Atmel and IoT and Crypto, oh my!

One of the companies that is best positioned to supply components into the Internet of Things (IoT) market is Atmel. For the time being most designs will be done using standard components, not doing massive integration on an SoC targeted at a specific market. The biggest issue in the early stage of market development will be working out what the customer wants and so the big premium will be on getting to market early and iterating fast, not premature cost optimization for a market that might not be big enough to support the design/NRE of a custom design.

Here is Atmel’s latest product in the SmartConnect family, the SAM W25 module

Atmel has microcontrollers, literally over 500 different flavors and in two families, the AVR family and a broad selection of ARM microcontrollers ad processors. They have wireless connectivity. They have strong solutions in security.

Indeed last week at Electronica in Germany they announced the latest product in the SmartConnect family, the SAM W25 module. It is the industry’s first fully-integrated FCC-certified Wi-Fi module with a standalone MCU and hardware security from a single source. The module is tiny, not much larger than a penny. The module includes Atmel’s recently-announced 2.4GHz IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi WINC1500, along with an Atmel | SMART SAM D21 ARM Cortex M0+-based MCU and Atmel’s ATECC108A optimized CryptoAuthentication engine with ultra-secure hardware-based key storage for secure connectivity.

Atmel at Electronica 2014

That last item is a key component for many IoT designs. Security is going to be a big thing and with so many well-publicized breaches of software security, the algorithms, and particularly the keys, are moving quickly into hardware. That component, the ATECC108A, provides state-of-the-art hardware security including a full turnkey Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) engine using key sizes of 256 or 283 bits – appropriate for modern security environments without the long computation delay typical of software solutions. Access to the device is through a standard I²C Interface at speeds up to 1Mb/sec. It is compatible with standard Serial EEPROM I²C Interface specifications. Compared to software, the device is:

• Higher performance (faster encryption)
• Lower power
• Much harder to compromise

Atmel has a new white paper out, Integrating the Internet of Things, Necessary Building Blocks for Broad Market Adoption. Depending on whose numbers you believe, there will be 50 billion IoT edge devices connected by 2020.

Edge nodes are becoming integrated into everyone’s life

As it says in the white paper:

On first inspection, the requirements of an IoT edge device appear to be much the same as any other microcontroller (MCU) based development project. You have one or more sensors that are read by an MCU, the data may then be processed locally prior to sending it off to another application or causing another event to occur such as turning on a motor. However, there are decisions to be made regarding how to communicate with these other applications. Wired, wireless, and power line communication (PLC) are the usual options. But, then you have to consider that many IoT devices are going to be battery powered, which means that their power consumption needs to be kept as low as possible to prolong battery life. The complexities deepen when you consider the security implications of a connected device as well. And that’s not just security of data being transferred, but also ensuring your device can’t be cloned and that it does not allow unauthorized applications to run on it.

IoT design requirements: Software / development tools ecosystem

For almost any application, the building blocks for an IoT edge node are the same:

• Embedded processing
• Sensors
• Connectivity
• Security
• And while not really a “building block,” ultra-low power for always-on applications

My view is that the biggest of these issues will be security. After all, even though Atmel has hundreds of different microcontrollers and microprocessors, there are plenty of other suppliers. Same goes for connectivity solutions. But strong cryptographhic solutions implemented in hardware are much less common.

The new IoT white paper is available for download here.

This post has been republished with permission from SemiWiki.com, where Paul McLellan is a featured blogger. It first appeared there on November 19, 2014.

Atmel expands SmartConnect portfolio with 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi SoCs and modules

Atmel has expanded its leading SmartConnect wireless portfolio with four new turnkey system-on-chips (SoCs): the WILC1000 and WINC1500. Each SoC extends the company’s already broad portfolio of wireless connectivity options with the latest 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi capability, seamlessly integrating Newport Media’s (NMI) solutions in just two months.

If you recall, NMI was acquired back in July 2014, thereby enabling Atmel to offer designers and Makers the industry’s most comprehensive wireless portfolio of smart, connected devices for the growing Internet of Things (IoT). The acquisition immediately added 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to its existing offerings and has accelerated the company’s introduction of low-energy Bluetooth products, Atmel CEO Steve Laub recently explained. “Combined with our existing Wi-Fi and ZigBee solutions and industry leading microcontroller portfolio, Atmel is positioned for substantial growth in the Internet of Things marketplace.”

Both wireless solutions are compatible with existing Atmel microcontroller solutions and can connect to all Atmel AVR or Atmel | SMART MCUs. The new WINC1500 is an IEEE 802.11b/g/n IoT network controller, while the WILC1000 is an IEEE 802.11b/g/n IoT link controller.

