New Generation of Atmel maXTouch

Atmel has announced the maXTouch E Series of single-chip capacitive touchscreen controllers for touchscreens from 2 to 12 inches. The mXT224E, mXT384E, mXT540E and mXT768E devices offer enhanced analog sensing with a third generation capacitive touch engine and Atmel's advanced AVR® architecture optimized for capacitive sensing. Offering 224 to 768 nodes, the new series enables system designers to select the industry's most advanced single-chip solution for their touchscreen size and application.

Atmel maXTouch E Series offers enhanced analog sensing to dramatically improve performance, reduce system power and lower system cost
First single-chip 32-bit solutions for smartphones, e-book readers and tablets up to 12 inches

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Atmel's XMEGA MCU Awarded Product of the Year

Atmel announced its industry leading XMEGA microcontroller was awarded the 2008 Product of the Year by Electronic Products' Magazine. Since its introduction in early 2008, there have been over 400 design wins to validate this award.

The editors of Electronic Products—a leading trade publication for electronic design engineers— evaluated thousands of products launched in 2008. The winning products were selected on the basis of innovative design, significant advancement in technology or application and substantial achievement in price and performance. The XMEGA was awarded this prestigious honor due to its unique design features that provide unmatched high performance at very low power. This is accomplished through its proprietary event management circuitry that provides the highest speed-power ratio for today's 8/16-bit microcontrollers.

"We thought the AVR® XMEGA processor was very innovative and, for many applications, brought the performance level of the 8-bit CPU up to an entirely new level," said Jim Harrison, editor of Electronic Products. "In some cases, it raises system performance of the 8/16-bit microcontroller up to, or even superior to, 32-bit processors."

The 2008 Product of the Year Awards were announced in the January 2009 issue of Electronic Products with a cover feature and a brief description of each product. Additionally, the winning products appear on Electronic Products' website (http://www2.electronicproducts.com/productyear.aspx). 2008 marked the 33rd annual Electronic Products' "Product of the Year" Awards, which began recognizing the best products in the industry in 1977. source

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New AVR Microcontroller for Smart Card Reader Applications

Atmel introduce its new AVR microcontroller designed for smart card reader applications. Based on the AVR 8-/16-bit RISC core allowing single cycle instruction execution, the AT90SCR100 embeds 4 Kbytes of EEPROM for data, 4 Kbytes of SRAM and 64 Kbytes of programmable FLASH providing all the flexibility required for fast software upgrade and customization reducing significantly time to market and development costs both during development phase and product life.

The AT90SCR100 offers a comprehensive set of interfaces such as ISO7816 (Class A,B,C supported), USB full Speed 2.0 device and host, USART and TWI to address any applications that interface to synchronous, asynchronous and USB smart cards. In addition, a SPI serial interface plus a dedicated High Speed SPI interface (up to 20Mbps at 20MHz) have been implemented. Respectively combined with an RF front end and/or with a fingerprint sensor, the AT90SCR100 is ideally suited to contactless and/or Biometric reader applications. With its 38 GPIOs in its high pin count configuration (64 pin package), it can also address all USB Keyboards integrating the smart card reader functionality.

Availability and Pricing
Samples for the AT90SCR100 are available now. Packages are available in 32-pin QFN, 64-pin QFN and 64-pin QFP. Volume production will start in May 2009. Prices start at US$ 3.00 for the 64 pin count version and at US$ 1.90 for the 32 pin package in 10,000 quantities.

related search : news, atmel, microcontroller, smart card reader, avr (src)

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Atmel Introduces an AVR USB 2.4GHz Wireless Reference Design

Atmel Introduces an AVR USB 2.4GHz Wireless Reference Design for Battery-based PC Peripherals

San Jose, CA, May 6, 2008…Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), announced today the AVRUSBRF01 reference design for development with AVR® microcontrollers in the un-licensed 2.4 GHz ISM band and connection to PCs with USB.

USB is the standard interface for connecting PC peripherals but wireless is becoming increasingly popular for peripherals like mice, keyboards, audio headsets or personal portable devices. Many desktops now offer WLAN and Bluetooth is on most laptops. Both wireless standards come with a power consumption which is not compatible with devices operating from simple batteries for several months or years. Existing transceivers operating in the 2.4GHz ISM band can achieve low power consumption with short range transfer speeds exceeding 1Mbit/s and rely on lightweight ad-hoc protocols.

