Performance and power consumption has always been key elements of AVR’s development ever since the first AT90S1200 was released in 1997.

Today’s increasing use of battery and signal line powered applications supports this focus and the requirements for low power solutions are stronger than ever.

To meet the tough requirements to modern microcontrollers Atmel has now combined ten years of low power research and development into picoPower technology for AVR microcontrollers. PicoPower enables AVR to achieve the industry’s lowest power consumption with 650 nA with a RTC running and 100nA in Power Down sleep.

picoPower Technology incorporate a number of techniques for lower power consumption in sleep and active mode.

The key elements are:
- True 1.8V Supply Voltage
- Minimized Leakage Current
- Sleeping BOD
- Ultra Low Power 32 kHz Crystal Oscillator
- Digital Input Disable Registers
- Power Reduction Register
- Clock Gating
- Flash Sampling