mbed eval boards showcase focus on IoT software and connectivity

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Chipmakers like Atmel are joining hands with ARM to bring the entire ecosystem under one roof and thus facilitate the creation of standards-based IoT products.

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ARM’s mbed operating system is winning attention in the highly fragmented embedded software space by promising a solid software foundation for interoperable hardware and thus scale the Internet of Things designs by narrowing the development time.

Atmel has put its weight behind ARM’s mbed OS by launching the single-chip evaluation board for the IoT ecosystem in a bid to ensure low software dependence for the embedded developers. The leading microcontroller supplier unveiled the mbed evaluation platform at the recent ARM TechCon held in Santa Clara, California.

The mbed OS platform is focused on rapid development of connected devices with an aim to create a serious professional platform to prototype IoT applications. So IoT developers don’t have to look to software guys for help. The mbed stack features a strong focus on enhancing the IoT’s connectivity and software components.

ARM is the lead maintainer for the mbed OS modules while it adds silicon partners, like Atmel, as platform-specific dependencies for the relevant mbed OS modules. Silicon partners are responsible for their platform-specific drivers.

Atmel’s mbed-enabled evaluation board is based on the low-power 2.4GHz wireless Cortex-M0+ SAM R21 MCU. Moreover, Atmel is expanding mbed OS support for its Wi-Fi modules and Bluetooth Low Energy products.

The fact that Atmel is adding mbed OS to its IoT ecosystem is an important nod for ARM’s mbed technology in its journey from merely a hardware abstraction layer to a full-fledged IoT platform. Atmel managers acknowledge that mbed technology adds diversity to embedded hardware devices and makes MCUs more capable.

Solid Software Foundation

There is a lot of code involved in the IoT applications and software is getting more complex. It encompasses, for instance, sensor library to acquire data, authentication at IoT gateways and SSL security. Here, the automatic software integration engine like mbed lets developers focus on their applications instead of worrying about integrating off-the-shelf software.

The mbed reference designs like the one showcased by Atmel during ARM TechCon are aimed at narrowing the development time with the availability of building blocks and design resources—components, code and infrastructure—needed to bootstrap a working IoT system. Atmel managers are confident that a quality software foundation like mbed could help bring IoT products to market faster.

Atmel’s mbed-enabled IoT evaluation board promises harmony between hardware and software. Apparently, chipmakers like Atmel are joining hands with ARM to bring the entire ecosystem — OS software, cloud services and developer tools — under one roof, and thus facilitate the creation of standards-based IoT products. Atmel’s mbed evaluation board clearly mirrors that effort to deliver a complete hardware, software and developer tools ecosystem in order to bring IoT designs quicker to market.

The platform comprises of mbed OS software for IoT client devices like gateways and mbed Device Server for the cloud services. ARM launched the mbed software platform in 2014 and Atmel has been part of this initiative since then.

mbed in Communications Stack

Additionally, Atmel has tied the mbed association to its SmartConnect wireless solutions to make the best of mbed’s networking stack in the Internet of connected things. The IoT technology is built on layers, and here, interoperability of communications protocols is a key challenge.

For a start, Atmel’s SAM R21-Xpro evaluation board is embed-enabled and is built around the R21 microcontroller, which has been designed for industrial and consumer wireless applications running proprietary communication stacks or IEEE 802.15.4-compliant solutions.

Next up, the evaluation board includes SAM W25 Wi-Fi module that integrates IEEE 802.11 b/g/n IoT network controller with the existing MCU solution, SAM D21, which is also based on the Cortex-M0+ processor core.

Furthermore, Atmel is offering an mbed-enabled Bluetooth starter kit that includes SAM L21 microcontroller-based evaluation board and ultra-low-power Bluetooth chip BTLC1000, which is compliant with Bluetooth Low Energy 4.1. Atmel demonstrated a home lighting system at the ARM TechCon show floor, which employed SAM R21-based Thread routers that passed light sensor information to an mbed-enabled home gateway. Subsequently, this information was processed and sent to the mbed Device Server using a web interface.

