Atmel SAM C21E / SAM C21G / SAM C21J
SMART ARM-Based Microcontroller
PRELIMINARY DATASHEET SUMMARY
Description
The Atmel® | SMART™ SAM C21 is a microcontroller series optimized for industrial automation,
appliances and other 5V applications using the 32-bit ARM® Cortex®-M0+ processor, and ranging
from 32- to 64-pins with up to 256KB Flash and 32KB of SRAM. The SAM C21 devices operate at
a maximum frequency of 48MHz and reach 2.46 Coremark/MHz. They are designed for simple
and intuitive migration with identical peripheral modules, hex compatible code, identical linear
address map and pin compatible migration paths between all devices in the product series. All
devices include intelligent and flexible peripherals, Atmel Event System for inter-peripheral
signaling, and support for capacitive touch button, slider and wheel user interfaces. SAM C21
devices are pin compatible to the SAM D family of general purpose microcontrollers.
The Atmel SAM C21 devices provide the following features: In-system programmable Flash,
twelve-channel direct memory access (DMA) controller, twelve channel Event System,
programmable interrupt controller, up to 52 programmable I/O pins, 32-bit real-time clock and
calendar, up to five 16-bit Timer/Counters (TC) and three Timer/Counters for Control (TCC),
where each TC can be configured to perform frequency and waveform generation, accurate
program execution timing or input capture with time and frequency measurement of digital
signals. The TCs can operate in 8- or 16-bit mode, selected TCs can be cascaded to form a 32-bit
TC, and three timer/counters have extended functions optimized for motor, lighting and other
control applications. Two TCC can operate in 24-bit mode, and the third TCC can operate in 16-
bit mode. The series provide two Controller Area Network (CAN) modules supported CAN 2.0A/B
and CAN-FD 1.0; up to six Serial Communication Modules (SERCOM) that each can be
configured to act as an USART, UART, SPI, I2C up to 3.4MHz, SMBus, PMBus, RS-485 and LIN
master/slave; two 12-bit, 1Msps ADCs with up to 12-channels each (20 unique channels total),
one 10-bit 300ksps DAC, four analog comparators with window mode, Peripheral Touch
Controller supporting up to 256 buttons, sliders, wheels and proximity sensing; programmable
Watchdog Timer, brown-out detector and power-on reset and two-pin Serial Wire Debug (SWD)
program and debug interface.
All devices have accurate and low-power external and internal oscillators. All oscillators can be
used as a source for the system clock. Different clock domains can be independently configured
to run at different frequencies, enabling power saving by running each peripheral at its optimal
clock frequency, and thus maintaining a high CPU frequency while reducing power consumption.
The SAM C21 devices have three software-selectable sleep modes, idle, standby and off. In idle
mode the CPU is stopped while all other functions can be kept running. In standby all clocks and
functions are stopped expect those selected to continue running. In this mode all RAMs and logic
contents are retained. The device supports SleepWalking. This feature allows the peripheral to
wake up from sleep based on predefined conditions, and thus allows some internal operation like
DMA transfer and/or the CPU to wake up only when needed, e.g. when a threshold is crossed or
a result is ready. The Event System supports synchronous and asynchronous events, allowing
peripherals to receive, react to and send events even in standby mode.
The Flash program memory can be reprogrammed in-system through the SWD interface. The
same interface can be used for non-intrusive on-chip debug of application code. A boot loader
running in the device can use any communication interface to download and upgrade the
application program in the Flash memory.
The Atmel SAM C21 devices are supported with a full suite of program and system development
tools, including C compilers, macro assemblers, program debugger/simulators, programmers and
evaluation kits.
Atmel-42365AS–SAM-C21_Summary–05/2015
SMART