Atmel's ARM9-Based MCU Supports Real Time 'Smart' Control Panels

San Jose, California (ots/PRNewswire) -

- AT91SAM9RL64 Integrates ARM926EJ-S with On-Chip LCD & Touch
Screen Controllers, USB High-Speed Device, 64k Byte SRAM
configurable as TCM, 24-channel DMA and 6-layer Bus

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), announced today its
AT91SAM9RL64 ARM9-based interactive GUI microcontroller with high
throughput, ideal peripherals and OS support to implement "smart"
control panel applications that can provide access to content
including user manuals, video clips and audio, as well as offering a
robust interface to system control functions. The SAM9RL64 can be
used as the main processor in a system or as the co-processor
dedicated to the user interface. A USB High Speed link provides the
bandwidth to transfer streaming video between the host- and the
AT91SAM9RL64 co-processor.

User Experience. The buttons, dials, switches and joysticks
typically used to control electronic products are rapidly being
replaced by touch screens with icons that beat or zoom when selected
or fly over the screen as the user navigates through the available
content. Increasingly, systems are voice activated, being able to
both talk and listen to the user. Interactive video content is
replacing static lists and instructions.

While 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers are used for user interfaces
in cost sensitive consumer applications, they are, however, not
capable of dealing with the amount of processing and data movement
required to manage a state-of-the-art interactive graphical user
interface. Atmel's AT91SAM9RL64 is a single-chip "smart" panel
solution with 200-plus MIPS, a 6-layer bus matrix and DMA on all
on-chip peripherals to support the high data rates associated with
screen refresh, image processing, user interaction and the creation
of the dynamics guaranteeing a good user experience. On-chip
peripherals include LCD and touch screen controllers, USB High Speed
device, 24 DMA channels, an MCI/SDIO interface, 5 UARTs, SPI, dual
SSC, AC'97, 6 Timers, 4 PWMs with high-drive I/Os, dual TWI and a
battery backup RTC with associated registers.

Large On-chip Tightly Coupled SRAM Supports Deterministic
Processing. In addition to the 4 Kbytes each of data and instruction
cache, the SAM9RL64 supports deterministic processing with an
additional 64 Kbytes of SRAM, arranged in four 16 KB blocks, that can
be configured as data or instruction Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM)
that bypasses the cache to provide single cycle access at the maximum
200 MIPS clock frequency. The TCM may also be configured as local
memory for on-chip peripherals connected to the multi-layer bus. At
system boot, the SRAM is connected to the multi-layer bus allowing
the DMA controller to copy the real-time critical code from
non-volatile storage, such as NAND or DataFlash(R). After the code
has been shadowed in the SRAM, the memory blocks can be reconfigured
as TCM.

Development Tools and Operating System Support. Atmel provides the
GNU gcc C compiler and GNU gdb debugger free of charge. Commercial
licenses from IAR(R) (C compiler -- Embedded Workbench(TM) --
Real-time Operating System (RTOS) -- Powerware), Mentor Graphics(R)
(RTOS -- Nucleus PLUS & User Interface middleware -- Inflexion),
Micrium(R) (RTOS -- uCOS/II), ExpressLogic(R) (RTOS -- ThreadX(R))
and Microsoft(R) (Windows(R) CE -- .NET Framework) are currently
being ported for a complete embedded application prototyping. Atmel
provides a software package with register descriptions and device
drivers for all peripherals and project examples that ease the use of
the microcontroller. An evaluation board is available for
benchmarking and a quick start in the development.

Availability and Pricing. The AT91SAM9RL64 is available in a
217-pin 15x15mm 0.8mm ball pitch BGA package. It is priced at US
$6.85 in volumes of 10,000 units.

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of
microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory
and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's
broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is
able to provide the electronics industry with complete system
solutions focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications,
computing and automotive markets.

Atmel offers a wide variety of microcontrollers and references
that support the implementation interactive graphical user
interfaces.

SAN JOSE, California, January 21 /PRNewswire/ --

(C) 2008 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), logo
and combinations thereof, DataFlash(R) and others, are registered
trademarks, or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries.
ARM(R) is a registered trademark of ARM Ltd. Other terms and product
names may be trademarks of others.

Information:
Atmel's AT91SAM9RL64 product information may be retrieved at
http://www.atmel.com/products/AT91/
Press Contacts:
Peter Bishop, Communications Manager, Atmel Rousset
Phone: +33-0-4-42-53-61-50, Email: peter.bishop@atmel.com
Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
Phone: +1-408-487-2963, Email: hperlegos@atmel.com

Web site: http://www.atmel.com

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$story.getcontactHeadline()
Peter Bishop, Communications Manager, Atmel Rousset,
+33-0-4-42-53-61-50, peter.bishop@atmel.com, or Helen Perlegos,
Public Relations, +1-408-487-2963, hperlegos@atmel.com, both of Atmel
Corporation