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Majeed Ahmad is the author of books Smartphone: Mobile Revolution at the Crossroads of Communications, Computing and Consumer Electronics and The Next Web of 50 Billion Devices: Mobile Internet’s Past, Present and Future.

Why do drones love the Atmel SAM E70?

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Eric Esteve explains why the latest Cortex-M7 MCU series will open up countless capabilities for drones other than just flying. 

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By nature, avionics is a mature market requiring the use of validated system solution: safety is an absolute requirement, while innovative systems require a stringent qualification phase. That’s why the very fast adoption of drones as an alternative solution for human piloted planes is impressive. It took 10 or so years for drones to become widely developed and employed for various applications, ranging from war to entertainment, with prices spanning a hundreds of dollars to several hundreds of thousands. But, even if we consider consumer-oriented, inexpensive drones, the required processing capabilities not only call for high performance but versatile MCU as well, capable of managing its built-in gyroscope, accelerator, geomagnetic sensor, GPS, rotational station, four to six-axis control, optical flow and so on.

When I was designing for avionics, namely the electronic CFM56 motor control (this reactor being jointly developed by GE in the U.S. and Snecma in France, equipping Boeing and Airbus planes), the CPU was a multi-hundred dollar Motorola 68020, leading to a $20 per MIPS cost! While I may not know the Atmel | SMART SAM E70 price precisely — I would guess that it cost a few dollars — what I do I know is that the MCU is offering an excess of 600 DMIPS. Aside from its high performance, this series boasts a rather large on-chip memory size of up to 384KB SRAM and 2MB Flash — just one of many pivotal reasons that this MCU has been selected to support the “drone with integrated navigation control to avoid obstacle and improve stability.”

In fact, the key design requirements for this application were: +600 DMIPS, camera sensor interface, dual ADC and PWM for motor control and dual CAN, all bundled up in a small package. Looking at the block diagram below helps link the MCU features with the various application capabilities: gyroscope (SPI), accelerator (SPI x2), geomagnetic sensor (I2C x2), GPS (UART), one or two-channel rotational station (UART x2), four or six-axis control communication (CAN x2), voltage/current (ADC), analog sensor (ADC), optical flow sensor (through image sensor Interface or ISI) and pulse width modulation (PWM x8) to support the rotational station and four or six-axis speed PWM control.

For those of you who may not know, the SAM E70 is based on the ARM-Cortex M7 — a principle and multi-verse handling MCU that combines superior performance with extensive peripheral sets supporting multi-threaded processes. It’s this multi-thread support that will surely open up countless capabilities for drones other than simply flying.

Today’s drones already possess the ability to soar through the air or stay stationary, snapping pictures or capturing HD footage. That’s already very impressive to see sub-kilogram devices offering such capabilities! However, the drone market is already looking ahead, preparing for the future, with the desire to get more application stacks into the UAVs so they can take in automation, routing, cloud connectivity (when available), 4G/5G, and other wireless functionalities to enhance data pulling and posting.

For instance, imagine a small town tallying a few thousand habitants, except a couple of days or weeks per year because of a special event or holiday, a hundred thousand people come storming into the area. These folks want to feed their smartphone with multimedia or share live experiences by sending movies or photos, most of them at the same time. The 4G/5G and cloud infrastructure is not tailored for such an amount of people, so the communication system may break. Yet, this problem could be fixed by simply calling in drone backup to reinforce the communication infrastructure for that period of time.

While this may be just one example of what could be achieved with the advanced usage of drones, each of the innovative applications will be characterized by a common set of requirements: high processing performance, large SRAM and flash memory capability, and extensive peripheral sets supporting multi-threaded processes. In this case, the Cortex M7 ARM-based SAM E70 MCU is an ideal choice with processing power in excess of 640 DMIPS, large on-chip SRAM (up to 384 KB) and Flash (up to 2MB) capabilities managing all sorts of sensors, navigation, automation, servos, motor, routing, adjustments, video/audio and more.

Intrigued? You’ll want to check out some of the products and design kits below:

• SAM V
• SAM S
• SAM E
• SAM V Xplained Ultra Kit

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This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Eric Esteve is a principle blogger as well as one of the four founding members of SemiWiki.com. This blog first appeared on SemiWiki on July 18, 2015.

