16.1 Clock Distribution

The SAM L21 clock system consists of:

• Clock sources, i.e. oscillators controlled by OSCCTRL and OSC32KCTRL
  • A clock source provides a time base that is used by other components, such as Generic Clock Generators. Example clock sources are the internal 16MHz oscillator (OSC16M), external crystal oscillator (XOSC) and the Digital Frequency Locked Loop (DFLL48M).

• Generic Clock Controller (GCLK), which generates, controls and distributes the asynchronous clock consisting of:
  • Generic Clock Generators: These are programmable prescalers that can use any of the system clock sources as a time base. The Generic Clock Generator 0 generates the clock signal GCLK_MAIN, which is used by the Power Manager and the Main Clock (MCLK) module, which in turn generates synchronous clocks.
  • Generic Clocks: These are clock signals generated by Generic Clock Generators and output by the Peripheral Channels, and serve as clocks for the peripherals of the system. Multiple instances of a peripheral will typically have a separate Generic Clock for each instance. Generic Clock 0 serves as the clock source for the DFLL48M clock input (when multiplying another clock source).

• Main Clock Controller (MCLK)
  • The MCLK generates and controls the synchronous clocks on the system. This includes the CPU, bus clocks (APB, AHB) as well as the synchronous (to the CPU) user interfaces of the peripherals. It contains clock masks that can turn on/off the user interface of a peripheral as well as prescalers for the CPU and bus clocks.

The next figure shows an example where SERCOM0 is clocked by the DFLL48M in open loop mode. The DFLL48M is enabled, the Generic Clock Generator 1 uses the DFLL48M as its clock source and feeds into Peripheral Channel 13. The Generic Clock , also called GCLK_SERCOM0_CORE, is connected to SERCOM0. The SERCOM0 interface, clocked by CLK_SERCOM0_APB, has been unmasked in the APBC Mask register in the MCLK.