The family consists of the multiprotocol MG26 SoC, the Bluetooth LE BG26 SoC, and the PG26 MCU. All three have been designed to future-proof the IoT against emerging applications, like Matter, with double the Flash and RAM of other Silicon Labs multiprotocol devices.
"As users from consumer to industrial sectors extract more benefits from their IoT deployments, their requirements are steadily increasing," explained Matt Johnson, CEO of Silicon Labs. "The new xG26 family is built for the future, empowering device manufacturers with the confidence that their current designs will meet tomorrow’s demands."
To help designers build devices capable of running advanced IoT applications, the xG26 family can be equipped with:
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.
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.
2.4 GHz wireless connectivity leveraging Silicon Labs' software stacks for 2.4 GHz wireless protocols, including Matter, Zigbee, OpenThread, Bluetooth Low Energy, Bluetooth Mesh, Proprietary, and Multiprotocol, with a RF link budget that improves range and reduces transmission retries, providing a better user experience while improving battery life.
Silicon Labs has committed itself to the Matter standard, the rapidly deploying application layer that allows devices to be interoperable between the leading IoT networks and ecosystems and is Matter's leading semiconductor code contributor. Most device types have already seen Matter's code requirements grow by 6% in the first 18 months since Matter 1.0 was released in October 2022.
While the MG26 is intended for Matter, the BG26 Bluetooth SoC brings all the same features but is optimised for Bluetooth LE and Bluetooth Mesh, while the PG26 brings low-power intelligence to unconnected applications like CCTV cameras, remotes, and children's toys.
Pin compatibility between select xG26 and xG24 devices and shared hardware and software development tools like Silicon Labs Simplicity Studios allows for easy development and migration from other Silicon Labs Series 2 devices.
