While using a 32-bit processor can enable a microcontroller to stay in a deep-sleep mode for longer, there is nevertheless some baseline power consumption which can significantly influence the overall energy budget. However, historically 32-bit processors have admittedly not been available with useful sub-µA standby modes. With the introduction of power efficient 32-bit architectures, the standby options are now complementing the reduced processing and active time.
With the relatively low power consumption many microcontrollers exhibit in deep sleep, the functionality they provide in these modes is often very limited. Since applications often require features such as real time counters, power-on reset / brown-out detection or UART reception to be enabled at all times, many microcontroller systems are prevented from ever entering deep sleep since such basic features are only available in an active run mode. Many microcontroller solutions also have limited SRAM and CPU state retention in sub-µA standby modes, if at all. Other solutions need to turn-off or duty-cycle brown-out and power-on reset detectors in order to save power.
In the pursuit of energy efficiency then microcontrollers need to provide product designers with a choice a sleep modes offering the flexibility to scale basic resources, and thereby the power consumption, in several defined levels or energy modes. While energy modes constitute a coarse division of basic resources, additional fine-grained tuning of resources within each energy mode should also be able to be implemented by enabling / disabling individual peripheral functions.
There’s little point though in offering a microcontroller with tremendous sleep mode energy consumption if its energy efficiency gains are lost due to the time it takes for the microcontroller to wake up and enter run mode.
When a microcontroller goes from a deep sleep state, where the oscillators are disabled, to an active state, there is always a wake-up period, where the processor must wait for the oscillators to stabilize before starting to execute code. Since no processing can be done during this period of time, the energy spent while waking up is wasted energy, and so reducing the wake-up time is important to reduce overall energy consumption.
Furthermore, microcontroller applications impose real time demands which often mean that the wake-up time must be kept to a minimum to enable the microcontroller to respond to an event within a set period of time. Because the latency demanded by many applications is lower than the wake-up time of many existing microcontrollers, the device is often inhibited from going into deep sleep at all – not a very good solution for energy sensitive applications.
A beneficial solution would be to use a very fast RC oscillator that instantly wakes up the CPU and then optionally transfers the clock source to a crystal oscillator if needed. This meets both the real time demands as well as encourages run- and sleep mode duty cycling. Albeit the RC oscillator is not as accurate as a crystal oscillator, the RC oscillator is sufficient as the CPUs clock source during crystal start-up.
We know that getting back to sleep mode is key to saving energy. Therefore the CPU should preferably use a high clock frequency to solve its tasks more quickly and efficiently. Even if the higher frequency at first appears to require more power, the advantage is a system that is able to return to low power modes in a fraction of the time.
Peripherals however might not need to run at the CPU’s clock frequency. One solution to this conundrum is to pre-scale the clock to the core and peripherals, thereby ensuring the dynamic power consumption of the different parts is kept to a minimum. If the peripherals can further operate without the supervision of the CPU, we realize that a flexible clocking system is a vital requirement for energy efficient microcontrollers.
The obvious way for microcontrollers to use less energy is to allow the CPU to stay asleep while the peripherals are active, and so the development of peripherals that can operate with minimum or no intervention from the CPU is another worthy consideration for microcontroller designers. When peripherals look after themselves, the CPU can either solve other high level tasks or simply fall asleep, saving energy either way.
With advanced sequence programming, routines for operating peripherals previously controlled by the CPU can be handled by the peripherals themselves. The use of a DMA controller provides a pragmatic approach to autonomous peripheral operation. Helping to offload CPU workload to peripherals, a flexible DMA controller can effectively handle data transfers between memory and communication or data processing interfaces.
Of course there’s little point in using autonomous peripherals to relieve the burden of the CPU if they’re energy hungry. Microcontroller makers also need to closely consider the energy consumption of peripherals such as serial communication interfaces, data encryption/decryption engines, display drivers and radio communication peripherals. All peripherals must be efficiently implemented and optimized for energy consumption in order to fulfill the application’s need for a low system level energy consumption.
Taking the autonomy ideal a step further, the introduction of additional programmable interconnect structures into a microcontroller enable peripherals to talk to peripherals without the intervention of the CPU, thereby reducing energy consumption even further. A typical example of a peripheral talking to another peripheral would be an ADC conversion periodically triggered by a timer. A flexible peripheral interconnect allows direct hardware interaction between such peripherals, solving the task while the CPU is in its deepest sleep state.
The third part of this three part article explores the tools and techniques available for energy debugging.
Tags: Low Power, Microcontroller
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