EM Microelectronic, based in Marin, La Tène near Neuchâtel in Switzerland, is a developer and

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical conductivity value falling between that of a conductor, such as copper, and an insulator, such as glass. Its resistivity falls as its temperature rises; metals behave in the opposite way. ...

manufacturer specialized in the design and production of ultra low power, low voltage integrated circuits for battery-operated and field-powered applications in consumer, automotive and industrial areas. EM Microelectronic SA is a subsidiary of

The Swatch Group The Swatch Group Ltd is a Swiss manufacturer of watches and jewellery. The company was founded in 1983 by the merger of ASUAG and SSIH to move to manufacturing quartz-crystal watches to resolve the quartz crisis threatening the traditional Swi ...

.EM Microelectronic-Marin corporate website
(retrieved 20 May 2019)

Subsidiaries

EM Microelectronic has a design center at its headquarters in Marin, in the French speaking part of Switzerland near the city of Neuchâtel. Company he EM Microelectronic headquarter

EM has subsidiaries and additional design centers: * EM Microelectronic - US Inc., located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S., is a subsidiary of EM Microelectronic. EM Microelectronic US Building

* ASICentrum s.r.o. is a design center located in Prague, Czech Republic. It is involved in the design of digital, analog and mixed-signal ICs.

Technology

EM Microelectronic specialises in the design and production of ultra low power, low voltage integrated circuits for battery-operated and field-powered applications in consumer, automotive and industrial products. It has in-house semiconductor fabrication facilities and also uses external

foundries A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...

Products

EM Microelectronic's products include RFID circuits,

smart cards A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...

ICs, ultra-low power

microcontrollers A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs ( processor cores) along with memory and programmabl ...

energy harvesting Energy harvesting (EH, also known as power harvesting or energy scavenging or ambient power) is the process by which energy is derived from external sources (e.g., solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, salinity gradients, and kinetic ener ...

, power management, LCD drivers and displays, optical sensors and sensor interface ICs. EM manufactures not only standard circuits and ASICs, but also systems and modules for applications such as access control, radio frequency identification, mobile phones, mass-market consumer appliances, alarm and security systems, utility and heating meters, sensor signal processing, controlling, car immobilization, electronic automotive subsystems and many more. Their microcontrollers use CoolRISC instruction set, instructions are 22 bits wide and operate on 8-bit data.

BLE and 2.4 GHz wireless

EM Microelectronic designs and develops Bluetooth Low Energy products such as the EM9304, aimed at smallest footprint and lowest power consumption applications. EM is an associate member of the

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

SIG and is contributing through several working group to improve global specification and expertise in ultra-low power design for Bluetooth low energy wireless technology. EM Micro has also a proprietary link family of products with 1Mbits, 2Mbit/s and Long range solutions.

RFID

EM started its RFID activity in the 1980s, and its portfolio includes passive, semi-active and active RFID products, in frequency ranges including LF, HF and UHF. The popularity of EM Microelectronic's range of ~125 kHz RFID devices has led to product from other manufacturers being advertised as "EM4100 compatible" although this may simply mean that the active device embedded in the RFID tag/card is an EM Microelectronic product. EM Microelectronic developed UHF RFID ICs in the early 1990s and launched the first mass retail deployment in 2003, with Marks & Spencer. By 2008, EM had shipped 250 million UHF ICs to into the Marks & Spencer project. In 2015, EM Microelectronic released em, echo, a range of chips combining UHF and HF RFID communication, or RAIN RFID and NFC, a combination it calls “RAINFC”. This concept allows using the same RFID tag for the logistics and the consumer interaction with a product. In 2020, EM launched the second generation of this family, em, echo-V, awarded “Best New Product” by RFID Journal

References

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External links

EM Microelectronic-Marin corporate website
(retrieved 20 January 2013)] Semiconductor companies of Switzerland Companies based in Neuchâtel