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 launches industry’s first wide-Vcc low-power temperature sensor family

We’re excited to announce the launch of the industry’s first family of high-precision digital temperature sensors with the widest Vcc range from 1.7V to 5.5V. The new family delivers higher temperature accuracy and faster I2C bus communication speeds, and are available with integrated nonvolatile registers and serial EEPROM memory making them ideal for consumer, industrial, computer, and medical applications.

With the widest Vcc range in the industry, the new temperature sensor family allows customers to purchase one device to cover all their Vcc requirements in a variety of applications. Currently, digital temperature sensors on the market are available with a very limited Vcc range requiring customers to purchase multiple temperature sensors in their overall bill of materials (BOM) and utilizing multiple devices to cover the different voltage ranges across various applications.

Atmel’s new family of digital temperature sensors lets customers select just one device to cover all Vcc requirements in various applications, reducing their overall BOM. The new family also delivers a higher accuracy rate at ±0.5°C accuracy (typical) across the 0°C to +85°C temperature range across the entire wide voltage range (1.7V to 5.5V). The low voltage operation of the devices also reduce the overall power consumption in applications such as portable handheld consumer devices, enabling longer battery life.

“Developers for consumer, industrial, computer, medical applications are constantly looking for ways to reduce their overall bill of materials while increasing their system reliability and lowering their power consumption,” said Bryce Morgan, Atmel Strategic Marketing Manager. “With Atmel’s new family of temperature sensors, developers are guaranteed a wide Vcc range along with higher temperature accuracy to satisfy a variety of applications across all market segments. Even more, the new family enables these developers to lower their overall system BOM, while increasing system reliability and lowering the overall power by selecting just one device in this new temp sensor family.”

The new family also delivers a faster I2C bus communication with speeds of up to 1MHz, increasing the data throughput for both temperature sensor operations and for devices with integrated Serial EEPROM. Additionally, the new lineup includes six high-precision, digital temperature sensors based on the industry-standard LM75 functionality offered by a number of vendors. All the devices accurately measure and monitor temperature to address the thermal monitoring requirements for a wide variety of applications and are highly configurable..

Those interested in the new digital temperature sensor family are in luck! AT30TS74, AT30TS75A, AT30TS750A, AT30TSE752A, AT30TSE754A, and the AT30TSE758A are now available.