Top Stories Atmel Releases New picoPower AVR Microcontrollers New Ultra Low Power Units are Ideal for Battery Applications Atmel® Corporation has released four new ultra low power 32-pin AVR Microcontrollers. The ATmega48P/88P/168P/328P devices have 4, 8, 16 and 32 Kbytes of Flash memory, respectively. These devices consume as little as 340 uA in active mode at 1.8V running from the internal RC oscillator at 1 MHz, 650 nA in power-save mode with real time counter running, and 100 nA in power-down mode. picoPower AVRs are pin-, performance-, and code-compatible with existing AVR microcontrollers. Atmel’s industry leading picoPower technology will assist the IC engineer by eliminating unnecessary power consumption in sleep modes. These include an ultra-low-power 32 kHz crystal oscillator, automatic disabling and re-enabling of brown-out detection, (sleeping BOD) circuitry during sleep modes, a power reduction register (PRR) that completely powers down individual peripherals, and digital input disable registers that removes leakage on ADC input pins. picoPower AVRs are ideally suited for low power applications and adds years to the battery life for applications that spend the majority of their time in sleep modes. The ATmega48P/88P/168P/328P microcontrollers operate from 1.8 to 5.5 volts and feature a 10-bit ADC, USART, SPI, 2-wire interface, internal temperature sensor, and have up to 20 MIPS throughput at 20 MHz. Similar to other AVR microcontrollers, the ATmega48P/88P/168P/328P features an on-chip debug system for easy, fast, and robust development. “We see a growing demand for ultra low power consumption in all segments of the microcontroller market. With these four new picoPower devices we are filling the gap between the low power tinyAVR® and the higher pin count picoPower megaAVR®. Now, the picoPower microcontrollers range from 28 to 100 pins and 4 to 64 Kbytes of Flash, making it easy for developers to find the perfect low-power fit for any project,” said Ingar Fredriksen Director, AVR Product Marketing. AVR picoPower microcontrollers use the standard AVR microcontroller development tools. The AVR Studio® integrated development environment is available free of charge on Atmel’s web site. The company's Web site address is http://www.atmel.com/. [Reprinted with kind permission from Atmel Corporation]

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