The Fastest ARM Cortex MCU Board (04.2016)

Atmel is making an interesting MCU evolution kit board SAM V71 with  ARM Cortex M7 micro controller core. That is the fastest ARM Cortex micro controller on the market today (04.2016).

General vie of the Atmel SAM V71 Xplained Ultra Evolution Kit PCB

Atmel SAM V71 Xplained Ultra Evolution Kit

Here is a picture of all the parts included on this kit board.

SAM V71 Xplained Ultra Evolution Kit with ARM Cortex M7 core

Most interesting in this board is that it includes both the Ethernet and CAN connections additional to the normal USB, UART, etc. connections.

Here is a video introduction to the evolution kit.

YouTube video: "Getting Started with Atmel SAM V"

The Cortex M7 core supports FPP (Floating Point Processing) and DSP (Digital Signal Processing) additional to the CPU core it self. There are Arduino Due compatible headers on the board to connect directly to several Arduino Due shield (add on) boards. Also helpful is the fact that the CPU supports several software products available on the market today.

Here are the connectors and board measures shown.

SAM V71 ARM Cortex M7 Evolution Kit board connectors and measures

Atmel's headquarters are located in the capital of silicon valley, San Jose, California.

Atmel headquarters in San Jose, California (2016)

The most interesting part on the kit board is of course the SAM V71 MCU. Here is a block diagram of its internal functional parts.

Atmel SAM V71 MCU 144-pin Block Diagram

SAM V71 MCU Description /1/

The Atmel SMART SAM V71 devices are members of an Atmel family of Automotive Flash microcontrollers based on the high-performance 32-bit ARM Cortex-M7 processor with Floating Point Unit (FPU). These devices operate at up to 300 MHz and feature up to 2048 Kbytes of Flash and up to 384 Kbytes of multi-port SRAM.

The on-chip SRAM can be configured as Tightly Coupled Memory (TCM) or system memory. A multi-port access to the SRAM guarantees a minimum access latency.

The peripheral set includes

• an Ethernet MAC (GMAC) supporting AVB, IEEE1588, 802.1Qbb, 802.3az, 802.1AS and 802.1Qav,
• a high-speed USB Device port and
• a high-speed USB Host port sharing an embedded transceiver,
• a MediaLB (MLB) device interface,
• an Image Sensor Interface (ISI),
• a high-speed Multimedia Card Interface (HSMCI) for SDIO/SD/e.MMC,
• an External Bus Interface (EBI) featuring an SDRAM Controller, and
• a Static Memory Controller providing connection to SRAM, PSRAM, NOR Flash, LCD module and NAND Flash. Additional peripherals include
• three Universal Synchronous Asynchronous Receiver Transmitters (USART),
• five Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitters (UART),
• three Two-wire Interfaces (TWI) supporting the I 2 C protocol,
• one Quad I/O Serial Peripheral Interface (QSPI),
• two Serial Peripheral Interfaces (SPI),
• one Serial Synchronous Controller (SSC) supporting I2S and TDM protocols,
• two Inter-IC Sound Controllers (I2SC), as well as
• two enhanced Pulse Width Modulators (PWM),
• twelve general-purpose 16-bit timers with stepper motor and quadrature decoder logic support,
• two Controller Area Networks with Flexible Data Rate (CAN-FD),
• one ultra low-power Real-Time Timer (RTT),
• one ultra low-power Real-Time Clock (RTC),
• dual Analog Front-End (AFE) including a 12-bit Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC),
• a Programmable Gain Amplifier (PGA),
• dual Sample-and-Hold and a digital averaging with up to 16-bit resolution,
• dual-channel 12-bit Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) and
• one Analog Comparator, as well as
• high-performance crypto-processors Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) and
• True Random Number Generator (TRNG).

The SAM V71 devices have three software-selectable low-power modes:

1. Sleep -- Sleep mode, the processor is stopped while all other functions can be kept running.
2. Wait -- In Wait mode, all clocks and functions are stopped but some peripherals can be configured to wake up the system based on predefined conditions. This feature, called SleepWalking™, performs a partial asynchronous wake-up, thus allowing the processor to wake up only when needed.
3. Backup -- In Backup mode, RTT, RTC and wake-up logic are running. In addition, in this mode, the device is able to meet the most stringent Key-Off requirements while retaining 1Kbyte of SRAM and wake-up on CAN.

To optimize power consumption, the clock system has been designed to support different clock frequencies for selected peripherals. Moreover, the processor and bus clock frequency can be modified without affecting processing on, for example, the USB, U(S)ART, AFE and Timer Counter.

The SAM V71 devices are also capable of sending and reacting to events in Active and Sleep modes without processor intervention.

The SAM V71 devices are high-performance Automotive microcontrollers, targeting In-Vehicle Infotainment connectivity applications, combining a rich set of interfaces including Ethernet-AVB and advanced DSP capabilities particularly useful for audio processing.

SAM V71 devices operate from 3.0V to 3.6V and are pin-to-pin compatible with the SAM4E (100-pin and 144-pin versions), except for USB signals.

The Atmel application note “Migrating the SAM4E to SAM E70 Microcontroller” (reference 44034) is available on www.atmel.com to ease migration from SAM4E devices to SAM V71 devices.  /1/

The SAM V71 (144-, 100-, and 64pin) packages are shown in the following figure. They are

• ̶ LQFP144, 144-lead LQFP, 20 x 20 mm, pitch 0.5 mm
• ̶ TFBGA144, 144-ball LFBGA, 10 x 10 mm, pitch 0.8 mm
• ̶ LQFP100, 100-lead LQFP, 14 x 14 mm, pitch 0.5 mm
• ̶ TFBGA100, 100-ball TFBGA, 9 x 9 mm, pitch 0.8 mm
• ̶ LQFP64, 64-lead LQFP, 10 x 10 mm, pitch 0.5 mm

SAM V71 144-, 100-, and 64-pin packages.

More manuals and documents can be found on the internet using, for example, the keyword "SAM V71".

RESOURSES

/1/ Atmel-44003-32-bit-cortex-m7-microcontroller-sam-v71q-sam-v71n-sam-v71j_datasheet.pdf

/2/ Atmel-42408-SAMV71-Xplained-Ultra_User-Guide.pdf

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