$79 Atmel ATSAMA5D3 Xplained Arduino Compatible, Open Source Hardware Board Powered by SAMA5D3 ARM Cortex-A5 Processor

A few days ago, at Embedded World 2014, Atmel has unveiled ATSAMA5D3 Xplained evaluation board based on SAMA5D36 ARM Cortex A5 micro-processor with 256 MB DDR2, 256 MB flash and numerous ports and expansion connectors, that targets industrial automation, networks, robotics, control panels and wearable applications. Atmel is one of the rare companies that provides support for the latest long term kernel (3.10) and mainline for their embedded solutions, and their latest board is fully open source hardware.

Let’s have a look at the board specifications:

• MPU – Atmel SAMA5D36 Cortex-A5 Microprocessor @ 536 MHz
• System Memory – 2GBit DDR2 (Micron)
• Storage – 2GBit Flash (Micron), SD/MMCPlus 8-bit Card slot, 1x Micro SD Card 4-bit slot footprint (meaning not soldered)
• Connectivity – 1x Ethernet 10/100/1000M, 1x Ethernet 10/100M
• USB –  1x micro USB Device connector, 2x USB Host connectors
• Debugging – 1x 6-lead 3V3-level serial port, 10-pin J-TAG connector
• Expansion – Arduino R3-compatible headers (6) and LCD connector
• Misc – 2x push buttons, reset and startup, 1x general purpose push button, 2x general purpose LEDs
• Power
  • Active Semi PMIC
  • Power measurement straps
  • USB powered
  • Supply input footprint (not soldered)

Beside the board, the kit also includes a Micro-AB to typeA USB cable, and a welcome letter…

The company provides a Linux distribution (Poky) based on either Linux 3.10 or mainline built with the Yocto Project (version 1.5.1), as well as headless Android support. You an also run bare metal C code if you don’t need an operating systems. You can find links to hardware and software development tools, technical documents including a user’s guide, SAMA5D3 datasheet, some application notes, and hardware files such as schematics, gerber, BoM…. on Element14. A detailed Linux wiki is available on Linux4SAM microsite.

SAMA5D3 Xplained board will ship in mid-March 2014  and sell for $79. You can register you interest @  www.element14.com/sama5d3, shipping with be handled by Farnell element14 in Europe, Newark element14 in North America and element14 in APAC. It can also be pre-order from Atmel e-Store. Beside Element14, you can also find more details on Atmel ATSAMA5D3-XPLD page.

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