Magnetovore

Introducing the Magnetovore, StackFoundry’s latest creation. The Magnetovore is a small development board featuring:

  1. An Atmel AVR xMEGA 128A1, running at up to 32MHz
  2. A USB to serial adapter, using the venerable FTDI FT232R chip.
  3. Up to 4Mbit (512KiB) of either standard SRAM, or 1-4MBit of MRAM, directly mapped into the processor’s address space.
  4. All of the pins not in use for the external bus interface broken out on 0.1 inch pin headers (6 ports of 8 bits each are available, 3 ports are used for the external memory bus)
  5. Arduino-compatible 0.1 inch pin headers, allowing you to plug in many pre-existing shields from any 3.3V compatible Arduino
  6. All of the normal support parts, including a 3.3V linear regulator, power connectors, USB-B connector, etc

The most exciting part of this board is the MRAM option, using the 8-bit wide parallel MRAM chips made by EverSpin Technologies. MRAM is a non-volatile memory, which retains its state even without power. MRAM has unlimited write endurance (unlike Flash, which can only be written 100,000 times on average), has an access time of 35 nanoseconds (faster than most Flash, even at reading), and is bit-changeable (no need for a separate erase step as in Flash). As the MRAM is directly addressable by the AVR xMEGA, it is completely transparent to the code running on the processor – you simply write to a memory location located in the external address space, and your data is automatically persisted.

For those that don’t want the non-volatile MRAM, a board with 512KB of RAM is also available at a reduced cost.

There is no firm pricing yet, but expect approximately $50-60 for a board with 128KB of MRAM, less for SRAM.

As you can see in the picture above, we have beta boards in stock and are verifying our hardware design, fixing issues, and starting procurement for production. No pre-orders are accepted just yet, but feel free to subscribe to this blog for further updates and when orders will be accepted in the store.

(And yes, the board pictured has SRAM installed ;) )