Atmel Corporation, announced on May 14, 2008 its 400 MHz AT91SAM9G20 ARM926EJ-S based embedded microprocessor that draws only 80 mW in full-power mode with all peripherals turned on. The AT91SAM9G20 is a pin-compatible evolution of the AT91SAM9260, offering four times the cache and on-chip SRAM memory of its predecessor, and features improved error correction for external NAND Flash as well as an enlarged Ethernet FIFO that improves latency. The AT91SAM9G20 is targeted at power-constrained applications that also need high performance. These include point-of-sale terminals, building automation, security cameras and bar code readers.

The AT91SAM9G20 offers the industry’s widest choice of operating systems, with support for Microsoft® Windows CE®, .NET MF and Linux®, as well as a number of real-time operating systems (RTOS) and middleware products from industry-leading third parties including Adeneo®, IAR®, Keil™, Mentor Graphics®, Micrium, Segger and TimeSys®. The AT91SAM9G20 fully exploits Atmel’s market-leading peripheral DMA (direct memory access) and distributed memory architecture that, together with the 6-layer bus matrix, enables multiple simultaneous data transfers between memories, peripherals and external interfaces without consuming CPU clock cycles. The external bus interface (EBI) is clocked at 133 MHz for high-speed transfers to off-chip memories. This architecture gives the device the high internal and external data bandwidth required by many embedded networked applications. Networking and communications requirements are met by 12M bps USB Full Speed Dual Host and Device ports, an Ethernet 10/100 Base T MAC, four USARTs, SPI, SSC and Two-Wire Interface (TWI). The image sensing requirements of many of the target applications for the AT91SAM9G20 are met by a fully integrated Image Sensor Interface (ISI). In addition to halving the power consumption in full-speed operating mode (where the clock frequency is software programmable), the AT91SAM9G20 features four reduced-power modes, including Backup Mode where the main power supply is off and the device power consumption is sufficiently low (9µW) for an extended period of operation under battery supply.

The AT91SAM9G20 is based on the ARM926EJ-S processor, with a clock speed of 400MHz. It features 32K byte instruction and 32K byte data cache memories, two 16K-byte blocks of SRAM and 64K bytes of ROM with single cycle access at maximum processor or bus speed, together with an external bus interface with controllers for SDRAM and static memories including NAND Flash and CompactFlash.  The AT91SAM9G20 has a fully featured system controller for efficient system management, including a reset controller, shutdown controller, clock management, advanced interrupt controller (AIC), debug unit (DBGU), periodic interval timer, watchdog timer and real-time timer. It is available in a 217-ball LFBGA RoHS-compliant package.

The extensive peripheral set of the microcontroller includes USB Full Speed Host and Device interfaces, a 10/100 Base T Ethernet MAC, Image Sensor Interface, Multimedia Card Interface (MCI), Synchronous Serial Controllers (SSC), USARTs, Master/Slave Serial Peripheral Interfaces (SPI), two three-channel 16-bit Timer Counters (TC), a Two Wire Interface (TWI) and four-channel 10-bit ADC. Three 32-bit Parallel I/O Controllers multiplex the pins to/from these peripherals in order to reduce the device pin count, and peripheral DMA channels maximize the data throughput between these interfaces and the on- and off-chip memories.

Achieving half the power consumption at twice the clock frequency of the AT91SAM9260, it consumes only 80 mW in full-power mode with all peripherals turned on. The AT91SAM9G20 is targeted at power-constrained applications that also need high performance. These include point-of-sale terminals, building automation, security cameras and bar code readers. The AT91SAM9G20 is supported by the AT91SAM9G20 Evaluation Board and extensive third-party application development tools. It supports both Linux and Windows CE.

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