Atmel Adds FPSLIC Support to AVR Starter Kit

Low-cost STK 594 Daughter Board Plugs into STK500

SAN JOSE, CA, September 3, 2002 . . . Atmel® Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) announced today the availability of the STK 594 a low-cost add-on board that supports the FPSLIC^TM Product Family. Atmel’s AVR®-based FPSLIC components integrate a 20+ MIPS 8-bit AVR microcontrollwith a 5,000 to 40,000 gate FPGA, up to 36 K-bytes of SRAM, and peripherals. FPSLIC devices provide programmable logic and an AVR microcontroller on a single chip

The STK594 add-on board plugs directly into an AVR STK500 development board, creating a low cost FPSLIC development environment. Atmel’s FPSLIC devices offer designers a single chip solution with the additional memory and programmable logic. The STK594 development kit offers these designers a low cost and easy way to develop FPSLIC designs using the AVR development environment. Since FPSLIC code executes from on-chip SRAM, the AVR microcontroller performance is 20 or more MIPS.

The STK 594 includes the FPSLIC daughter board, Atmel’s System Designer co-verification, code- development, and EDA tool suite. The HDL Planner tool in System Designer automates the generation of the FPGA design, so embedded designers who are not familiar with a hardware description language (HDL) can quickly and easily create the FPGA portion of the design. System Designer’s co-verification back plane supports the simultaneous debugging of the processor code during the FPGA simulation.

According to Saroj Pathak, Atmel’s Programmable SLI Product Line Director, “Frequently, system designers find they need to add custom peripherals or additional logic to their MCU-based designs. However, the addition of an external FPGA or CPLD increases cost, board real estate, power consumption and design complexity. Adding external logic usually means that the embedded designer must learn how to use a hardware description language (HDL) or bring in a HDL designer – – lengthening the design cycle.

“The System Designer tool suite is very friendly to code developers. It integrates the code development and FPGA design tools in a co-verification environment that automates the generation of syntactically correct Verilog or VHDL from a library of over 50 point-and-click logic and memory functions selected by the designer. Embedded system designers who have no knowledge of hardware description languages can create the FPGA portion of the FPSLIC design quickly and easily with these tools,” Pathak concluded.

Atmel’s STK594 FPSLIC development kit is available now, priced at $149. The STK500 AVR Development Kit is available with a list price of $79.00