With a move to the 22nm process node, Series 3 devices will be able to offer enhanced compute, wireless performance, and energy efficiency along with improved levels of IoT security architected to the silicon.
“Our Series 3 platform is built for a more connected world that demands development flexibility and that more intelligence be pushed to the edge,” said Silicon Labs CEO Matt Johnson. “Series 3 not only meets the needs of developers and device manufacturers today but is built to meet their needs for the next decade.”
The initial Series 1 and current-gen Series 2 platforms continue to help scale the IoT and open up new applications. In large part, according to Silicon Labs, this is because they formed a platform with many commonalities that developers could leverage.
Series 3 devices will be able to meet the demands for more processing power at far-edge devices like IoT sensors, cameras, blood glucose monitors, and the demand for increasingly portable, secure, compute-intensive applications.
As a platform, Series 3 devices are designed to be:
- More Secure: Building on Silicon Labs’ Secure Vault technology, the first security package to earn PSA Level 3 certification, Series 3 devices will include all the security features available on Series 2 devices with new enhancements to make them the most secure devices in the IoT marketplace.
- More Intelligent: With built-in AI/ML engines, Series 3 devices are architected to improve AI/ML application performance by more than 100x. For non-AI/ML workloads, other enhancements to compute capabilities are designed to drive up to 20x more available general-purpose processing performance, allowing integration of system MCUs into Silicon Labs wireless SoCs.
- More Power-Efficient: By not only tapping the built-in AI/ML engine to optimise on-device power usage with machine learning as well as other proprietary improvements targeted towards critical power points, Series 3 is designed to add years to a device’s battery life, thereby helping to cut cords and increase portability for new IoT applications.
- More Scalable: Series 3 will be the only multi-radio IoT platform with a common code base for over 30 products across key wireless protocols including, but not limited to, Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, Wi-SUN, 15.4, multiprotocol, and proprietary protocols. This will allow developers to use one common set of tools to build applications and program countless devices.
The move to 22 nm and leveraging NVM memories and off-the-shelf IP blocks will also open significant foundry options for Silicon Labs and in an effort to minimise risk and disruptions for customers, Series 3 will be produced in the US, EMEA, and Asia.
In addition to the launch of Series 3 and to help developers and device manufacturers streamline and accelerate product designs, Silicon Labs also unveiled the next version of their developer tool suite, Simplicity Studio.
According to Silicon Labs, developer feedback suggests that they don’t want to be locked into vendor-specific tools, and they increasingly want to leverage open-source communities and third-party applications to enhance their development capabilities. Because of this, the biggest and most impactful change to Simplicity Studio 6 is the decoupling of the IDE from Silicon Lab’s productivity tools. With the launch of Simplicity Studio 6, Silicon Labs is enabling developers to use some of the most requested IDEs in the industry and not be locked into a vendor-specific IDE.
“We recognise that development is not a one-size-fits-all approach,” said Michael Norman, Senior Product Manager of IoT Development at Silicon Labs. “That’s why we wanted to present developers with the most complete set of tools, support for an expansive universe of providers, and let them choose. We want to offer a great platform, tools, and support and get out of their way.”
To meet that ambition, Silicon Labs has also announced an extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code. This will enable Silicon Labs applications, new or existing, to be developed from within Visual Studio Code.
