Atmel’s New Microcontrollers and IoT, Wearables

Atmel’s New Microcontrollers and IoT, Wearables
by Paul McLellan on 10-17-2014 at 7:00 am

More and more companies, regardless of their vertical, are trying to get closer to their customers and see various aspects of the internet of things (IoT) as the way to do so. For a good example, here is Salesforce Wear Developer Pack which, as they say:..is a collection of open-source starter apps that let you quickly design and buildRead More


Atmel SMART

Atmel SMART
by Paul McLellan on 06-09-2014 at 6:00 pm

I talked last week about the internet of things (IoT) panel I attended at DAC. One thing that is clear is that IoT is not really a market on its own, but nonetheless the fact that billions of edge-node devices are going to be connected to the internet is a real trend. One company that takes IoT very seriously is Atmel, since they have an … Read More


A Re-look at TI’s Businesses, Strategies & Future

A Re-look at TI’s Businesses, Strategies & Future
by Pawan Fangaria on 06-09-2014 at 8:00 am

In recent days I’ve seen several long discussions about Texas Instrumentslosing its grip in semiconductor industry when it came out of a business it was strong in, i.e. wireless business. It seems the semiconductor community has not digested the fact that TI, very rightly, came out of the OMAP business at the right time. The smartphone… Read More


What’s not quite MCU, and not quite SoC?

What’s not quite MCU, and not quite SoC?
by Don Dingee on 05-21-2014 at 10:10 am

There has been a lot of railing lately about how we don’t have quite the right chips for the upcoming wave of wearables. Chips one would drop in a smartphone are often overkill and overpowered, burning through electrons too quickly. Chips one would use for a simple control task generally lack peripherals and performance, offsetting… Read More


Care and trimming of MEMS sensors

Care and trimming of MEMS sensors
by Don Dingee on 03-28-2014 at 2:00 pm

My first job in electronic design circa 1981 was making analog autopilots and control devices for RPVs – the early form of what today we call UAVs. A couple of really delicate boxes with gyroscopes, accelerometers, and magnetometers, and several boards full of LM148 quad op-amps surrounded by a lot of resistors and capacitors made… Read More


Sewn open: Arduino and soft electronics

Sewn open: Arduino and soft electronics
by Don Dingee on 03-19-2014 at 3:00 pm

As several other recent threads on SemiWiki have pointed out, the term “wearables” is a bit amorphous right now. The most recognizable wearable endeavors so far are the smartwatch and fitness band, but these are far from the only categories of interest.

There is another area of wearable wonder beginning to get attention: clothing,… Read More


Atmel on Tour at AT&T Park

Atmel on Tour at AT&T Park
by Paul McLellan on 03-18-2014 at 5:02 pm

OK, it’s not exactly AT&T park…it’s the parking lot. But they have a huge semi loaded up with lots of cool Atmel stuff to show off some of the things that their customers are doing with their microcontrollers and display technology, primarily focused on the internet of things (IoT). I went down to check it … Read More


Baskin-Robbins Only has 31 Flavors. Atmel has 505 Microcontrollers

Baskin-Robbins Only has 31 Flavors. Atmel has 505 Microcontrollers
by Paul McLellan on 03-02-2014 at 4:59 pm

Actually these days even Baskin-Robbins has more, but not 505. But as it says in the title, Atmel have 505 different microcontrollers. That’s a lot. Some are AVR, both 8 bit and 32 bit, and some are various flavors of ARM (all 32 bit) ranging from older parts like the ARM9 to various flavors of Cortex ranging from the M0 (tiny microcontroller… Read More


SmartConnect goes five by five for the IoT

SmartConnect goes five by five for the IoT
by Don Dingee on 02-27-2014 at 8:45 pm

OK, enough with octa-core mobile monstrosities for now. Let’s shift gears to Embedded World 2014 and the lower end of the spectrum, one that will make up the vast majority of devices on the Internet of Things: tiny, low power microcontrollers with integrated wireless connectivity.

There still seems to be some stigma about putting… Read More


ISO 26262 driving away from mobile SoCs

ISO 26262 driving away from mobile SoCs
by Don Dingee on 02-13-2014 at 10:00 pm

Connected cars may be starting to resemble overgrown phones in many ways, but there are critical differences now leading processor teams in a different direction away from the ubiquitous mobile SoC architecture – in turn causing designers to reevaluate interconnect strategies.

The modern car has evolved into a microcontroller… Read More