Atmel Cortex-M3 Flash MCU Selected by Xirgo Technologies for Next-Generation Asset Tracking Platforms

Atmel today announced that Xirgo Technologies, LLC has selected Atmel's Cortex-M3-based product family for its next-generation enhanced-battery-life asset tracking platform. Xirgo Technologies' existing machine-to-machine communications devices are used by leading companies in automotive insurance, fleet tracking, vehicle financing, and dealer lot inventory verticals. Xirgo is targeting its next-generation platform, designed to address the long battery life requirements of portable tracking solutions, for the emerging cargo and package tracking verticals. Atmel's Cortex-M3-based Flash microcontrollers offer increased processing power and enhanced power efficiency necessary for on-device application support to substantially reduce data transmission costs, while maximizing battery life.

The Atmel Cortex-M3 family's broad on-chip peripheral support and hardware and software compatibility, with older Atmel ARM7TDMI®-based microcontrollers provides an easy migration path for next-generation devices that have more demanding power optimization and processing power requirements, said Kris Kelkar, Chief Executive Officer at Xirgo.

About Atmel's SAM3 Cortex-M3-based microcontrollers: Inspired by the market's best-selling ARM7TDMI®-based SAM7S series, Atmel's SAM3S-series enable an easy migration path for SAM7S customers to a 50 percent more powerful, lower power and feature-rich Flash MCU, while preserving hardware and software investments. At maximum operating frequency of 64 MHz, the device consumes only 1.45 mW / MHz. Atmel's SAM3 Cortex-M3 MCUs add new peripheral functionality including high-speed USB, SD/SDIO/MMC and SPI, on-die termination resistors that simplify PCB design, parallel IO signal capture, memory protection unit, external memory scrambler and 12-bit analog converters expanding their market opportunities in applications including consumer, industrial control, metering, toys, medical, test and measurement, 802.15.4 wireless networking, PC, cell phone and gaming peripherals.