Atmel believes Android is becoming an OS of choice with embedded developers, not only in handsets and tablets but in a variety of applications in vertical markets, including household appliances, industrial equipment monitors and medical devices.
It cites several benefits for embedded developers over traditional Linux distributions and considers it an "out-of-the-box" Linux solution, as it is a complete package built on top of the Linux kernel with libraries for audio and graphics, application framework, and browser and multimedia applications.
With its new ready-to-use BSP for SAM9 devices, Atmel claims designers can now run Android on one of its ARM9 processors to save overall system costs and hours of coding time on the Android platform.
Phil Burr, director of UI product marketing, Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division said the company is excited that the Atmel SAM9 class of devices will fully support the Android OS for consumer and industrial applications, adding it is working closely with Atmel to ensure embedded developers can quickly pull up its Inflexion UI tool to create rich UIs and get the most out of their hardware design using the drag-and-drop Inflexion UI tool.
The Atmel Android port is based on version 2.1 and supports a camera interface, hardware video decoding (for the SAM9M10 only), software decoding, Web browsing via an Ethernet cable or a WiFi SDIO dongle from Atmel partner H&D Wireless.