Atmel Introduces New 0.18 Micron Structured Array Family to Support High Density FPGA Conversions

Company Offers Strong Track Record in Short Conversion Lead Time and Reduced NRE

Nantes, France – April 20, 2005 . . . Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a global leader in the development and fabrication of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced today the availability of the ATU18, a complete set of 0.18 micron structured array matrices to convert most FPGA/CPLDs with Atmel's Ultimate Logic Conversion (ULC), enabling significant cost savings for system makers.

With the ATU18 matrices, Atmel can handle up to 1,200 K-bits Dual Port RAM, 1,600K gates, PLLs, and Multipliers in a single chip. These memory blocks are compatible with embedded memory blocks from FPGA/CPLD makers Xilinx® and Altera®. The 51micron pad pitch allows significant reduction of die size even for high pin count conversions that are often pad limited. The Atmel ULC design flow has been improved to handle the latest FPGA architectures, resulting in a shorter conversion lead-time.

Atmel's ATU18 solution uses only wafer metal layers to configure the ULC, offering very low Non-Recurring Engineering (NRE) charges compared to solutions that require a full mask set. By removing the silicon area needed for programmability and implementing the memory in ULC memory blocks, Atmel can significantly reduce the size of the die and can bring up to 80 percent cost savings for the latest FPGAs with a pin-to-pin compatible offer.

With its 0.18 micron process, Atmel ULC's can support complexities equivalent to 8,000K FPGA gates. The ULC's internal frequency can be run at a much faster speed than that with conventional FPGAs, with at least 200 MHz. Power consumption can typically be 70 percent lower than its FPGA counterpart.

Gerard Bouvet, ULC Marketing Manager at Atmel, said, "Key industry players use FPGAs and CPLDs to reduce development cycle time in a wide range of applications but they have a lot of pressure from the market place to reduce manufacturing costs. Atmel's success in providing FPGA/CPLD conversions has benefited many companies from different market segments, including the data processing, consumer, digital imaging, industrial, automotive and military sectors."

The ATU18 structured array matrices are available for designs now. NRE are typically ranging from 60 to 120 K$. Price quotations may be obtained typically within 24 hours.

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete system solutions. Focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets, Atmel ICs can be found Everywhere You AreSM.

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Information

Atmel's ATU18 product information may be retrieved at: http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?PN=ATU18