Atmel’s SAM4L ARM Cortex-M4 based MCU has inherently low current consumption for such a powerful chip. But it also has a Peripheral Event System that allows you to service interrupts or external conditions without waking up the core processor.
Periphereal Event-System for Atmel’s SAM4L Cortex-M4
Keeping your microcontroller unit in sleep mode will reduce system power consumption. Increasing the throughput will reduce the time spent in active mode. Atmel’s Peripheral Event System allows peripherals to communicate directly with each other without involving the CPU (central processing unit). It is a routing network independent of traditional data paths such as system buses. Peripherals can trigger events such as data transfer to another peripheral or the copying of a message directly to the MCU internal memory. All this can happen while the processor is asleep. You spare the CPU from the time-consuming handling of interrupts since the Peripheral Event System is doing these repetitive tasks. This will free up more time for the MCU to handle other tasks in the application, or allow the MCU to remain in sleep mode for a longer time. The Peripheral Event System lowers power consumption and increases performance.
You can read more about conserving power in an Atmel white paper: Redefining the power benchmark.
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