MCUS have increased throughput and industry's lowest power consumption
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Atmel has announced the 8 and 16bit AVR XMEGA microcontroller series. It claims the family has the industry's lowest power consumption of 100nA, increased throughput and low overall system cost.
The series features full speed usb, high precision analogue systems, a direct memory access controller and an event system designed to maximise real time performance and throughput while reducing cpu load.
Atmel says the new range lowers overall system cost through higher integration, capacitive touch support and ultra low power consumption. The microcontrollers have a 5µS wake up time are designed for applications in the industrial, consumer, metering and medical markets.
Using the internal oscillator in the AVR XMEGA, Atmel claims designers can lower overall system cost by eliminating the crystal oscillator traditionally required for full speed usb. Free software for all common usb device classes is available in the AVR Software Framework, which is a complete software package that includes drivers and communication stacks for AVR microcontrollers.
The series includes two 12bit a/d converters with programmable gain stages that are said to remove the need for external amplifiers. The devices operate down to 1.6V and have a combined sample rate up to 4Ms/s. The two 12bit d/a converters also support systems that need fast and high precision analogue output. The DACs are designed to drive high loads to reduce external driver component costs.
