Graham Turner , Atmel Automotive Bus Systems by Markus Schmid , Atmel The Explosive World of Serial Flash

Introduction Welcome to Atmel Applications Journal Volume 6. I would like to thank all of you for your dedication to the AVR microcontroller family. 2005 has been another great year for us and the AVR product family has enjoyed high double-digit growth, both in revenue and units shipped. Design wins continue to go from strength to strength and we are all very excited about our prospects for 2006. In 2006 we will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the AVR. It all started in 1996 in Norway and with the continuous efforts of everyone who has joined the team, we have grown the AVR to be the most exciting 8-bit microcontroller family in the market place. In 2005 we increased the family of products by 24 to over 50. We entered the automotive market with the AVR and already have received great customer acceptance for these products. We have also introduced products for motor control applications and are able to offer solutions for the PC fan market below 50 cents. The TinyAVR family has been expanded with several new parts including 14-pin devices, and finally , we have introduced many parts with increased pin counts and larger memories. Looking forward to 2006, we have many exciting new products to announce. The first of which is as a result of our considerable R&D efforts to set new standards in the power consumption of our microcontrollers. We will launch a new range of ultra low power products which will significantly extend the lifetime of the battery in the system. This new development combined with the efficiency of our AVR core will allow us to continue as the leader in the 8-bit microcontroller market. Along with our great products we have continued our advances in software tools and hardware development systems. There are hundreds of thousands of AVR Studio users out there who will continue to benefit from our high quality, low-cost tools. The latest AVR Studio version has enabled third party suppliers to plug their software directly into it for complete integration, which will allow for increases in functionality in debug software and hardware designs. Our continued focus on the AVR Studio, combined with our low-cost starter kits and emulators will ensure that we have the best offering in the market. In 2006 we will further develop our plan to reduce our lead-times for these popular products so that our customers can get …