SAN JOSE, California, July 16 /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