January 9, 2012 -- Marvell, Inc. today announced the 88MZ100 ZigBee microcontroller system-on-chip (SOC), which Marvell says has the level of integrated features for home automation and LED lighting-control applications normally found in four separate chips.

With high-performance, low power consumption and rich microcontroller peripherals at an affordable price point, the 88MZ100 is designed to offer unparalleled advantages for home automation and LED lighting control applications enabling original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs) to easily, quickly and cost-effectively reach the market with new, innovative products.

In addition, Marvell announced today the new 88MC200 Wi-Fi microcontroller SOC which, together with Marvell's Avastar 88W878x 802.11n Wi-Fi SOC and comprehensive Smart Energy software stack, is designed to provide a highly cost-effective, flexible and easy-to-use hardware/ software solution enabling smart connectivity for a variety of devices and appliances that are not designed with high-performance host processors, ranging from refrigerators to thermostats.

The 88MZ100 ZigBee SOC leverages the company's proven strengths in energy-efficient computing and wireless networking, and combines it with Marvell's LED drivers to provide a total solution for LED lighting-control and home-automation applications. The SOC's ZigBee gateway acts as an adaptor that facilitates control of both ZigBee and Wi-Fi enabled smart devices using a standard IP network infrastructure.

The 88MZ100 provides best-in-class coexistence performance in the 2.4-GHz ISM band where Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices reside. Furthermore, with superior sensitivity (-104dBm), the 88MZ100 does not sacrifice receive sensitivity as a coexistence solution.

The 88MZ100 ZigBee software stack features a set of host APIs that provide users full control of the light bulb via the Marvell Wi-Fi/ ZigBee Gateway reference design. Using ZigBee's cost-effective green and global wireless networking standard, the 88MZ100 and Marvell Wi-Fi/ ZigBee gateway enable consumers to seamlessly control their household devices from their mobile phone, connected consumer electronics device or dedicated website through an intuitive user interface (UI).

The Marvell 88MC200 high-performance microcontroller uses an advanced 55-nm process with 512-kBytes SRAM, and integrates a set of I/O interfaces including I2S, SDIO and USB. Marvell's new Smart-Energy Platform is driven by the 88MC200 and Marvell's second-generation Smart-Energy Software Platform to provide a flexible, cost-effective solution that further enables the mass-market adoption of smart appliances and devices ranging from thermostats to refrigerators. Current devices implemented with the Marvell 88MC200 include heating and cooling systems; household appliances such as refrigerators, dishwashers, washers and dryers; plug-load controllers; lighting controls; smart-meters and sensors; and irrigations systems.

88MZ100 overview

The Marvell 88MZ100's extremely high integration level, best-in-class transceiver performance and power consumption, and reduced bill-of-materials (BoM), lets manufacturers lower the total system cost significantly while also improving system performance and robustness.

48 pin QFN package, 31 GPIOs, out of which 29 support external IRQ. 32-MHz crystal with on-chip clock generation. ARM Cortex-M3 core, running at 32MHz or 64MHz with software programmability. 512-kByte in-package QSPI serial flash with 1-MByte option. 160 kByte configurable code/ data RAM. DMA with six configurable channels for peripheral data transfer. Serial communication port: 2 UART, 2 SPI and 2 I2C. Two general purpose 32-bit timer modules, each supporting 5 PWM channels. RTC / WDT. 16-bit ADC with configurable throughput up to 250ksps and conversion range from 0 to 3.6V; 8 single channels or 4 differential channels. 10-bit 500-ksps DAC, 2 single channels or 1 differential channel. Two analog comparators with programmable speed/ current. On-chip temperature sensor. On-chip battery monitoring. Hardware 16-bit CRC and 128-bit AES engine shared between MAC and applications.

88MC200 overview