Silicon Labs announces new xG26 family of Wireless SoCs and MCUs. The new range of Wireless SoCs and MCUs is stated as IoT industry’s highest performing device family to date.
The New Wireless SoCs and MCUs Family Consists:
- Multiprotocol MG26 SoC,
- The Bluetooth LE BG26 SoC,
- And the PG26 MCU.
All Wireless SoCs and MCUs Family have twice the Flash and RAM of previous Silicon Labs multiprotocol devices. The new family of Wireless SoCs and MCUs also enables to future-proof the Internet of Things against some of the most demanding new applications, like Matter.
“As users from consumer to industrial sectors extract more benefits from their IoT deployments, their requirements are steadily increasing,” said Matt Johnson, CEO of Silicon Labs, Inc. “The new xG26 family is built for the future, empowering device manufacturers with the confidence that their current designs will meet tomorrow’s demands.”
The xG26 series of devices can be outfitted with powerful IoT applications to assist designers in creating devices that:
- Doubled Flash, RAM, and GPIO capacity compared to the xG24 device family, allowing IoT device builders to develop advanced edge applications. It also has double the number of general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins as the xG24, meaning that device builders can connect it to twice as many peripherals for better system integration.
- Higher performance compute in a multicore format with an ARM® Cortex®-M33 CPU and dedicated cores for the radio and security subsystems, helping to free up the main core for customer applications.
- Embedded AI/ML hardware acceleration, enabling up to 8x faster processing of machine learning algorithms using as little as 1/6th the power, achieving greater energy efficiency.
- Best-in-Class Security with Silicon Labs Secure Vault™ and ARM TrustZone. Using the Silicon Labs Custom Part Manufacturing Service, xG26 devices can also be hard-coded with customer-designed security keys and other features in the fabrication process, further hardening them against vulnerabilities.
- 4 GHz wireless connectivity leveraging Silicon Labs’ proven, tested, and certified software stacks for 2.4 GHz wireless protocols, including Matter, Zigbee, OpenThread, Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth Mesh, Proprietary, and Multiprotocol, with a best in class RF link budget that improves range and reduces transmission retries, providing a better user experience while improving battery life.
MG26 Multiprotocol SoC Designed to be Most Advanced SoC for Matter over Thread
With Matter, the quickly emerging application layer that enables device interoperability across the top IoT networks and ecosystems, Silicon Labs is fully committed to the project.
Leading and third-largest provider of semiconductor code to Matter is Silicon Labs. Silicon Labs received extensive insight into what it takes to develop a device that can expand with the needs of the Matter standard as it adds support for new device kinds, security advancements, and more, thanks to the knowledge gained working on Matter.
In the first eighteen months since Matter 1.0 was introduced in October 2022, most device types have already seen a 6% increase in programming needs.
The goal of consumers investing in Matter-enabled Smart Home construction is to avoid having their new gadgets become outdated in a matter of years. Rather, what people want is assurance that the Matter device they bought a year ago would function with the same devices and be just as safe as the next one they buy the following year.
This is the interoperability and security promise of Matter, which is why Silicon Labs created the most sophisticated SoC for the Matter standard in the MG26.
Based on the same architecture as the MG24 Multiprotocol Wireless SoC, which won multiple awards, the MG26 has twice as much Flash and RAM as its predecessor and can be customized with up to 3200 kB of Flash and 512 kB of RAM.
Additionally, it features twice as many general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins as the MG24, allowing device manufacturers to attach twice as many peripherals to it for improved system integration.
The exclusive Matrix Vector AI/ML hardware accelerator from Silicon Labs is also utilized by the MG26, BG26, and PG26 to enable higher intelligence for all applications, not only Matter-enabled ones.
This machine learning-optimized dedicated core can process machine learning tasks up to eight times quicker while consuming as little as one-sixth the energy of a conventional embedded CPU. Because the device can transfer ML-based activation or wake cues to the accelerator, more power-hungry functions can go to sleep and battery depletion may be minimized, greatly increasing the family’s energy efficiency.
This is perfect for battery-operated smart home devices like switches and sensors, where users want them to blend in with their surroundings without drawing attention to themselves by constantly needing new batteries.
Silicon Labs Extends IoT Leadership with New SoC and MCU Family
None of the other pure-play Internet of Things companies can compare to Silicon Labs’ breadth, depth, and level of competence, according to the company’s claims to be among the top ones worldwide.
For this reason, the xG26 is released as a family. The BG26 Bluetooth SoC has all the same functionalities and is optimized for Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth Mesh, while the PG26 provides low-power intelligence to disconnected applications such as remote controls, CCTV cameras, and kids’ toys.
The MG26 is perfect for Matter. Easy development and smooth migration from other Silicon Labs Series 2 devices are made possible by pin compatibility between certain xG26 and xG24 devices and shared hardware and software development tools like Silicon Labs Simplicity Studios.
To find out more about how to use Silicon Labs to start creating innovative IoT devices, be sure to:
- The Silicon Labs Matter Developer Journey
- The Silicon Labs Bluetooth Developer Journey
- The Silicon Labs 32-Bit Microcontrollers product page