Understanding the IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated that there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion by 2020.

According to Alain Louchez of the Georgia Institute of Technology, interest in the IoT has accelerated dramatically in 2013. A number of initiatives – annual conferences, forums, new journals, standards groups and public consultations – have recently kicked off around the world, confirming the growing importance of connected objects.

“IoT is many things to many people. It is often cloaked with various names, depending on the context. For example, machine-to-machine communications (M2M), ubiquitous computing, cyber-physical systems, industrial Internet, smart grid and smarter planet are a few examples of expressions used to describe IoT,” Louchez explained.

“[However], the development of any IoT solution requires the combination of myriad technologies and expertise, from the sensing and actuating stage to the transformation of data into actionable information. For IoT to thrive, education, training and awareness must become a top priority for businesses, governments and academia.”

Louchez also recommended that more colleges and universities integrate IoT technology into their respective curricula.

“China is one of the first countries to understand the need for well-adapted educational programs to support IoT acceleration. Many Chinese universities already offer degrees in Internet of Things Engineering. Note that the fundamental technical knowledge necessary to prepare for IoT can be found in universities with programs in ubiquitous computing, interactive computing, human–computer interaction, cyber-physical systems and M2M networking,” he continued.

“These programs are inherently dynamic because they need to keep pace with a rapidly changing industry. With the arrival of Big Data, generated in no small part by IoT and associated technologies, ‘data science’ has become a hot topic in academic circles. The information extraction is central to IoT and cannot be ignored by IoT architects.”

Finally, Louchez noted that smart roads, home automation and fitness-data collection are examples that can be used to explain the power of IoT on practical terms to both businesses and consumers.

“IoT is about the radical transformation of society, which won’t happen overnight. Education, training and awareness are some of the highly visible prerequisites, and critical to IoT’s success. The faster we come to grips with this, the faster IoT will move to mainstream adoption,” he concluded.

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, the rapidly evolving IoT represents perhaps the greatest potential growth market for semiconductors over the next several years. And that is precisely why Atmel remains focused on designing the absolute lowest power sipping products, particularly with regards to microcontrollers (MCUs).

“Atmel is well positioned for the rapidly evolving IoT as our portfolio includes ultra-low power WiFi capability and an extensive lineup of microcontrollers (MCUs). As applications become more interconnected and user interfaces become richer, MCUs must handle and transfer ever-growing levels of data. To boost performance for these smart, connected applications, Atmel’s 8-bit Flash MCUs integrate a wide range of classic communication peripherals, such as UART, SPI and I2C,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces.

“Plus, our higher-performance 32-bit MCUs and embedded MPUs (eMPUs) feature Ethernet and full-speed and high-speed USB, while also providing extension ports for external communication modules such as WiFi or cellular modems. Simply put, Atmel MCUs are designed to deliver maximum performance and meet the requirements of advanced applications. That is why we offer highly integrated architecture optimized for high-speed connectivity, optimal data bandwidth and rich interface support – making them ideal for powering the smart, connected products at the heart of the IoT.”

Atmel MCUs: High performance for the IoT

Atmel microcontrollers (MCUs) are designed to deliver maximum performance and meet the requirements of advanced applications. That is why our MCUs offer highly integrated architecture optimized for high-speed connectivity, optimal data bandwidth and rich interface support – making them ideal for powering the smart, connected products at the heart of The Internet of Things (IoT).

Essentially, the Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a future world where all types of electronic devices link to each other via the Internet. Today, it’s estimated that there are nearly 10 billion devices in the world connected to the Internet, a figure expected to triple to nearly 30 billion by 2020.

“As applications become more interconnected and user interfaces become richer, microcontrollers must handle and transfer ever-growing levels of data,” an Atmel engineering rep told Bits & Pieces. “To boost performance for these smart, connected applications, Atmel’s 8-bit Flash MCUs integrate a wide range of classic communication peripherals, such as UART, SPI and I2C. Plus, our higher-performance 32-bit MCUs and embedded MPUs (eMPUs) feature Ethernet and full-speed and high-speed USB, while also providing extension ports for external communication modules such as WiFi or cellular modems.”

