Atmel has announced early sampling of its 32bit SAM3S16 ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontroller with 1Mbyte embedded flash and 128kbyte SRAM (static random access memory). Target applications include medical equipment, building and home control, industrial automation, M2M (machine-to-machine), test and measurement, smart grid, and data input and output peripherals for consumer and computing devices.
The microcontroller is claimed to be pin-to-pin compatible with existing Atmel SAM3N and SAM3S Cortex-M3 microcontrollers. The microcontroller operates at 100MHz with 1024kbyte flash and 128kbyte SRAM and includes a full peripheral set. The microcontroller features a USB, an MCI (multimedia control interface) for SDIO (secure digital input output), SD (secure digital), and MMC (multimedia card), four UART, TWIs (two wire interfaces), SPI (serial peripheral interface), I2S (inter-IC sound) and an external bus interface supporting PSRAM (pseudo-static RAM), NOR flash, LCD modules and NAND flash.
The company supports capacitive touch BSW (buttons, slider and wheel) capability on the microcontroller through the Atmel QTouch library. The microcontroller operates from 1.62 to 3.6V and can achieve 200µA/MHz in dynamic mode at a low operating frequency; 30mA at 100MHz; and 3µA at 1.8V in back-up mode with the RTC (real-time clock) running. The microcontroller is available in a 100pin QFP package.
