标签: Zero

Not typical of me, I was not wearing my happy face several days ago, nor did I perform a single happy dance. The reason for this sad state of affairs started when I arrived at my office at the crack of dawn and powered up the main tower computer that drives the three 28-inch monitors forming my desktop.   Everything seemed to be OK at first. The various applications (Outlook, Firefox, Excel, Word, Visio, Notepad, etc.) appeared to open and run as expected while I was setting up my desktop the way I like it. As soon as I tried to do anything with any of these applications, however, that program immediately locked up. If I subsequently tried to use the ctrl-alt-delete key combination to access the task manager, the entire system locked up and then all three screens went black. Strange to relate, the only thing that continued to work was the lonely cursor associated with my mouse, and there’s not much you can do with a cursor on an otherwise blank screen.   I tried re-booting the machine several times to no avail. There were probably other things I could have tried, but I’d pretty much reached the end of the line. To be honest, this computer has been getting flakier and flakier recently, and I’ve been expecting this day to come for a few months now. We’ve run antivirus and anti-malware tools, and we’ve tried swapping memory sticks and running low-level diagnostic and intensive burn-in tests, but at the end of the day there’s only so much you can do.     I must admit to feeling a tad forlorn. This machine has been a true and faithful companion for several years now. It was actually a refurbished unit I purchased off eBay for around $350. The graphics card was a beast that could drive two high-resolution monitors. I soon discovered that a new card of the same type would have cost me around $450 (eek!), but then I tracked down a refurbished version on eBay for something like $30. Since that time, I’ve been working the poor little scamp into the ground, pounding away on my keyboard, orchestrating things with my mouse, creating blogs, editing images, and doing suchlike from dawn till dusk, day-in and day-out. I know how frazzled I feel, so I’m not surprised that my tower computer eventually gave up the ghost and shrugged off this mortal coil.   The thing is that I can’t survive without my big-boy computer. I can struggle along on my notepads – as I must do when I’m travelling -- but I can generate only a fraction of the throughput I manage on my primary setup. If you couple this with the fact that I am a man of little patience, who is not prepared to wait several days to obtain a new machine, you can see we have a problem.   Of course one can find computers at places like Best-Buy and Walmart, but these are pretty much generic boxes targeted at the masses. These machines may be OK for home use, but I haven’t had much luck over the years using them in a grueling professional environment.   Fortunately, I have a chum called Daniel Imsand who works at a local company called GigaParts . This is an interesting organization with two faces to it. On one hand it is the largest independent ham radio distributor in the USA (and possibly in the world). On the other it builds and sells kick-ass PCs. The GigaParts Zero Systems brand is divided into three categories: Zero Home PCs, Zero Gaming PCs, and Zero Workstations.   Daniel is the product manager for all of GigaParts' Zero Systems. He is tasked with creating custom configurations with great pricing boasting the most reliable and stable components. As Daniel told me, GigaParts includes parts and labor warranty -- three years for both on the machine I ended up purchasing from them. But, given a choice, it prefers not to have to do any warranty work, so the company designs and builds its machines in such a way that they keep going, and going, and …   A lot of GigaParts' computer business involves creating custom value-added systems that it builds to order. (Apparently it does a roaring trade in professional-grade flight simulators.) But it also offers prebuilt, off-the-shelf systems sufficient to make even a grizzled old engineer like me squeal with delight. (It was not a pretty sound.)   I called Daniel on the phone. Based on his recommendation, I settled on a Zero Pro Z7 Plus machine. This little beauty boasts a quad-core Intel Core i7-4790 processor running at 3.6 GHz (be still, my beating heart). This is augmented by 16GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, an enterprise-grade Intel Pro 2500 Series 240GB SSD (solid state drive), an nVidia Quadro K620 Workstation GPU, SuperSpeed USB 3.0, and more bells and whistles than you could swing a stick at.   One thing I really like is that the company offers this machine with Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit. (I have little regard for Windows 8 on my office machines.) As soon as I got off the phone with Daniel, I leapt into my truck and raced over to the GigaParts building. By the time I arrived, about 20 minutes later, my new machine, along with a bunch of HDMI cables and appropriate connectors, was sitting on the counter waiting for me. After undergoing a few formalities, like paying for the little scamp (thank goodness for credit cards, is all I can say), I zipped back to my office and commenced connecting everything together.     To be honest, after spending the past several months trying to keep my old machine gasping along, I've grown a little tired of crawling around under my desk, replacing parts and messing around with cables. Thus, I decided to locate this new machine on the top of my desk behind the monitors, as shown in the picture above.   