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Technology Stocks : Atmel - the trend is about to change -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mang Cheng who wrote (8022)	3/14/1998 2:23:00 AM
From: jerryrom	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13565

March 16, 1998, TechWeb News ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Atmel's 8-bit AVR road map takes shape By Andrew MacLellan Silicon Valley- In a bid to recapture business lost through an OEM migration to 16-bit microcontrollers, Atmel Corp. today will expand its AVR family of 8-bit embedded flash microcontrollers with a proprietary, high-performance architecture. Atmel's MegaAVR RISC microcontrollers integrate flash, EEPROM, and SRAM in a two-address device with a two-stage pipeline and 32 8-bit registers. Targeting embedded controls in industrial, automotive, and other applications, the chips are able to execute an instruction in a single clock cycle and reduce program memory by tightening assembly and C-language code density, the company said. The family is the first entirely new microcontroller architecture to enter the market in some time, according to Chris Heyden, Atmel's product marketing manager, and is expected to reduce the component count of systems now using industry-mainstay 8051-class microcontrollers. "It's very difficult to get a new architecture developed in the marketplace, and the reason why this is so exciting is because we've taken our core competency in flash and integrated it with our core micro," Heyden said. The first chip in the family, the ATmega103, improves on Atmel's existing 8-bit microcontroller architecture and exceeds the performance of many competing 16-bit devices. The MegaAVR devices also include a 10-bit, 8-channel A/D converter; a full-duplex UART; a watchdog timer, a real-time clock with separate oscillator; and three timer/counters with separate prescaler. "In high-end applications, companies have typically converted to 16-bit because 8-bit didn't have enough address space," Heyden said. "We've captured these applications by offering 16-bit performance at an 8-bit price." By embedding 4 Kbytes of byte-writable EEPROM, the MegaAVR device is able to store code on chip, while 4 Kbytes of SRAM enables more efficient compiling of C-language variables, according to San Jose-based Atmel. The controller's 128 Kbytes of on-chip flash enables in-system programmability for systems in the field via a phone line or wireless connection. "We support code migration across the entire [AVR] family," Heyden said. "The function of the architecture and the way we built the instruction sets allows the same compiler for each part." With its 1-mip/MHz processing speed, the MegaAVR extends the performance of Atmel's AVR family and provides a midrange alternative to the company's high-end 16-bit and 32-bit ARMThumb RISC CPUs. A stripped down follow-on to the AVR family, the TinyAVR, is also being readied for low-cost applications. Serving in a gas pipeline monitor, the MegaAVR chip replaced four 8-bit controllers and seven peripheral ICs, while reducing power consumption by 80% and trimming program storage requirements by nearly 30%, Atmel said. A second microcontroller, the ATmega603, will ship with only 64 Kbytes of flash and 2 Kbytes of EEPROM. Both devices are available off-the-shelf in a 64-pin TQFP and operate at 2.7 V and 5 V. The ATmega103 is $15 in 10,000s, while the ATmega603 is $11 in like quantities. The ATmega303 with 32 Kbytes of embedded flash is the next device in the family slated for introduction. Copyright (c) 1998 CMP Media Inc.