16.6.2 External Multipurpose Crystal Oscillator (XOSC) Operation

The XOSC can operate in two different modes:

• External clock, with an external clock signal connected to the XIN pin
• Crystal oscillator, with an external 0.4-32MHz crystal

The XOSC can be used as a clock source for generic clock generators, as described in the GCLK – Generic Clock Controller.

At reset, the XOSC is disabled, and the XIN/XOUT pins can be used as General Purpose I/O (GPIO) pins or by other peripherals in the system. When XOSC is enabled, the operating mode determines the GPIO usage. When in crystal oscillator mode, the XIN and XOUT pins are controlled by the SYSCTRL, and GPIO functions are overridden on both pins. When in external clock mode, only the XIN pin will be overridden and controlled by the SYSCTRL, while the XOUT pin can still be used as a GPIO pin.

The XOSC is enabled by writing a one to the Enable bit in the External Multipurpose Crystal Oscillator Control register (XOSC.ENABLE). To enable the XOSC as a crystal oscillator, a one must be written to the XTAL Enable bit (XOSC.XTALEN). If XOSC.XTALEN is zero, external clock input will be enabled.

When in crystal oscillator mode (XOSC.XTALEN is one), the External Multipurpose Crystal Oscillator Gain (XOSC.GAIN) must be set to match the external crystal oscillator frequency. If the External Multipurpose Crystal Oscillator Automatic Amplitude Gain Control (XOSC.AMPGC) is one, the oscillator amplitude will be automatically adjusted, and in most cases result in a lower power consumption.

The XOSC will behave differently in different sleep modes based on the settings of XOSC.RUNSTDBY, XOSC.ONDEMAND and XOSC.ENABLE:

After a hard reset, or when waking up from a sleep mode where the XOSC was disabled, the XOSC will need a certain amount of time to stabilize on the correct frequency. This start-up time can be configured by changing the Oscillator Start-Up Time bit group (XOSC.STARTUP) in the External Multipurpose Crystal Oscillator Control register. During the start-up time, the oscillator output is masked to ensure that no unstable clock propagates to the digital logic. The External Multipurpose Crystal Oscillator Ready bit in the Power and Clock Status register (PCLKSR.XOSCRDY) is set when the user-selected start-up time is over. An interrupt is generated on a zero-to-one transition on PCLKSR.XOSCRDY if the External Multipurpose Crystal Oscillator Ready bit in the Interrupt Enable Set register (INTENSET.XOSCRDY) is set.