ARM MCU Lowers The Boom On Current

Based on an ARM926EJ-S processor, the AT91SAM9261 microcontroller draws 400 µA of operating current at 500 MHz and, over an industrial temperature range, 65 mA at 200 MIPS with all peripherals on. Power consumption is 2.5 µA in standby mode. The device’s throughput and extended instruction set allow DSP functions to execute quickly in burst mode. In a typical PoS application with a four-hour battery life, the MCU can extend battery life up to 16 hours. Features include a multi-layer AHB bus architecture, DMA controller, 16 KB cache, 16 KB instruction/write buffer cache, 160 KB of 200-MHz, single-cycle access SRAM, 2 KB of DPRAM, LCD controller, and a USB host controller. Peripherals include a periodic interval timer, watchdog timer, real-time clock, three 32-bit parallel I/O controllers, SD- and Multimedia-compliant interface, three synchronous serial controllers, three USARTS, one debug UART, two master/slave SPIs, 3-channel 16-bit timer/counter, two-wire interface, and JTAG boundary scan on all digital pins. Available in a 217-ball LFBGA RoHS-compliant package, price is under $10 each in high volume. ATMEL CORP., San Jose, CA. (408) 441-0311.