SAMA5D4 Series is Cost Optimized for Video Playback, Taking Out Unnecessary Overhead and Complexity of Traditional Application Processors - Advanced Security for Internet of Things, Communications, Data Protection and Against Counterfeiting
Atmel Corporation announced the company has expanded itsAtmel | SMART portfolio with the SAMA5D4, a new series of high-performance microprocessors (MPUs) based on the ARMCortex-A5 processor. The SAMA5D4 offers OEMs seamless technology for Internet of Things (IoT), consumer and industrial applications including control panels, communication gateways, imaging terminals and more.
Atmel’s SAMA5D4 series expand on the SAMA5 family by offering H264, VP8 and MPEG4 720p video playback capability at 30fps for an enhanced user interface experience, bringing significant increases in processing and system performance. Additionally, the series also provides higher security leveraging ARM TrustZone technology to protect the system against counterfeiting, remote firmware updates and allow safe storage of critical data.
Featuring an ARM NEON engine for accelerated signal processing for multimedia and graphics, the SAMA5D4 runs up to 528MHz and includes a 720p hardware video decoder, along with 128kB L2 cache for improved system performance. The MPU integrates powerful peripherals for connectivity and user interface applications including a TFT LCD display controller and dual EMAC.The SAMA5D4 series offer advanced security functions to protect customer systems against counterfeiting by running authentic software and secure data. These include on-the-fly execution of encrypted code stored in external memory, tamper detection with erasure of critical data, and hardware encryption engines supporting private and public keys algorithms.
Ecosystem
To support the new series of SAMA5D4 MPUs, Atmel has developed a free Linux distribution available on linux4sam.com and published on a mainline kernel. A free Android KitKat port will also be available in December 2014. Atmel offers a free graphics software development kit (SDK) based on Qt5 including demos, widgets, background images, icons, and useful graphical elements to ease a designer’s interface development and customization. For non-operating system (OS) users, Atmel delivers more than 40 peripheral drivers in C. Atmel collaborates with an expanded global network of partners, including IAR, Timesys, Free Electrons, Active Semi, Micron, ISSI, Segger, FreeRTOS, Express Logic, eForce and NuttX that deliver development tools, PMIC, memories, Systems-On-Module (SOM) and software solutions.
To evaluate and prototype your application, Atmel provides a Evaluation Kit ATSAMA5D4-EK covering all SAMA5D4 devices, including a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen. A Linux distribution and a graphic user interface demo with video playback based on Qt5 are made available for initial demonstration.
Availability
Samples for the SAMA5D4 are available now while production is ramping. Evaluation kits are available today for $695 USD each.
The SAMA5D4 series is comprised of four devices and is shipping in BGA289 and BGA361 packages. Pricing for the SAMA5D43 with the 720p hardware video decoding option starts at $8.95 USD for 1,000-piece quantities.
