Targeting the Internet of Things, Wearables and Other Applications Requiring Extremely Low Power, Innovative New Tools Enable Developers to Identify and Eliminate Power Spikes During Development
Atmel Corporation announced a high-accuracy debugging tool that enables customers to visualize the power usage of their product during the development cycle. With ultra-low power being a critical factor in next-generation Internet of Things (IoT), wearable and battery-operated devices, being able to locate code where power spikes occur is crucial for supporting extremely low power in the overall design. The new Power Debugger is Atmel’s latest development tool for debugging and programming Atmel | SMART ARM Cortex-M–based MCUs and Atmel AVR MCUs that use JTAG, SWD, PDI, debugWIRE, aWire, TPI or SPI target interfaces.
In addition to standard low-level debug functionality, the Power Debugger features two independent current-sensing channels for collecting real-time power measurements during application execution. The Atmel Power Debugger streams such power measurements collected to the Atmel Data Visualizer—available in Atmel Studio 7 IDE—for real-time analysis and display. The Data Visualizer graphs power usage in real-time and uses this data to estimate application battery life. The Data Visualizer also enables developers to correlate power samples with the code that was executing when the sample was taken, greatly reducing the time required to identify “hot spots” in the developers’ application.
Key Features
- Supports JTAG, SWD, PDI, TPI, aWire, SPI and debugWIRE interfaces
- Two independent measurement channels measuring both voltage and current simultaneously — One high resolution channel that can measure 100nA to 100mA and one lower resolution channel that can measure 1mA to 1A.
- Adjustable power supply that can be used to power the target application — Voltage adjustable between 1.6V and 5.5V. Can deliver up to 100mA
- USB feed-through connection for easy measurement of current consumption of USB powered target board
- 1.62 to 5.5V target operation
- USB powered
- Provides both ARM Cortex Debug Connector (10-pin) pin-out and AVR JTAG connector pin-out
- CDC virtual COM port interface
- Atmel Data Gateway Interface channels for streaming application data to the host computer from a SPI, USART, TWI or GPIO source
“Lowering overall power consumption is key to many customer designs and essential for battery-operated and wearable designs,” said Steve Pancoast, Vice President of Software Development, Applications and Tools, Atmel Corporation. “Atmel provides cost-effective, easy-to-use tools that make it possible for our developers to profile the power usage of applications running on their own hardware as part of the standard development cycle".
Availability
The Power Debugger is available for purchase from the Atmel web store and through Atmel distributors.
