Product category:
Design and Development Hardware
News Release from: Kanda.com | Subject: JTAG programmer
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 29 August 2005
JTAG programmer offers third alternative
Kanda has now introduced a robust JTAG programmer for Atmel AVR microcontrollers that gives all the benefits of JTAG for the production environment.
Until now AVR microcontrollers have been programmed in a ZIF socket using parallel programming, or have been programmed in circuit using the in system programming (ISP serial programming) protocol and interface Now Atmel has provided a third interface using JTAG, and Kanda has developed a programmer for it
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 27 Apr 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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The main reason for Atmel adding a JTAG controller to the AVR microcontrollers was to improve in circuit emulation of the chips.
Atmel and Kanda have exploited this feature very effectively, using the brilliant AVR Studio software as an interface.
So now low cost emulators are freely available for AVR, unlike emulators for the PIC, and are very effective for code debugging.
Lots of developers are now happy using the JTAG protocol for debugging but tend to stick with the ISP interface for programming.
This is because production engineers do not want AVR Studio and fragile ICE hardware on the production line, for obvious reasons.
Therefore, Kanda has now introduced a robust JTAG programmer that gives all the benefits of JTAG for the production environment.
The major advantage of the JTAG programming interface over the serial programming interface is its speed.
Typical serial programming speeds are about 4Kbyte/s, whereas JTAG can manage 16Kbyte/s.
This translates to about 8s to program a complete Atmega128.
The JTAG interface is only available on the newer Atmega devices with more than 40 pins, so older AVR devices, Attiny and smaller Atmega chips, such as the Atmega8, are not supported.
This is why Kanda has supplied an adapter and one piece of software for both JTAG and serial programming, so it is easy to swap between programming methods.
So users can improve programming speeds by a factor of four for devices with a JTAG interface, yet retain the ability to program other AVR devices without any major changes to your setup - same software, same programmer, different interface.
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