18.6.9.1 Periodic Events

The RTC prescaler can generate events at periodic intervals, allowing flexible system tick creation. Any of the upper eight bits of the prescaler (bits 2 to 9) can be the source of an event. When one of the eight Periodic Event Output bits in the Event Control register (EVCTRL.PEREO[n=0..7]) is '1', an event is generated on the 0-to-1 transition of the related bit in the prescaler, resulting in a periodic event frequency of:

f_{P E R I O D I C} = \frac{f_{GCLK_RTC}}{2^{n + 3}}

f_{GCLK_RTC} is the frequency of the internal prescaler clock, GCLK_RTC, and n is the position of the EVCTRL.PEREOn bit. For example, PER0 will generate an event every eight CLK_RTC_OSC cycles, PER1 every 16 cycles, etc. This is shown in the figure below. Periodic events are independent of the prescaler setting used by the RTC counter, except if CTRL.PRESCALER is zero. Then, no periodic events will be generated.