The AVRUSBRF01 enables the PC-Wireless connectivity using AVR USB microcontrollers. Designers can then develop battery-based, wireless peripheral applications using Atmel's 1.8V picoPower™ AVR microcontrollers that feature industry-best low power consumption. By using the same architecture and development platform for a complete project, designers can concentrate on end-product optimization and get to the market faster.

Atmel's picoPower AVR features in-system programmable Flash and true EEPROM with the largest choice of package and memory ranges. This gives the best flexibility to meet with changing requirements and to develop a range of products based on the same architecture.

The AVRUSBRF01 is based on the Atmel AT90USB162 microcontroller, which allows connection to a PC through the USB. This kit can be programmed through the USB in half a second and implement various standard USB device classes for input devices (Human Interface Device), generic HID I/O, communication (Communication Device Class), etc. The AVR USB can also support composite device classes, combining for instance and HID interface for remote control and an Audio interface for audio streaming. It offers 16 Kbyte of Flash for USB and RF protocol as well as on-chip EEPROM for pairing with wireless devices. AT90USB82 is a pin to pin compatible 8 Kbyte variant of AT90USB162, which can be used for application requiring less than 16 Kbyte. Conversely, the AVR USB family also offers Flash sizes up to 128 Kbyte for the most demanding applications.

The kit contains two identical AVR USB RF modules and can connect to two different USB ports to establish wireless communication and evaluate the solution. They can also communicate with wireless peripherals derived from this reference design. To help with evaluation and development, the modules include two push buttons for hardware reset, in-system programming and extra functions, two LEDs for monitoring activity and a 6-pin header to connect development tools or other peripheral functions. The PCB size is only 3.8x1.6 cm, which is small enough to be used without change for many applications. If necessary, size can be further reduced by removing the extra features provided for evaluation and development.

"The nRF24L01 RF transceiver we have selected for the AVRUSBRF01 can directly connect to our AVR microcontrollers and provide ready-to-use solutions for consumer applications," said Jean-Christophe Lawson, Atmel Product Marketing Manager.

"Our nRF24L01 transceiver is going very well with Atmel AVR microcontrollers," said Thomas Embla Bonnerud, Nordic Semiconductor's Product Manager for Standard Components. "We are very happy with best speed and power consumption they can achieve," he continued.

source : Atmel Press News

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AVR XMEGA

ATMEL Launching new microcontroller AVR Family : AVR XMEGA

"The new AVR XMEGA™ family from Atmel brings 8/16-bit microcontrollers up to a new level of system performance. Increased focus on system performance is important because more and more 8/16-bit microcontroller families do not meet today’s requirements. Requirements for higher embedded performance combined with reduced cost, size and power consumption mandate new microcontrollers designed especially to combine and offer all these requirements in the best possible way. With AVR XMEGA Atmel is the reference for 8/16-bit microcontrollers."

AVR XMEGA devices include:

• 2nd generation of picoPower technology
• Innovative Event System for fast, CPU independent inter-peripheral communication
• 4-channel DMA Controller boosts MCU performance
• 100% predictable timing
• Fast 12-bit ADC and DAC
• Fast Cryptography support for AES and DES

For detail click here

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Flash Microcontrollers Performance Raise Above 200 MIPS

News from Atmel

"AT91SAM9XE 32-bit Microcontrollers Integrate Flash, SRAM and Boot ROM with USB Host/Device, Ethernet, Multiple Serial Interfaces and DMA for Maximum Performance, Connectivity, and Data Bandwidth

Atmel Corporation, announced today the sampling of the AT91SAM9XE-series, the first generation of monolithic ARM9-based Flash microcontrollers that combines a 200-MIPS ARM926EJ-S™ processor core with up to 512K bytes of high-performance on-chip Flash. The new device offers an unrivalled combination of performance and functionality on a single chip, making these Flash microcontrollers ideal for space-constrained applications where high performance is required.

Smooth migration from ARM7 to ARM9-based Flash Microcontrollers. The SAM9XE-series is designed to reuse the maximum of the peripherals and technology developed for Atmel's ARM7™-based SAM7 family. In addition, the same support infrastructure is used for both the SAM7 and the new SAM9XE-series, making the migration between both microcontroller families smooth and easy.

Multiple Networking/Connectivity Options. The SAM9XE provides multiple networking/connectivity options with on-chip USB 2.0 Full Speed Host and Device Ports, an Ethernet 10/100 Base-T MAC as well as a two-slot Multimedia Card Interface (SDCard/SDIO and MultiMediaCard Compliant), a Synchronous Serial Controller (SSC), four USARTs, two master/slave Serial Peripheral Interfaces (SPI), a debug UART and two Two Wire Interfaces (TWI).

