ARDINO Due:

The Arduino Due is first ARM-based development microcontroller board. This board is based on a powerful 32bit Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller made programmable through the familiar Arduino IDE. It improves all the standard Arduino functionalities and adds many new features keeping the language as compatible as possible so that many programs will be migrated in a matter of minutes! Unlike other Arduino boards, the Arduino Due board runs at 3.3V. The maximum voltage that the I/O pins can tolerate is 3.3V. Providing higher voltages, like 5V to an I/O pin could damage the board. The board contains everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started. The Due is compatible with all Arduino shields that work at 3.3V and are compliant with the 1.0 Arduino pinout.

The Arduino Due offers 54 digital input/output pins (of which 12 can be used as PWM outputs with selectable resolution), 12 analog inputs with 12 bits of resolution, a 84 MHz clock (crystal oscillator), a USB-OTG capable connection, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), 2 DAC (digital to analog), 2 TWI, a power jack, an ICSP header, an SPI header, a JTAG header, a reset button and an erase button. There are also some cool features like Audio, DMA, DACs, an experimental multi-tasking library and more. The board has two micro USB connectors--one for debugging purposes and a second one capable of acting as a USB host, allowing external USB peripherals such as mouse, keyboards, smartphones, etc. to be connected to the Arduino Due.

The maximum length and width of the Arduino Due PCB are 4 and 2.1 inches respectively, with the USB connectors and power jack extending beyond the former dimension. Three screw holes allow the board to be attached to a surface or case. Note that the distance between digital pins 7 and 8 is 160 mil (0.16"), not an even multiple of the 100 mil spacing of the other pins. The Arduino Due is designed to be compatible with most shields designed for the Uno, Diecimila or Duemilanove. Digital pins 0 to 13 (and the adjacent AREF and GND pins), analog inputs 0 to 5, the power header, and "ICSP" (SPI) header are all in equivalent locations. Further the main UART (serial port) is located on the same pins (0 and 1). Please note that I2C is not located on the same pins on the Due (20 and 21) as the Duemilanove / Diecimila (analog inputs 4 and 5).

ARM Core Benefits:

1. 32-bit core allows operations on 4 bytes wide data within a single CPU clock
2. CPU Clock at 84Mhz
3. 96KB of SRAM
4. 512KB of Flash memory for code
5. DMA controller can relieve the CPU from doing memory intensive tasks

Features:

Microcontroller:                                            AT91SAM3X8E
Operating Voltage:                                        3.3V
Input Voltage (recommended):                     7-12V
Input Voltage (limits):                                   6-20V
Digital I/O Pins:                                            54 (of which 12 provide PWM output)
Analog Input Pins                                        12
Analog Outputs Pins                                    2 (DAC)
Total DC Output Current on all I/O lines     130 mA
DC Current for 3.3V Pin                              800 mA
DC Current for 5V Pin                                 800 mA
Flash Memory                                              512 KB all available for the user applications
SRAM                                                          96 KB (two banks: 64KB and 32KB)
Clock Speed                                                 84 MHz

Important links:

EAGLE files: arduino-Due-reference-design.zip
Schematic: arduino-Due-schematic.pdf
Pin Mapping: SAM3X Pin Mapping page
Product page: Arduino-Due-product page.
Arduino IDE: Arduino-IDE-V1.5-beta-download.
Getting started: Getting started page.

Not sure which Arduino or Arduino-compatible board is right for you? Check out our Arduino Buying Guide!