Atmel Chip for Embedded Linux Devices

Lee writes, "ATMEL launches single-chip Internet enabler fueling low-cost Internet phone (VoIP), e-mail and MP3 appliances. A complete single-chip solution IC, featuring Embedded Linux and application software delivering true telephone sound quality." We've been saying for some time that embedded boxes are one of the strongest futures for that whole Linux thing. I'm still waiting to see one of these little Linux boxes make it to the market ...

telephony

[Anonymous Coward]

For us cheap people who have to run a software solution currently, what telephone applications do we have under Linux currently? How well do they work? Do they work with a dialup? Encryption? Secure?

MP3 ... telephone sound quality

[crow]

Uhm, this would make a really lame MP3 player if the sound quality is "telephone quality." Telephones have really lousy sound quality. That might be fine for 8Kbps mono MP3 files, but for anything sane, you'll need much better.

Where's the faster connections?

[mind21_98]

For even telephone-quality calls to go through IP *extremely* fast connections are needed at both ends of the call. Right now most of you are running 56k modems (or cable/DSL if you're lucky).

At least DSL is needed in order to provide calls over IP. Dialpad.com has made some progress (I use it on my 56k and can hear the other side fine) but this hardware solution is needed in every home using VoIP.

Re:Does it run OS/2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly troll. I work in manufacturing and you reminded me of an OS/2 controlled line we have. With the push for NT on everything, I almost forgot about the OS/2 Plant Works on the old IBM Industrial computer. Its slow as molassas, but for the four years we had it, its never crashed once. Its made it through power failures, ripped cables from forklifts, misapplied solvents eating the touch screen, and the constant poking by bored operators, but it always runs. Why the scrap producing, property damage inducing NT is being picked over OS/2, I'll never know.

That was four years ago. If a closed source solution is picked today, that will be a mystery to ponder four years from now. Nothing quite like the networking stopping, because the time license expired at midnight on a weekend and $1,000,000 worth of product a day stops. That's when the vendors and sales droids got you by the balls.

"That whole linux thing" ???

[Roofus]

You make it sound like it's some kind of degenerate fad..."whole linux thing" ????
BAH!!

On another random note, that Tux icon is pretty sweet!

No faster connections, better protocol.

[mysty]

Internet is fast enough. You just don't have
garanteed bandwith. I think in IP version 6 this
is solved. You can claim an amount of bandwith
with that. 3 KB/s should be enough for telephone.
-------------------------------------- ------------------
UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...

Re:Where's the faster connections?

[SuuSt]

I think a bigger concern is what is this going to do to the existing internet infrastructure. If we all start abandoning the existing phone lines and start using up our big fat DSL bandwidth to make phone calls, I don't think the net could handle that. I'll admit I don't know the numbers but lets say an internet phone call uses 500Kbps and every person in America averages 2 phone calls a day, thats 350,000 gigabits of necessary bandwidth just to handle the phone calls (and thats assuming they're polite enough to spread those phone calls out evenly!), not to mention the movies and music on demand we'll all be having. I realize that all of that is a long way off, but its not that long.

Re:Slashdotted already...

[Anonymous Coward]

ATMEL LAUNCHES SINGLE-CHIP INTERNET ENABLER FUELING LOW-COST INTERNET PHONE (VoIP), E-MAIL AND MP3 APPLIANCES

A Complete Single-Chip Solution IC, featuring Embedded Linux and Application Software delivering True Telephone Sound Quality

SAN JOSE, CA, 18th February 2000.... Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) in partnership with Aplio Inc. today announced the launch of its AT75C310 Smart Internet Appliance Processor IC. The AT75C310, featuring an Embedded Linux operating system, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and Audio application software, together with an application development platform, provides a total system solution empowering manufacturers to launch Internet Phones, E-mail and MP3 Appliances at low cost with a short time to market. The AT75C310 reduces development risk, based on a proven and scalable technology. The VoIP application software delivers true telephone sound quality featuring PacketPlusTM Technology. The AT75C310 is the first in a family of Atmel products for Internet-enabled voice and multimedia applications. These products are aimed at the corporate and individual end user markets. They strengthen Atmel's position as a supplier of single-chip solutions in the fast-growing market for Internet and other digital communications appliances.

The Internet Appliance Market
Internet appliances are dedicated devices, intuitive to use, enabling the user to access the Internet at the push of a button for numerous activities, including free long distance telephony (VoIP), e-mail and downloading MP3 music and audio files. They connect to the Internet through an existing phone line, without requiring a PC or additional equipment. While there were less than one million non-PC Internet devices sold in 1998, IDC predicts that the worldwide market of Information Appliances will rise to over 150 million units in 2002. A study from Killen & Associates predicts that global voice/Internet service revenues will top $63 billion by the year 2002. The hottest Internet Appliances fueled by the AT75C310 are:

Internet Phones
These phones enable you to call anywhere in the world at the cost of a local call, at the push of a button. They connect to a regular phone line and deliver true telephone sound quality, as good as that of a conventional telephone. The benefits to both individuals and corporations are enormous.

E-mail Phones
These phones encapsulate an E-mail address; they offer e-mail communication to non-PC users. A user has only to press a button to read his or her e-mails and reply with a voice message.

MP3 Players
These devices enable users to download MP3 music and audio files from the Web and exchange them by e- mail. The service is available at the push of a button, from wherever the device can be connected to a phone line.

Key Benefits
The AT75C310 is a low-cost single-chip solution simultaneously handling voice processing, telephony and VoIP protocol stack tasks. This programmable standard product assures fast time to market. The Embedded Linux OS brings a royalty-free open system ready for fast evolution, benefiting from all the innovations brought by the worldwide Linux community.

The AT75C310 has been developed in collaboration with Aplio Inc., which supplies the software. The operating system is a customized port of the Linux kernel.The Linux layer supports a palette of DSP functions including modules for a V34 modem, G723.1 and G729A voice codecs, silence compression and echo cancellation. A rich application software toolkit includes modules for popular communication protocols (such as H323, SIP, MGCP, POP/SMTP), connection processes and full featured VoIP and Audio software suites, including PacketPlusTM Technology which delivers true telephone sound quality. This solution reduces development risk, based on Aplio's proven and scalable Internet Telephony Technology, already in use by more than 100,000 customers in over 50 countries.

The AT75C310 single-chip architecture is the latest example of Atmel's system level integration capability. Based on an embedded ARM7TDMI? core for system control and protocol stack processing, it incorporates two OakDSPCores? for line- side and caller-side signal processing. All three processors deliver unmatched performance for low power consumption. Each DSP core accesses 88k bytes of on-chip program and data RAM. An advanced interrupt controller and peripheral data controller ensure that the system-on-chip's real- time processing capabilities are more than adequate for the application. An SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) is provided for downloading the DSP program RAM, and a two-channel USART provides flexible serial communications. Two sets of parallel I/O lines reduce the device pin count.

The industry-standard ARM7TDMI and OakDSPCores are supported by a comprehensive range of state-of- the-art development tools.

The AT75C310 is supplied in a 160-lead PQFP package. Prices are $17 for 100K units. Aplio/Atmel Partnership

Atmel and Aplio have established a long-term partnership for the development of Internet Appliances. Atmel contributes its state-of-the-art silicon technology, wealth of design experience, high-volume manufacturing capacity and worldwide marketing and sales network. Aplio brings its expertise in advanced Internet communications systems, its detailed market knowledge and its proven software base. "This partnership creates the synergy to give customers a total system solution, based around a single IC including all the software layers required for rapid, risk-free implementation," said Eric Amouyal, Atmel's marketing manager for telecom products.

Aplio and Atmel have agreed to develop together the next generation of Smart Internet Appliance Processor products after the AT75C310. These new products will provide the manufacturers of Internet Appliances with single-chip solutions that fit their customers' expectations.

Atmel Corporation

Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose, California with manufacturing facilities in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Nantes and Rousset, France and Heilbronn, Germany. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets on a worldwide basis advanced logic, mixed-signal, non-volatile memory, and RF semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system level integration semiconductor solutions using advanced CMOS, BiCMOS, BiPolar and SiGe process technologies.

Atmel product and financial information may be obtained from its Fax-on-Demand service. In North America call 1-800-292-8635 or Internationally, call 1-408-441-0732. Requests may be made via e-mail to [e-mail] or by visiting Atmel's web site at www.atmel.com.

Aplio Inc.

Aplio is a leading provider of turnkey technologies for Internet appliances. Aplio's patented technology including Chips, Hardware reference designs and Software (including PacketPlus(TM) Technology delivering VoIP calls as good as regular phone calls), enables manufacturers of Internet Appliances to easily and at minimal cost, integrate Internet features like Voice over IP, E-mail and MP3 into their devices.

