Atmel Introduces a Family of AVR Microcontrollers for Automotive LIN Networking Applications

San Jose, California (ots/PRNewswire) -

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today the
availability of a new family of AVR(R) 8-bit microcontrollers for LIN
Automotive networking applications. The ATtiny167 is the first device
and is optimized to LIN slave applications. It will be qualified to
AECQ-100 grade 0 and sustain ambient temperatures of up to 150
degrees Celsius. Combined with a LIN transceiver such as ATA662x or
ATA666x it brings a complete solution for sensors in a gearbox,
exhaust gas system, pumps or turbo.

Many Automotive body electronic subsystems such as door locks,
window lift, wipers, lighting systems, sun and rain sensors are
connected via LIN networks. They request tiny LIN controllers with
Analog/Digital converters for sensors signal formatting and a 16-bit
PWM channel to control Half bridge drivers such as Atmel's ATA6831/32
or H bridge motors control such as Atmel's ATA6223.

The ATtiny167 includes a hardware LIN UART with automatic baud
rate synchronization in slave mode. A frame processing request of
only 2 interrupts, one for LIN identifier available and one for
transmit or receive completed. Thanks to the collaboration with
Mentor Graphics(R), a leading manufacturer of software tools and
software components for automotive networking, a complete hardware
and LIN software networking solution is available.

With integrated hardware routines, the code size for LIN is
reduced to about 1 Kbyte of Flash leaving about 15 Kbytes of Flash to
the user application. Automatic synchronization is performed on each
entering frame without calling for any CPU resources and Interrupt
generation is limited to the extreme minimum to not jeopardize the
real time capability of the application.

Mentor Graphics LIN Drivers - "One of the critical requirements
for using embedded processors in the automotive market is the
availability of an effective and well-supported LIN communication
stack," said Michel Passemard, Director of Automotive MCU Tactical
Marketing at Atmel.

As a founding member of the LIN consortium and with extensive
experience in developing embedded software for communication systems,
Mentor Graphics helps by gathering the requirements of OEMs with
respect to LIN and synthesize them into the LIN specification since
1999.

"We're happy to support Atmel's latest product with our latest
version of LTP based on the LIN2.1 standard," said Joachim
Langenwalter, Director of Mentor's Automotive Network Design business
unit. "Our efforts are focused on making the most efficient
implementation with respect to memory footprint and speed, while
implementing the standard and testing according to the latest
conformance tests." As a result our LIN implementation is
particularly well suited to support slave applications used in very
small microcontrollers."

Development Tools - Atmel's AVR Studio(R) and AVR JTAGICE mkII,
provide a multiplatform integrated development environment (IDE). The
STK(R)600 with STK600-SOIC add-on starter kit is available to start
development.

Availability and Pricing -

Samples for the ATtiny167 are available now. Packages are
available in a 20-pin SOIC, 20-Pin TSSOP and 32-pin QFN. The
ATtiny167 will be qualified at 125 degrees Celsius in all packages
and 150 degrees Celsius in QFN and TSSOP packages. It will be
available for volume production in December 2008.

Prices start at US$1.48 in 10,000 quantities for the 125 degrees
qualified version.

The ATtiny87 and ATtiny327, with 8 Kbytes and 32 Kbytes Flash,
respectively, will be introduced later in 4Q2008.

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of
microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory
and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's
broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is
able to provide the electronics industry with complete system
solutions focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications,
computing and automotive markets.

(C) 2008 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), logo
and combinations thereof, AVR(R) , STK(R) , AVR studio(R) and others,
are registered trademarks, or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its
subsidiaries. Mentor Graphics(R) is a registered trademark of Mentor
Graphics Corporation. Other terms and product names may be trademarks
of others.

Information:

ATtiny167 product information can be retrieved at:
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=4365

For further information on AVR Automotive microcontrollers, go
to: http://www.atmel.com/products/automcu/

For further information on Mentor, go to http://www.mentor.com/

Press Contacts:
Philippe Faure, Marketing Communications Director - Microcontrollers
Tel: +33-2-40-18-18-87, Email: philippe.faure@atmel.com
Helen Perlegos, Public RelationsTel: +1-408-487-2963, Email:
hperlegos@atmel.com

Web site: http://www.atmel.com

ots Originaltext: Atmel Corporation
Im Internet recherchierbar: http://www.presseportal.de

Contact:
Philippe Faure, Marketing Communications Director - Microcontrollers,
+33-2-40-18-18-87, philippe.faure@atmel.com, or Helen Perlegos,
Public Relations, +1-408-487-2963, hperlegos@atmel.com, both of Atmel
Corporation