4 reasons why Atmel is ready to ride the IoT wave

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The IoT recipe comprises of three key technology components: Sensing, computing and communications.

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In 2014, a Goldman Sachs’ report took many people by surprise when it picked Atmel Corporation as the company best positioned to take advantage of the rising Internet of Things (IoT) tsunami. At the same time, the report omitted tech industry giants like Apple and Google from the list of companies that could make a significant impact on the rapidly expanding IoT business. So what makes Atmel so special in the IoT arena?

The San Jose, California–based chipmaker has been proactively building its ‘SMART’ brand of 32-bit ARM-based microcontrollers that boasts an end-to-end design platform for connected devices in the IoT realm. The company with two decades of experience in the MCU business was among the first to license ARM’s low-power processors for IoT chips that target smart home, industrial automation, wearable electronics and more.

Goldman Sachs named Atmel a leader in the Internet of Things (IoT) market.

Goldman Sachs named Atmel a leader in the Internet of Things (IoT) market

A closer look at the IoT ingredients and Atmel’s product portfolio shows why Goldman Sachs called Atmel a leader in the IoT space. For starters, Atmel is among the handful of chipmakers that cover all the bases in IoT hardware value chain: MCUs, sensors and wireless connectivity.

1. A Complete IoT Recipe

The IoT recipe comprises of three key technology components: Sensing, computing and communications. Atmel offers sensor products and is a market leader in MCU-centric sensor fusion solutions than encompass context awareness, embedded vision, biometric recognition, etc.

For computation—handling tasks related to signal processing, bit manipulation, encryption, etc.—the chipmaker from Silicon Valley has been offering a diverse array of ARM-based microcontrollers for connected devices in the IoT space.

Atmel has reaffirmed its IoT commitment through a number of acquisitions.

Finally, for wireless connectivity, Atmel has cobbled a broad portfolio made up of low-power Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee radio technologies. Atmel’s $140 million acquisition of Newport Media in 2014 was a bid to accelerate the development of low-power Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips for IoT applications. Moreover, Atmel could use Newport’s product expertise in Wi-Fi communications for TV tuners to make TV an integral part of the smart home solutions.

Furthermore, communications across the Internet depends on the TCP/IP stack, which is a 32-bit protocol for transmitting packets on the Internet. Atmel’s microcontrollers are based on 32-bit ARM cores and are well suited for TCP/IP-centric Internet communications fabric.

2. Low Power Leadership

In February 2014, Atmel announced the entry-level ARM Cortex M0+-based microcontrollers for the IoT market. The SAM D series of low-power MCUs—comprising of D21, D10 and D11 versions—featured Atmel’s signature high-end features like peripheral touch controller, USB interface and SERCOM module. The connected peripherals work flawlessly with Cortex M0+ CPU through the Event System that allows system developers to chain events in software and use an event to trigger a peripheral without CPU involvement.

According to Andreas Eieland, Director of Product Marketing for Atmel’s MCU Business Unit, the IoT design is largely about three things: Battery life, cost and ease-of-use. The SAM D microcontrollers aim to bring the ease-of-use and price-to-performance ratio to the IoT products like smartwatches where energy efficiency is crucial. Atmel’s SAM D family of microcontrollers was steadily building a case for IoT market when the company’s SAM L21 microcontroller rocked the semiconductor industry in March 2015 by claiming the leadership in low-power Cortex-M IoT design.

Atmel’s SAM L21 became the lowest power ARM Cortex-M microcontroller when it topped the EEMBC benchmark measurements. It’s plausible that another MCU maker takes over the EEMBC benchmarks in the coming months. However, according to Atmel’s Eieland, what’s important is the range of power-saving options that an MCU can bring to product developers.

“There are many avenues to go down on the low path, but they are getting complex,” Eieland added. He quoted features like multiple clock domains, event management system and sleepwalking that provide additional levels of configurability for IoT product developers. Such a set of low-power technologies that evolves in successive MCU families can provide product developers with a common platform and a control on their initiatives to lower power consumption.

3. Coping with Digital Insecurity

In the IoT environment, multiple device types communicate with each other over a multitude of wireless interfaces like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy. And IoT product developers are largely on their own when it comes to securing the system. The IoT security is a new domain with few standards and IoT product developers heavily rely on the security expertise of chip suppliers.

