Microchip Launches "Functional Safety Ready" AVR DA Family of 8-Bit Microcontrollers
Designed with integrated safety features, including CRC validation for flash memory contents, Microchip's AVR DA range is now available.
Microchip has announced the launch of a "functional safety ready" family of microcontrollers, the AVR DA range, designed for automotive, industrial, security, and human-machine interface (HMI) applications.
“With this AVR DA family of microcontrollers Microchip builds on our legacy of high performance and high code efficiency devices, now meeting new demand across multiple industries with advanced analogue and core independent peripherals, and more capacitive touch channels over existing devices," explains Greg Robinson, associate vice president of marketing for Microchip's eight-bit business unit.
“The technology spans applications from connected home security, building automation and sensor systems to automotive and industrial automation, enabling the designs of more robust, accurate and responsive applications.”
The key feature which separates the AVR DA family from Microchip's existing eight-bit microcontrollers: Their designation as "functional safety ready," indicating the parts incorporate safety features not typically present in lower-end devices — including power-on reset, brown-out detection, voltage-level monitoring, and a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) scan to verify flash memory content.
The AVR DA range tops out at 24MHz, 16kB of static RAM (SRAM), 512 bytes of EEPROM, 128kB flash memory, and 12-bit differential analogue-to-digital conversion (ADC) and 10-bit digital-to-analogue conversion (DAC) alongside analogue comparators and zero-cross detectors.
The company is pushing the parts' support for various touch interface functions including buttons, sliders, wheels, touchpads, touch screens, and gesture controls across industrial and automotive designs — supporting, the company claims, up to 46 self-capacitance and 529 mutual capacitive touch channels. The company also promises latency-free real-time inter-peripheral communication through an event system for real-time control, which has the side-effect of allowing the CPU to sleep more often and reducing the overall power usage.
More information on the family is available on the Microchip website, while csot has been set at $0.87 in 10,000-unit quantities with low-volume retail pricing yet to be confirmed.