Product category:
Design and Development Hardware
News Release from: Atmel Corporation | Subject: AT91CAP7X-DK development kit
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 16 April 2008
Kit creates customised MCU designs
Development kit enables users to develop ARM7-based microcontrollers with custom peripheral sets not available on standard devices.
A new development kit aims to help designers to develop, emulate and ultimately migrate ARM7-plus-FPGA designs to Atmel's CAP7 customisable microcontrollers Atmel's CAP7 customisable MCU is an ARM7-based microcontroller with a metal-programmable (MP) block with 450K gates or the equivalent of 56K FPGA logic cells, as well as a USB 2.0 full speed device, SPI master and slave, two USARTs, three 16bit timer counters, an eight-channel 10bit analogue to digital convertor, plus interrupt control and supervisory functions noted above
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 18 Nov 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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Any functionality that has been implemented in an FPGA may be migrated directly to a CAP7 device with no special EDA tools or customer-side engineering.
Atmel's AT91CAP7X-DK development kit may be used to develop ARM7-based MCUs with custom peripheral sets not available on standard MCUs (such as 10 USARTs or 20 PWMs).
Atmel owns or has access to extensive libraries of well-documented peripherals that include TWI, SPI master and slave, SSC, MCI, USARTs, Ethernet MAC, CAN, EBI, full-speed USB host and device, image sensor interface, LCD and AC97 controllers, timer counters, analogue to digital convertors and AES/TDES encryption/decryption engines.
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There is no extra charge for including Atmel-owned peripherals on CAP devices.
Customers may also implement their own or third-party peripherals in the MP block.
The AT91CAP-DK motherboard has an extensive set of interface devices, which are controlled by the device controllers embedded in the AT91CAP7 customisable MCU.
The motherboard includes a 3.5in quarter-VGA TFT colour LCD, a 10/100 Ethernet PHY, USB 2.0 High-Speed Host and High-Speed Device ports, three USB 2.0 Full-Speed Device ports, an I2S audio device, four ADC inputs, an AC97 audio codec, two SD/MMC card slots, a USART serial communication device, a CAN interface device, a TWI serial EEPROM device, an image sensor device connector, a 16 button keypad, a PCI64 slot, four GPIO expansion slots, software controlled power indication and general-purpose LEDs.
The CAP7 specific daughterboard includes the AT91CAP7S MCU and a high density FPGA with 80K logic cells, capable of interfacing custom logic directly to the AT91CAP7S Amba architecture.
The daughtercard plugs directly onto the motherboard for not only software and hardware development, but also connection to real world applications for prototyping and end product evaluation.
A memory expansion board includes 64Mbyte of SDRAM, 8Mbyte of NOR Flash and 256Mbyte of NAND Flash.
The same C compilers, RTOSs, OSs, ICEs and IDEs used with Atmel's AT91SAM ARM-based MCUs can be used with the CAP.
FPGA design may be done using any FPGA design software, including third-party tools.
Atmel's AT91CAP7X-DK development kit is available now and priced at US $3500.
Atmel charges a one-time fee of US $150,000 for design, mask fees, and prototypes of the customised ARM7-based MCUs.
Production unit prices are US $5.44 in quantities of 50,000 for the AT91CAP7S250 device.
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