Specially designed for lamp ballast applications, the high-performance, low-power Atmel 8-bit AVR RISC-based microcontroller combines 16KB ISP flash memory with read-while-write capabilities, 512B EEPROM, 1024B SRAM, 53 general purpose I/O lines, 32 general purpose working registers, three power stage controllers, two flexible timer/counters with compare modes and PWM, 1 USART with DALI mode, an 11-channel 10-bit A/D converter with two differential input stage with programmable gain, a 10-bit D/A converter, programmable watchdog timer with internal oscillator, a SPI serial port, debugWire for on-chip debugging, and four software selectable power saving modes. The device operates between 2.7-5.5 volts.

By executing powerful instructions in a single clock cycle, the device achieves throughputs approaching 1 MIPS per MHz, balancing power consumption and processing speed.