Aplio technology reduces design risks and enables easy product evolutions (featuring Embedded Linux).

Located in San Mateo, Calif., Aplio, Inc. has a worldwide presence with offices in the United States, Europe and Israel. The privately held company is backed by major venture capitalists. For more information about Aplio please visit our web site at http://www.aplio.com

Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the other day, Denis Chertykov [overta.ru] announced that his port of GCC to Atmel's AVR and ATMega chips was going to be included in the next official release of GCC (2.96.2, I think). [Congratulations, Denis!]

While I'm a bit curious about their new chip, I'm also kinda cautious. Why? Because this is a big jump for the company.

Atmel, in the past, has focused more on the *really* embedded market-- simple, inexpensive chips (very much like the 8051) to be used for applications such as keyboard controllers. Or for cheap calculators.

But, really, if this thing is going to be capable of running a "real" Linux, then it's definitely not a *simple* piece of hardware. You can't use an AT90S8515 (sorta like an 8051, but based on a RISC-like architecture) to perform VoIP. Or to do e-mail. It has to have at least enough complexity to handle the minimal features of the Linux kernel-- multitasking, memory management, etc. That means that it's going to be anything *but* simple. It's going to be complex (maybe not as complex as a 386 or a Motorala 68K, but complex nonetheless). And that's different from anything Atmel has done recently.

I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just wondering what direction this will take the company in. It's something different from what they normally do-- will they stick with it?

What about TiVo?

[hubie]

Isn't TiVo [tivo.com] an embedded Linux box that has made it to the market?

Re:Embedded Linux - a Marketing perspective.

[atroup]

Rock solid guarantees? Good lord that was funny, thanks for the laugh pal I am gonna have to go grab a beer that was so funny. Windows CE bites.....

Re:No faster connections, better protocol.

[chris.barton]

Poor old fax machine won't work tho'
They have problems running over compressed voice lines at the best of times...

Linux DVD/Web/MP3/Work/Game pad.

[Forge]

Linux on these devices will start hitting the street very soon weather you like it or not. Coolness factor isn't enough they have to be cheap enough to make and functional enough to use.

Palm Pilot already killed the whole novelty portable gadget thing two years ago. These days people want to get real work done. Now if we could get DeCSS on a device that was all edge to edge touch screen and just barely wide enough to include a DVD drive but only 1/2" thick.

Ohh, wait DeCSS was having a "chilling effect" on innovations in the DVD marketplace. Or could it be the lawsuits that are doing it ?

Here is a suggestion. All those companies who could use this code to cut costs on both CSS licensing and chipsets ( No CSS hardware decoder needed ) should get together and sponsor the defense and any possible counter attack ( The MPAA can be sued on this ). In the mean time they could form something like the Trillion project to hammer out the code which should then be 1.0 quality by the time the case ends.

Imagine these things hitting the street in Christmas seconds after the temporary injunction has been lifted ?

Re:Where's the faster connections?

[Emil Brink]

500 kbps? Um, like, hello? A single ISDN channel is 64 kbps. ISDN was designed to carry telephony as one of its major aplications, and they still "settled" for 64 kbps. Since then, we've seen the rise of GSM, which transports telephone calls in something like 9.6 kbps. So, without actually beeing anything near a true telecom geek, I think I can say that 500 kbps for a telephone conversation is a bit too much... Corrections welcome, of course.

Re:Where's the faster connections?

[ruud]

For even telephone-quality calls to go through IP *extremely* fast connections are needed at both ends of the call.

Eh? ISDN quality voice uses 64 kbps (56 kbps in the US) of bandwidth. Since we are talking about voice calls only (data calls over VoIP are pointless), they can be compressed quite well, so they can easily be handled on a slow link.

What kind of "extreme" bandwidth were you talking about?
--

Re:No faster connections, better protocol.

[theophilus]

Better connections are needed...Bandwidth isn't the Big factor, latency is. Its OK to buffer a realaudio stream for 15 seconds because it is only 1 way, but "telephone quality" should have an imperceptible delay. This is why ATM has a 125us frame. compare that to your last quake ping.

Re:Where's the faster connections?

[CastleBravo]

Uh, dude. G.792a (CS-ACELP) only requires 8Kbps of bandwidth and 17 MIPS.

