Atmel has announced the first member of a pin-compatible ARM9-based microcontroller family that shares the same programming model as ARM7-based controllers, allowing direct migration between controllers based on different ARM cores.

The AT91SAM9260 also supports deterministic, real-time operation, offers supervisory functions, and has third-party RTOS support comparable to those of 8-bit controllers.
 
Developed for highly-connected image processing applications, such as point-of-sale terminals, Ethernet-based IP cameras, and bar code readers, the AT91SAM9260 integrates a 200 MIPS ARM926EJ-S core with a camera interface, seven USARTs, 10/100 Ethernet MAC, 12Mbit/s USB device and host controller with on-chip transceivers, external bus interface supporting SDRAM, Flash, NAND Flash with built-in ECC, SD, SDIO, and Multimedia Card interface (MMC), three synchronous serial controllers (SSC), two master/slave Serial Peripheral Interfaces (SPI), a three-channel 16-bit timer/counter, two-wire interface (TWI) and IEEE 1149.1 JTAG Boundary Scan on all digital pins.

The AT91SAM9260 has third-party RTOS support from Green Hills Software, Mentor Graphics and Micrium. Compiler/debuggers are available from Green Hills Software, ARM, Keil, IAR Systems and any compliant ARM926EJ-S compiler. Windows CE and Linux operating system support is also provided.

The AT91SAM9260 is available now in a 217-ball LFBGA RoHS-compliant package and in a 208-pin Green QFP package.