Distributed DMA for Optimal Internal Data Bandwidth. The six-layer system bus matrix is linked to the Memory Management Unit of the processor core, as well as to distributed DMA channels on the USB Host, Ethernet and Image Sensor Interface to ensure uninterrupted internal data flows with minimum processor overhead. This concept is extended to peripherals via the Peripheral DMA Controller (PDC) that communicates with DMA interfaces on the USB Device and all other serial I/Os. This industry-leading distributed DMA architecture ensures that internal data transfers occur at maximum possible bandwidth with minimal processor intervention. It enables the SAM9XE to perform complex data processing at the same time as high-speed data transfers."

link

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About Microcontroller Mobile Version

About Microcontroller now give mobile version for its content. You can access our Microcontroller Project weblog via your Mobile device like PDA or Mobile phone at http://abmicro.mofuse.mobi. We know that there is need more improvemnet to our new mobile weblog. But, We hope with about microcontroller mobile version you will never miss for our new post.

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Atmel Introduces AVR 32-bit Platform for FlexRay In-vehicle Networking

News from Atmel.com :)

Atmel Corporation announced today the availability of its AVR 32-bit FlexRay® evaluation environment. In addition, Atmel will demonstrate its new technology today at the FlexRay day conference held in Stuttgart, Germany with a mockup car implementing advanced in-vehicle networking with X-by-wire drive, steer and brake functions.

The core of the evaluation environment is a 32-bit microcontroller based on Atmel’s AVR32 proprietary architecture with FlexRay IP licensed from Robert Bosch GmbH. In addition, the environment includes a hardware LIN IP, a dual CAN IP, an Ethernet MAC and a set of general purpose peripherals. This environment includes also the AVR32 development tool set, a FlexRay stack, a FlexRay configuration tool and a network analyzer. A range of daughter boards are available to implement a complete network including gateway function or BLDC motor control.

The FlexRay Communications System is designed to provide high-speed deterministic distributed control for advanced automotive applications. Its dual-channel architecture offers system-wide redundancy that meets the reliability requirements of emerging safety systems. With 10 Mbps throughput per channel, the FlexRay system can also be employed as a vehicle-wide network backbone, working in conjunction with already well-established systems, such as CAN and LIN.

Atmel’s AVR32 is a modern 32-bit architecture designed to deliver both high performance and low power consumption and is especially suited to handle advanced protocols such as FlexRay. "With this environment, Atmel can now provide to its customer a complete FlexRay evaluation platform," commented Philippe Malecha, Atmel’s Automotive Microcontroller Strategic Marketing Director. "This movement to FlexRay will significantly extend our existing microcontroller offering covering CAN and LIN control, providing to our customers a broad range of solutions for their future vehicle designs."

link

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Atmel Licenses Quantum Capacitive Touch Technology

Quantum's technology combined with Atmel's picoPower AVR Microcontroller's gives best in class capacitive touch solutions with low energy consumption.

San Jose, CA, September 19, 2007 Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) and Quantum Research Group (UK) announced today that Atmel has licensed Quantum's QTouch™ and QMatrix™ capacitive touch technologies. Quantum's intellectual property (IP) will be programmed into Atmel picoPower™ AVR® microcontrollers (MCUs), enabling the devices to be used for both touch sensing and many other control functions, for example driving motor controls, LEDs and displays. QTouch technology is used for simple keys, while QMatrix is used for larger keypad arrays and keyboards. In addition, Atmel has obtained a license to QWheel™ and QSlide™ applications, which are used for rotary and linear touch controls respectively.

Quantum's patented charge-transfer capacitive sensing is more robust than alternative capacitive touch sensors. Spread-spectrum modulation ensures a high degree of electromagnetic compatibility and a superior signal-to-noise ratio for reliable operation. The all-digital technology features automatic calibration of devices on power-up and automatic drift compensation over the life of the product in which it is used. Where touch keys are packed closely together, for example on a mobile phone, Quantum?s patented Adjacent Key Suppression (AKS) technique avoids false triggering of nearby keys, only registering touch on the intended key.

Atmel's planned capacitive touch parts will incorporate AVR microcontrollers with picoPower energy saving techniques. The microcontrollers have a modern and effective core suited for Quantum's touch technologies. The AVR architecture ensures both high processing capability and good performance. In addition, its true 1.8V operation and multiple sleep modes increase the battery life in hand-held, battery-operated products such as mobile phones and media players. More information on picoPower

Quantum has used Atmel Microcontrollers for several years to create devices under its own brand name. The company has successfully established the technology in consumer, industrial, IT and automotive applications and, more recently, in hand-held devices, particularly mobile phones. Atmel is now licensing the technology for its own chips. Atmel's global network of sales and technical support channels is available to help customers implement capacitive touch controls in their products.

