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32-bit AVR

I have heard that Atmel has a 32-bit AVR-like architecture (not ARM) in development, near release. Is this true?

Reply to
Ian McBride
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Atmel doesn't talk...

bob

Reply to
bob

I should say that Atmel doesn't talk very much anyway... They are very tight lipped about everything. New and old products. bob

Reply to
bob

Anything is possible, but this makes little commercial sense :

- They have an ARM product line already, this would canabalise that..

- Others (Philips, Sharp, et al ) have ARM Microcontrollers in release now ARM is quickly becomming the next 80C51

- Tools/Training for 'yet another 32 bit core' would take the std gestation time

It _would_ make sense for Atmel to release a single-die FLASH ARM, in something like Mega128 pinouts/peripherals, with ~512K Bytes FLASH. For a Flash-centric company, Atmel have surprisingly small-memory single-chip microcontroller FLASH variants. ( this excludes their niche dual-die BGA-only ARM offerings )

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

ARM own's arm, so they pay a fee for each chip Customers can 'jump' ship to another ARM processor. AVR customers may be thinking of using an ARM (I know I am) and ATMEL doesn't have anything that looks good to me. But something like a beefed up AVR and they may hang on to those customers.

See above; A good reason for them to do something of their own.

Sure - but then they make 8051's and AVR's. You could argue why even bother with AVR's.

It would, but if everyone thought that way we would never get anything new.

Couldn't agree more.

Ralph

Reply to
Ralph Mason

Atmel has had single die flash ARMs for a long time, but these are ASICs and not standard products... Single die flash + ARM standard products are coming ...

--
Best Regards
Ulf at atmel dot com
These comments are intended to be my own opinion and they
may, or may not be shared by my employer, Atmel Sweden.
Reply to
Ulf Samuelsson

Correct, but those same customers then have to choose between 'Green Silicon/Single Source' OR Proven family/Multisourced.

Look at Motorola's MCORE phase-out as an example of just how hard even the biggest player finds hitting 'critical mass' on a new 32 bit core.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Please contact me if you ever make a single die flash version of the

55800A. That was a very nice chip for my application other than the lack of flash. I think the inclusion of the RTC was a *great* idea. I don't think I have seen that done by anyone else. 
--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX
Reply to
rickman

Info on the LPC2114/2124 is sparse, but this document

formatting link
shows a block diagram with : RTC, 16K RAM, 128KB FLASH, 2 UARTS, SPI,i2c, ADC, PWM, PLL..... so it's reasonably similar to (55800A+FLASH+i2c+MoreSRAM-1uart-SomePins)...

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

I hope you can make the single-die products with rather small power consumption! We are currently using AT91R40008 + AM29DL163 combination and would like to migrate to a single-chip (not necessarily single-die) solution. However the Atmel flash seems to draw huge amounts of current compared to the AMD one. The processor itself is not very hungry.

- Ville

--
Ville Voipio, Dr.Tech., M.Sc. (EE)
Reply to
Ville Voipio

The AT91R40807 will draw even less power than the AT91R40008 in deep power down. Only 136 kB and 33 MHz operatino though.

The AT91FR40161 = AT91R40807 and AT49BV16x4,

will reduce the power down current compared to the AT91FR40162 It will use the same flash though. The ARM processors can draw a lot of current when tristated, It is good to pull up the databus to avoid that.

-- Best Regards Ulf at atmel dot com These comments are >

Reply to
Ulf Samuelsson

The Intel and Atmel flash parts do consume a lot of current. The AMD parts are much less, both active and standby. Our design uses the OKI ARM chip with internal flash for its own use and we also need external flash for the DSP and FPGAs. Since no one is executing from this flash we can use a NAND flash part. Turns out this is even lower power not to mention much lower cost. So consider the OKI ARM chip and if you need more than 512 KB flash, a NAND flash part is ideal.

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX
Reply to
rickman

Yes. But I am mainly interested in minimum maximum power consumption. I have a fixed (small) amount of milliamps available. And then it turns out that the flash is the bottleneck. Reading the program into SRAM takes more power than anything else.

It seems that Atmel is behind its competitors in this respect. Integrating the two dies should eliminate the pin drivers and thus reduce the power consumption but at the moment the lowest consumptions seem to be obtainable only by using Atmel processors and someone else's memory.

- Ville

--
Ville Voipio, Dr.Tech., M.Sc. (EE)
Reply to
Ville Voipio

power

I think it is a tradeoff between cost and size.

2 MB of integrated flash is quite expensive to integrate. Atmel have had 128 kB of Flash integrated with ARM on a single die for 3-4 years. Not standard circuits though, only ASIC.

If Maximum power consumption is an issue, then you can do some tricks.

--
Best Regards
Ulf at atmel dot com
These comments are intended to be my own opinion and they
may, or may not be shared by my employer, Atmel Sweden.
Reply to
Ulf Samuelsson

The AT91RM3400 is the first Atmel ARM standard MCU without an external bus. This downloads the code from external SPI Flash, TWI EEPROM or from a serial port using the UART or the onchip USB Device. You do not need to have any flash in the design if you download the app using the UART or USB.

The part has 96 kB SRAM for code and data and 256 kB boot ROM. Atmel has loaded the ROM with the boot mechanism and other stuff, so it is not expected that most customers will change the ROM.

Executing from SRAM is low power and allows S/W breakpoints.

--
Best Regards
Ulf at atmel dot com
These comments are intended to be my own opinion and they
may, or may not be shared by my employer, Atmel Sweden.
Reply to
Ulf Samuelsson

but -external bus!!!! That Philips chip is really cool, concerning peripherals, but the lack of an external bus is a pitty!!! The Atmel chips are fine, but most of them have little peripherals like SPI, I2C, ADC, etc. except for the 55800, but this one lacks flash.

Cheers, ER!K

--

--
LINS Technologies
http://www.lins.de



>
> -jg
Reply to
Erik Lins

formatting link

etc.

Do you mean external DATA bus, for (eg) Ethernet Chip, or external CODE memory bus ? External CODE turns a microcontroller into a microprocessor, and I guess Philips reasoning is if the FLASH is on chip, you do not NEED the pin/EMC costs of external bus.

I have not seen enough data to know how/when they support connection of Octarts/Ethernet style peripherals - but they indicate 48/64/128 pin devices so far, and I'm sure if the demand is there, they will make it.

-jg

Reply to
Jim Granville

Yes, the Atmel parts fall short by not combining the best of all their chips in one and the Philips chip is designed for similar apps as the MSP430 where space is at a real premium with no need for an external bus.

The OKI ML67Q400x/500x chips are the ones that give you all of the above along with an external bus (and has a simple serial port boot loader).

I have thought that I might be able to use the Philips chip even without the external bus by connecting to the FPGA via SPI or similar. But the Philips part requires a special programmer to boot load the code. This is just not what I want in my product.

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX
Reply to
rickman

Umm, the LPC210x just uses the serial port for loading.

Robert Adsett

Reply to
R Adsett

I have seen several posts here that indicate that you need a programmer. Several people have indicated that they can't find info on programming the flash. Are the details in the data sheet?

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX
Reply to
rickman

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