Atmel expands 6-pin AVR MCU family

Colin Holland

Embedded Europe (11/23/2009 8:03 AM ET)

LONDON — Atmel Corp. has added three pin and code compatible 6-pin picoPower AVR microcontrollers to its portfolio.

Using the AVR CPU, the 6-pin tinyAVR MCUs can process up to 12 MIPS at 12 MHz which Atmel says is six times the performance of any other similar sized microcontroller in the market.

The processing efficiency is designed to reduce the time in active mode and increases the time spent in power saving sleep modes.

The ATtiny4, ATtiny5, and ATtiny9 are pin- and functional-compatible to the existing ATtiny10 which eases migration between the devices in-between different projects with different requirements. The 6-pin tinyAVR microcontrollers are also pin-compatible with similar devices from competitors.

"The ATtiny10 was launched in April and we were overwhelmed by the rapid market acceptance and strong demand for this device, which is the smallest AVR microcontroller," said Jukka Eskelinen, Product Marketing Director, tinyAVR for Atmel. "It is clear that developers needed innovation in this market segment."

All tinyAVR microcontrollers use the standard AVR microcontroller development tools.

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