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