Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Microchip Partners With Google On Smart Energy Design

Chandler, Arizona-based Microchip Technology, a developer of microcontrollers and analog semiconductors, announced Tuesday afternoon that it is in a strategic partnership with search engine giant Google. Microchip said it has created a reference implementation of Google's PowerMeter API for embedded developers. Google PowerMeter is Google's smart energy monitoring effort, which pulls electricity usage data from consumers onto a web portal. Microchip said that the refernce design, which combines it 16- and 32-bit PIC microcontrollers, energy measurement ICs, Ethernet controllers, and other components, will allow embedded developers to create products taht measure and monitor energy usage. Microchip said the new reference implementation code is available for free download.