Hi All
The ATMEL SAM7X became available early 2006 (some people managed to get samples earlier but they had some sort of export problem due to encryption algorithms used in one of the parts). The first time I learned about it was at a seminar where some Atmel representatives were demoing the ATMEL evaluation board. I was very impressed but had to wait quite a long time to actually get my hands on one of my own.
It combines Ethernet (although it does need an external PHY) and USB (device) with an interesting amount of internal FLASH and SRAM (128k or 256k FLASH - I think that there may be a 512k version now - and 64k SRAM). Its small FLASH granularity (256bytes) and ease of FLASH programming are nice, although the programming times are not necessarily the shortest.
Strangely this part seems to be preferred for educational work rather than industrial projects, although my own data based on the uTasker community may not be representative. I do wonder whether ATMEL themselves may be partly to blame (if it is true) by not giving it the promotion that it may deserve. The ATMEL forum was never really the best and general cooperation with developers just can't be compared to the likes of Freescale (for example).
But returning to the technical details; the SAM7X is not to be overlooked. It may not be the best chip in the world but is flexible and very capable in a lot of projects - its fairly large memory and interesting price, coupled with USB/Ethernet mix (also USB Boot program included) can not be ignored.
Please use this forum section to discuss anything to do with the SAM7X. Maybe we can help some others to discover a potential pearl among the embedded Internet enabled devices supported by the uTasker.
I look forward to reading your topics!!
Regards
Mark