Link :Atmel News

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"Propeller Clock" Mechanically Scanned LED Clock

If you want to build some interesting clock, perhaps you can try this, Propeller Clock. In this project, scanning Led process uses spin motor. It will give Illusion of numbers in the air.

How this clock works:
A motor spins the "propeller", and a small microcontroller keeps track of time and changes the pattern on seven LEDs with exact timing to simulate a 7 by 30 array of LEDs. It is an illusion, but it works nicely.

If you want to build this clock, you will need a few things, including:
1. Skill with motors and mechanical things.
2. Prior electronic experience.
3. A dead VCR or floppy drive or other source of a suitable motor and miscellaneous parts.
4. A programmer that will program a PIC16C84 or 16F84 or AVR microcontroller.

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Atmel Extends the AVR picoPower Product Range with Four New 32-pin MCUs

San Jose, CA, July 19, 2007 Atmel Corporation announced today a new family of 32-pin picoPower™ AVR® microcontrollers. The ATmega48P/88P/168P/328P devices have 4, 8, 16 and 32 Kbytes of Flash memory, respectively. These devices consume as little as 340 uA in active mode at 1.8V running from the internal RC oscillator at 1 MHz, 650 nA in power-save mode with real time counter running, and 100 nA in power-down mode. picoPower AVRs are pin-, performance-, and code-compatible with existing AVR microcontrollers.

Atmel's industry leading picoPower technology will assist the IC engineer by eliminating unnecessary power consumption in sleep modes. These include an ultra-low-power 32 kHz crystal oscillator, automatic disabling and re-enabling of brown-out detection, (sleeping BOD) circuitry during sleep modes, a power reduction register (PRR) that completely powers down individual peripherals, and digital input disable registers that removes leakage on ADC input pins. picoPower AVRs are ideally suited for low power applications and adds years to the battery life for applications that spend the majority of their time in sleep modes.

The ATmega48P/88P/168P/328P microcontrollers operate from 1.8 to 5.5 volts and feature a 10-bit ADC, USART, SPI, 2-wire interface, internal temperature sensor, and have up to 20 MIPS throughput at 20 MHz. Similar to other AVR microcontrollers, the ATmega48P/88P/168P/328P features an on-chip debug system for easy, fast, and robust development.

AVR picoPower microcontrollers use the standard AVR microcontroller development tools. The AVR Studio® integrated development environment is available free of charge on Atmel's web site.Samples for the ATmega88P and ATmega168P are available now in QFN32 and TQFP32 packages. Samples for the ATmega48P will be available in August 2007 and the ATmega328P will be available in 4Q/07, respectively.Volume prices for 10k units are US $1.18 for the ATmega48P, US $1.65 for the ATmega88P, US $2.00 for the ATmega168P and US $2.65 for the ATmega328P, respectively.

Link : News from ATMEL

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Atmel Extends Its AT91SO Secure MCU Product Family for High Security Systems

Based on the AT91SO100 chip, the Three New Devices Offer Extensive Flexibility and Security for POS, PIN Pads and Health Card Readers Applications

Rousset, France, July 11, 2007. Atmel Corporation announced today the addition of three new members of its AT91SO family for high security systems. These devices are fully compatible with the AT91SO100 secure silicon platform that has already been widely used in markets that require enhanced security such as Electronic Transaction Terminals.

Based on Atmel's ARM SecurCore SC100 CPU core, the new AT91SO25, AT91SO50 and AT91SO51 feature 256 Kbytes of EEPROM for program and data, 32 Kbytes of ROM for on chip Atmel libraries and 100 Kbytes of RAM. They include dedicated peripherals such as USB, SPI, USARTs, I/O ports, magnetic stripe and smart card interfaces. These devices incorporate strong security mechanisms to meet Common Criteria EAL4+ certification, including intrusion sensors, dedicated hardware protections, real time clock and battery backup. They also have an impressive set of cryptographic features: hardware DES/TDES, AES and SHA-n, a cryptographic accelerator for asymmetric algorithms (RSA, elliptic curves, key generation) and a true random number generator.

