Atmel debuts secure controller family
AT90SO family offers crypto accelerators for use in secure token, femtocell applications
Loring Wirbel, Contributing Editor -- EDN, November 13, 2009
Atmel Corp. is sampling a new family of microcontrollers based on the SecureAVR architecture melding 8/16-bit RISC with dedicated crypto accelerators. The AT90SO family can be configured with up to 288 Kbytes of ROM, 128 Kbytes of EEPROM, and 12 Kbytes of RAM. The cryptographic accelerators can handle AES, DES and Triple-DES, and RSA algorithms. The crypto cores are compatible with Common Criteria EAL4+ and FIPS 140-2 standards.
Atmel is aiming the controllers at a range of emerging smart object and secure object applications, such as femtocell base stations, smart meters, USB e-tokens, and gaming platforms. Interface options for the family include ISO7816, SPI, USB 2.0, I2C, GPIO. The controllers feature a secured real-time clock for secure time-stamping. The controllers are available in SOIC8 and QFN44 packages.
