AVR XMEGA Special Considerations

OCD and clocking

When the MCU enters stopped mode, the OCD clock is used as MCU clock. The OCD clock is either the JTAG TCK if the JTAG interface is being used, or the PDI_CLK if the PDI interface is being used.

I/O modules in stopped mode

In contrast to earlier Atmel megaAVR devices, in XMEGA the I/O modules are stopped in stop mode. This means that USART transmissions will be interrupted, timers (and PWM) will be stopped.

Hardware breakpoints

There are four hardware breakpoint comparators - two address comparators and two value comparators. They have certain restrictions:

Here are the different combinations that can be set:

Atmel Studio will tell you if the breakpoint can't be set, and why. Data breakpoints have priority over program breakpoints, if software breakpoints are available.

External reset and PDI physical

The PDI physical interface uses the reset line as clock. While debugging, the reset pullup should be 10k or more or be removed. Any reset capacitors should be removed. Other external reset sources should be disconnected.

Debugging with sleep for ATxmegaA1 rev H and earlier

A bug existed on early versions of ATxmegaA1 devices that prevented the OCD from being enabled while the device was in certain sleep modes. There are two workarounds to re-enable OCD:

The sleep modes that trigger this bug are: