[mjevans]

That Atmel chip sounds like quite a heck to work with... the DMA section alone. Also related, 'Improving RAM bandwidth' section.

The author's final conclusion about the chip... "Thanks for nothing, Atmel."

I wonder if there are better options available today, but I fear anything useful might involve BGA or similar surface mount techniques.

[dmitrygr]

> I wonder if there are better options available today

Rp2350. That’s what I’m basing my next revision of this project on

[mjevans]

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2350/

0.5MB RAM and 4MB of flash might not sound like a lot, but that's plenty for many micro computer system environments.

[dmitrygr]

It supports QSPI PSRAM natively. So it’ll be a lot faster than doing in manually on ATSAMD21

[mmoskal]

Also M33 vs M0 and higher clock - should be 2-3x faster. And maybe you can do something with the second core.

Im super impressed you got this to work! The memories of the SAMD clocks... Shudders.

[mjevans]

I found an older HN thread from about a month ago while trying to learn more about the RP2350

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41214307

It seems that it didn't get much coverage at the time.