"Based on the AT91SO100, already widely recognized for its performance, its integration and its very high security level, these three new chips offer the flexibility required to design systems such as high-end POS terminals or low-cost PIN Pads complying with Visa® PCI PED, health card readers or any other system requiring security and versatile communication interfaces," stated Olivier Debelleix, Worldwide Business Development Manager for Atmel's Secure Products Division.
The AT91SO50 is available in a BGA 208 package. The AT91SO51 integrates in the same package the AT83C26 which offers five smart card interfaces. The AT91SO25 distinguishes itself by an extremely compact BGA 144 package.


Link : News From Atmel

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Atmel Extends CAP Family of Customizable Microcontrollers with ARM7-based Product

CAP7 Integrates FPGA Logic, Cuts IC Costs by over 50%

Colorado Springs, CO, June 25, 2007, Atmel announced today that it has extended its CAP family of customizable microcontroller-based System-on-a-Chip products with an ARM7 core. The new CAP7 customizable microcontroller is architecturally compatible with Atmel's broad range of off-the-shelf ARM7-based MCUs and incorporates metal programmable cell fabric (MPCF) technology to integrate up to 450K equivalent ASIC gates in a metal programmable block for custom logic netlist conversion. Atmel's flexible design flow allows an easy conversion path from FPGA netlist to the metal programmable block.

According to Atmel's marketing director, Jay Johnson, Design engineers frequently use programmable ICs to accelerate their proprietary DSP algorithms in a gate array technology. Many choose FPGAs which represent a flexible, cost-effective solution for market-testing new products, when volumes cannot be predicted. However, once production ramp begins and controlling bill of materials is a priority, our CAP7 customizable MCUs offer a painless cost reduction path, without the typical NRE and long development cycle associated with a standard cell ASIC.

By eliminating an external FPGA, Atmel's customizable microcontrollers can reduce IC costs by at least 50%. For example, in medium volumes (50K units), a 1 to 2M gate FPGA and ARM7 MCU, 2-chip solution, market price is between $13 and $20. With unit prices under $6, CAP7 can cut the cost by more than half. In addition, with an 80MHz CAP7, designers can double performance and reduce power consumption by 90%, compared to 1 to 2 watt FPGA solutions.

Link : News From Atmel

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Atmel Introduces AM/FM Antenna Impedance Matching IC Enabling Outstanding Car-radio Reception with any Kind of Active Car Antenna

Heilbronn, Germany, June 12, 2007 Atmel® Corporation announced today the availability of the highly integrated AM/FM antenna amplifier IC ATR4251, which enables outstanding AM/FM car-radio reception when used with designer antennas, such as windshield, roof, or bumper antennas. The ATR4251's impedance matching amplifier helps to compensate for signal losses resulting from the smaller dimensions of modern antennas and the longer cables to the car radio.

The ATR4251 IC enables crystal-clear reception without distortion even under the extremely difficult and rapidly fluctuating field strength conditions typically found in moving antenna systems due to its highly dynamic AM and FM range. This high reception quality is due to the balance of an AM gain value of up to 35 dB, a large-signal behaviour both in AM and FM mode (e.g., IP3 148 dBuV in FM), and a good noise behavior, optimized for antenna applications.

Link : Atmel Introduces AM/FM Antenna Impedance Matching IC

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Atmel Introduces an AVR32 Application Processor for Linux-based, Cost-constrained Embedded Designs

It's a good news from ATMEL for Linux user..

San Jose, CA, June 4, 2007 Atmel® Corporation announced today the AT32AP7001, a member of the AVR®32 AP7 family of Application Processors optimized for cost constrained, Linux®-based embedded designs. The device is packaged in a 30 x 30mm VQFP for easy integration into a four-layer PCB design.

Examples of applications for the AT32AP7001 include printers, fax machines, surveillance cameras, audio processing and industrial control equipment. The new device is built to run the popular Linux operating system in an embedded setting. Atmel provides a free port and support of the OS and tool chain.

The AT32AP7001 is built around Atmel?s high throughput AVR32 AP7 Application Processor core and offers 210 Dhrystone v2.1 MIPS when clocked at 150 MHz and powered at 1.8V (1.4 DMIPS / MHz), with an active power consumption of 75 mA (500 uA/MHz). The core has built-in DSP, SIMD instruction set, branch prediction and MMU. The device offers Dynamic Frequency Scaling (DFS), which allows on-the-fly adjustments of the power consumption in the four on-chip clock domains (CPU, High Speed Bus, 2 independent peripheral buses).

