Atmel Targets New Emerging Automotive and Industrial Applications Such as Tire-Pressure Monitoring With Extended Microcontroller Temperature Range

    HEILBRONN, Germany--Dec. 13, 2001--Atmel(R) Corp. announced today that their popular MARC4 microcontroller family members T48Cx9x/ M44Cx9x are now also available with extended temperature range for various automotive and industrial applications such as ECUs (Electronic Control Units) within a vehicle's engine compartment or within body electronic systems (tire-pressure monitoring, control of cooling fan, heating or window-integrated antennas) as well as industrial sensor applications.
    In controlling and monitoring such systems, Atmel's 4-bit microcontroller family members T48Cx9x/ M44Cx9x offer the designer several advantages compared with other solutions such as 8-bit microcontrollers, like extremely low current consumption and an ideal combination of several dedicated modules on-chip.
    The automotive and industrial systems, which operate within a high-temperature range, require an extended operating temperature range for all system devices. When slowing down in a car, for example, it is mandatory for the components within the tire-pressure monitoring system to withstand operating temperatures up to 125 degrees C.
    Atmel's 4-bit microcontroller standard temperature range is -40 degrees C to +85 degrees C. To support the new, emerging high-temperature applications, Atmel provides several versions with extended temperature ranges. The ROM version M44Cx9x-H covers the range of -40 degrees C to 105 degrees C, the M44Cx9x-V the range of -40 degrees C to 125 degrees C and the MTP (Multi-Times Programmable) / Flash version T48Cx9x-V -40 degrees C to 125 degrees C.
    The new devices are members of Atmel's well-known MARC4 4-bit single-chip microcontroller family. They contain ROM, RAM, parallel I/O ports, one 8-bit programmable multifunction timer/ counter, voltage supervisor, interval timer with watchdog function and a sophisticated on-chip clock generation with integrated RC-, 32-kHz and 4-MHz crystal oscillators. The MARC4 members provide an advanced stack-based, 4-bit CPU core and on-chip peripherals. This enhances program execution speed by allowing both instruction prefetching, and a simultaneous communication to the on-chip peripheral circuitry. The extremely powerful integrated interrupt controller with associated eight prioritized interrupt levels supports fast and efficient processing of hardware events. The MARC4 microcontrollers are designed for the high-level programming language qFORTH. This architecture enables high-level language programming without any loss of efficiency or code density.
    The MTP /Flash version T48Cx9x is preferred for development, pre-series and low-volume production, whereas the ROM versions M44Cx9x-H/ M44Cx9x-V are dedicated to series/ high-volume production.
    Samples are available now. Compared to Atmel's standard 4-bit microcontroller pricing, the extended-temperature versions are available at additional costs of $0.06 per device (for the 105 degrees C versions) and $0.10 (for the 125 degrees C versions).

    About Atmel

    Founded in 1984, Atmel Corp. is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. with manufacturing facilities in North America and Europe. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets worldwide, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and RF semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system-level integration semiconductor solutions using CMOS, BiCMOS, bipolar SiGe, and high-voltage BCDMOS process technologies.

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    Information

    Atmel's 4-bit microcontroller information may be retrieved at www.atmel-wm.com.
    For more information on the T48Cx9x and M44Cx9x go to: http://www.atmel-wm.com/products/ gab_prod_level2_2.php3?dom1=21&dom2=46&dom3=50&cas=dom3.