Microcontroller and touch solutions leader Atmel Corporation (www.atmel.com) has unveiled the first 32-bit AVR microcontrollers (MCUs) that feature a floating point unit (FPU). Delivering a unique blend of high-processing power, the new Atmel AVR UC3 C MCU series offers high-speed communication, true 5V operation as well as reliability and advanced safety features in a range of compact packages, making it suitable for industrial control applications.

“The Atmel AVR UC3 C series delivers more processing power—in a smaller footprint—than any other microcontroller in our line card,” remarked Haakon Skar, Marketing Director of AVR UC3 Products, Atmel Corporation.

“The new series offers better performance and enables us to include this new FPU without negatively impacting the microcontroller power consumption. These new 32-bit AVR microcontrollers complement our already-strong line card of 8-bit AVR MCUs targeting the industrial control.”

Built specifically for high-speed communication with a true 5V operation, the Atmel UC3 C series comes with 64 + 4KB high-speed SRAM, a nine-layer databus and various high-speed communication peripherals that include dual CAN ports, a 100 Mbps Ethernet and a full-speed USB interface. In addition, an SDRAM interface in fitted in larger devices. Together with the layered databus, the split SRAM architecture enables the system designer to avoid clashes on high-speed communications.

Featuring the Atmel Peripheral Event System, the Atmel UC3 C series also comes with FlashVault code protection, which is a flash security technology that partially programs and locks the on-chip flash to create secure on-chip storage for software intellectual property and secret code.