Silicon Labs announced their next-generation Series 3 platform, purpose-built for embedded IoT devices. With a move to the 22 nanometer (nm) process node, new Silicon Labs Series 3 devices will be designed to offer industry-leading compute, wireless performance, and energy efficiency with the highest levels of IoT security architected to the silicon. To help developers and device manufacturers streamline and accelerate product designs, Silicon Labs also announced the next version of their developer tool suite, Simplicity Studio. With support for Silicon Labs’ entire portfolio, including Series 3, Simplicity Studio 6 will allow developers to utilize some of the most favored integrated development environments (IDEs) on the market,
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“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.”
Series 3 Platform Brings New Performance Capabilities, Efficiencies, and Diversified Supply Chain
The initial Series 1 and current-gen Series 2 platforms continue to be successful in helping to scale the IoT, connect more and more devices, and open up new applications. In large part, this is because they formed a platform with many commonalities that developers could leverage, and Series 3 follows in the same mold.
Series 3 devices will be able to answer the challenges that the continued acceleration of IoT poses: demands for more processing power at far-edge devices across all IoT applications in key areas including, but not limited to, smart cities and civil infrastructure, commercial buildings, retail and warehouses, smart factories and Industry 4.0, smart homes, personal and clinical healthcare, and the demand for increasingly portable, secure, compute-intensive applications. Series 3 advances Silicon Labs’ industry-leading wireless platform:
- More Security and Power Efficiency: Building on Silicon Labs’ industry-leading 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. By targeting critical power points with proprietary improvements, Series 3 is designed to add years to a device’s battery life.
- New Levels of Compute: Series 3 will bring more than 100X processing capability, including integrated AI/ ML accelerators for edge devices, enabling consolidation of system processing into wireless SoCs. In other words, with Series 3, with the increases in programmable compute, developers can eliminate MCUs taking up space and adding cost to their systems. This will include cutting-edge digital and analog peripherals enabling higher-performance systems.
- 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. In addition, Series 3 will support an extendable, scalable memory architecture, including support for external flash.
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The move to 22 nm will also open significant scalability for Series 3. The past several years have included several events and trends that have put a strain on the semiconductor supply chain across the entire industry, and the IoT hasn’t been immune. In an effort to minimize geographic risk and disruptions for customers, Series 3 will be produced in multiple fabs across multiple geographies.
Silicon Labs Simplicity Studio 6 Enhances Developer Tools with Visual Studio Code Support
Silicon Labs continues to invest in the developer experience for its customers including everything from documentation, partnerships with external tool providers, integrating new plug-ins and extensions into existing SDKs. Along with the Series 3 hardware, today Silicon Labs is also announcing Simplicity Studio 6, the latest version of its award-winning application development and productivity tools. Simplicity Studio 6 will bring the latest development tools to the entire Silicon Labs portfolio of devices, including Series 1 and Series 2, will giving developers a bridge to Series 3.
One of the most common pieces of developer feedback is 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 our productivity tools. With the launch of Simplicity Studio 6, Silicon Labs is enabling developers to utilize some of the most requested IDEs in the industry and not be locked into a vendor-specific IDE.
“We recognize 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.”
In a move to fulfill that goal, Silicon Labs has announced an extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code, the most popular tool for software development in the world today. This extension will enable Silicon Labs applications, new or existing, to be developed from within Visual Studio Code. A Beta release of the Silicon Labs extension is available for download today in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace that works with the latest version of Simplicity Studio 5.
In addition, to be a supportive partner in the development process, Silicon Labs today also revealed an expanded Developer Journey for Amazon Sidewalk as well as an all-new Matter Development Journey. Both provide the tools, documentation, hardware, and expert support needed for development in the two technologies, backed by Silicon Labs.
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