Top Stories Atmel Releases New High-Speed ATTiny Microcontrollers Ideal for low power, high performance portable applications Three new 14-pin tinyAVR®products have been added to the wide AVR family of Flash Microcontrollers. All three devices are pin compatible, differing only in the size of Flash, EEPROM and SRAM memory. ATtiny24 has 2 KB of Self- Programmable Flash memory, whereas ATtiny44 and ATtiny84 have 4 KB and 8 KB, respectively. All new devices deliver 20 MIPS throughput when running at 20 MHz. ATtiny24/44/84 excel in battery-powered equipment due to the inherent low power consumption and three individually selectable low power sleep modes. The application software can adjust the system clock frequency to achieve top performance when needed, and then slow down the clock during idle times. Additional power saving is achieved by using the AVR Power Stop System allowing the user to turn off timers, USI, and/or ADC when not in use. As a result, the ATtiny24/44/84 consume less than 100 nA in Power Down mode. "We received requests for 14-pin AVR devices by customers who need the unmatched performance and the rich peripheral set of the AVR," said Jukka Eskelinen, Marketing Director for tinyAVR products. "ATtiny24/44/84 devices complement existing tinyAVR range that now offers 8-pin, 14-pin, 20-pin and 28-pin devices," he added. ATtiny24/44/84 have internal EEPROM, pull-up resistors and an 8 MHz, high precision calibrated RC Oscillator, leaving 12 general I/O pins available for application use. The I/O pins can alternatively work as ADC inputs or PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) outputs depending on the application requirements. Interfacing to ATtiny24/44/84 is made easy by using the Universal Serial Interface (USI), which can be configured to work as an SPI, UART or TWI. Sensor applications benefit from the internal temperature sensor that accurately monitors chip temperature, allowing reliable system parameter calibration. A wide range of high performance microcontroller peripheral functions are readily integrated. The devices include one 8-bit timer and one 16-bit timer, which can control two 8-bit and two 16-bit PWM outputs, respectively. A total of twelve 10-bit, differential A/D converter input channels with programmable gain and a fast analog comparator allow a wide selection of peripherals to be connected when used in sensor and control applications. The company's Web site address is http://www.atmel.com/. [Reprinted with kind permission from Atmel Corporation]

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