Accent intros smart meter industry game changer with advanced chip family

MILAN, ITALY: Accent, a world leading semiconductor supplier of communications and metering technologies, announced today its second-generation ASMgrid standard product family targeted at the demanding performance needs required by Smart Meters.

ASMgrid2 incorporates optimized flexibility to support and track next-generation home-area-network (HAN) and near-area-network (NAN) communication standards including IEEE 802.15.4g, G3, PRIME, IEEE 1901.2, home area networking with IEEE 802.15.4. The ASSPs feature breakthrough system capability to address the demanding performance, cost, and scalability needs of Smart Grid equipment manufacturers.

While Smart Grid trials and deployments are in full force in many parts of the world, solution providers are still defining more advanced communication standards and product features which would be required in electric meters.

Unfortunately, silicon solutions available today fall short in either providing support for newer technologies or doing so in a cost effective and scalable manner. The ASMgrid2 product family reconciles these competing forces through market leading silicon integration and technology innovation at the architectural and design level.

To provide complete advanced smart meter solutions, the ASMgrid2 system-on-chip architecture encompasses a broad range of technologies including high-precision analog-front-ends, RF transceivers, non-volatile memories, and processing capabilities needed to run required protocol stacks and vendor application software.

Each one of the three devices in the ASMgrid2 product family contains an ARM processor for unmatched performance, code density, and development capability. In addition to other processing, the ARM processors are also used in combination with hardware acceleration for Accent’s SUNFXTM modems, providing adaptable solutions for still evolving utility communication standards.

"We're delighted Accent is adopting Cortex-M and ARM9 series processors as key technology elements in what is certain to be a significant enabler for the smart grid industry," said Eric Schorn, VP Marketing, Processor Division, ARM. "The ARM architecture provides an ideal low-power processing solution to meet the sensitive performance and cost needs of smart meters that are expected to operate for periods up to 20 years on a single battery."

“The ASMgrid2 ASSP family represents industry-first solutions in terms of technology, integration and feature set specifically designed to optimally address advanced Smart Meters, by offering compelling solutions to equipment manufacturers seeking to support the latest and future meter communication technologies with built-in system scalability plus rich feature set to address their long product life cycles,” said Federico Arcelli, CEO of Accent.