Atmel CAP7 Customizable Microcontroller with ARM7 Core

Atmel extended its CAP family of customizable microcontroller-based SoC (System-on-a-Chip) products with an ARM7 core. The new CAP7 microcontroller’s architecture is compatible with Atmel's ARM7-based microcontrollers. By eliminating an external FPGA, Atmel's customizable microcontrollers can reduce IC costs by at least 50%. In addition, with an 80MHz CAP7, designers can double performance and reduce power consumption by 90%, compared to 1 to 2 watt FPGA solutions.

Atmel AT91CAP Customizable Microcontroller

Jay Johnson, Atmel:

Design engineers frequently use programmable ICs to accelerate their proprietary DSP algorithms in a gate array technology. Many choose FPGAs which represent a flexible, cost-effective solution for market-testing new products, when volumes cannot be predicted. However, once production ramp begins and controlling bill of materials is a priority, our CAP7 customizable MCUs offer a painless cost reduction path, without the typical NRE and long development cycle associated with a standard cell ASIC…

The new CAP7 customizable microcontroller  incorporates metal programmable cell fabric (MPCF) technology to integrate up to 450K equivalent ASIC gates in a metal programmable block for custom logic netlist conversion. Atmel's flexible design flow allows an easy conversion path from FPGA netlist to the metal programmable block.

Metal Programmable Cell Fabric (MPCF) Technology offers the density and unit costs of cell-based ASICs with the quick turn around and low NREs of gate arrays. The key to the MPCF technology is an 8 transistor core cell that is only 3.2 um high and 2.0 um wide in Atmel's 130nm process, achieving densities up to 210,000 usable gates per square millimeter which is 35% more available gates than sea-of-gates technology.

Available for ARM7-based Designs
The initial CAP7 product release includes the AT91CAP7S, based on the ARM7TDMI processor core. The AT91CAP7S has 160K bytes of on-chip fast SRAM and either a 250K or 450K block of metal programmable ASIC gates. Peripherals include USARTs, SPI master and slave, USB device, 10-bit ADC, 16-bit timer counters, and supervisory functions. Additional peripherals from Atmel's extensive IP library or customer IP may be instantiated in the MP block.

Availability and Pricing
There is a one-time charge of $150,000 for design, mask fees, and prototypes. The CAP7 is available now for design. The AT91CAP7S250 in a 144 pin LQFP package is priced at US $5.44 for 50K unit quantities.

About AT91CAP7S250A ARM7 Customizable Microcontroller

Key Parameters of AT91CAP7S250A:

• CPU Core: ARM7TDMI
• ROM: 256 KB
• On-chip SRAM: 160 KB
• MP Block Usable Ga: 250K
• NAND Flash Control: 1
• Clock Speed: 80 MHz
• Packages (Pb-Free):  PQFP 208(3.2),  TFBGA 176,  TFBGA 208, LQFP 144,  LQFP 160,  LQFP 176,  LFBGA 144

The AT91CAP7S250A Customizable Microcontroller is based on the integration of an ARM7TDMI processor with 256K bytes of fast ROM and 160K bytes of SRAM memories, together with a set of peripherals and a metal programmable (MP) block of 250K gates of digital logic. The MP block has two 2Kx16 DPRAM blocks that can be tightly coupled to the application-specific logic that requires them. This makes the AT91CAP7S250A an ideal platform for creating custom designs.

The AT91CAP7S250A Customizable Microcontroller embeds a USB Full-speed Device, and several standard peripherals, such as USARTs, SPI, Timer Counters, and an 8-channel 10-bit ADC. Additional peripherals can be instantiated in the MP Block as needed. It also features an external memory bus (EBI) capable of interfacing with a wide range of memory devices and up to 90 general-purpose I/O.

(Summarized from _http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?family_id=689&family_name=AT91CAP+Microcontrollers&part_id=4179)

More info: Atmel AT91CAP Customizable Microcontroller

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Relate news: May 21, 2007

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