Hello and Happy New Year! I want to post a new low power, small form factor microcontroller from ATMEL. For all the wearable designs going on at CES I thought this should be a processor of consideration for these types of applications:
Atmel launched a brand new family of microcontrollers, the SAM G, at the Consumer
Electronic Show (CES) last week. The SAM G family targets ultra-low-power,
small form factor and high-performance applications. With a Cortex-M4 CPU with
FPU bundled with the low power consumption, these devices offers unrivaled
efficiency in a very small package, just 3 x 3 mm WLCSP with 49 balls.
With an optimized and highly-efficient set of serial peripherals, 12-bit ADC,
digital audio, DMA and a good SRAM-to-flash ratio. The SAM G devices targets a
broad range of low-power, space-constrained applications especially consumer
sensor hubs.
Family overview
|
SAM G51
|
SAM G53
|
|
Frequency
|
48MHz
|
48MHz
|
|
Flash
|
256KB
|
512KB
|
|
SRAM
|
64KB
|
96KB
|
|
USART/UART
|
1 + 2
|
2 + 2
|
|
I2C
Master
|
2 @ 400kbps
|
2 @ 400kbps
|
|
I2C
Slave
|
1 @ 3.4Mbps
|
1 @ 3.4Mbps
|
|
SPI
|
1
|
1
|
|
Timer / Counter
|
3 x 16-bit
|
6 x 16-bit
|
|
12-bit ADC
|
8
|
8
|
|
I2S /
PDM
|
-
|
2
|
|
PLL
|
1
|
1
|
|
picoPowerTM
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
SleepWalking
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
|
GPIO
|
38
|
38
|
|
WLCSP size
|
2.84 x 2.84
|
3.07 x 3.07
|
The SAM G family comes in two series, the SAM G51 and SAM G53. These
devices are fully compatible, even down to the WLCSP package.
The SAM G family is all about low power. There are 3 main areas that the
SAM G is optimized for: active, deep sleep with SRAM retention, and wake-up
time. For most battery-powered applications these three figures are what affect
the system power consumption. The G family features:
Both the
G51 and G53 embed a Cortex-M4 CPU with an FPU (floating point unit). This
ensures maximum throughput. This is very important as it allows you to minimize
the active power consumption and get to sleep faster in order to reduce the
overall power consumption. Additionally, the devices have 16 DMA channels,
which give extremely high throughput. The combination of ultra-low power
consumption, fast wake-up time and high throughput is what gives the SAM G the
edge in space- and power-constrained consumer applications such as sensor hubs.
It wakes up quickly, has the throughput needed to reduce the amount of time
spent in active mode, and then goes back to sleep with SRAM retention to
conserve energy. This gives the best performance and longest battery lifetime.
The SAM G family of devices is fully-functional all the way down to 1.62V,
including flash reads and writes, as well as full ADC operation. This allows
for a more flexible power supply scheme that will squeeze extra runtime out of
a battery.
Sensor Hubs
In
today’s connected world, sensors are all around us. Engineers continue to
design them into an increasing number of everyday products. Requirements have
changed from simple monitoring to comprehensive interpretations of a device’s
status. This can require simultaneous analysis and fusion of data from
different sensors and sensor types. Hubs take data from accelerometers,
gyroscopes and magnetometers, as well as environment sensors like light level,
color, temperature, pressure, and humidity. To simplify the task, Atmel has
partnered with leading sensor manufacturers and sensor fusion specialists to
provide a complete, easy-to-implement Sensor Hub ecosystem. The SAM G family of
devices is especially designed for these types of applications. Take a look at
atmel.com/SensorHubs for more information.
Tools
The SAM
G53 Xplained Pro is the recommended evaluation kit for both the SAM G51 and the
SAM G53. The kit features a SAMG53N19A-AU and provides you with everything you
need to start designing new microcontroller-based applications in minutes.
·
Easy to connect —
Through an embedded debugger, Xplained Pro boards connect just with a USB cable
to a PC for programming and development.
·
Easy to develop —
The boards are automatically recognized by the Atmel Studio 6 integrated
development platform (IDP), so you get direct access to example projects and
documentation.
·
Easy to extend —
Hardware extension boards provide easy access to all functionality of the MCU.
The Atmel Software Framework provides a large set of software drivers and
components.
Device Availability
The SAM G
is in mass production and available for orders today. The devices are sampling
as a regular device directly from the Atmel Sample Center.
Please let me know if you need more information
