The Atmel family of tinyAVR microcontrollers are targeted at applications that run from a single battery, such as AA, AAA, or coin cell.

The first in this family is the ATtiny43U for portable battery powered consumer applications like phone accessories, remote controls, sporting goods and personal care products. ATtiny43U has 4Kbytes of Flash memory and 64bytes of In-System programmable EEPROM. 

A regular AA or AAA battery has a voltage of up to 1.8V fully charged. When energy is drawn from the battery, the battery voltage drops as the battery discharges, down to 0.7V where there is hardly any energy at all left in the battery. 

The ATtiny43U has an on-chip boost regulator that works from battery voltages between 0.7 and 1.8V. The regulator converts the low battery voltage up to 3V, this is sufficiently high to effectively operate the AVR MCU, its peripherals and I/Os. The boost regulator can deliver enough current to the I/O pins to directly drive LEDs and electric motors.

The ATtiny43U also features a 10-bit ADC, two 8-bit timer counters with PWM outputs, SPI, I2C interface, internal temperature sensor, and has up to 8 MIPS throughput running from a 0.7V battery.

Like the other AVR microcontrollers, the ATtiny43U features an on-chip debug system for easy, fast, and robust development. All tinyAVR microcontrollers use the standard AVR microcontroller development tools. The AVR Studio AVR integrated development environment is available free on Atmel’s website.

Samples for the ATtiny43U are available now in a QFN20 package. Volume prices for 10k units are USD $1.00.

More information: http://www.atmel.com/low-voltage