Atmel extend battery life via a new Picopower AVR microcontroller

　　Author ：Iflowpower – Portable Power Station Supplier

Atmel (R) Corporation recently announced the first AVR (R) microcontroller that integrates an energy-saving technology. This energy-saving technology can reach battery life for many years. Atmel (R) Picopower (TM) technology can reduce the power consumption of "energy saving" to only 650NA, even in the operation of the 32kHz clock and the high-level undervoltage detection (Brown-out-detection).

This is the lowest operating current of similar products in the industry. Newly launched Picopower devices include ATMEGA169P with 4x25SEGMENTLCD microcontroller and ATMEGA165P universal microcontroller. Both microcontrollers have 16KB flash memory (Flash), 512B electrical erasable read-only memory (EEPROM) and 1KB static memory (SRAM).

They also have an analog Digital Converter (ADC), General Synchronous / Asynchronous Transceiver (USART), SPI and Two-WireInterface (Double Line Interface). They can operate at 1.8V to 5.

5V, and the output rate is up to 16MIPS. 14 new 8-bit PicopownRavR microcontrollers will be launched in the next 12 months. The Picopower microcontroller is as low as 340ua in the working mode, 1 MHz standby mode is 150ua, and the energy saving mode is 650NA, and the power-down mode is 100na.

They will implement pin, performance and code compatibility with existing AVR microcontrollers. Atmelavr Marketing Manager Asmundsaetre said: "About numerous application products, battery life for several years will be a must require. People don't really like to replace their car keys or batteries in the HVAC system.

Battery life is very important, and even become part of Zigbee specification. The battery life of the zigbee terminal product must be at least 2 years, otherwise it will not pass the certification. The Saetre summary said: "Our development of Picopower has a common property for it.

They are in standby in standby, but they will consume electricity even in sleep mode. Although there is no big deal that there is no big deal, it is not a big deal, but it is a little improvement in the sleep mode to make the battery life of the terminal product in the system that is inactive. Extend a few years.

Atmel has always been committed to eliminating or significantly reducing the power consumption such as oscillator, undervoltage detector, input / output pin leakage, thereby supplying lowest powerful microcontrollers to the market. "Atmel's Picopower technology has adopted many innovative technologies, these technologies can eliminate unnecessary power consumption in power-on state. These include an ultra-low power consumption 32kHz crystal oscillator, and automatically terminate and reactivate the undervoltage detecting circuit in sleep mode, it is possible to completely stop the power supply register (POWERREDUCTIONREGISTER, PRR) of individual peripheral devices and can be cut off.

Digital input interrupt register for a specific pin. 300NA32KHZ real time clock (RTC). Many systems should clear the time even in the case of power failure.

Atmel has optimized its 32kHz crystal oscillator so that the total power consumption of the equipment with a real-time clock is reduced to 650na. Usaccurate undervoltage detector with sleep mode. The undervoltage detector detected when the power supply is lower than the minimum required for the normal operation of the equipment.

Once detected, it will start a power-on reset (POR) to protect important data. If there is no such protection, once it is power out, it will cause catastrophic damage to this controller to make it uncomfortable. The accuracy of the undervoltage detector is directly proportional to the current it consumes.

Low voltage or no voltage, undervoltage detectors will react slow and unauthorized, and more accurate and faster undervoltage detectors will tend to consume more electricity. Since undervoltage detectors are typically in sleep, they can a large extent affect the life of the battery. Therefore, most ultra-low power microcontroller manufacturers will reduce power consumption by sacrificing accuracy and speed.

The Atmel takes a new way to develop an undervoltage detector that has a sufficiently large current, which can be capable of 1.8 volts, 2.7 volts and 4.

5 volts, in 2 micro Accurate detection within the second reaction time. The saving of power is to automatically stop the undervoltage detector in the sleep state, and activate the undervoltage detector when the controller is waken (before performing any instruction). This method can supply better protection by significantly less power consumption.

Digital input interrupt register. Small controllers with fewer pins often set analog digital converters to the same pins in the same pin. This will cause the current to leak through the digital IO buffer.

ATMEL has resolved this problem with a dedicated input interrupt register (DIDR), which can open the digital buffer from the input device for analog digital converter reading through software. Power saving register. The Piration Register (PRR) on the PicopowerAVR microcontroller contains control bits that are capable of fully blocking clock assignment to unused peripheral modules.

This power saving register is controlled by software control that enables users to open and close peripheral modules. When the peripheral module is disconnected by the power saving register, all I / O registers cannot be accessed. After reactivation, the peripheral module will reply to the state before disconnect.

Disconnecting the power consumption ratio of the peripheral module to reduce 5-10%, reduce 10-20% lower than standby mode. Clock Game Control Technology. Atmel also implements a dynamically configured clock gates, which can freeze the clocks of the circuit in some parts of the circuit.

Once activated, the status after the module is started, as before. Clock Gate can also be used to reduce the performance of analog digital converters in applications that reduce noise and to higher resolution data. Low clock frequency flash sampling (FlashSampling).

Conventional microcontrollers are in power-on state in the working mode, causing unnecessary static power consumption at a few Hz or less low operating frequencies. The AVR microcontroller uses a technology called flash sample, which makes flash memory to sample the contents of the array within a few nanoseconds, and then stop its function, thereby significantly reduces current leakage. .