Ambiq Enables Audio, Radio, and Graphics for Always-Connected IoT Endpoints

July 06, 2022

News

Ambiq®, an ultra-low-power semiconductor solutions company based on the proprietary and patented Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT®) platform, announced the general availability of Apollo4 Blue Plus supporting Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity, enhanced graphics display, and audio capabilities, and flexible security features to safely deploy power-constrained IoT endpoint devices without compromising power efficiency.

According to Ericsson® Mobility Visualizer, the installed base of connected IoT devices is expected to grow from 14.6 billion devices in 2021 to 30.2 billion devices in 2027. The wearables market in particular, including smartwatches, smartbands, and smart glasses, together will generate more than $350 billion in cumulative revenues over the next five years.

To address the IoT market, some of the key design challenges to overcome include power consumption, on-chip intelligence, complex integration, and interaction with the outside world.

The Apollo4 Blue Plus is the 4th generation system processor product built upon Ambiq’s proprietary SPOT platform. The Apollo4 Blue Plus has an integrated CPU and sophisticated graphics rendering capability, allowing developers to compose high-resolution UI with vibrant images, and enabling additional features while reducing devices’ overall system power consumption to extend their battery life.

Its embedded 4.75MB of memory delivers power-efficient display performance by storing images on-chip to avoid exhausting resources by fetching data from external memory.

Additionally, the memory size enables an end-to-end always-on-voice capability to support high quality voice calls and music playback due to its precise Pulse Density Modulation (PDM) to Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) converter and four stereo digital microphones with dynamic range of up to 120 dB. The Apollo4 Blue Plus also has flexible audio interfaces with full duplex I2S and asynchronous sample rate conversion (ASRC), which is helpful for driving a speaker.

The Apollo4 Blue Plus provides enhanced graphics display and voice capabilities to serve as either an application processor or a coprocessor for battery-powered endpoint devices.

For more information, visit Ambiq.