SAN JOSE, California, January 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- AT91SAM9RL64 Integrates ARM926EJ-S with On-Chip LCD & Touch Screen 
Controllers, USB High-Speed Device, 64k Byte SRAM configurable as TCM,
24-channel DMA and 6-layer Bus

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), announced today its AT91SAM9RL64
ARM9-based interactive GUI microcontroller with high throughput, ideal
peripherals and OS support to implement "smart" control panel applications
that can provide access to content including user manuals, video clips and
audio, as well as offering a robust interface to system control functions.
The SAM9RL64 can be used as the main processor in a system or as the
co-processor dedicated to the user interface. A USB High Speed link provides
the bandwidth to transfer streaming video between the host- and the
AT91SAM9RL64 co-processor.

User Experience. The buttons, dials, switches and joysticks typically
used to control electronic products are rapidly being replaced by touch
screens with icons that beat or zoom when selected or fly over the screen as
the user navigates through the available content. Increasingly, systems are
voice activated, being able to both talk and listen to the user. Interactive
video content is replacing static lists and instructions.

While 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers are used for user interfaces in cost
sensitive consumer applications, they are, however, not capable of dealing
with the amount of processing and data movement required to manage a
state-of-the-art interactive graphical user interface. Atmel's
AT91SAM9RL64 is a single-chip "smart" panel solution with 200-plus MIPS, a
6-layer bus matrix and DMA on all on-chip peripherals to support the high
data rates associated with screen refresh, image processing, user interaction
and the creation of the dynamics guaranteeing a good user experience. On-chip
peripherals include LCD and touch screen controllers, USB High Speed device,
24 DMA channels, an MCI/SDIO interface, 5 UARTs, SPI, dual SSC, AC'97, 6
Timers, 4 PWMs with high-drive I/Os, dual TWI and a battery backup RTC with
associated registers.

Large On-chip Tightly Coupled SRAM Supports Deterministic Processing. In
addition to the 4 Kbytes each of data and instruction cache, the SAM9RL64
supports deterministic processing with an additional 64 Kbytes of SRAM,
arranged in four 16 KB blocks, that can be configured as data or instruction
Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM) that bypasses the cache to provide single cycle
access at the maximum 200 MIPS clock frequency. The TCM may also be
configured as local memory for on-chip peripherals connected to the
multi-layer bus. At system boot, the SRAM is connected to the multi-layer
bus allowing the DMA controller to copy the real-time critical code from
non-volatile storage, such as NAND or DataFlash(R). After the code has
been shadowed in the SRAM, the memory blocks can be reconfigured as TCM.

Development Tools and Operating System Support. Atmel provides the GNU
gcc C compiler and GNU gdb debugger free of charge. Commercial licenses from
IAR(R) (C compiler -- Embedded Workbench(TM) -- Real-time Operating System
(RTOS) -- Powerware), Mentor Graphics(R) (RTOS -- Nucleus PLUS & User
Interface middleware -- Inflexion), Micrium(R) (RTOS -- uCOS/II),
ExpressLogic(R) (RTOS -- ThreadX(R)) and Microsoft(R) (Windows(R) CE -- .NET
Framework) are currently being ported for a complete embedded application
prototyping. Atmel provides a software package with register descriptions and
device drivers for all peripherals and project examples that ease the use of
the microcontroller. An evaluation board is available for benchmarking and a
quick start in the development.

Availability and Pricing. The AT91SAM9RL64 is available in a 217-pin
15x15mm 0.8mm ball pitch BGA package. It is priced at US $6.85 in volumes of
10,000 units.

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of
microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio
frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest
intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide
the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on consumer,
industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets.

Atmel offers a wide variety of microcontrollers and references that
support the implementation interactive graphical user interfaces.

SAN JOSE, California, January 21 /PRNewswire/ --

(C) 2008 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), logo and
combinations thereof, DataFlash(R) and others, are registered trademarks, or
trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. ARM(R) is a registered
trademark of ARM Ltd. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of
others.

Information:

    Atmel's AT91SAM9RL64 product information may be retrieved at
    http://www.atmel.com/products/AT91/

    Press Contacts:
    Peter Bishop, Communications Manager, Atmel Rousset
    Phone: +33-0-4-42-53-61-50, Email: peter.bishop@atmel.com

    Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
    Phone: +1-408-487-2963, Email: hperlegos@atmel.com



Web site: http://www.atmel.com