Microchip ARM Cortex-M0+
Microchip's (formerly Atmel) range of ARM®Cortex®-M0+ microcontrollers deliver up to 48MHz of high performance processing and plenty of memory, making them idea for a range of applications where connectivity or interfacing plays an important role. The SAMD family is ideal for connectivity applications, with its high-speed USB interface, and supports human-machine interfaces via its QTouch® capacitive touch capability. The SAMD21 device also features on the popular Arduino M0 Pro development board. The SAMC provides a similar feature-set, adding a CAN-FD interface on some devices.
The SAMDA family also features the CAN-FD and LIN interfaces. This family of AEC-Q100 Grade 2 devices are targeted at automotive applications. When requiring support for segmented LCD displays at low-power, the SAML family offers suitable options.
Both debug and instrumented trace support are provided on these devices via ARM's CoreSight™ technology, utilizing the Serial Wire Debug (SWD) interface for pure debugging and the Serial Wire Output (SWO) single-pin interface for basic trace output. For more advanced program trace, the device also feature the Micro Trace Buffer (MTB) which provides some limited trace support, and is especially useful for code coverage measurements together with testIDEA.
Furthermore, the following CoreSight™ features are supported by this family:
| CoreSight™ Feature | Description | SAMD | SAMDA | SAMC | SAML | iC5000 | iC5700 |
| FPB (Flash Patch Breakpoint) | Implements hardware breakpoints | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| DWT (Data Watchpoint and Trace) | Hardware comparators for program counter and data watchpoints |
✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| ITM (Instrumentation Trace Macrocell) | Block supports printf style debugging, trace of RTOS events and output of diagnostic system information. |
✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| SWO (Serial Wire Output) | Single-pin output for ITM trace messages | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| TPIU (Trace Port Interface Unit) | Bridge between on-chip trace data and either SWO or ETM interfaces. |
✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| MTB (Micro Trace Buffer) | Reserves SRAM to store trace information on-chip | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| SWD (Serial Wire Debug) | Two-wire CoreSight™ interface used for debugging and debug configuration. |
✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
If you are looking to improve code quality, our integrated testing tool testIDEA can also utilize the debug interface to test your code on the target microcontroller as well, even providing code coverage for unit tests by using the CoreSight™ MTB feature.