Atmel AT91CAP7E User Manual

TM

APB

System Controller

ICE

ARM7TDMI

PIT

Main

OSC

PLL

PMC

WDT

PLL

6-layer AHB Matrix

JTAG

AIC

USART ADC

Timer

x3

USART

PIO
x32

SRAM

96KB

FPGA Interface

EBI

Static Mem.

CF

NAND Flash

SDRAM

ROM (256KB)

SPI

RTT

SHWDC

GPBREG

POR

32K OSC

RC OSC

USB

FS

Device

SRAM

64KB

POR

AT91CAP7E

Peripheral DMA

Controller

AMBA Bridge

CAP

CUSTOMIZABLE MICROCONTROLLERS

AT91CAP7E

AT91CAP7E is an ARM7™-based MCU with a direct FPGA interface, six-layer advanced high-speed
bus (AHB), peripheral DMA controller and 160 Kbytes of on-chip SRAM. It offers seamless migration to
AT91CAP7 customizable MCUs for ARM7-plus-FPGA designs. It includes on-chip peripherals such as
USB 2.0 full speed device, SPI master and slave, two USARTs, three 16-bit timer counters, an 8-channel/
10-bit analog to digital converter, plus a full-functioned system controller including interrupt and power
control and supervisory functions.

The FPGA interface on the AT91CAP7E provides the FPGA with direct access to the AT91CAP7E’s
on-chip AHB and peripheral DMA controller. This architecture eliminates FPGA-induced bus contention,
off-loads MCU-to-FPGA communications from the CPU, and frees up the external bus interface for
external memory access.

Interfacing an ARM7-based MCU to an FPGA has traditionally been done through the external bus
interface (EBI) or programmable I/O. Either arrangement requires that the CPU transfer data to and from

the FPGA one word-at-a-time, basically stealing CPU cycles that should be conserved for processing and
limiting access to external memory during FPGA operations.

The FPGA interface on Atmel’s AT91CAP7E provides the FPGA with two AHB masters, four AHB slaves,
a special direct AHB slave interface to an external RAM through the FPGA, and a programmable ROM
that remaps the external RAM to emulate and debug the ROM code. Fourteen advanced peripheral bus
(APB) slaves, two full-duplex DMA channels and 32-bit programmable I/O may be hardware selected to
share I/O. An on-chip priority interrupt controller provides up to 13 encoded interrupts and two additional
un-encoded interrupts for DMA transfers.

Atmel provides FPGA logic that decodes and encodes the bus traffic that flows between the FPGA and

USB

PDC

256K ROM

POR

GPBR

POR

RTT

PIT

WDT

PLL

PLL

SHWDC

OSC

32K

AIC

PMC

Main

OSC

ICE

JTAG

AHB/APB Bridge

6-layer AHB Matrix

INTERFACE

FPGA

AHB/APB Bridge

CUSTOM MP

ARM7TDMI

Additional NON-AHB/APB Logic

FPGA

CAP7E to FPGA Interface

CAP7E

HZBT

AHBs

Dedicated

FPGA I/F

2 AHB Masters

4 AHB Slaves

14 APBs Slaves
2 PDC Channels

CAP7E-Ctrol

96KB SRAM

64KB SRAM

FPGA

INTERFACE

EBI

Peripheral DMA

Controller

SPI

PIO

TIMERS

USART

USART

ADC

IRQ

the AT91CAP7E microcontroller. The logic blocks inside the FPGA are connected to the AT91CAP7E via
the AHB master and slave channels.

The AT91CAP7E is a standard microcontroller with an FPGA interface that makes the FPGA look and work
like it is on the internal bus on the MCU. Customers who are considering the AT91CAP7 customizable
MCU for their designs, frequently need a two-chip, no-NRE, FPGA-plus ARM7 solution as they are
gaining market momentum. The AT91CAP7E provides such a solution and offers an engineering-free
migration path to a lower cost, lower power customizable MCU when volume justifies it. The AT91CAP7E
is available in a 225 LFBGA package (13 x 13 x 1.4mm).

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AT91CAP7 Customizable MCUs

Atmel’s AT91CAP7 customizable MCU is an ARM7-based microcontroller with a metal-programmable
(MP) block with 450K gates or the equivalent of 56K FPGA logic cells (LC). Any functionality that has
been implemented in an FPGA may be migrated directly to a CAP7 device with no special EDA tools
or customer-side engineering. Standard FPGA software tools are all that is necessary to implement
functions such as LCD controllers, DSP algorithms (e.g. GPS correlators, FFTs, FIR filters), and proprietary
customer IP. A AT91CAP7 implementation delivers as much as 8X better performance, consumes 98%
less static power, and costs about 30% less than the FPGA-plus-MCU implementation. The AT91CAP7
is available in multiple packages.

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the sale of Atmel products. EXCEPT AS SET FORTH IN ATMEL’S TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SALE LOCATED ON ATMEL’S WEB SITE, ATMEL ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER AND DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR
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contained herein. Unless specifically provided otherwise, Atmel products are not suitable for, and shall not be used in, automotive applications. Atmel’s products are not intended, authorized, or warranted for use as components in applications
intended to support or sustain life.

Product Contacts

Technical Support

www.atmel.com/products/AT91CAP

Sales Contacts

www.atmel.com/contacts

Web Site

www.atmel.com

© 2008 Atmel Corporation.

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REV.: 860/8543A-06/08/1K