Arduino Announces New Arduino Due Board
Calling all Arduino fans!
Ardunio today announced the Arduino Due, which promises increased performance and faster connectivity thanks to an 84MHz SAM3X8E processor from Atmel that's based on the 32 bit ARM Cortex M3 architecture. The company said the board aims to provide more creative options to users and is ideal for projects that require high computing power.
"The release of the 1.0 Arduino platform in 2011 represented a milestone for Open Source Hardware: after six years of development, Arduino is declared mature and stable," the company said in a release today. "Once this was achieved, the team applied itself to the new version of Arduino designed to provide more creative options to users."
The Arduino Due is priced at $49 and features 512 KB of flash memory, 12 analog inputs (ADC), high-resolution analog outputs (DAC), four high-speed serial communication ports, 70 input/output pins, 12 PWM channels, 2 I2C bus, 12 PWM channels, and an operating voltage of 3.3V.

(It is not that there is flash memory in the processor itself that it is ram.)
Usually there was rom and ram.
Now flash for longer term storage and ram for fast load and store of stuff.
In a mechatronic class I took we made a basketball game that rocked quickly if you were close to it, and stopped moving if you were far away. This was achieved by using an ultrasonic sensor to determine the distance the player was away from the hoop. Also, we added a scoreboard and counter to keep track of baskets made. All of this of done through a program loaded into an Arduino board.
Hope this helps paint a picture of what it is used for. It really is made for hobbiest. Serious to fun projects can made with them.
i wish they were 512 mb.
From their website:
The Due has a 32-bit ARM core that can outperform typical 8-bit microcontroller boards. The most significant differences are:
A 32-bit core, that allows operations on 4 bytes wide data within a single CPU clock. (for more information look int type page).
CPU Clock at 84Mhz.
96 KBytes of SRAM.
512 KBytes of Flash memory for code.
a DMA controller, that can relieve the CPU from doing memory intensive tasks.
Took all of 15 seconds Jane.... You really should have included this.
Extra's:
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