Electronic – Does the output bypass capacitor of an LM7805 double as a decoupling capacitor

atmega328pdecoupling-capacitorintegrated-circuitlm78xxvoltage-regulator

I'm using a 5v linear regulator (specifically an LM7805) that outputs directly to an ATMEGA328P. According to the LM7805 datasheet (page 23) input and output bypass capacitors should be used, as seen below, to tame peaks and ensure stability.
Schematic of LM7805 with bypass capacitors

It is good practice to also include a decoupling capacitor in front of an IC, in this case an ATMEGA328. Does the 0.1μF capacitor on the output side of the LM7805 act as a decoupling capacitor if the regulator feeds into the IC directly after the output bypass capacitor?

Best Answer

The most important thing about about decoupling capacitors is that they are placed physically close to the device they are decoupling, to minimize the trace inductance. The actual capacitance is often chosen by rule of thumb.

This implies that two chips can share a decoupling capacitor if their power supply pins are right near each other. Or, in other words, if two identical decoupling capacitors end up in parallel right near each other, you can drop one of them.