ATmega48PA/88PA/168PA/328P
When switching between prescaler settings, the System Clock Prescaler ensures that no
glitches occurs in the clock system. It also ensures that no intermediate frequency is higher than
neither the clock frequency corresponding to the previous setting, nor the clock frequency corre-
sponding to the new setting. The ripple counter that implements the prescaler runs at the
frequency of the undivided clock, which may be faster than the CPU's clock frequency. Hence, it
is not possible to determine the state of the prescaler - even if it were readable, and the exact
time it takes to switch from one clock division to the other cannot be exactly predicted. From the
time the CLKPS values are written, it takes between T1 + T2 and T1 + 2 * T2 before the new
clock frequency is active. In this interval, 2 active clock edges are produced. Here, T1 is the pre-
vious clock period, and T2 is the period corresponding to the new prescaler setting.
To avoid unintentional changes of clock frequency, a special write procedure must befollowed to
change the CLKPS bits:
1. Write the Clock Prescaler Change Enable (CLKPCE) bit to one and all other bitsin
CLKPR to zero.
2. Within four cycles, write the desired value to CLKPS while writing a zero to CLKPCE.
Interrupts must be disabled when changing prescaler setting to make sure the write procedure is
not interrupted.
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8161D–AVR–10/09
ATMEL [ ATMEL ]
