Atmel's picoPower 8/16-bit XMEGA MCU Cuts Power and Processing Requirement by 98%
Atmel Corporation announced its latest family of 32 MIPS, picoPower 8/16-bit microcontroller that radically improves MCU performance by off-loading interrupts and data transfers to an on-chip event manager and DMA
- Highest performance with the AVR 8/16-bit single cycle core and FLASH program memory
- Reduced CPU active time with the new innovative XMEGA event system. With 8 routing channels to route direct communication between on-chip resources like ADC, Memory, I/O, timers and comparators the event system reduces the CPU active time by as much as 98%.
- Improved data rate, saved CPU load and reduced active time with the integrated 4-channel DMA controller. The DMA can transfer data between all memories and peripherals in any combination the users configure. The XMEGA DMA reduces CPU usage with 96% for SPI@4Mbps and 57% for UART@2Mbps.
- High speed and accurate sampling of analog data with two 12-bits, 8-channels and 2Ms/s ADCs. Integrated 64x gain stage increases the dynamic range to 18-bits.
- Market leading low power with Atmel's unique picoPower technology. Power down current is as low as 100nA and active current is cut up to 98%.
- Highest Flexibility with built in 5 different sleep modes, DES and CES crypto engines , WDT, USART, TWI, SPI, analog comparators, DACs, various 8/16 bits timers, EEPROM, SRAM, RTC, PLL and 6 different oscillators including a 1% RC oscillator and a 1uA 32kHz ultra low power oscillator.
Ingar Fredriksen, Atmel's director of AVR product marketing, explained, "We realized, after looking at a wide range of customer designs, that the majority of CPU cycles are spent handling interrupts and moving data. This realization meant that there was great potential to free up a significant amount of processing power by simply rethinking how various events are handled in the MCU. XMEGA microcontrollers are designed to revolutionize system performance, with lower power consumption."
100% pin- and code-compatible. All AVR XMEGA MCUs are pin- and 100% code-compatible across all devices. With XMEGA developers only need to keep and maintain one code base that can be used and re-used across multiple projects.
Availability and Pricing
Samples of the XMEGA devices are available now with flash memory density from 64 KB to 256 KB in 64 to 100 pin packages. Pricing varies from $1.75 to $5.00 depending on volume quantity and memory option.
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