Atmel Launches Industry's Safest Battery Management Solution for Automotive and Industrial High-Cell-Count Li-Ion Battery Packs

San Jose, California (ots/PRNewswire) -

- Devices enable cost savings of up to 60 percent compared to
existing solutions

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) today announced the
availability of a new Li-Ion battery management chipset for
high-cell-count automotive and industrial applications such as
electrical/hybrid vehicles, e-bikes or uninterruptible power
supplies. Atmel is currently the only supplier to provide a complete
two-chip protection solution including all necessary functionalities
with the highest safety level.

The ATA6870/71 chipset requires less external components than
comparable solutions because it includes a hot plug-in capability,
six integrated AD converters with a cut-off frequency lower than 30
Hz, saving external filters, and a stackable microcontroller power
supply. With Atmel's cost-efficient 30-V CMOS technology, these
features allow cost savings of up to 60 percent, compared to existing
solutions.

The ATA6870 is the industry's first battery management IC to
include all functionalities required to control a high-cell-count
Li-Ion battery including six precise 12-bit AD converters for voltage
monitoring, cell balancing, cell temperature measuring, and unique
features such as stackable integrated power supply for a
microcontroller or hot plug-in capability.

"Battery safety and efficiency are key for industrial and
automotive battery applications," said Claus Mochel, Automotive
High-Voltage Marketing Manager for Atmel Corporation. "Atmel's new
ATA6870 and ATA6871 address these issues by offering a battery
management solution with an unsurpassed safety concept and advanced
parallel cell voltage measuring and balancing technique."

Since Li-Ion batteries are very sensitive against overcharging
and deep discharge, they may burn or explode. To prevent this, Atmel
provides a special safety strategy with its secondary protection
device, the ATA6871. This monitors the battery cells' voltage and
temperature, and prevents Li-Ion batteries from thermal runaway or
exploding. If either of these were to occur in a battery cell, it can
then be switched off by the emergency relays. With its implemented
self-test routines, which run without an external microcontroller or
software and its hardware-implemented monitoring thresholds, the
ATA6871 constitutes the highest available safety level for Li-Ion
battery monitoring. Proper operation is ensured even if the primary
device is damaged.

About Atmel's ATA6870 and ATA6871

Both the ATA6870 and the ATA6871 circuits monitor six-battery
cells and can be stacked up to 16 times. For the highest
communication robustness between the stacked ICs, the ICs feature
level shifters based on current sources. The ATA6870 also includes an
8-bit checksum monitor that helps further increase data communication
robustness.

The ATA6870 provides a dedicated AD converter for each battery
cell to be monitored. This enables simultaneous measurement voltage
of all cells within one battery string for precise state-of-charge
determination of Li-Ion battery cells.

The integrated power supply for the microcontroller can be
stacked the same way as the IC itself. Therefore, the current
required to supply the microcontroller can be taken from the top cell
and be fed back into the battery string's bottom cell. As a result,
the microcontroller's current consumption will not cause any cell
imbalance, helping designers save expensive high-voltage devices.

Availability, Pricing and Photo

Samples of the new ATA6870 and ATA6871 ICs are now available in
small QFN48/SSO28 packages. Pricing starts at USD $2.95 for the
ATA6870 and USD $1.31 for the ATA6871 at 10k-piece quantities. The
evaluation kits are also available now. This enables a quick start
with the ICs to allow prototyping and testing of new battery designs
immediately. For the ATA6870, Atmel offers additional software for
PCs and laptops with a graphical user interface to control and
optimize high-cell-count battery stacks.

To download a high-resolution photo of the ATA6870/71 device,
please click the following link: http://www.atmel.com/images/homepage
_new/press/Li-Ion_Battery_ICs_ATA6870-71.jpg

Information:

Product information on Atmel's Li-Ion battery management ICs
ATA6870 and ATA6871 are available at:
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=4641
(ATA6870)
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=4642
(ATA6871)

Footnote
AD = Analog Digital
CMOS = Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
Li Ion = Lithium Ion
NiMH = Nickel Metal Hydride cell
QFN = Quad Flat No leads

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) 2009 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), Atmel
logo and combinations thereof, and others are registered trademarks
or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms
and product names may be trademarks of others.

Press Contacts:
Dr. Susanne van Clewe, Marcom Director Automotive
Phone: +49-7131-67-2081, Email: susanne.van-clewe@atmel.com
Clive Over, Director of Public Relations
Tel: +1-408-436-4305, Email: clive.over@atmel.com

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

Contact:
Dr. Susanne van Clewe, Marcom Director Automotive, +49-7131-67-2081,
susanne.van-clewe@atmel.com, or Clive Over, Director of Public
Relations, +1-408-436-4305, clive.over@atmel.com, both of Atmel
Corporation