The new CAP7L SoCs are economical in volumes of 10K units, with a fully-amortized unit cost of $17. In 50K unit volumes, the amortized unit cost is $7, incorporating NRE and IP expense.
The AT91CAP7L is a microcontroller with 200K gates of metal programmable cell fabric that can be utilized to execute the customer IP, hardware accelerators, additional processor cores or new peripherals sets to attain a customized SoC. The company has a large library of license- and royalty-free IP that has been fully verified and tested in CAP7L MP block.
Atmel’s second-generation metal programmable cell fabric technology (MPCF-II) has cut the mask charges to $75K by using only three metals and three via layers for the configuration.
Jay Johnson, Atmel’s director of CAP marketing, said Fabless semiconductor companies are often stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to implementing new designs. Low-volume, quick-turnaround ASICs typically have unit costs of hundreds of dollars and often require the purchase of an ARM IP license. The CAP7L provides an affordable low-volume solution with the power consumption, performance characteristics, and IP security of a custom-SoC, without excessive license fees or units costs. Worst-case static power consumption for the CAP7L is between 3mW and 4mW – 98% less than the power consumed by a typical FPGA, concluded Johnson.
The HDL code for any custom-IP is developed utilizing standard, vendor-specific or third-party field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) design tools. Once verified, the customer requires to offer the register transfer level (RTL) netlist to company’s for implementation in the MP block on the CAP7L. Prototypes can be available within 10 weeks of the final gate level netlist and production quantities within 12 weeks.
Existing Third-party Tools:
The same C-compilers, RTOS, OSs, ICEs and IDEs utilized with Atmel’s ARM processor-based microcontrollers can be utilized with the CAP versions of the devices. These incorporate company’s free GNU gcc C compiler, GNU gdb debugger, FreeRTOS.org real-time kernel. Commercially available tools incorporate ARM (RealView Development Suite, RealView ICE, RealView Trace2) Green Hills (Multi IDE, TimeMachine, Integrity OS), IAR (C compiler – Embedded Workbench), ExpressLogic (Real-time Operating System – ThreadX) and Micrium (Real-time Operating System – uCOS/II).
Availability and Pricing:
The new CAP7L customizable microcontrollers are available. NRE is $75K, with unit costs of $5.50 in quantities of 50K units in 144 LQFP package. Incorporated in the $75K NRE is design engineering to help the customers in re-targeting their FPGA code into company’s metal programmable library, static timing analysis and closure, place and route, design finishing, masks and 10 quick-turn prototypes. Additionally, a low cost starter kit is available for the engineering evaluation. The AT91CAP7A-STK kit is priced at $399.