So, back to the math:

300,000,000 people calling at once = 2.4Gbps

Re:Funny...

[Anonymous Coward]

The part is based around the ARM7 core, as already used in their AT91 series of controllers. This is not such a new thing for ATMEL.

Netsilicon article

[Tekmage]

Here's another similar article: Netsilicon makes embedded Linux production-ready for networked devices [semibiznews.com]

Re:No faster connections, better protocol.

[tallpaul]

A fax connection is data anyway. Making a fax connection over an analog (voice) phone line was non-optimal in the first place. Why make it more complicated by doing data (fax) over voice (VoIP) over data (IP)? That's just plain ridiculous.

There are already fax over IP solutions available which work just fine. It would be stupid to do anything else.

Re:Where's the faster connections?

[SuuSt]

I'll trust your numbers on that (actually I forgott about ISDN being intended to carry voice). I was basing that on the face that I never get less than 300 Kbps off my shared T1 and when I use Dailpad.com it STILL sounds cruddy...

Re:No faster connections, better protocol.

[Zurk]

dont forget that ATM transfers a *max* of 48 BYTES of data per packet while IP packets can be as large as 64KBYTES. smaller packets=lower latency. and anyway, ATM was build for this sort of application with QoS stuff designed into it from the start.

Re:telephony

[gherlein]

There are several VoIP solutions out now. The most useful one is part of the OpenH323 Project. [openh323.org] There are several applications in the package: the basic test app called Voxilla, and the more interesting app called OpenPhone. The latter is the "flagship" application of the OpenPhone Project. [openphone.org]

These applications run on linux (and Win32) and work very well, even over dialup connections. If you use hardware to do the audio compression you can use a normal phone and get MUCH better performance. Disclaimer: my company, Quicknet Technologies, Inc. [quicknet.net] makes this kind of hardware. We even have open source drivers, and are in the kernel as of 2.2.14! We're hiring too!

Internet Telephony is the next big thing - and linux will be a major platform for it.

Not True! It works over dialup!

[gherlein]

You do NOT need ultra-fast connections to do Internet Telephony. If you use a software only solution (using your sound card) you can compress with GSM and take the 64kbps audio stream (one way, 8khz samples at 8 bits each) and get it down to about 9kbps or so. You add latency due to the time it takes to do the compression. If you have a hardware compression device (such as what my company makes) then you can use better (and more standard) compressions like G.723.1, or G.729a. These can get down very low (5.3kbps for G.732.1). And since it's done in hardware, you get very little increase in latency. The most important thing is that you get to use the compression codec with the license paid for by the hardware vendor. Thus, open source projects can use this technology without issue regarding the intellectual property and royalties regarding the advanced compression codecs. And you can plug a real phone (such as a cordless) into your PC and it acts like a phone because it is a phone!

Remember - that's one way! You need to add the reverse direction, and then add the packet overhead of RTP (real time protocol) and UDP, plus the control signals. You can do great IP calls and use about 16kbps or less. I know. I do it all the time!

Our products (PCI/ISA/PCMCIA) allow you to connect a normal phone to your PC (and provide dial tone, DTMF, ringing, etc) and provide the compression codecs. We have open source linux drivers, and are in the kernel as of 2.2.14. For more information, write me or see our web site: Quicknet Technologies, Inc. [quicknet.net]

Check out the OpenH323 Project [openh323.org] and the OpenPhone Project [openphone.org] for more information.

Re:What about TiVo?

[AntiNorm]

http://www.tivo.com/linux/ [tivo.com]
Sure is.

=================================

Re:No faster connections, better protocol.

[Doco]

As you said - speed isn't as much of an issue as latency.

A nit to pick though is that ATM is *not* based on a 125uSec frame. ATM by itself does not have a frame rate. An ATM cell with a (common) payload of 40 bytes of voice traffic will have a packetization delay of 5 mSec. That's 1 byte per 125uSec as in 8000 bytes/sec or 64000 bits/sec. Yes, there are 48 bytes of payload per ATM cell - but the AAL layer can take one or more bytes, and then you also have some systems that just don't fully fill the cells (like voice-over-ATM) to reduce latency. To get bigger packets you have more delay.

You also have delay from the fact that once you have a packet you need to send it over the line. A 60 byte packet over a 56k modem line takes about 8.5 mSec to transmit. You add up a few more of these serialization delays and you have a BUNCH of latency. Not tolerable for a normal phone call.