More specifically, Atmel’s ARM-based SAM9G45 eMPU  boasts high-speed 480 Mbps USB Host and Device Ports with on-chip transceivers, Ethernet MAC and SDIO/SD Card/MMC interfaces – offering developers an easy way to manage large amounts of data and interconnection both between systems and printed circuit boards (PCBs) inside a system. Indeed, the SAM9G45 eMPU is fully compliant with both EHCI and OHCI standards, enabling easy porting of USB host drivers to the SAM9G45.

Similarly, Atmel’s 32-bit AVR and AT91SAM devices are also well-suited for a wide range of standards-based high-speed USB applications. To be sure, the peripheral DMA controller found in the AVR XMEGA and AVR UC3 facilitates efficient data transfers between peripherals and memories with minimal CPU intervention. This eliminates CPU bottlenecks, allowing AVR microcontrollers to achieve transfer rates of up to 33 MBit/s per SPI and USART port with only a 15 percent load on the CPU.

“In addition, Atmel offers a complete line of IEEE 802.15.4-compliant, IPv6/6LoWPAN based, ZigBee certified wireless solutions,” the engineering rep continued. “They are based on our extensive family of RF transceivers, 8-bit and 32-bit AVR, and ARM microcontrollers. As expected, to ease development and speed time to market, Atmel offers a variety of free software stacks, reference designs, wireless modules and development kits.”

In terms of ensuring sufficient data bandwidth, Atmel’s 32-bit MCUs and eMPUs contains a set of parallel data buses where each bus master controls its own dedicated bus connected to all the slaves. This lets the devices support tremendous data bandwidth and removes processing bottlenecks. Atmel 400 MHz eMPUs also feature a high data speedway architecture based on a peripheral DMA (direct memory access) and distributed memory architecture that, together with a multi-layer bus matrix, enables multiple simultaneous data transfers between memories, peripherals and external interfaces without consuming CPU clock cycles.

Meanwhile, select models of Atmel’s 32-bit microcontrollers feature additional SRAM blocks connected to the multi-layer databus or tightly-coupled with the CPU, enabling devices with multiple high-speed communication interfaces to transfer more data by allowing each peripheral to use all of the available bandwidth of any one of the SRAMs. Combined with the peripheral DMA controller, this allows large blocks of data to be transferred with minimal load on the CPU.

It should also be noted that Atmel’s versatile and expansive MCU portfolio can be used to power a wide range of sophisticated interfaces. Examples include industrial applications, such as home and commercial building automation, data loggers, point-of-sale terminals and cash registers, in-house displays for energy metering, alarm systems and medical equipment – all are joining the “smart” revolution currently enjoyed by portable media player and smartphone markets.

So in addition to ubiquitous Internet connectivity, a central aspect of The Internet of Things, the way in which individuals interface and interact with equipment is fundamentally changing. This is prompting hardware designers to increase the processor performance to several 100 MIPS, the peripheral data rates to tens of Mbps and on and off-chip bandwidth to Gbps. As such, the memory size scales with the software to several Mbytes in cases of an RTOS-based implementation or tens of Mbytes for Linux or Microsoft Embedded CE.

Last, but certainly not least, videos are replacing static images. To address this demand, the Atmel SAM9M10 eMPU embeds a high-performance hardware video decoder and 2D accelerator, delivering a high-quality user experience, all while preserving the full processing power of the central processing unit for the application.

“Simply put, we are continuing to build on its legacy of innovation and highly integrated designs, to deliver a solid combination of performance, flexibility and efficiency to support the machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and evolution of the ‘industrial Internet,'” the engineering rep added.

The value of microcontrollers (MCUs) with dual-bank flash

Written by Brian Hammill

Atmel, along with a number of other industry heavyweights, recently introduced a slew of Cortex-M microcontrollers (MCUs) equipped with a dual-bank flash feature.  While single bank flash is sufficient for numerous applications, the dual-bank feature offers significant value in specific scenarios. So let’s discuss the added benefit of dual-bank flash.