I then spent the rest of the day downloading and/or reloading my various applications, like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio, Paint.net, and so forth. I also downloaded Mozilla Firefox, which is my preferred Web browser, and I made sure that Google.com is the default search engine that appears on the screen when I launch that browser.   Then the next day -- a brand spanking new day. Once again I'm wearing my happy face and all is now well in the Land of Max, where the colors are brighter, the butterflies are bigger, the birds sing sweeter, and the beer is plentiful and cold. I just powered up "the beast." OMG, this machine is so fast ! The password box appears on the center screen only a second or so after you've pressed the soft power button. As soon as you enter the password all three screens immediately spring to life. When I launch an application like Word or Excel, it appears on my screen in a flash. It's so fast, in fact, that I get the impression the program has launched before I've finished double-clicking its icon on my desktop.   Having said all this, I have run into one slight problem. I think this came about when I downloaded a new copy of the free PDFCreator utility that I've been using for years, but I can’t say for sure. All I know is that now, when I launch Firefox, I'm presented with the Google search engine on the initial tab, which is what I want. But if I subsequently click the '+' icon to open up a new tab, that tab appears with the loathsome Bing search engine flaunting itself in all its horrible glory. I've tried playing with the "options" settings, but for the life of me I can’t work out how to stop this from happening.   Are you aware of any problems associated with downloading PDFCreator, and do you have any ideas as to how I can banish the despicable Bing search engine back to the nether regions from whence it came?

Unusually for me, I was not wearing my happy face several days ago, nor did I perform a single happy dance. The reason for this sad state of affairs started when I arrived at my office at the crack of dawn and powered up the main tower computer that drives the three 28-inch monitors forming my desktop.   Everything seemed to be OK at first. The various applications (Outlook, Firefox, Excel, Word, Visio, Notepad, etc.) appeared to open and run as expected while I was setting up my desktop the way I like it. As soon as I tried to do anything with any of these applications, however, that program immediately locked up. If I subsequently tried to use the ctrl-alt-delete key combination to access the task manager, the entire system locked up and then all three screens went black. Strange to relate, the only thing that continued to work was the lonely cursor associated with my mouse, and there’s not much you can do with a cursor on an otherwise blank screen.   I tried re-booting the machine several times to no avail. There were probably other things I could have tried, but I’d pretty much reached the end of the line. To be honest, this computer has been getting flakier and flakier recently, and I’ve been expecting this day to come for a few months now. We’ve run antivirus and anti-malware tools, and we’ve tried swapping memory sticks and running low-level diagnostic and intensive burn-in tests, but at the end of the day there’s only so much you can do.     I must admit to feeling a tad forlorn. This machine has been a true and faithful companion for several years now. It was actually a refurbished unit I purchased off eBay for around $350. The graphics card was a beast that could drive two high-resolution monitors. I soon discovered that a new card of the same type would have cost me around $450 (eek!), but then I tracked down a refurbished version on eBay for something like $30. Since that time, I’ve been working the poor little scamp into the ground, pounding away on my keyboard, orchestrating things with my mouse, creating blogs, editing images, and doing suchlike from dawn till dusk, day-in and day-out. I know how frazzled I feel, so I’m not surprised that my tower computer eventually gave up the ghost and shrugged off this mortal coil.   The thing is that I can’t survive without my big-boy computer. I can struggle along on my notepads – as I must do when I’m travelling -- but I can generate only a fraction of the throughput I manage on my primary setup. If you couple this with the fact that I am a man of little patience, who is not prepared to wait several days to obtain a new machine, you can see we have a problem.   Of course one can find computers at places like Best-Buy and Walmart, but these are pretty much generic boxes targeted at the masses. These machines may be OK for home use, but I haven’t had much luck over the years using them in a grueling professional environment.   Fortunately, I have a chum called Daniel Imsand who works at a local company called GigaParts . This is an interesting organization with two faces to it. On one hand it is the largest independent ham radio distributor in the USA (and possibly in the world). On the other it builds and sells kick-ass PCs. The GigaParts Zero Systems brand is divided into three categories: Zero Home PCs, Zero Gaming PCs, and Zero Workstations.   