AVR XMEGA offers a set of low power features that provides unique application benefits. The second generation of Microchip’s picoPower® technology, brings key low power parameters on large microcontrollers down to levels only seen on much smaller 8-bit microcontrollers before. True 1.6 V operation ensures full functionality down to a 1.6 V operating voltage. XMEGA can run directly from a regulated 1.8 V power supply with up to a 10% variation. This reduces the requirements and cost of the power supply. True 1.6 V operation also allows deeper battery discharge voltage compared to other solutions where mandatory functions such as the ADC and Flash writes stop working at 2.5 V or 2.2 V. All XMEGA devices have a 32 kHz crystal oscillator and real time counter that uses only 500 nA. This is combined with sleep current as low as 100 nA with full SRAM retention and only 5 µs wake-up time from external events. This means that the application can be put in low power sleep mode and still achieve very short wake-up time. There is no need to power-off most of the devices, and then re-initialize the complete application at every wake-up. Compared to other microcontrollers this saves hundreds of micro seconds and even milliseconds of wake-up time, and allows for almost instant response time.