Atmel (News - Alert) Corporation, specializing in microcontroller and touch technology solutions, announced the addition of five new devices to the Atmel SAM9 ARM926-based family of microcontrollers (MCUs).

In a release Jacko Wilbrink, director of ARM (News - Alert) products, Atmel Corporation said, “Atmel continues to expand its 32-bit ARM-based portfolio to support our changing customer requirements.”

“The new SAM9 devices are ideal host processors for applications requiring DDR2 and NAND flash support, a rich combination of wired and wireless communication interfaces plus advanced LCD support for a modern user experience. We are a leader in the 32-bit microcontroller segment and will continue to bring innovative products to the market to meet our customers' needs,” Wilbrink added.

Company officials added that the new SAM9 devices are most suitable for applications in industrial and building control, HVAC, Point of Sale (POS) terminals, printers and medical devices, smart grid with data concentrators, human machine interfaces (HMI) and machine-to-machine (M2M) market segments.

The new devices added to the MCU family are named SAM9G15, SAM9G25, SAM9G35, SAM9X25 and SAM9X35. These devices are expected to expand Atmel’s existing ARM-based portfolio as they support several key technology features needed in modern applications.

These optimized features include replacing SDRAM with DDR2 memory for more memory-intensive applications; offering NAND flash support with 24-bit ECC for reduced system cost; and the addition of more communication channels including dual 10/100 Ethernet, dual CAN and up to 3x USB ports to serve  application requirements optimally, said officials.

It was revealed that Atmel and Conexant will enable soft modem implementation on the new SAM9 devices for keeping a control on overall bill of materials (BOM) by eliminating external components. The five new ARM926-based microcontrollers are designed to operate at up to 400MHz and the core and peripherals consume only 100mW power even while delivering maximum performance, added officials.

The new Atmel SAM9 devices feature an advanced graphics LCD controller with hardware acceleration suited for industrial applications. The enhanced LCD controller includes overlays, alpha blending, and image scaling, rotating and color space conversion which provide an intuitive interface, for offloading the CPU.

TMCnet reported recently that Atmel Corporation has announced additional unique features to the already-successful 8/16-bit AVR XMEGA microcontroller (MCU) family with very low power consumption of 100nA with 5µS wake-up time.