Daniel is the product manager for all of GigaParts' Zero Systems. He is tasked with creating custom configurations with great pricing boasting the most reliable and stable components. As Daniel told me, GigaParts includes parts and labor warranty -- three years for both on the machine I ended up purchasing from them. But, given a choice, it prefers not to have to do any warranty work, so the company designs and builds its machines in such a way that they keep going, and going, and …   A lot of GigaParts' computer business involves creating custom value-added systems that it builds to order. (Apparently it does a roaring trade in professional-grade flight simulators.) But it also offers prebuilt, off-the-shelf systems sufficient to make even a grizzled old engineer like me squeal with delight. (It was not a pretty sound.)   I called Daniel on the phone. Based on his recommendation, I settled on a Zero Pro Z7 Plus machine. This little beauty boasts a quad-core Intel Core i7-4790 processor running at 3.6 GHz (be still, my beating heart). This is augmented by 16GB of DDR3-1600 RAM, an enterprise-grade Intel Pro 2500 Series 240GB SSD (solid state drive), an nVidia Quadro K620 Workstation GPU, SuperSpeed USB 3.0, and more bells and whistles than you could swing a stick at.   One thing I really like is that the company offers this machine with Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit. (I have little regard for Windows 8 on my office machines.) As soon as I got off the phone with Daniel, I leapt into my truck and raced over to the GigaParts building. By the time I arrived, about 20 minutes later, my new machine, along with a bunch of HDMI cables and appropriate connectors, was sitting on the counter waiting for me. After undergoing a few formalities, like paying for the little scamp (thank goodness for credit cards, is all I can say), I zipped back to my office and commenced connecting everything together.     To be honest, after spending the past several months trying to keep my old machine gasping along, I've grown a little tired of crawling around under my desk, replacing parts and messing around with cables. Thus, I decided to locate this new machine on the top of my desk behind the monitors, as shown in the picture above.   I then spent the rest of the day downloading and/or reloading my various applications, like Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visio, Paint.net, and so forth. I also downloaded Mozilla Firefox, which is my preferred Web browser, and I made sure that Google.com is the default search engine that appears on the screen when I launch that browser.   Then the next day -- a brand spanking new day. Once again I'm wearing my happy face and all is now well in the Land of Max, where the colors are brighter, the butterflies are bigger, the birds sing sweeter, and the beer is plentiful and cold. I just powered up "the beast." OMG, this machine is so fast ! The password box appears on the center screen only a second or so after you've pressed the soft power button. As soon as you enter the password all three screens immediately spring to life. When I launch an application like Word or Excel, it appears on my screen in a flash. It's so fast, in fact, that I get the impression the program has launched before I've finished double-clicking its icon on my desktop.   Having said all this, I have run into one slight problem. I think this came about when I downloaded a new copy of the free PDFCreator utility that I've been using for years, but I can’t say for sure. All I know is that now, when I launch Firefox, I'm presented with the Google search engine on the initial tab, which is what I want. But if I subsequently click the '+' icon to open up a new tab, that tab appears with the loathsome Bing search engine flaunting itself in all its horrible glory. I've tried playing with the "options" settings, but for the life of me I can’t work out how to stop this from happening.   Are you aware of any problems associated with downloading PDFCreator, and do you have any ideas as to how I can banish the despicable Bing search engine back to the nether regions from whence it came?

I first dabbled with Arduino microcontroller development platforms last year in the form of the Rainbowduino Arduino-compatible system from Seeed Studio, which powered my 4x4x4 tri-color 3D LED cube .   Since that time, I've become a huge supporter of the Arduino, from the concept to the hardware to the software (IDE) to the ecosystem. I'm now using Arduinos and Arduino-compatible platforms for all sorts of projects, including my Inamorata Prognostication Engine , and my BADASS Display .   Along the way, I've used Arduino Unos and Arduino Megas , both of which are powered by Atmel processors. I'm poised to start using a chipKIT Max32 , which is powered by a MIPS processor from Microchip. I'm also looking at a Teensy 3.1 , which boasts a Kinetis processor from Freescale.   Each Arduino and Arduino-compatible platform offers different features, functions, capacities, and capabilities, which makes it possible to select the optimal platform for the project at hand using criteria such as size, cost, performance, and number of input/output pins.   Recently though, there's a new kid on the block -- the Arduino Zero, which has been jointly developed by Atmel and Arduino.     The 3.3V Arduino Zero has the same form factor as the 5V Arduino Uno but is powered by Atmel's SAMD21 MCU, which boasts a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+ core. (The Atmel ATmega328, featuring an eight-bit AVR core running at 16MHz, powers the Uno).   I subsequently discovered that the Arduino Zero actually boasts 256 K bytes of Flash and 32 Kbytes of SRAM, which are much more respectable quantities. Also, I subsequently discovered that the Zero's clock speed is 48MHz, which is 3X that of the Arduino Uno.     I hear that the first prototypes of the Arduino Zero will be on display at the Maker Faire , which will take place in the San Mateo Event Center May 17-18 in the United States.

