Multimedia ARM9 Goes Secure

May 4, 2010

Atmel's 400 MHz ARM926-based bring DDR2, hardware encryption and an embedded video decoder to the playing table.

1 of Enlarge image

Atmel SAM9G46 microcontroller

Atmel SAM9M11 microcontroller

Atmel SAM9G46 and SAM9M11 chips

Atmel's 400 MHz ARM926-based SAM9G46 and SAM9M11 bring hardware encryption and an embedded video decoder (SAM9M11) to the playing table. These chips provide plug-compatibility with earlier Atmel microcontrollers (SAM9G45 and SAM9M10) while providing better security and multimedia performance.

These chips target applications where security and authentication are becoming a requirement for applications in industrial and building control, HVAC systems, POS terminals, alarm systems, printers and medical equipment. The hardware encryption engine supports AES, 3DES and SHA support. They include a hardware-based True Random Number Generator (TPNG) used to generate session keys. It can generate a 32-bit random number every 84 clock cycles. The AES256 hardware decryption is two orders of magnitude greater than software reaching 300 Mbits/s.

Both chips have dual 32 Kbyte caches and DDR2 support. On the video side, they both support 24-bit VGA (1024 by 768) resolution for TFT LCDs with touch screen support. The SAM9M11 has 2D video hardware acceleration. They have host and device USB 2.0 support with built-in PHYs. They also have high-speed serial communication, /100 Ethernet, and high speed SDIO/SD/MMC interfaces. The SAM9M11's video decoder handles D1 resolutions at 30 frames/s. Both chips support 3.3V IO.

The chips come with a free Linux distribution and Windows CE board support package (BSP). The SAM9M11 comes in an 0.8 in pitch BGA324 package.

Atmel

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.