Silicon Labs Introduces Series 3 SoCs for Secure IoT Wireless Product Development

Silicon Labs has rolled out the first products in its new Series 3 platform, the SiMG301 and SiBG301 system-on-chips (SoCs). This new platform represents a significant step in the company’s wireless portfolio, focusing on meeting the increasing computational and security demands of modern IoT applications. The Series 3 SoCs are built on an advanced 22 nm process, which enables increased density and lower power consumption for use in battery-powered or resource-constrained devices at the edge.

Silicon Labs’ Series 3 SoCs are designed for computationally intensive IoT applications, providing a wide variety of use cases for home and industrial automation systems. Image used courtesy of Silicon Labs

Silicon Labs Series 3 SoCs

A core architectural advancement of the new Series 3 wireless platform is its multi-core design. The SixG301 family of SoCs separates application, wireless, and security workloads into dedicated processing cores. This approach provides architectural headroom, allowing the main application processor to focus on user-defined code and computationally heavy tasks without being bogged down by the overhead of managing complex wireless protocol stacks. This separation is particularly beneficial in a world of growing and increasingly complex IoT standards where managing multiple concurrent protocols on a single core can be a challenge. 

The SiBG301 is targeted at Bluetooth LE applications, while the SiMG301 is designed to support a wider array of protocols, including Matter, Zigbee, and Thread.

The Series 3 SoCs have a 150 MHz ARM Cortex-M33 processor, 4 MB Flash, and up to 512 kB of RAM. Image used courtesy of Silicon Labs

Connectivity and Certification

The SiMG301 is included in the Connectivity Standards Alliance’s new Matter Compliant Platform Certification program. This is a crucial detail for developing for the smart home market. By building on a pre-certified platform, device manufacturers can substantially reduce the amount of testing required for their final product to achieve certification. This can significantly reduce development time and cost, allowing for faster time-to-market. The streamlined certification process is a key benefit, especially as the Matter standard continues to evolve and gain traction.

The architecture is also designed to manage growing wireless protocol stacks. As devices need to support more sophisticated behaviors, from over-the-air firmware updates to complex networking and interoperability, the dedicated wireless core ensures that communication performance remains consistent and reliable, even under high computational load from the main application.

Developers can use the SixG301 Explorer Kit development and evaluation platform to begin prototyping for the Series 3 SoCs. Image used courtesy of Silicon Labs

Series 3 Secure Vault

In addition to its connectivity features, the Series 3 platform places a strong emphasis on security. The Secure Vault technology on the new SoCs has achieved PSA Level 4 certification, which is currently the highest level recognized by PSA Certified. This level of certification signifies protection against sophisticated physical attacks, including fault injection and side-channel analysis. For engineers designing products for industrial, medical, or other high-value applications, this is a critical feature. The hardware-based security elements on the chip are designed to protect against advanced threats, ensuring the integrity of the device, its data, and its communication.

The comprehensive security features extend beyond physical protection to include secure boot, secure key storage, and hardware-accelerated cryptography. These features are fundamental in building trusted devices in the IoT ecosystem. A strong security foundation at the chip level is increasingly non-negotiable for commercial deployment, as it helps to prevent cloning, intellectual property theft, and unauthorized access.

Wireless IoT Development

The Silicon Labs Series 3 platform, featuring the SiMG301 and SiBG301 SoCs, provides a robust, multi-core architecture on a 22 nm process node. It offers a secure and efficient foundation for next-generation IoT devices. The new SoCs are engineered for high-performance, compute-intensive applications that require reliable connectivity and robust security. These features make the Series 3 platform well-suited for a variety of use cases, including complex smart home devices, multi-sensor hubs and connected appliances, industrial automation systems requiring secure and reliable control, and commercial building automation systems that demand high-level security and seamless interoperability.