Introducing the new Atmel | SMART SAM C family

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Atmel unveils an innovative 5V Cortex-M0+ MCU series with integrated peripheral touch controller.

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Say hello to the Atmel | SMART SAM C family, the world’s first full 5V ARM Cortex-M0+-based MCU series with an integrated peripheral touch controller (PTC). The newest batch of MCUs innovatively combines 5V, DMA performance and a PTC with excellent moisture tolerance. Beyond that, the devices integrate advanced analog capability and offer EMI and ESD protection, making them ideal for the rapidly expanding smart appliance and industrial markets.

Atmel | SMART microcontrollers with PTC are currently in mass production at leading appliance manufacturers worldwide. By adding full 5V functionality on an ARM Cortex M0+ based core, along with upcoming support for the IEC 60730 Class B Safety Library, the SAM C lineup — including the SAM C20 and CAM C21 — is the perfect solution for partnering with industrial and white goods companies to power next-generation applications for the burgeoning Internet of Things.

Leveraging over two decades of MCU success, the latest series incorporates Atmel’s proprietary smart peripherals and Event System, not to mention are also pin and code-compatible to the SAM D and SAM L families. The SAM C is fully supported by Atmel’s free integrated development environment Atmel Studio and program examples and drivers for all peripherals are available through the Atmel Software Framework.

“Atmel leverages its leadership position in both MCU and touch with the new SAM C series,” explained Reza Kazerounian, Atmel SVP and GM, Microcontroller Business Unit. “The SAM C series uniquely combines support for 5V on a Cortex-M0+ based MCU with an integrated PTC, bringing an industry-first product to market for next-generation industrial and appliance applications.”

Among the notable features of the SAM C:

• Expands the ARM Cortex-M0+ based MCU with hardware divide and square root accelerator at 48MHz
• Large memories with SRAM up to 32KB and embedded Flash up to 256KB
• Supports 2.7V to 5.5V operating voltage
• Integrates the Atmel QTouch Peripheral Touch Controller
• Incorporates Atmel’s proprietary DMA with SleepWalking, Event System and SERCOM
• Dual 12-bit ADCs and a 16-bit Sigma Delta ADC
• Dual CAN 2.0 with FD support

To help accelerate a designer’s development, the SAM C21 Xplained Pro is now selling for just $39. These boards include an embedded debugger and programmer and have a wide range of compatible extensions units. Standalone programmer debugger solutions supporting the SAM C family are also available from both Atmel and third parties.

EE Times features Atmel’s next-gen touch controllers

Writing for the EE Times, Max Maxfield notes that Atmel is a major player in the touchscreen tech arena, especially in the large format screen space. Indeed, Atmel boasts a wide range of ultra-low-power single-chip touchscreen controllers for screens ranging from 1.5 to 15.6 inches. Earlier this week, the company expanded its popular maXTouch T lineup of touchscreen controllers with the mXT106xT2 family of devices.

“These devices include the high-end touchscreen features associated with state-of-the-art smartphone-sized products, but they target the larger format market with products whose screens are in the 7- to 8.9-inch range,” Maxfield explains.

“The mXT1066T2 and mXT1068T2 controllers support both mutual-capacitance and self-capacitance sensing. By intelligently switching back and forth between the two and using a hybrid approach, designers can achieve optimal power consumption and noise immunity, even in high humidity and moisture environments, while supporting bare finger and gloved operation.”

As Maxfield points out, mXT1068T2 controllers also supports hover operation in which the user’s finger can be up to 20mm above the touch surface. Indeed, hover adds another dimension to the user-touchscreen interface by allowing the touchscreen to detect, track and interact with a floating finger without physical contact.

“Currently, only single-finger hover is supported, but one can easily imagine how useful this would be if using a tablet to read a recipe when one’s hands are covered in food. In the future, multi-fingered hover control might allow the user to ‘grab’ objects and rotate them,” says Maxfield.

“Hover is one element in an increasingly sophisticated realm of human-machine interfaces (HMIs) that also include gesture recognition. In the not-so-distant future, people will interact with electronic systems using a mixture of voice control, gesture recognition and touchscreens, including hover technology.”

Last, but certainly not least, Maxfield notes that the mXT106xT2 lineup features a peripheral touch controller (PTC) capability that enables capacitive sensing of up to 12 channels via a dedicated hardware block in the mXT chip.

The new devices in the maXTouch T Series are currently in production, with the 8.3” screen size evaluation kit slated to ship in May.

Interested in learning more about Atmel’s popular maXTouch T lineup of touchscreen controllers? You can check out the product’s official page here.

Video: ARM interviews Atmel’s Ingar Fredriksen

Earlier this week, Atmel kicked off Embedded World 2014 by expanding its low-power ARM Cortex M0+-based MCU portfolio with three new families: the SAM D21, D10 and D11. The trio of entry-level, low-power MCUs are packed with a number of high-end features including Atmel’s Event System, SERCOM module, peripheral touch controller and a full-speed USB interface.

