New Atmel Cortex M3 runs at 96MHz, has high-speed USB

and a

have up to

Nice article. Next time could you put a link to a datasheet?

MHz, and a

ices have up to

Timers look a little light, at just 16 bits and only 3 ?! There is a Quadrature mode, hidden in the fine print

Even the 99c NXP device has 2 x 32 bit and 2 x 16b Timer/counters.

Interesting to compare this, with the new AT32UC3L

- That has SIX timers, (in a much smaller package) and an 8 bit 150Mhz PWM on every pin

The AT32UC3L also has a Frequency Counter option (the good news)

- but the bad news, is that Frequency Counter does not appear to reach Port Pins, (?!) and the register-size is also limited (so the dynamic range is crippled)

- seems it never occurred to the designers, that someone MIGHT want to measure external frequencies ?

-jg

Why are they calling it 'Atmel Cortex M3' when it's an 'ARM Cortex M3'?

Licensed from ARM, made by Atmel.

These microcontroller.com threads always seem to appear two weeks after the parts are originally mentioned.

Cortex M3 is the core, designed by ARM. Atmel chose and designed the peripherals to put on the SoC, do the integration, fab and marketing.

A bit like an 'Intel Pentium PC' (a PC made by anybody containing Intel Pentium chips) compared with a 'Dell Pentium PC' (a PC made by Dell containing Pentium chips).

Theo

mmmmm - these are not just any Dell containing Pentium Chips - these are Dells containing Intel Pentium Chips - smooth, creamy, succulent hand picked Intel Pentium chips with a delicious fondant topping, hand whipped by virgins on a tropical island -

But you don't really have that deep husky voice to carry off the full S&M advert style [apologies to those not aware of the UK TV adverts that is being parodied].

On Jun 20, 11:37=A0am, "FreeRTOS.org" wrote: ......

he

Richard,

you are correct that the article on microcontroller dot com was a little late but it had additional information. So has this one

p.s. that website mcu-related.com also features a new article about the latest AVR32 picoPower announcement. The author seems not very happy with marketing hype

An Schwob

Yes - I like the article, it is quite refreshing and not just reprinting press release guff. It is pointing out the obvious - if everybody claims they have the lowest power then all of them but one are 'bending the truth'. In reality of course which CPU will actually give you the lowest power will depend on your usage scenario and engineers know that. Its exactly the same when you see compilers compared, they are all the best :o). RTOS too for that matter, I saw one being advertised as 'boots in x micro seconds' but gave absolutely no information about what was being booted, what was included in the build, which compiler was being used, etc. etc. so the whole article had absolutely no credibility.

Power consumption seems to be the fashionable thing for marketeers at the moment. NXP Cortex M0, Energy Micro, Atmel, etc. etc. are all using it. I think very often marketeers fail to understand how to market to engineers though, or, as I suspect, are actually marketing to their share holders not their potential customers. A good example of this is the explosion of WEB sites that use videos instead of text based articles. I can skim an article in a few seconds to get the gist of it and pick out the facts I need to know. I have very high demands on my time, so there is no way I'm going to sit and watch a whole series of 5 to 20 minute videos preach marketing gospel to me so I can glean just a few facts and figures from somewhere near its end. ....but now I'm getting really off topic and just ranting again.

For a sample set of one, there is no interest at all in taking the time to complete the form even with bogus data. Their competitors are just a click away...

Theo