Silicon Labs teases its Series 3 wireless platform

Silicon Labs gave the industry a sneak peek into its upcoming next-generation wireless Series 3 platform built for embedded IoT devices. Announced at its fourth annual Works with Developers Conference, the Series 3 wireless platform moves to 22-nanometer (nm) process node, touting more compute power, greater security, higher scalability and better efficiency. The company also announced the new version of its developer suite Simplicity Studio, which will open the development environment to the most popular integrated development environments (IDEs) and the new Series 3.

The Series 3 Platform builds on the initial Series 1 and current-generation Series 2 platforms of SoCs and modules, opening up new applications with improved features that help scale the IoT. These devices will provide more processing power at far-edge devices across all IoT applications in key areas. These include smart cities and civil infrastructure, commercial buildings, retail and warehouses, smart factories and Industry 4.0, smart homes and healthcare, as well as portable compute-intensive applications.

Matt Johnson, CEO, Silicon Labs (Source: Silicon Labs)

“Series 3 is a watershed moment for our industry and Silicon Labs,” said Matt Johnson, CEO, Silicon Labs, during his keynote at the conference. “The goal is to increase the industry adoption of IoT technology with new-to-industry capabilities and four generations of learning what our customers want and need.

“Series 3 is purpose-built for embedded IoT,” Johnson said. “Globally, we have more devices being connected than ever before, more data being gathered and more devices processing that data, and we have more processing power and intelligence available at the edge than ever before. With this, new applications continue to emerge and they’re incredibly diverse.”

To meet these new demands, “Series 3 has been architected to be the highest volume, most scalable embedded platform ever,” he added.

What will Series 3 bring to IoT wireless?

The key enhancements center around security, power efficiency, processing capability and scalability.

Not providing too many spec details, Johnson said Series 3 addresses three major areas. These include taking the company’s IoT wireless leadership to the next level with more security, more wireless capability and improved power efficiency; delivering new levels of compute with more than 100× the processing power including integrated AI/ML accelerators for edge devices and leading-edge analog and digital peripherals, and offering greater scalability with a multi-radio platform, including support for an extendable and scalable memory architecture.

Looking at security, Series 3 builds on the company’s Secure Vault technology, the first security package to earn PSA Level 3 certification and includes the same security features available on Series 2 as well as new features, which have not been revealed yet.

“We’ve relentlessly innovated to advance IoT wireless security making it upgradable and as future proof as you can get in our industry and we’re taking that security to the next level with Series 3,” Johnson said.

Series 3 also provide more wireless capability, “extending our wireless performance even further as well as bringing scalable, multi-protocol, multi-band solutions across all the mainstream IoT wireless technologies and ecosystems,” and “… will push battery life to a new level and better than anything else out there today or that’s been announced.”

Series 3 also promises more than 100× processing capability, including integrated AI/ ML accelerators for edge devices and digital and analog peripherals that enable higher performance systems.

Series 3 delivers new levels of compute optimized for your application, enabling consolidation of system processing into wireless SoCs, Johnson said. “With the increases in programmable compute, you can eliminate that existing MCU taking up space and adding cost to your system. This will include cutting-edge digital and analog peripherals enabling higher performance systems.”

Silicon Labs also claims Series 3 will be the only multi-radio IoT platform with a common code base for over 30 products across key wireless protocols including Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, Wi-SUN, 15.4, multi-protocol and proprietary protocols. This will make it easier for developers who now can use one common set of tools to build applications and program devices. The new platform also will support an extendable, scalable memory architecture, including support for external flash.

Johnson expects Series 3 “will be the most scalable wireless platform ever.” The multi-radio platform, architected with a common code base, “will be the heart of over 30 Series 3 wireless products, which is a two to three times increase over Series 2,” he added.

While the move to 22 nm will open significant scalability for Series 3, the new solutions will be produced in multiple fabs across multiple geographies to minimize supply chain risk.

The company is on track to sample products early next year and will provide more information about the platform products in the upcoming quarters. Johnson also noted that the company will continue to support Series 2 with new silicon and software, complementing the Series 3 platform for many years to come.

“An investment in Series 2 is an investment in Series 3,” Johnson said. “It will be supported by the same GSDKs and the same software platform and tool compatibility across both families, including backward support and code compatibility.”

Simplicity Studio 6

Silicon Labs also continues to invest in development tools, ranging from documentation and partnerships with external tool providers to integrating new plug-ins and extensions into existing SDKs.

Along with the Series 3 hardware, Silicon Labs unveiled Simplicity Studio 6, the latest version of its application development and productivity tools.

“We gave it a head-to-toe polish with a new sleek responsive and intuitive UI, incorporating flexible options to manage and accelerate your projects,” said Michael Norman, senior product manager of IoT development at Silicon Labs, at the Works for Developers Conference. “You will be able to start your projects by technology with the ability to filter and browse our entire SDK example and demo library. For example, if you’re building a Bluetooth project, you’ll be able to see and jump right into Bluetooth templates and tools.”

The biggest change is the decoupling of the IDE from Silicon Labs’ productivity tools. This allows developers to use some of the most popular IDEs in the industry instead of being locked into a vendor-specific IDE.

“We recognize the development is not a one-size-fits-all approach, Norman said. “One of the most common pieces of feedback that we hear is that developers don’t want to be locked into a vendor-specific tool and want to leverage open-source communities and third-party applications to enhance their development capabilities and we agree.”

Norman said the “most exciting change” in Simplicity Studio Six is decoupling the IDE from the configuration and analysis tools, while still providing a seamless development experience.

To support this move, the company announced an extension for Microsoft Visual Studio Code, called the most popular tool for software development today. This enables new or existing Silicon Labs applications to be developed from within Visual Studio Code. A beta release of the extension is available for download in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace that works with the latest version of Simplicity Studio 5. Beta for Simplicity Studio 6 is expected to open in early 2024.