Link : AVR32 Application Processor for Linux-based

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Atmel Introduces Optimized AVR Flash Microcontrollers for USB Full-Speed Peripherals

Beijing, China, March 7th, 2007 Atmel® Corporation, today expands its popular family of AVR® microcontrollers with two new devices for high-volume USB applications ranging from high-performance Human Interface Devices (HID) to wireless adaptors.

Based on the 8-bit AVR core, the new AT90USB82 and AT90USB162 feature a full-speed USB (12 Mbits/s) controller and have 8- and 16-Kbyte of Flash memory, respectively allowing in-system programming directly through their USB interface. On-chip EEPROM of 512 bytes allows for parameters settings without interfering with the application.

Link : Atmel's AT90USB82 and AT90USB162 product information

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3D Eagle

if you wonder how your electronic project will be, you can try Eagle 3D. It's not too difficult, After you create PCB board in free version of CadSoft Eagle then create the 3D shape in POV-Ray using Eagle 3D. For Detil Information about this cool project follow this link

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Atmel Launches Customizable Microcontroller-based SoC Platform

Low NRE CAP Products Bridge the Gap Between Standard MCUs and ASICs

San Jose, CA, May 21, 2007 . . . Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), announced today the CAP microcontroller-based system-on-chip (SoC) platform for complex applications that require fast time-to-market. CAP features high-speed local memory, a wide range of industry-standard peripherals and interfaces, and a high-capacity metal programmable (MP) block that allows the designer to add a significant amount of custom logic on-chip. By leveraging the architecture of Atmel's market-leading AT91SAM microcontrollers, the new CAP metal programmable microcontroller platform enables application-specific products to be developed in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of a conventional standard-cell or gate array ASIC, but at a unit price close to that of standard-cell devices. Stocks of CAP platforms are held prior to metal layer fabrication, allowing prototypes to be delivered rapidly, and accelerating volume production.



CAP is based on Atmel's Metal Programmable Cell Fabric (MPCF) that provides nearly identical routed gate densities to those of standard cells in the same process.

Introducing the AT91CAP9S for ARM9-based Designs. The initial CAP product introduction comprises the AT91CAP9S series, based on the ARM926EJ-S™ processor.

The AT91CAP9S offers a 200 MHz ARM926EJ-S core with 16 KBytes each of program and data cache, 32 KBytes of additional SRAM, 32 KBytes of ROM, EBI with error correction code (ECC) for NAND Flash/SmartMedia® and 250K or 500K metal programmable gates. Peripherals include both a USB full-speed host and USB 2.0 high-speed device, 10/100 Ethernet MAC, image sensor interface, 2.0A and 2.0B CAN controller, LCD controller, MCI, SSC, PWM, LCD and AC97 controllers, SPI master and slave, two USARTs, three 16-bit timer counters, an 8-channel, 10-bit analog to digital converter, and a full complement of supervisory functions. Optional hardware AES/TDES encryption/decryption engines are also included. The AT91CAP9S is built around a multi-layered bus and a distributed DMA architecture for the high internal data bandwidth required by deeply embedded networked applications.

Dual-core architectures can be created by instantiating an additional ARM® core, Atmel's proprietary AVR® processor or a DSP core in the MP Block. Bus master controls are brought into the MP Block, and DMA access can be provided to the system bus.

AT91CAP9-DK Development Board. The AT91CAP9-DK development board implements the fixed portion of the CAP device as a microcontroller standard product, tightly coupled to a high-density FPGA that emulates the MP Block. The boards also include a range of memories and physical interfaces/connectors representing external system components. This configuration enables parallel hardware/software testing of the application under development at close to operational speed, with no penalty for hardware modifications. This enables software development to proceed in parallel with hardware development, and significantly reduces the design cycle time, increasing confidence in a right-first-time system solution.

Development Tools and Operating System Support. Atmel's CAP products are supported by the same third-party development tools as Atmel's standard product AT91SAM ARM-based MCUs, including C/C++ compilers, in-circuit emulators and debuggers, from third party suppliers. AT91CAP9S is able to host Microsoft® Windows® CE and Linux®, and a number of proprietary real-time operating systems. This extensive software support network simplifies the task of application development.

Availability and Pricing

CAP NRE starts at $150K, to cover netlist implementation/placement&routing in the Metal Programmable Block, mask costs, fabrication, testing and delivery of prototypes. AT91CAP9S is priced at $13 in volumes of 100K units. AT91CAP9S products and development boards are available now.

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets.

Information

Atmel's AT91CAP product information may be retrieved at: http://www.atmel.com/products/AT91CAP

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