•  
• EDN Europe MAGAZINE
•  
• Free SUBSCRIPTION
• Subscription Renewal
• View Media Kit

• EDN
• EDN Australia
• EDN Asia
• EDN China
• EDN Japan

ARM plus fast USB

Atmel configured its AT91SAM9R64 ARM9-based microcontroller for high-performance USB-enabled embedded control applications. It will boot from the USB port, SDCard or an external NAND flash and offers the flexibility to reduce the number of memories for program and bulk data storage. To suit space-constrained applications, such as intelligent interfaces between I/O standards, the device occupies a USB 10x10-mm, 0.8-mm-ball-pitch BGA package. With high-speed—480 Mbits/ sec—USB, you can use the µC as an upgrade for existing full-speed USB (12 Mbits/sec). In addition to static memories, the AT91SAM9R64 memory- bus interface supports SDRAM and NAND flash: it works with both 3.3and 1.8V memories, and to maintain the required performance level at 1.8V, the I/O pads include a booster that you enable in software. The chip has 4 kbytes each I and D cache, 64 kbytes of SRAM, 24 DMA channels, an MCI/ SDIO interface, five UARTs, SPI, SSC, TWI, six timers, four PWMs with highdrive I/Os, and a battery-backup RTC and associated registers. Development tools include a free-of-charge GNU C compiler and debugger, plus third-party development environments and operating systems. Atmel provides a software package with register descriptions and device drivers for all peripherals and project examples, plus an evaluation/ benchmarking board. The µC costs US$5.85 (10,000).

Atmel, www.atmel.com