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Getting Started With Microprocessors (MPUs)

How It Works 

MPUs are a great option when you need more capabilities than a microcontroller provides, you need more external memory, or you want to use the free Linux® operating system.

Steps to get started with microprocessors

Step #1: Select a Hardware Evaluation Board

Start evaluating and prototyping by selecting a hardware evaluation board to use with your MPU.

SAM9 Family

Running at two or three times the speed of a microcontroller (MCU), SAM9 MPUs are versatile MPUs based on ARM926 cores. They support bare metal- and RTOS-based applications and larger software applications with their on-device Double Data Rate (DDR) memory interfaces for running Linux OS. 

SAMA5 Family

Running up to 600 MHz and based on Arm® Cortex®-A5 cores, SAMA5 MPUs provide high performance capability and support for a wide range of memories.

SAMA7 Family

SAMA7 MPUs are a step up from the SAMA5 family. Based on Arm Cortex-A7 cores, SAMA7 MPUs run up to 1 GHz and contain additional processing power with their integrated Floating-Point Units (FPUs).

Step #2: Select Software and Development Tools

We offer all the software and development tools that you need to quickly get started with your MPU-based design. We also support various design partners that can provide additional design help and resources to get your design to market faster. Find the software and development tools or you support you need by selecting one of the approaches to development listed below.

Linux-Based Development

For Linux-based development, check out our Linux site that centralizes information about the Linux kernel and open-source projects used by our MPUs and peripheral devices.

MPLAB® X IDE and MPLAB Harmony-Based Development

For MPLAB X IDE/Harmony-based development, see our software tools web page.

Learn About MPLAB Harmony

Third-Party Partners

Browse our third-party partners for additional resources.

Step #3: Access Tutorials, Examples and Graphics Solutions

We offer a variety of resources to support your design and development efforts. For MPLAB X IDE/Harmony development, refer to our introductory resource on MPLAB Harmony for MPUs and our chip support package. To develop sophisticated graphics, refer to our MPLAB Harmony Graphics Suite. For graphics development software under the Linux environment, take advantage of our Ensemble Graphics Toolkit (EGT).