Re:What about TiVo?

[Just H.]

Dude, TiVo ROX!

This is the cooles Linux appliance I've used. Now Only if it had an Enthernet port.

Re:Yes and no.

[nrc]

Tivo isn't ~$1000. 30 hour units can be had for $599 and will very soon be down to $399. The linux kernel is pretty small when it's not built with everything but the kitchen sink. Beyond that it doesn't require any more resources than any other embedded OS to get it's job done.

Re:Funny...

[philzaw]

It's going to be complex (maybe not as complex as a 386 or a Motorala 68K, but complex nonetheless). And that's different from anything Atmel has done recently.

Well, in article it is written, that this thing is based on ARM. Just like that from Netsilicon.

It is not first ARM-based CPU from Atmel, they are making them for quite a long time.

For those of you, who don't know ARM, it's very nice 32 bit RISC CPU, with built in MMU. It has 16 working registers, and some of them are "swappable" when entering different CPU modes (Supervisor, Fast interrupt handling etc).

In ARM design there is "internal" bus, called AMBA, and it is quite easy for chip manufacturer to extend it's functionality.

For example netsilicon has built in FastEthernet, serials, parallel port...

GCC has support for ARM cpu's too. All Newtons were based on them :)

Possible Investment?

[MicroBerto]

I'm very seriously thinking about investing some good money in this company (well, I'm 18 and don't have that much money, but a good amount for someone of my status)... The stock price is at the high of its life, but that hasn't stopped me before, and whenever I have a good feeling about something like this, it does great.

Kinda like when i bought netopia at 6, 100 shares. today netopia is at 87. 1450% increase isn't too shabby :) I bought it when I had just heard about DSL and thought it was the future. I was pretty right... and embedded linux systems should be the future as well.

also bought amd at 17, now at 42, its been up to 45 or higher very recently. AMD has much growth as well to come, especially if Intel keeps screwing up!

Bought a company called aware at 10, just because my uncle opened my account with 100 bux, so i bought 10 shares. It's a cablemodem/dslmodem company. Shortly it rose to 80!

I don't buy stock because of the stupid numbers, I buy it becuase the future of the company looks promising. There have been others. I think that this technology is VERY promising, and from that standpoint, im' going to buy this stock.

Any other viewpoints? Thanks!

- Mike Roberto
-- [e-mail]
--- AOL IM: MicroBerto

Re:Funny...

[dne]

The ARM7TDMI core [arm.com], on which both the Atmel [atmel.com] AT91 series [atmel.com] and this new chip are based, does not include an MMU.

Where are the freakin' specs?

[QuantumG]

I've looked all over the ATMEL site and I can't find any specs on the AT75C310. ATMEL are usually really good, supplying pdf files that outline everything about the chip. $17 sounds like a great price but it really doesn't help me if I can't get any tech specs. Anyone?

here be the datasheet

[andrewmuck]

you can get the datasheet [aplio.com] from here [aplio.com]
in case it gets slashdotted here is some of the details:

The APLIO TRIO is a tri-processor chip including a 32-bit RISC CPU (ARM core) and two 16-bit fixed point DSP (OAK core) with 88K bytes of memory per DSP. It also includes all the peripheral interfaces (DRAM, Keyboard, etc.) allowing for very integrated and low cost PCB design.

here is the checklist of whats in it:

• 2x16 bits fixed-point DSP cores (2x40Mips)
• Programmable chip selects
• Interrupt controller
• Three Timers
• Watchdog Timer
• Integrated fast RAM for two DSPs (2x88K bytes)
• Two UARTs with FIFO
• SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface)
• External DRAM controller
• Input/Output pins
• Full JTAG debbuging
• Flash EPROM interface
• Dual Codec Interface
• Compatible with all existing Aplio Software modules

it seems to run at either 80Mhz or 96Mhz, could be it needs both clock speeds.
Now to get some samples....

cya, Andrew...

Check out Aplio.com

[Bob_T_Bold]

Check out http://www.aplio.com. They use the device, and were crucial in its development. Interesting application, but an expensive solution for now. Robert

Re:Dream on!

[scatterbrained]

If you read the whole press release in addition to the ARM core there are also two (2) Oak DSP cores in the device, which should give it plenty of DSP horsepower...