Last year, I first started working with Arduino microcontroller development platforms in the form of the Rainbowduino Arduino-compatible system from Seeed Studio, which powered my 4x4x4 tri-color 3D LED cube .   Since that time, I've become a huge supporter of the Arduino, from the concept to the hardware to the software (IDE) to the ecosystem. I'm now using Arduinos and Arduino-compatible platforms for all sorts of projects, including my Inamorata Prognostication Engine , and my BADASS Display .   Along the way, I've used Arduino Unos and Arduino Megas , both of which are powered by Atmel processors. I'm poised to start using a chipKIT Max32 , which is powered by a MIPS processor from Microchip. I'm also looking at a Teensy 3.1 , which boasts a Kinetis processor from Freescale.   Each Arduino and Arduino-compatible platform offers different features, functions, capacities, and capabilities, which makes it possible to select the optimal platform for the project at hand using criteria such as size, cost, performance, and number of input/output pins.   Recently though, there's a new kid on the block -- the Arduino Zero, which has been jointly developed by Atmel and Arduino.     The 3.3V Arduino Zero has the same form factor as the 5V Arduino Uno but is powered by Atmel's SAMD21 MCU, which boasts a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+ core. (The Atmel ATmega328, featuring an eight-bit AVR core running at 16MHz, powers the Uno).   I subsequently discovered that the Arduino Zero actually boasts 256 K bytes of Flash and 32 Kbytes of SRAM, which are much more respectable quantities. Also, I subsequently discovered that the Zero's clock speed is 48MHz, which is 3X that of the Arduino Uno.     I hear that the first prototypes of the Arduino Zero will be on display at the Maker Faire , which will take place in the San Mateo Event Center May 17-18 in the United States.

功耗敏感型（对电池寿命有要求的）应用在选择MCU时，为满足超长电池寿命的要求，应尽可能选择功耗小的产品。在这些应用中，MCU可能大部分时间处于休眠状态，当有任务需要处理时，MCU进入工作状态，处理完成后再次进入休眠状态。因此，MCU的总体能耗等于工作模式能耗与休眠模式能耗之和。要做到低功耗，MCU一方面需要降低休眠模式功耗，一方面需要降低工作模式功耗。 为满足低功耗的要求，同时又提供一定处理能力（32位），Silicon Labs旗下Energy Micro设计了一款基于M0+的MCU产品Zero Gecko。为什么取名叫“Gecko（壁虎）”？Silicon Labs亚太地区MCU资深市场经理彭志昌（Alan Pang）（图1）介绍，是因为壁虎是世界上耗能最低的动物。EFM32 Gecko整个系列的MCU产品（在Zero Gecko之前，Energy Micro已有超过200个基于M3和M4的MCU型号）都是针对功耗而开发的，而Zero的含义则是其功耗几乎为0。 