During the show, ARM’s Andy Frame interviewed Atmel’s MCU Marketing Director Ingar Fredriksen about the company’s ARM-based SAM D family of products.

“The original SAM D20 lineup has been a tremendous success for Atmel,” Fredriksen told Frame. “We see a lot of opportunities for the series over the next five years.”

Commenting on the new additions to the SAM D series, Fredriksen highlighted Atmel’s integrated peripheral touch controller (PTC) which supports buttons, sliders, wheels and proximity with up to 256 channels. This configuration allows developers to migrate from a two-chip (one MCU + one touch) solution to a one-chip platform.

Indeed, the PTC supports mutual and self capacitive touch, while offering optimized sensitivity and noise tolerance as well as self-calibration. Simply put, the PTC eliminates the need for external components and minimizes CPU overhead. More specifically, implementing one button takes one channel, while wheels and sliders occupy three.

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, Atmel’s SAM D portfolio is architected beyond the core, leveraging over two decades of MCU experience to create unique, connected peripherals that are easy-to-use, while providing scalability and performance.

To help accelerate the design process and eliminate the need for additional components, Atmel’s new SAM D lineup integrates additional functionality, including full-speed crystal-less USB, DMA, I2S, timers/counters for control applications, along with several other new features. Atmel’s SAM D devices are also code- and pin-compatible, making it easy for designers to migrate up and down the family.

Interested in learning more? You can check out Atmel’s ARM-based solutions here and “Think Beyond the Core,” a free white paper [PDF] about Atmel’s scalable SAM D lineup here.

Atmel expands SAM D Cortex M0+ MCU portfolio

Atmel has expanded its low-power ARM Cortex M0+-based MCU portfolio with three new families: the SAM D21, D10 and D11. These entry-level, low-power MCUs are packed with high-end features including Atmel’s Event System, SERCOM module, peripheral touch controller and a full-speed USB interface.

“As more devices are becoming smarter and connected in this era of the Internet of Things (IoT), designers are looking for MCUs with additional connectivity and communication options to scale their applications in the consumer, industrial and medical markets,” explained Patrick Sullivan, Vice President of Marketing, Microcontroller Business Unit, Atmel Corporation.

“Atmel’s new SAM D21, D10 and  D11 families of Cortex M0+-based MCUs deliver low-power consumption, connectivity and small footprint, providing designers just the right price-to-performance ratio. These new families expand the company’s growing line of Atmel Smart microcontrollers with new pin and memory combinations, along with new features such as DMA and crystal-less USB.”

As we’ve previously discussed on Bits & Pieces, Atmel’s SAM D portfolio is architected beyond the core, leveraging over two decades of MCU experience to create unique, connected peripherals that are easy-to-use, while providing scalability and performance. Indeed, to help simplify the design process and eliminate the need for additional components, Atmel’s new SAM D lineup integrates additional functionality, including full-speed crystal-less USB, DMA, I2S, timers/counters for control applications, along with several other new features. Atmel’s SAM D devices are also code- and pin-compatible making it easy for designers to migrate up and down the family.

“Atmel’s expanded portfolio of low-power SAM D family ARM Cortex-M0+-based devices enables more designers to deliver smart devices in this increasingly connected world,” said Noel Hurley, Deputy General Manager, CPU Group, ARM.

“The ARM Cortex-M0+ processor is a highly area- and energy-efficient core which enables partners, such as Atmel, to provide the right peripheral set, intelligence, communication and memory for their customers’ needs.”

Key  SAM D21 features include:

• 48MHz operation
2.14 Coremark/MHz
• Single-cycle IO access
• 
6- to 12-channel Event System
• 
6- to 12-channel DMA
• Up to six SERCOM modules configurable as UART/USART, SPI, I2C
• 12Mbps USB 2.0 device with an embedded host and device
• 
Two-channel I2S with 96MHz fractional PLL for audio streaming
• Up to five 16-bit timers, up to three 16-bit times optimized for control applications
• Peripheral touch controller supports up to 256 touch channels for capacitive touch buttons, sliders, wheels and proximity sensing
• 
Down to 70uA/MHz in active mode
• 4uA RAM retention
• Real-time clock and calendar
• 
Option to choose between internal and external oscillators, on-the-fly clock switching
• 
Sleepwalking

To help accelerate the design process, the $39 SAM D21 Xplained Pro is equipped with an embedded debugger/programmer and offers support for a wide range of compatible extensions boards. Standalone programmer debugger solutions supporting the SAM D family are also available from both Atmel and third parties, with the Atmel SAM D MCUs fully supported by Atmel Studio and Atmel Software Framework.

The SAM D21 is the first family in this expanded portfolio, and samples and tools are available today with volume production in May 2014. The SAM D21 is offered in 32KB to 256KB of Flash and in 32-, 48- and 64-pin packages. Meanwhile, the SAM D10 and D11 families will be available in 14- and 20-pin SOIC and 24-pin QFN packages with up to 16KB of Flash. Both memory options feature 4KB of SRAM. All package options minimize the number of power pins to maximize the amount of IO available for the application. Engineering samples and tools are slated to go live in Q2 2014.