Expanding on Atmel’s Wi-Fi offering, the WILC1000 and WINC1500 are SoC solutions optimized for battery-powered IoT applications. These wireless SoCs feature fully-integrated power amplifiers for the industry’s best communication range, without compromising cost or performance. Both the WILC1000 and WINC1500 are add-on solutions which can connect to any Atmel MCU or eMPU targeting a wide range of Internet of Things (IoT), consumer and industrial applications. Both products are available either as fully-certified modules ready for production to accelerate a designer’s time-to-market or as discrete SoCs for customers requiring the highest design flexibility.

“Atmel is excited to offer one of the broadest portfolios of differentiated wireless MCU solutions in the industry to further enable more smart, connected devices in the era of the Internet of Things,” said Kaivan Karimi, Atmel Vice President of Wireless Solutions. “Connected devices that were once a concept are becoming a reality because of innovations that are allowing devices to be smaller, easier to use, faster and more powerful—but are lower in power and optimized for battery operations. When these products are paired with Atmel’s broad portfolio of products, along with comprehensive technologies, OEMs and small developers are allowed to streamline the production of the next wave of IoT devices.”

Atmel’s SmartConnect family can be connected to any ultra-low power MCUs or eMPUs and wireless connectivity solutions into an easy, turnkey IoT solution. SmartConnect enables Wi-Fi Internet connectivity using ultra-low power for IoT edge/sensing nodes markets, therefore reducing overall bill of materials. In addition, the latest solutions accelerate development time for cost-effective, battery-operated applications in the residential, healthcare, industrial, smart energy and wearable markets.

As Reza Kazerounian, Senior Vice President and General Manager, MCU Business Unit at Atmel, previously noted, ultra-low power wireless connectivity is critical for embedded applications in the era of IoT.  “[That is why] Atmel’s SmartConnect technology is about simplifying the use of embedded wireless connectivity technologies and enabling users to accelerate their time-to-market. This simplicity allows all players to participate in the IoT market, fueling the innovation needed to accelerate adoption.”

The WILC1000 and WINC1500 provide multiple peripheral interfaces such as UART, SPI, SDIO and I2C. The only external clock source needed is a high-speed crystal or oscillator with a wide variety of reference clock frequencies supported (between 12 – 50 MHz) and are IEEE 802.11 b/g/n, RF, Baseband, MAC certified.

Key features of the Atmel WILC1000, which can be found on its preliminary datasheet ready for download, include:

• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n RF/PH/MAC SoC
• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n (1×1) for up to 72Mbps
• Single spatial stream in 2.5Ghz RF band
• Integrated PA and T/R Switch
• Superior Sensitivity and Range via advanced PHY signal processing
• Advanced Equalization and Channel Estimation
• Advanced Carrier and Timing Synchronization
• Wi-Fi Direct and Soft-AP support
• Supports IEEE 802.11 WEP, WPA, WPA2 Security
• Supports China WAPI security
• Superior MAC throughput via hardware accelerated two-level A-MSDU/A-MPDU frame aggregation and block acknowledgement
• On-chip memory management engine to reduce host load
• SPI and SDIO host interfaces
• 2/3/4-wire Bluetooth coexistence interface

Key features of the Atmel WINC1500, whose preliminary datasheet can also be found here, include:

• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n RF/PH/MAC SOC
• IEEE 802.11 b/g/n (1×1) for up to 72Mbps
• Single spatial stream in 2.5Ghz RF band
• Integrated PA and T/R Switch
• Superior Sensitivity and Range via advanced PHY signal processing  Wi-Fi Direct and Soft-AP support
• Supports IEEE 802.11 WEP, WPA, WPA2 Security
• On-chip memory management engine to reduce host load
• 4Mbit internal Flash memory for system software
• SPI, UART and I2C as host interfaces
• Power save modes
  • 3μA deep sleep mode
  • 600μA standby mode (state is preserved)
  • On-chip low power sleep oscillator
  • Fast host wake-up by chip pin or clock-less transaction
• Fast boot options
  • On-Chip Boot ROM (Firmware instant boot)
  • SPI flash boot (firmware patches and state variables)
  • Low-leakage on-chip memory for state variables (next chip revision)
  • No SPI flash is needed if firmware patches and state variables can be loaded from MCU at boot time
  • Fast AP Re-Association (150ms)
• On-Chip Network Stack to offload MCU
  • Integrated Network IP stack to minimize host CPU requirements
  • Network features TCP, UDP, DHCP, ARP, HTTP, SSL, and DNS
• TCP/IP protocol stack (client/server) sockets applications
• Wi-Fi security WEP, WPA, WPA2 and WPS
• Advanced Equalization and Channel Estimation
• Advanced Carrier and Timing Synchronization
• Wi-Fi Direct and Soft-AP support
• Network protocols (DHCP/DNS)
• WSC (wireless simple configuration WPS)
• No OS small footprint host driver (4KB flash – less than 1KB RAM)

Interested in the newest members of the SmartConnect family? The WILC1000 and WINC1500 are both now available — WILC1000 as a chip and three different modules; the WINC1500 as a chip and a module, with an evaluation kit featuring Atmel’s SAM D21 MCU.