Atmel offers embedded security solutions for IoT designs.

Atmel, with many years of experience in crypto hardware and Trusted Platform Modules, is among the first to offer specialized security hardware for the IoT market. It has recently shipped a crypto authentication device that has integrated the Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman (ECDH) security protocol. Atmel’s ATECC508A chip provides confidentiality, data integrity and authentication in systems with MCUs or MPUs running encryption/decryption algorithms like AES in software.

4. Power of the Platform

The popularity of 8-bit AVR microcontrollers is a testament to the power of the platform; once you learn to work on one MCU, you can work on any of the AVR family microcontrollers. And same goes for Atmel’s Smart family of microcontrollers aimed for the IoT market. While ARM shows a similarity among its processors, Atmel exhibits the same trait in the use of its peripherals.

Low-power SAM L21 builds on features of SAM D MCUs.

A design engineer can conveniently work on Cortex-M3 and Cortex -M0+ processor after having learned the instruction set for Cortex-M4. Likewise, Atmel’s set of peripherals for low-power IoT applications complements the ARM core benefits. Atmel’s standard features like sleep modes, sleepwalking and event system are optimized for ultra-low-power use, and they can extend IoT battery lifetime from years to decades.

Atmel, a semiconductor outfit once focused on memory and standard products, began its transformation toward becoming an MCU company about eight years ago. That’s when it also started to build a broad portfolio of wireless connectivity solutions. In retrospect, those were all the right moves. Fast forward to 2015, Atmel seems ready to ride on the market wave created by the IoT technology juggernaut.

Interested? You may also want to read:

Atmel’s L21 MCU for IoT Tops Low Power Benchmark

Atmel’s New Car MCU Tips Imminent SoC Journey

Atmel’s Sensor Hub Ready to Wear

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Majeed Ahmad is 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.

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.

Please explain to Grandma: What’s the SAM D20 Xplained Dev Board?

My side of the family is very small. I have two parents and a sister, and it stops just about there. My girlfriend’s family, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. A large family means regular family events, and after close to ten years, I still haven’t met everyone. This is just one of those occasions, where I smile, and pretend not to be terrified.

There are a few people walking around the room, but the three mains congregation points are in front of the huge fireplace where apparently someone has attempted to put in a small tree, and just push it in as the end burns away. The table is full of food, and quite a few people are nibbling on delicious snacks. Then there is apparently a line of grandmothers at the back of the room. I hear my name spoken from this part of the room, and I turn around to see five grandmothers looking at me, as well as one or two unknown members of the family. I think I’m supposed to say something.

Excuse me?

– I said that you had just written a book.

Yes, indeed.

– What is it about? Asks one of the grandmothers. They all look at me.

We’ve all been there, a family reunion, where you suddenly become the center of attention. I am subjected to a two hundred kilowatt neon blue stare, the sort of look you get when you are asked the famous family questions; When are you going to get a haircut? When are you going to get a job? And when are you going to come over and see the neighbors because they have this fantastic son/daughter who is single and has just had this promotion at work! I think I’m losing weight just being subjected to this look. Here we go. It is a technical book—about ARM processors.

– Oh, that’s nice!

That one phrase says it all. I start counting under my breath. Two… Three…

– And, um, what exactly is an ARM processor?

I start to explain that it is a type of processor, the “brains” if you will of modern machines. A few weeks ago, I was asked to explain the IoT to someone, and that person is here, practically jumping up and down in excitement.

– Show them the Internet thingy!

Very quietly, from the privacy of my own head, I sigh. Internet of Things, not the “Internet Thingy”. Please excuse me while I go and fetch it. I also take the opportunity to drink an ice-cold glass of water.

Atmel’s SAM D20 Xplained Development Board

On returning, I show them the board, an Atmel SAM D20 evaluation board that I used for my book. I explain that the SAM D20 is based on an ARM processor, using Atmel’s technology, and that the entire board is used as a prototyping device, capable of hundreds of applications, depending on your imagination. I also point out the SAM D20 itself; this little black thing here, the size of a thumbnail that is the processor…

– That isn’t a processor.

