Atmel has announced the release of 13 microcontrollers in three different series in its 32bit AVR UC3 portfolio. The microcontrollers feature DSP instructions, USB connectivity, secure encryption and capacitive touch support. In addition to microcontrollers in the existing UC3 L and UC3 A series, a UC3 D series of microcontrollers is available. The microcontrollers also offer an optional 256bit AES encryption decryption/encryption module.
The AVR UC3L series of 32bit microcontroller features SleepWalking, a picoPower technology and is suitable for portable consumer and battery-powered applications, board controllers, game pads, remote controls and human interface devices. The microcontrollers consume down to 165µA/MHz in active mode, down to 600nA with RTC running, and down to 9nA in deep-sleep mode. They offer true 1.62V operation, allowing all analogue modules, oscillators and flash to be functional without compromise at 1.62V, says the company. The picoPower technology is claimed to allow peripherals to make intelligent decisions and wake the CPU directly in all UC3L microcontrollers. The microcontrollers feature the built-in capacitive touch peripheral and a glue logic controller. To safeguard sensitive data, FlashVault code protection enables on-chip flash to be partially programmed and locked, for secure on-chip storage of software intellectual property, says the company. The microcontrollers have 128 and 256kbyte of flash memory and a 32kbyte of internal SRAM. They are pin-compatible with the UC3L0 microcontrollers. The UC3L4 adds full-speed USB device connectivity to the UC3L series. The UC3L4 microcontrollers come in 64, 128 and 256kbyte on-board flash options, and offer up to 32kbyte of internal SRAM.
The AVR UC3D series of entry-level 32bit microcontrollers is suitable for applications requiring low-power capacitive touch as well as other consumer and industrial applications. The series features hardware QTouch capacitive touch interface, USB full-speed device, RTC with calendar, 10bit ADC, USART (universal synchronous asynchronous receiver transmitter), SPI, TWI (two-wire interface), PWM and I2S (inter-IC sound). With SleepWalking technology integrated into the microcontrollers, they can be woken from sleep mode via a peripheral. In capacitive touch applications, the microcontrollers can be put into sleep mode and woken by proximity touch. The capacitive touch module found on the UC3D supports up to 25 channels in hardware, and each channel can be configured as buttons, sliders and wheels. Multiple touch channels can be grouped together for good performance in applications where different sensitivity levels are needed on different channels, claims the company. The glue logic controller contains programmable logic and lookup tables which can be connected to GPIO pins. The microcontrollers are pin-compatible with the UC3B series. The UC3B offers good memory densities and USB On-The-Go, as well as a migration path for ensuring good functionality and performance, says the company.
The AVR UC3A4 series of high-throughput 32bit microcontrollers can be used in high-speed applications requiring security, such as PC peripherals, e-tokens, high-speed communication gateways and audio. The microcontrollers achieve performance levels of up to 1.51Dhrystone MIPS/MHz running from flash and offers Hi-Speed USB On-The-Go. They feature 128kbyte of onboard SRAM, where 64kbyte of the SRAM are directly coupled to the 32bit AVR CPU for performance optimisation, and two blocks of 32kbyte SRAM on the high-speed bus. These two memory blocks are physically separate, but sequential in the address map, allowing real ping-pong buffering to increase performance, according to the company. Additional features include memory-to-memory direct memory access controller, SD (secure digital) and SD I/O card support and multi-level cell NAND flash with ECC interface. The microcontrollers also feature many communication interfaces such as USART, SPI, TWI, I2S and an audio bitstream DAC.
The microcontrollers are supported by the company's AVR Studio 5 and the AVR Software Framework for easy development and debugging of embedded applications. The STK600 with routing cards can be used for development. The AT32UC3L0256 and ATUC256L4 are available in 48pin QFN and thin quad flat.
