Atmel and Lead Tech Design collaborate for video systems-on-chip based on Atmel’s AT91CAP customizable microcontroller

Atmel Corporation and Lead Tech Design (LTD) has announced a collaboration to develop video systems-on-chip, based on Atmel’s AT91CAP customizable microcontroller for their mutual clients, with video expertise and hardware and software IP blocks contributed by Lead Tech Design.

In terms of this agreement, Lead Tech Design will work with clients to transform their design specifications into netlists for the metal programmable portion of the AT91CAP customizable microcontroller, incorporating, as required, IP blocks from LTD’s extensive library of video signal processing functions. Lead Tech Design will also supply software drivers for these blocks and for the ARM core that is the central architectural element of the AT91CAP. These netlists will be validated on the AT91CAP emulation board by mapping them onto an FPGA, before being transferred to Atmel for placement & routing, and metal programming of the AT91CAP platform.

Atmel’s CAP microcontroller, with its integrated metal programmable block, is the ideal platform for applications of this nature that require a general-purpose microcontroller for system control, coupled with dedicated functional blocks for compute-intensive signal processing. Michel Le Lan, Atmel’s Marketing Director for ASIC products, commented, “We welcome this agreement with Lead Tech Design that enables us to offer a turnkey solution to clients wanting a system-on-chip for video applications with an extremely short development cycle, low development cost and an attractive unit price in volume.”

Eric Fouchard, LTD’s Sales Manager, explained, “We provide know-how, up-to-date technological knowledge and experience in video processing to ensure that Atmel’s customers receive a cost-effective solutions. We architect, design and verify high integration IPs and systems using Video IPs, ASIC, System-on-Chip (SoC), FPGA technologies and embedded operating systems such as Linux, RTAI and XENOMAI.”

Atmel’s AT91CAP Customizable Microcontroller
Atmel's AT91CAP is an ARM microcontroller-based system-on-chip with fast local memory, a wide range of industry-standard peripherals and interfaces, and a Metal Programmable (MP) Block that allows the designer to add custom logic. By combining the performance, density and low power consumption of the fixed portion of the device with the flexibility of the MP Block, CAP enables application-specific products to be developed in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of standard-cell ASICs, but at a unit price close to that of standard cell devices. CAP also offers superior performance, smaller form factor and lower power consumption at a unit price significantly lower than an MCU-plus-FPGA combination for the same functionality. CAP is fully supported with an emulation board, software development tools, operating systems and code modules to facilitate application software development.

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