Atmel has introduced a family of tinyAVR microcontrollers that deliver 8Mips from 0.7V.
“These devices are targeted at applications that run from a single battery, such as AA, AAA, or coin cell,” said Atmel. “The first member of this family is the ATtiny43U.”
Like Silicon Labs’ 0.9V C8051F9xx family introduced at this time last year, the Atmel controller includes a DC-DC boost converter.
This one can run from 0.7-1.8V, producing at least 17mA at 3V, and up to 60mA from the higher end of the input voltage range. “The regulator can deliver enough current to the I/O pins to directly drive LEDs and electric motors,” claimed the firm.
Start-up is guaranteed from 1.35V (1.2V typical) and consumption is as little as 5µA with the converter on and the core sleeping. This rises to 5mA from 1.2V with the core at 4MHz.
Converter efficiency is generally above 70%, and up to 95%.
Although the converter is autonomous, several of its modes can be controlled by the core.
For operation above 1.8V, the converter can be turned off completely. In this state with the core sleeping, at 3V consumption is under 150nA, rising to 400µA at 1MHz.
4kbyte of flash and 64byte of in-system programmable EEPROM are provided on-die and alongside this is a 10bit ADC, two 8bit timer counters with PWM outputs, SPI and I2C serial, and an internal temperature sensor.
The chip includes an on-chip debug system and works with Atmel’s AVR Studio integrated development environment.
Applications are foreseen in phone accessories, remote controls, sporting goods and personal care products. Samples are available now in a QFN20 package.
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