I come from a very technology-phobic family. My mother spent weeks looking for a microwave with a single button because she doesn’t want to have to enter any information at all, not even the amount of seconds. My father’s grasp of computers is fairly limited; when asked how much RAM he has, his answer is “Enough, I suppose”. It’s the same for every single component. He uses them because he doesn’t have a choice. He still has a telex machine in his office. It’s almost a miracle I got into technology in the first place. With such a family, I’m used to translating, and I had already prepared myself for just about any question possible on my book, but I wasn’t expecting this. Excuse me?

– I said that isn’t a processor.

Umm… If you really want to be complicated, I suppose you could argue that it is a microcontroller, since it is based on the Cortex-M0+, but I don’t think that is what she means. What do you mean?

– I changed the processor on my computer a few weeks ago, and a processor is much larger.

The grandmother line has just shifted looks, and is once again analyzing m every move. My opponent is getting more approving nods than I am.

Well, yes, indeed, the processor on your computer is bigger, and if that is what you are looking for, it is better, faster, and just about everything you could imagine. The only problem is… bigger does not mean better. I’ve been in contact with Atmel for some time now, and I’ve been using their products for even longer. I know that they have an impressive range of processor families, and in each family is an even bigger list of members. There is a processor for just about every need. First things first, I need to sort out the Grandmother look.

Okay, so the processor on your computer is larger, indeed. The only thing is, you don’t use it for the same thing, do you?

– You mean that what you have in your hand isn’t powerful?

No, that isn’t what I mean. It is powerful enough. It all depends on what you need. The SAM D20 is an excellent microcontroller, and at 48MHz, it is more than powerful enough for most applications. That gives me an idea…

What kind of car do you drive?

– A medium range, why?

What, you don’t have a sports car? Why not? They are better!

– But I don’t need a sports car!

Exactly. There is a lot of choice, and you decided to go with a model that suits your needs; budget, comfort, utility. If you wanted better, you could have gone with a sports car. You might even have decided to buy a lorry, I mean, the engine is more powerful. It is the same thing with processors. You have a high-end processor in your computer, but do you really want a $500 processor on your wrist, using up so much power that you need a 5-pound battery on your back just to tell the time? The SAM D20 is ultra low powered, you could keep it on your wrist for weeks, maybe even months without a recharge, and it has more than enough power to display the time, and also some bonus features like a thermometer, UV sensor, heart beat monitor, and to record your physical activity and upload that onto your flashy fast computer. It doesn’t heat up as much, and won’t burn your wrist. Plus, it costs a fraction of the price.

I get a majority of approving nods. The granny stare now shifts back to the other person.

– Yes, but processors are getting faster, so why buy something that is slow?

It isn’t slow, not even close. It runs at 48MHz. Let me remind you that your first computer probably ran at 4MHz, and you were happy with that. Processors aren’t only based on their speed in megahertz, and ARM processors are exceptionally fast per megahertz compared to some other design. Also, Atmel added in even more intelligence, making this a very fast and efficient system. Atmel’s Event System makes this ideal for automation, allowing peripherals to react to external events without slowing down processing.

Now, I only have one more person to convince.

– So why would I need one?

Not only do you need one, but you already have several processors like this. Your microwave has one, your car has several to control braking, the radio, the on-board computer and even the different sensors. The world is full of tiny processors, helping us live our lives. And this tiny processor on the SAM D20 Xplained Pro board is one of hundreds of designs from Atmel. My book talks about just some of those designs, and also talks about the SAM D20 Xplained Pro, Atmel’s IDP (Integration Development Platform), and how easy it is to get a project up and running. Five approval nods. I won this one.

– I see what you mean. By the way, when are you going to marry your girlfriend?

Red alert! Five approval nods. I lost this one. Time to go!

Atmel announces Embedded World lineup

Next week, Atmel will be launching a number of new products to drive smart, connected devices in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT) at Embedded World 2014 in Nuremberg, Germany.

