Atmel has announced the SAM9G15, SAM9G25, SAM9G35, SAM9X25, and SAM9X35 microcontrollers to the Atmel SAM9 ARM926-based family of microcontrollers. The microcontrollers target applications in industrial and building control, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), PoS terminals, printers and medical devices, smart grid with data concentrators, HMI (human machine interfaces) and M2M (machine-to-machine) market segments.
The microcontrollers are claimed to expand the company's existing ARM-based portfolio by supporting key technology features which include replacing SDRAM with DDR2 memory for more memory-intensive applications, NAND flash support with 24bit ECC (error correcting code). The microcontrollers also support more communication channels including dual 10/100 Ethernet, dual CAN and up to 3x USB ports. Atmel has also teamed with Conexant to enable soft modem implementation on the microcontrollers to minimise the overall BOM (bill of materials) by eliminating external components, claims the company. The microcontrollers operate at up to 400MHz and the core and peripherals consume 100mW at maximum performance.
According to the company, the LCD controller includes overlays, alpha blending, image scaling, rotating and colour space conversion to enable a more intuitive interface, while offloading the CPU.
The microcontrollers are available in a 0.8mm ball pitch 217ball BGA (ball grid array) package. The SAM9G25 is also available in a 0.5mm ball pitch 247pin BGA package.
