ARM7 micros with 2x Flash capacity from Nu Horizons

10th May 2007

ES Admin

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Nu Horizons is now stocking the AT91SAM7S, SAM7X and SAM7XC processors from Atmel. These ARM7TDMI processors are now available with 512Kbytes of Flash memory, double the previous capacity. This means that software engineers can integrate new features through in-application programming. The price premium for this doubled capacity is less than 20%.

The Flash memory is arranged in two separate banks, enabling programming to be carried out at the same time as application execution. The dual-bank implementation also protects against failures from power outages during firmware updates.

Increasingly complex communication protocols, data throughput and streaming content used in networked embedded systems require large data buffers and high levels of security. To address this, Atmel has doubled the density of the zero-wait-state, 32-bit wide SRAM on its AT91SAM7X512 and SAM7XC512 from 64 to 128K bytes.

The new devices have 11 to 13 dedicated peripheral DMA channels (PDC) that increase on-chip bandwidth from a maximum of 4 Mbps, on conventional ARM7 MCUs, to 25 Mbps or more. By off-loading peripheral-to-memory transfers from the CPU, the PDC increases the number of CPU operations available to the application.

One derivative, the AT91SAM7XC, provides secure encryption by integrating a hardware crypto engine that can be configured to do 128-, 192- or 256-bit AES or triple-DES encryption.
The AT91SAM7S512 is available in 64-pin LQFP and 64-lead QFN green packages. The AT91SAM7X512 and AT91SAM7XC512 are available in 100-pin LQFP and 100-ball BGA green packages.