The board features a 32-bit 300 MHz SAM E70 Arm Cortex-M7 based microcontroller for quicker debug iterations. The debugger system executes code, like an actual device, because it uses the target device’s built-in emulation circuitry, instead of a special debugger chip.
All available features of the device are accessible interactively and can be set and modified by the MPLAB X IDE interface.
Additionally, the board matches the silicon clocking speed of the target device, allowing engineers to run programs at the device’s maximum speed.
The board connects to a computer via high-speed USB 2.0 interface and can be connected to the target device through an 8-pin single in-line (SIL) header. The connector uses two device input/output (I/O) pins and the reset line to implement in-circuit debugging and In-Circuit Serial Programming (ICSP) capability.
Along with its support for a wide target voltage range of 1.20V to 5.5V, the MPLAB Snap supports advanced interfaces such as 4-wire JTAG and Serial Wire Debug with streaming data gateway. It is also backward compatible for demo boards, headers and target systems using 2-wire JTAG and ICSP.