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  4. Ambiq — Apollo3 Blue Plus System-on-Chip (SoC)

Ambiq — Apollo3 Blue Plus System-on-Chip (SoC)

Ambiq

 

Ambiq Apollo3 Blue Plus System-on-Chip (SoC)

Build your smart home

The Ambiq Apollo3 Blue Plus of the Apollo3 System-on-Chip (SoC) family is their Go-Wide part for the smart home space.

The SoC offers ultra-low power processing at just 6uA/MHz, which enables greater battery life and AI features in endpoint devices, as well as Bluetooth LE connectivity for devices such as wearables, trackers, smart TV remotes, sensors, and more. You can also throw in AI health and fitness monitoring and Voice-on-SPOT as neuralSPOT feature adds.

The Apollo3 Blue Plus SoC sets a new standard in energy efficiency for battery-powered devices with an integrated ARM Cortex-M4 processor with Floating Point Unit and turboSPOT® increasing the computational capabilities of the ARM Cortex M4F core to 96 MHz while lowering the active power consumption to <6 uA/MHz. This combination dramatically reduces energy consumption while still enabling abundant application processing power to add greater capability and extended life to battery operated devices.

The Apollo3 Blue brings several new features to Ambiq’s SPOTbased Apollo MCU Family including an integrated DMA engine, QSPI interface and advanced stepper motor control for ultra-low power analog watch hand management. The Apollo3 Blue also forms the core of Ambiq’s Voice-on-SPOT® reference platform making it the perfect device for always-on voice assistant integration and command recognition to battery-powered devices.

The Apollo3 Blue provides a dedicated second core for the ultra-low power BLE5 connectivity platform providing superior RF throughput and leaving plenty of resources available for user applications. The Apollo3 Blue Plus SoC adds two additional MSPI modules (3 total) to the Apollo3 feature set, and increases the external memory execute-in-place (XiP) aperture from 64 MB to 96 MB (32 MB/ MSPI instance). Additionally, internal FLASH increases from 1 MB to 2 MB, SRAM from 384 KB to 768 KB (TCM size remains at 64 KB) and the GPIO count increases from 50 to 74.

Features

  • Ultra-low supply current:
    • 6 µA/MHz executing from FLASH or RAM at 3.3 V
    • Low-power sleep and deep sleep modes with selectable levels of RAM/cache retention
  • High-performance ARM Cortex-M4 Processor:
    • 48 MHz nominal clock frequency, with 96 MHz high performance turboSPOT® Mode
    • Floating point unit
    • Memory protection unit
    • Wake-up interrupt controller with 32 interrupts
  • Integrated Bluetooth 5 low-energy controller:
    • RF sensitivity: -93 dBm (typical)
    • TX peak output power: 3 dBm (max)
  • Ultra-low power memory:
    • Up to 2 MB of flash memory for code/data
    • Up to 768 KB of low latency/leakage SRAM for code/data
    • 16 KB 2-way Associative/Direct-Mapped Cache
  • Ultra-low power interface for on and off-chip sensors:
    • 14 bit ADC at up to 1.2 MS/s, 15 selectable input channels
    • Voltage Comparator
    • Temperature sensor with +/- 3ºC accuracy after calibration

 

  • ISO7816 Secure interface
  • Flexible serial peripherals:
    • 1x 2/4/8-bit and 2x 2/4-bit SPI master interfaces (MSPIs)
    • 6x I 2C/SPI masters for peripheral communication
    • I2C/SPI slave for host communications
    • 2x UART modules with 32-location TX and RX FIFOs
    • PDM for mono and stereo audio microphone
    • 1x I2S slave for PDM audio pass-through
  • Rich set of clock sources:
    • 32.768 kHz XTAL oscillator
    • Low frequency RC oscillator - 1.024
    • High frequency RC oscillator – 48/96 MHz
    • RTC based on Ambiq’s AM08X5/18X5 families
  • Wide operating range: 1.755-3.63 V, -40 to 85°C
  • Compact packages:
    • 5.3 x 4.3 x 0.8 mm, 108-ball BGA with 74 GPIO

 

Applications
  • Voice-on-SPOT® compatible for always-listening keyword detect, audio command recognition and voice assistant integration in battery-powered devices including:
    • Bluetooth headsets, earbuds, and truly wireless earbuds
    • Remote and Gaming Controls
    • Smart home
  • Wearables including smart watches and fitness/activity trackers
  • Hearing aids, Digital Health Monitoring and Sensing Devices
  • Smart Home Automation, Security and Lighting control