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Automotive microcontroller users continually request devices with enhanced functionality and performance to integrate more features and to help meet increased government regulations. The use of standard (off-the-shelf) products to provide single-chip solutions to satisfy these requirements is quickly becoming more costly as integration requirements out pace process density improvements. However, multi-chip system solutions introduce concerns such as electromagnetic interference, more complex system validation, and printed circuit board (PCB) and component costs. Consequently, there is a need to take advantage of new technologies to partition system function while considering various constraints. To facilitate identifying current system partitioning trends and constraints, this paper examines five aspects of the microcontroller environment: CPU, memory, peripherals, networking and manufacturability.

Recently, significant focus and development effort has been dedicated toward in-vehicle networking. This effort includes work on behalf of the American Trucking Association (ATA), the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), the International Standards Organization (ISO), and independent developments by automotive and semiconductor manufacturers. In-vehicle networking extends, as a result, beyond passenger cars into heavy truck, military, and construction vehicles. In the course of these developments, the benefits of networking have been examined and networking is perceived as having significant benefits, resulting in production and custom development [1, 2, 3]. The Controller Area Network (CAN) is a high-performance serial communication solution which has been designed to meet the requirements for the broad range of applications and has now progressed from a specification to a product.

Intel's Package Development Group began development of Tape Automated Bonding (TAB) (See Figure 1) for two primary purposes: as a lead frame to device interconnect for high lead count products; and, as a stand-alone for surface-mounted-devices (SMD). New production assembly equipment, bumping equipment and tape technology have made it possible for TAB to become production-worthy. Intel, over the past few years, has made progress in the development of TAB technology. Using a 16-bit micro-controller as the process characterization vehicle, numerous milestones have been accomplished: tape design, carrier design, and assembly development. The 16-bit micro-controller has been tested to an Automotive product type flow and a number of piece part specifications have been generated. In addition, much of the production equipment has been characterized, and process characterization is well under way.

In the past, In-Circuit Emulations of single chip microcontrollers were accomplished by expensive emulators with elaborate development computers as drivers. This is no longer true with intelligent hardware design and the introduction of the Personal Computer (PC). This paper discusses two emulation tools for the MCS-96 family of 16-bit microcontrollers using a PC as it's host computer and minimal hardware design for almost a nonintrusive emulation tool for under $500.