Some of the new products, along with interactive demos, will be showcased at the official Atmel booth located in Hall 4A / #4A-220 and include:

Solutions in Embedded Processing

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An expanded SAM D family of ARM Cortex M0+ MCUs for consumer and industrial applications.
• Cost-effective development kits integrating Atmel’s ARM Cortex A5 processor MPUs.
• 
Recently launched automotive-qualified mXT1664S maXTouch controller.
• 
New Atmel AVR MCUs, expanding the industry-leading 8-bit AVR family with fresh development kits and products (to be introduced in 2014).

Solutions in Connectivity



• World’s first highly integrated, ultra-low power Wi-Fi IoT module powered by Atmel’s Cortex M0+ MCUs.
• Atmel’s SAMR21, a new family of Cortex M0+ based ultra-low power wireless microcontrollers targeting ZigBee and 6LoWPAN.
• 
A new series of automotive LIN (local interconnect networking) SBC (system basis chip) solutions to better connect in-vehicle systems.

Solutions in Software and Tools

Atmel will also be launching the new Studio 6.2 integrated development platform (in beta), which features a new debug probe with advanced debugging to accelerate time-to-market. In addition, Atmel is slated to showcase various demos in the embedded processing, connectivity and software/tools segments, including:

• Capacitive touch capability with Atmel’s QTouch technologies – Highlights various home appliances to demonstrate conductive immunity and moisture tolerance, along with an Xplained Pro board and capacitive touch extension board.
• New ARM MCU solutions – A SAM4E data logger with signal processing based on Atmel’s ARM Cortex-M4 MCUs and a SAM D20 global positioning system tracker based on Atmel’s ARM Cortex-M0+ MCUs.
• SAM A5 MPU applications – A new SAMA5D3 Xplained board, a low-cost ARM Cortex A5 processor kit, a smart thermostat, a home automation and smart fridge demo with a 7” capacitive touch panel.

Other notable demos include Ivee Sleek Wi-Fi, a voice-activated assistance for the home that helps manage and control connected devices without hands; a finger print, voice-search, secure Bluetooth / USB drive that displays passwords; a tiny automatic camera and app that boasts a searchable and shareable photographic memory and a 5mm x 5mm Cortex-A5 System on Module card. 

A polyphase smart e-metering board based on a dual ARM Cortex-M4 core system-on-chip with an integrated metrology AFE will also be on display in the booth.

For Connectivity

• 

Atmel’s Wi-Fi connectivity solutions – A Turtle Beach i60 headset and Roku 3 box used on a Vizio M-Series flat panel on display.
• Upcoming ultra-low power IoT module – Integrates the company’s Wi-Fi technology with a Cortex M0+ core. We will be showcasing the latest Xplained PRO Starter demo kit using this soon-to-be-announced Wi-Fi IoT module.
• 

The new SAMR21 family of wireless MCUs (supported by the new SAMR21 Xplained PRO evaluation kits) – Ideal as a platform for evaluating and developing the SAMR21 wireless MCUs.
• ZigBee and open-source 6LoWPAN solutions with cloud services.

For Software and Tools



Along with the new Atmel Studio 6.2 and Atmel-ICE, we will be demoing our latest integrated development platform and advanced debug probe. We will also be highlighting a new SAMA5D3 Xplained cost-effective kit based on the ARM Cortex-A5 processor MPU, as well as the new Xplained Mini ultra-low cost evaluation kit with an Atmel 8-bit AVR, low pin-count MCU for less than USD $10. 

In addition, we plan on hosting several Arduino board demonstrations based on Atmel MCUs for our Maker community. And, by popular demand, Atmel will also be showcasing its advanced AvantCar demo, a next-generation automotive center console concept with curved touchscreens that illustrates the combined use of Atmel’s XSense, maXTouch, QTouch, and 8-bit AVR MCU technologies.

Meanwhile, Atmel’s low-power MCU Expert Bob Martin is scheduled to present “Differentiating and Optimizing for Static and Active Microcontroller Modes” during the hands-on workshop: “Applying Optimizing Techniques for Ultra-low Power Microcontrollers” (Class 07) on Wednesday, February 26. In this 9:00 am – 5:00 pm CET day-long session, Martin will be presenting at 9:15 am CET. Last, but certainly not least, Atmel will be announcing winners from its AVR Hero Design contest at the show.