A couple of weeks ago Atmel launched the SAM D20 family of products with a comprehensive roll-out of product information, including one of the most impressive of uses that I have seen in a while of all of their social media channels - I have been reading a good number of blogs about the family, watching product videos and re-tweeting a plethora of @Atmel posts. I caught up with Andreas (@AndreasMCUguy) recently, taking a brief pause from his ongoing launch activities, to talk about the new family and what innovations Atmel brings to the ARM Cortex®-M0+ space.
Andy: Atmel recently launched their first Cortex-M0+ enabled product family, the SAM D20, Can you tell me a bit more about the products that you are launching?
Andreas: The first ARM Cortex-M0+ powered family from Atmel is the general purpose SAM D20 family. It ranges all the way from 32 pin devices with 16KB of embedded Flash to 64 pin 256KB devices. We have learnt a lot about microcontrollers since Atmel launched the first 8051 micro in 1995 and the first AVR in 1996 and a lot of this know how is included in the new SAM D20 family: from simple things that make the devices easy to develop with like making the devices pin and code compatible, to more advanced system integration technologies.
Andy: What is the advantage for Atmel of moving to a Cortex M0+ core?
Andreas: There are several reasons why Atmel decided to move forward and bring a Cortex-M0+ based family to the market. First of all we are a dedicated ARM partner and already have Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4 and Cortex-A5 products available, as well as products based on the ARM9 and ARM7 cores, so ensuring a complete ARM portfolio for our customers by extending the product offering downwards with a Cortex-M0+ was a natural thing to do. Secondly the Cortex-M0+ market space is growing and we want to make sure that those developers who need more computational power than what you find in an 8 or 16-bit solution can find a product fit with Atmel. And last but not least, we are confident that mixing our AVR knowledge with an industry standard core allows us to bring a really good, unique and, easy to use product to the market.
Andy: What are the key differentiators for this new family?
Andreas: There are three modules that I would like to highlight in the SAM D20. First of all the Event System, this is an IP that we initially developed for our 8-bit AVR XMEGA family, but it ended up being so versatile and powerful that we have re-used it on both our UC3 and Cortex-M4 SAM4L products and of course we added it to the SAM D20 as well. In short the Event System is a system that connects peripherals to each other and allows them to co-operate without using any CPU or BUS resources, it adds parallelism, guarantees timing, offloads the CPU, and increases overall system performance.
A new module we developed for the SAM D20 is the Serial Communication Module, or SERCOM for short. This is a module that can be configured to act as a SPI, I2C and UART/USART. Each SAM D20 has multiple SERCOMs and this allows you to configure your SAM D20 to have exactly the peripherals you need. Previously, if you needed 5 SPIs, you normally had to buy a device that also included 5 I2Cs and 5 UARTs, even if you did not need them. With the SERCOM module in SAM D20 developers can now get the fit they are looking for without having to opt for larger devices. To make PCB design easier the SERCOM devices have support for pin multiplexing, this eases design as you can optimize the SAM D20 pin out to match other components on your board, removing vias, reducing PCB area, and in some cases even removing an entire layer from the board.
The last thing I want to emphasize is the Peripheral Touch Controller (PTC). With the Atmel maXTouch product line we have had great success over the last years with capacitive touch applications; a trickledown effect of this is the new Touch Module in the SAM D20. The PTC supports buttons, sliders, wheels and proximity with minimal CPU overhead and without any external components. On the 64 pin SAM D20 up to 256 buttons can be implemented. With a strong signal to noise ratio and superior capacitive touch technology, the SAM D20 is the easiest way to add Capacitive touch sensing to your design.
Andy: You managed to secure a big lead customer with Bosch Sensortec can you tell me why these guys picked the SAM D20 and what they will use it for?
Andreas: We are very happy to work with Bosch Sensortech as a lead customer for our SAM D20 product family. Bosch is using the SAM D20 in their new 9-axis "Absolute Orientation Sensor" named BNO055. This is a System in Package solution with 3 Bosch Sensortech sensors and the Cortex-M0+ powered SAM D20 working together. The SAM D20 and the Cortex-M0+ Core was a perfect match for Bosch Sensortech, giving them the computational performance they needed without having to sacrifice power consumption. The result is a 5 x 4.5 mm package that eases the integration process of adding sensors to a customer's design. Bosch Sensortech targets the BNO055 for several different consumer applications like Gaming, Fitness , Augmented reality and many more
Andy: Atmel has a very good tools offering with the Atmel Studio 6 development platform, how do you leverage this for the SAM D20?
Andreas: With ever-increasing software complexity and shorter and shorter development cycles shorter, ease-of-use is critical when choosing a microcontroller for your design, and the environment you develop in is an integral part of this. For the SAM D20 we are doing the same as for all our other Flash based Microcontrollers, full support in the free Atmel Studio, low cost Hardware tools that connect easily to our integrated development platform, and free source code and examples through the Atmel Software Framework. The SAM D20 Xplained pro which is the main hardware kit for the SAM D20 retails for $39 and includes an embedded programmer and debugger, all you have to do is connect it to your PC with Atmel Studio installed and you are ready to evaluate, develop and debug your application.
We also work closely with our third party vendors, obviously including the ARM tools from Keil, along with Segger, IAR, Atollic and others. The Atmel Gallery, an apps store for embedded resources, provides plug-ins for source code management, compiler alternatives, real-time operating systems, cycle accurate simulators, training modules and more. It all works together in one consistent environment.
I left Andreas to run off to another customer meeting, but to find out more information about the SAM D20 you can check out SAM D20 page over on the Atmel web site, and if you're in the mood to find out more detail then check out this more in depth article.