图1：Silicon Labs亚太地区MCU资深市场经理彭志昌（Alan Pang）。 彭志昌表示，EFM32 Zero Gecko系列MCU是世界上最节能的ARM MCU，也是EFM32 Gecko家族的最新成员。它是为功耗敏感、电池供电的无线应用而优化的解决方案。如何做到节能？Zero Gecko采用了复杂的功耗管理系统，具有五种功耗模式——不同产品对于功耗的要求以及所使用的模块和方式都不相同，在用户需要使用某个模块时，只需打开包含有该模块的功耗模式，就可减少整体功耗。 此外，Zero Gecko还具有最佳的模拟外设，包括片内IDAC（电流DAC——若需要电压输出，外接电阻即可），适用于无线安全的片内AES加密（提升加解密速度，减轻CPU负担，从而降低功耗），以及完整的Simplicity Studio生态系统（开发平台）。 Zero Gecko MCU的最高频率为24MHz，片内Flash有4、8、16、32kB四种选择，片内RAM为2或4kB。它提供QFN24(5mm×5mm)、QFN32(6mm×6mm)、QFP48(7mm×7mm)三种封装形式。 Zero Gecko内部由CPU和存储、时钟管理、电源管理、串口、IO端口、定时器和触发器、模拟模块和安全几大模块组成，提供EM0（运行模式）、EM1（休眠模式）、EM2（深度休眠模式）、EM3（停止模式）和EM4（关机模式）五种功耗模式（图2）。 图2：EFM32 Zero Gecko架构。 彭志昌解释说，每个模块在打开后都会产生功耗，在EM4模式时，MCU仅提供IO口的一些操作和上电复位操作，使功耗处于最低。若用户需要使用更多的功能，则可以调整工作模式到更高的级别，比如在EM3模式时，除EM4模式支持的功能外，还可以使用RAM存储器、调试接口等模块；在EM2模式时，除EM4、EM3支持的功能外，还可以使用低功耗串口、实时时钟等；以此类推…… 另外，EFM32还具有独特的“外设反射系统（PRS）”。MCU通过软件或指令处理任务，若采用ADC定时转换信号，通常CPU会定时一段时间对信号进行采样，再将数据放入RAM中，然后进入睡眠状态。有了PRS后，CPU可以处于睡眠模式——定时器计时完毕后，将会产生一个触发信号送给ADC，ADC捕获数据转存到RAM中，完全不需要CPU去管理。Zero Gecko具有四通道PRS，支持8输出7输入信号，可以实现定时器与ADC、串口等的互通。 《电子技术设计》网站版权所有，谢绝转载 EFM32 Zero Gecko MCU拥有极低的工作模式功耗（110μAMHz），这在许多8位MCU中都很难实现。虽然其性能不如基于M3的MCU，但其处理速度比8位MCU要强得多（0.93DMIPSMHz，2.07CoreMarkMHz）。另外， MCU从休眠到唤醒所做的功是无用功。Zero Gecko MCU从休眠模式到唤醒所需时间仅为2μs，从而能够有效节省功率浪费。 Zero Gecko MCU具有超低待机电流，在关机（EM4）模式时，其功耗小于20nA；在深度休眠（EM2）模式（保留POR、BOD、RTC、RAM和CPU状态等）时，其功耗仅为900nA。该MCU的所有外设在CPU休眠时都能依旧保持运行；从串口接收数据转存到RAM可通过DMA操作完成，CPU可以处于休眠状态；同时，所有外设都能够自主运行。 Zero Gecko MCU各种功耗模式的电流消耗如图3所示。除5种功耗模式外，该系列MCU还具有超高能效的外设，比如12位模数转换器在1MSps采样率下，电流消耗仅为350μA；低功耗UART电流消耗仅为150nA；电流DAC最低电流消耗仅10nA。 图3：EFM32 MCU设计优良的能耗模式及超高能效的外设。 Zero Gecko适用于能耗敏感型应用，比如水表、气表、电表，智能家居和建筑自动化，报警和安全系统，健康和健身设备，以及智能外设等（图4）。Zero Gecko部分应用实例如图5所示。 图4：Zero Gecko适用的能耗敏感型应用。 图5：Zero Gecko应用实例。 同时，Energy Micro为EFM32提供了开发平台Simplicity Studio。该开发软件适用于Windows、Linux和MacOS X系统开发，提供免费的库、源代码模板和应用笔记，以及特有的代码创建、调试和功耗探测工具。功耗探测工具Advanced Energy Monitoring（AEM）使工程师在调试程序时，无需借助其他测量工具，就可以观察MCU运行每条指令时的功耗（比如驱动ADC时的功耗）。而能耗调试工具energyAware Profiler使用来自AEM的数据可以完成相关对象代码的实时图表绘制和调试。另外，MCU开发少不了烧录器、集成开发环境/编译器等工具，这些在Simplicity生态系统中都有包含（如图6所示）。 图6：完整的Simplicity生态系统。 最后，Silicon Labs提供了完整的低成本入门开发套件EFM32ZG-STK3200。该套件具有的以下特点：加速评估和应用开发；内建SEGGER J-Link调试器，无需其它调试适配器，节省成本；先进的能耗监视系统；无需万用表示波器；Memory LCD和电容式触摸按键；69美元的经济的价格。此外，Energy Micro所有的Gecko系列（基于M0+、M3、M4的MCU）产品软件兼容，并且同种封装引脚兼容，可以很方便地进行移植。 《电子技术设计》网站版权所有，谢绝转载