Atmel's New System-in-Package Solution for Automotive LIN Networking Applications

The ATA6616 (8 KB Flash) is fully compatible with the current ATA6617 (16 KB Flash), thus allowing customers with lower memory requirements to effortlessly switch to the new device and immediately realize cost savings.

All devices in the LIN SiP family are based on Atmel's second-generation LIN IP, which boasts excellent EMC and ESD performance. This IP is optimized for low-cost LIN slave applications thus enabling system cost reductions of up to 30%.

The integrated AVR microcontroller (ATtiny87) includes a hardware LIN UART with automatic baud-rate synchronization in slave mode; integrated hardware routines to simplify protocol stack handling and limit interrupt generation, thus reducing the microcontroller load and flash memory consumption.

Thanks to collaboration with Vector, a leading manufacturer of software tools and components for automotive networking, a complete hardware and LIN2.1 software networking solution is available. Using the integrated hardware routines, the code size for the LIN protocol is reduced to about 1 Kbyte of Flash leaving about 7 Kbytes of Flash available for the user application.

One important criterion for LIN applications is low current consumption. To ensure that the LIN node's current consumption is well below 100 microampere in applications that are continuously connected to the battery, the ATA6616 provides several current saving modes where different functionalities are individually switched off or on, depending on the application requirements.

All pins of the LIN system basis chip and the microcontroller are bonded out, thus providing customers the same flexibility and performance for their applications as with discrete parts.

Thanks to the extremely small QFN38 package, measuring only 5 mm x 7 mm, designers can save more than 50% of PCB size compared to conventional solutions.