Comparators can be configured to run in either Single Shot or Continuous sampling modes; when in Single Shot mode, the comparator will only perform a comparison (and any resulting filtering, see Output Filtering) when triggered via a software or event trigger. This mode improves the power efficiency of the system by only performing comparisons when actually required by the application.
For systems requiring a lower latency or more frequent comparisons, continuous mode will place the comparator into continuous sampling mode, which increases the module's power consumption, but decreases the latency between each comparison result by automatically performing a comparison on every cycle of the module's clock.