Atmel's Latest ARM9-based Microcontroller Significantly Increases Internal Data Bandwidth
Rousset, France (ots/PRNewswire)
- ARM926EJ-S-based MCU Provides 41.6 Gbps Internal Data Bandwidth, Combines Networking with Human Interface Capabilities
Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today the newest member of Atmel's SAM9 family, the AT91SAM9263 embedding a 200 MIPS ARM926EJ-S(TM )-based microcontroller that overcomes the bottlenecks that occur with conventional ARM9(TM)-based MCUs in graphically-interfaced, data-intensive applications such as networked medical monitoring equipment and GPS navigation systems. The AT91SAM9263 employs 27 DMA channels including Atmel's 18-channel peripheral DMA controller (PDC), a 9-layer bus matrix, and two additional busses for data- and instruction-tightly-coupled-memories (TCMs) to boost CPU performance and provide on-chip data transfer rates of up to 41.6 Gbps. Two external bus interfaces (EBIs) support gigabyte-plus external memories.
Human Interface. On-chip human interface peripherals include a camera interface, TFT/STN LCD controller, a 6-channel audio front-end interface (AC97), I2S and a 2D graphics co-processor that off-loads line draw, block transfer, polygon fill, and clipping functions from the CPU.
Networking and Communications. Networking peripherals include a 12 Mbps USB host and device, a 10/100 Ethernet MAC and a 1 Mbps control area network (CAN). There are also four USARTs, two 50 Mbps serial parallel interfaces (SPI), CompactFlash(R), SDIO (MCI) and a two-wire interface (TWI) which can be connected to external wired and wireless communication modules like GPRS modem and Wi-Fi(R).
Peripheral DMA Controller Relieves CPU of Peripheral-to-Memory Transfers -- Conventional ARM9-based processors use load/store instructions that require at least 80 CPU cycles to transfer a single byte of data between memory and a peripheral. Running at 200 MHz with a bus frequency of 100 MHz, these processors typically reach the limit of their capability at about 20 Mbps even with the memory management unit and instruction- and data-cache controllers enabled.
Atmel's AT91SAM9263 integrates 18 simple, silicon-efficient, single-cycle, peripheral DMA controllers (PDC), five DMA controllers with burst mode support to the USB host, Ethernet MAC, camera interface, LCD controller and 2D graphics controller, plus a memory-to-memory DMA controller with burst mode, scatter-gather and linked lists support. The DMA controllers completely off-load the execution of data transfers between external serial interfaces and memories. At a 20 Mbps data rate, Atmel's SAM9263 still has 88% of its MIPS available for application execution.
Eleven-layer Bus plus 96 kBytes on-chip SRAM Eliminates Bandwidth Bottlenecks. Atmel has implemented 11 busses and 96 Kbytes of on-chip scratchpad SRAM on the AT92SAM9263. The SRAM can be partly configured as tightly-coupled data and instruction memory (TCM). The busses provide multiple parallel on-chip data transfer channels and a total on-chip bandwidth of 41.6 Gbps.
Dual EBI Allows Simultaneous, Parallel Operation of the ARM9 CPU and Graphics Processors. The AT91SAM9263 has two external bus interfaces (EBI): one for the system memory and one for the human interface. The second EBI eliminates the need for the LCD controller and CPU to share memory and can increase available CPU MIPS by 20% to 40%.
Pricing & Availability. The AT91SAM9263 is available now in a 324-ball BGA package and is priced at sub US$10 for 100K parts.
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, Atmel ICs can be found Everywhere You Are(R).
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Information:
Atmel's AT91SAM9 product information may be retrieved at http://www.atmel.com/products/AT91 /.
Press Contacts:
Peter Bishop, Communications Manager, Atmel Rousset
Phone: +33-0-4-42-53-61-50, Email: peter.bishop@rfo.atmel.com
Helen Perlegos, Corporate Press Relations -- USA and Asia
Phone: +1-408-451-2855, Email: hperlegos@atmel.com
Veronique Sablereau, Corporate Communications Manager -- Europe
Phone: +33-1-30-60-70-68, Email: veronique.sablereau@atmel.comWeb site: http://www.atmel.com
Contact:
Peter Bishop, Communications Manager, of Atmel Rousset,
+33-0-4-42-53-61-50, or peter.bishop@rfo.atmel.com; or USA and Asia,
Helen Perlegos, Corporate Press Relations, +1-408-451-2855, or
hperlegos@atmel.com, or Europe, Veronique Sablereau, Corporate
Communications Manager, +33-1-30-60-70-68, or
veronique.sablereau@atmel.com, both of Atmel Corporation