Dual bank flash provides a fail safe method of implementing remote firmware upgrades

First, we need to understand the role of flash in a MCU.  Just under 100% of the time, the flash memory in your MCU is in read mode.  The processor core is almost always fetching instructions to execute out of the flash. Exceptions? When code is being run from RAM, internal or external, or ROM.  Meaning, with typical flash memory, you cannot read while you are writing to it.  As such, during firmware upgrades and data storage operations, the processor core cannot execute code from the flash.  Either the processor has to wait for the write operation to complete, or the core can continue to execute from other physical memory such as RAM or ROM.

In Atmel’s single bank SAM3 and SAM4 family flash MCUs, this problem has been solved in a somewhat novel manner by providing flash programming code in the factory programmed ROM.  This means that whenever the firmware engineer wants to write the flash, it will buffer the data to be written and make a call to a routine in ROM.  The processor core will then be executing from ROM while the flash is being written.  Since flash erase and programming operations can take milliseconds (a very long time for a MCU core running at up to 150 MHz), the ROM routine may have to sit in a do nothing loop while the flash operation completes.

Admittedly there are limitations, but this method generally works just fine for systems with external storage such as serial flash – retaining downloaded firmware images until they can be written to the internal flash.  It also works well in systems which infrequently write a few bytes of data to the flash.

Firmware upgrades can be risky, especially in applications where firmware images are downloaded across slow unreliable wireless links – or where systems are prone to power failures. In a single bank flash system, ensuring a reliable firmware upgrade means there is a part of the flash that you never erase or write over. The code contained in that part of the flash knows how to detect corrupted code in the rest of the flash.

Using a checksum, CRC, or even a digital signature are common ways to determine the validity of the flash image on boot or reset.  If the check comes out bad, the code in the part of flash that is never over-written knows to look for a backup image and attempt to reprogram the application.  The backup image can be located in an external memory such as a serial flash or if there is enough space, in an unused part of the internal flash.

Managing backup images in internal flash or external serial flash can be done reliably in a well planned system with single bank flash.  The key is well-planned, although the firmware engineer has to jump through some hoops because changing the interrupt table ordinarily means you have to change the very lowest flash addresses.  Plus, you cannot keep that part of flash unchanged over the life of the product in the field.  So it is necessary to have the fixed interrupt vectors point at defined locations where the actual interrupt service routines are located.  And finally, the actual ISRs can be changed when the application is changed by a firmware update, although this can lead to size restrictions or wasted flash space between the ISRs.

Easing Design Process with AUTOSAR Standard Support

By Eric Tinlot

Today’s vehicles have up to 70 electronic control units (ECUs) supporting many of their in-vehicle functionalities—a result of tougher constraints in areas including security, environment, comfort and safety. All of these functionalities call for simultaneous interactions by sensors, actuators and control units. But with the complexity of signal interactions among ECUs, this can be a challenging prospect. What’s more, these complex interactions and the increasing number of ECU nodes are increasing the amount and complexity of software required.

The Automotive Software Platform and Architecture (AUTOSAR) is an open and standardized automotive software platform and architecture jointly developed by automotive manufacturers, suppliers and tools developers. Because it provides an abstraction layer between hardware and application, the standard allows hardware-independent development and testing of the application software.

Atmel has worked with Vector Informatik to fully support the Atmel 32-bit AVR automotive family devices in AUTOSAR through the MICROSAR bundle from Vector. We have developed a microcontroller abstraction layer (MCAL) for our automotive-qualified AVR devices. These MCAL modules and Vector’s LIN/CAN communication layers are integrated into Vector’s complete MICROSAR environment. This AUTOSAR bundle for the 32-bit AVR family is available from Vector.

The AUTOSAR bundle consists of a microcontroller abstraction layer for AVR automotive-qualified MCUs and Vector Informatik’s LIN/CAN communication layers.

To learn more, including which MCALs we’ve developed, read the full article, Atmel Eases Automotive Design Process Through Support of AUTOSAR Standard.