AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit for CAP Customizable Microcontrollers - Atmel

Atmel recently announced the AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit, a new evaluation kit for its CAP customizable microcontrollers. AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit is intended to familiarize the designer with the ARM7-based CAP concept and architecture, and is a tool for designer to consolidate the  knowledge of hardware and software SoC design. AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit facilitates the mapping of application-specific IP blocks into its FPGA that emulates the functionality of the CAP Metal Programmable Block, while at the same time providing a development platform for software for the ARM processor.

Atmel AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit for CAP Customizable Microcontrollers

Board of AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit includes:

• AT91CAP7E ARM7TDMI-Based Microcontroller System-On-Chip
• 64M Bytes SDRAM Memory
• 256M Bytes NAND Flash
• Altera Cyclone II EP2C8F256C7N (256BGA)
• Altera Configuration PROM -EPCS4SI8N
• 2.8 inch TFT Color LCD
• Two Serial Ports (One Connected to the CAP7 Debug Unit)
• Full Speed USB 2.0
• Mini Joy Stick
• Four Analog Inputs
• Light Sensor
• Temperature Sensor
• Voltage Potentiometer
• 50 MHz oscillator
• Access Points for CAP7 Power Measurements
• Eight LED’s Four Push Buttons
• POR Circuit for FPGA
• POR Circuit for CAP7
• JTAG ICE Connector (CAP7)
• JTAG ISP Connector (FPGA)
• 40-Lead Extension Connector (x3) for I/O Access
• Voltage Regulators (1.2V, 2.5V and 3.3V)

Atmel AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit includes a board with AT91CAP7E microcontroller, Cyclone II EP2C8F256C7N FPGA with EPCS4SI8N serial configuration memory, 64M Bytes of SDRAM application memory, 256M Bytes of NAND flash, 4MB DataFlash, 10-bit analog to digital converter (ADC), 2.8 inch TFT LCD panel and joystick. External interfaces include full-speed USB device, EBI (external bus interface), four analog inputs, SPI,

USART, and Debug UART. AT91CAP7A-STK’s board also supports sensing applications with potentiometers, temperature sensors and light sensors.

AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit Block Diagram

Jay Johnson, Atmel, said:

Development boards with an ARM7 and FPGA usually cost thousands of dollars. The $399 CAP7 starter kit is the first ARM7-plus FPGA kit to provide a low cost alternative for evaluating these designs and for validating the CAP7 concept, without any NRE charges or risk. This kit can be used by anyone from a developer in a tier-one electronics company to the smallest startup to find out how easy it is to customize an ARM-based microcontroller for a specific application. It is also the ideal vehicle for students of electronics engineering to consolidate their knowledge of system-on-chip hardware and software design…

The Cyclone II FPGA in the AT91CAP7A-STK’s board, contains 8,256 four-input LUTs (Lookup Table) LEs (logic elements) equivalent to 66,048 CAP7 MP block gates. It can be used to map and emulate application-specific IP blocks, in the CAP7’s embedded Metal Programmable (MP) block, along with the system software. The AT91CAP7E executes at clock speeds up to 80 MHz and can send to or receive data from the FPGA at this speed over the EBI. The AT91CAP7E can also interface the FPGA via peripheral IO (PIO).

Atmel AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit allows designers to determine how the software, microcontroller and new IP will play together in a customizable microcontroller, without incurring any NRE charges or spending lot of cost for a full development board. Smaller designs can be emulated and evaluated on the AT91CAP7A-STK. However for development of a customized CAP7 device, the fully featured AT91CAP7-DK is recommended to allow customers to take full advantage of the CAP7’s multi-layer high-speed bus (AHB) and peripheral DMA. Debug is facilitated by the provision of an ICE-JTAG interface for CAP7 JTAG programming, and a USB-Blaster-JTAG interface for Cyclone II JTAG programming.

AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit also includes an essential set of development tools:

• A CD for documentation and software, including everything a user needs to evaluate the CAP7 products, including software development tools and FPGA development tools
• Instructions for downloading IAR KickStart version of IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM
• Instructions for downloading Altera’s free Quartus 2 Web Edition tools for FPGA programming

Atmel AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit is available at $399.

About Atmel’s CAP Customizable Microcontroller
Atmel’s CAP is an ARM microcontroller-based system-on-chip with fast local memory, a wide range of industry standard peripherals and interfaces, and a Metal Programmable (MP) Block that allows the designer to add custom logic. By combining the performance, density and low power consumption of the fixed portion of the device with the flexibility of the MP Block, CAP enables application-specific products to be developed in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of standard-cell ASICs, but at a unit price close to that of standard cell devices. CAP also offers superior performance, smaller form factor and lower power consumption at a unit price significantly lower than an MCU-plus-FPGA combination for the same functionality

References:

• _http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/press/at91cap7a-stkdevkit_9_2.html  (Press release of Atmel AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit)
• _http://www.atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/doc8521.pdf (Product flyer of Atmel AT91CAP7A-STK Starter Kit, 516KB)