Atmel Fulfills Promise of Affordable System Level Integration Capability On Every Engineer's Desk.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 17, 2000

Low Cost Programmable SLI Starter Kit for Design Engineers

and Universities Now Shipping

Atmel Corporation (Nasdaq:ATML) announced the immediate availability of its low cost Field Programmable System Level Integrated Circuit (FPSLIC(TM)) starter kit. The FPSLIC starter kit contains everything needed for a designer to use the FPSLIC products, is priced at $495 and is available for immediate delivery.

FPSLIC, which integrates microcontroller, FPGA, SRAM and peripherals, combine the time-to-market and flexibility benefits of programmable logic with system-on-chip (SOC) design. The combination of architecture and design tools enable SOC designs to be implemented and verified in a matter of hours or days, without the NRE (non-recurring engineering charges) or design risk associated with custom ASICs. The FPSLIC co-verification tools enable hardware and software tradeoffs to be made early in the design process, further reducing time-to-market and development cost.

"The FPSLIC starter kit provides an easy to use, cost effective and timely solution to system designers who want to use the award winning Atmel FPSLIC architecture. The starter kit includes a reconfigurable FPSLIC device, prototype board, software, cables and user manual. This enabling solution means any design engineer can afford to design with SOC products. The benefits that Atmel's FPSLIC solution has over conventional ASIC and FPGA solutions means that higher performance, lower power, small size and cost effective solutions can be created to meet today's time to market driven products. Applications such as networking, telecommunications, wireless and industrial control can benefit from using the FPSLIC products," according to Martin Mason, Programmable Sli Marketing Manager for Atmel. "The FPSLIC starter kits allows engineers to evaluate the many fixed peripherals that are built into the FPSLIC product, as well as create their own designs. The extensive tutorials and code examples supplied with the kit show engineers how to use the starter kit, software and FPSLIC products. The inclusion of real applications and design examples make the kit ideal for customers as well as university design labs. Atmel's FPSLIC total starter kit solution will help to bring customers deigns to completion earlier," Mason concluded.

Kit contents and availability

The ATSTK94 Starter Kit is available for immediate delivery for $495. The Kit includes a reconfigurable FPSLIC device, prototype board, cables, and user manual and 4 months complete FPSLIC Designer software license.

About AT94K Field Programmable System Level Integration Circuits (FPSLIC)

FPSLIC brings the benefits of Programmability to System-on-Chip design. The SRAM-based AT94K FPSLIC family integrates all the major building blocks required for a system level design -- up to 40,000 gates of Atmel's AT40K (Field Programmable Gate Array) with FreeRAM(TM), 30+ MIPS AVR(R) RISC processor, 32 Kbytes of program SRAM memory, 4K of Data SRAM memory and frequently used on chip peripherals such as UARTs, timer/counters, an industry standard 2-wire serial bus and a hardware multiplier. Additional peripherals can be created in the FPGA and mapped directly in the address space of the microcontroller. The entire device is SRAM-based, allowing both the instruction set for the microcontroller and the hardware code for the FPGA to be reconfigured in-system, any number of times, either during development, production, or remotely at the end-customer site.

Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose with principal manufacturing facilities in Colorado Springs, Colo., Nantes and Rousset, France and Heilbronn, Germany. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets on a worldwide basis advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory, and RF semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system level integration semiconductor solutions using advanced CMOS, BiCMOS, BiPolar and SiGe process technologies.

Atmel product and financial information are available from its Fax-on-Demand service. In North America call 800/292-8635 or Internationally, call 408/441-0732. Requests may be made via e-mail to [e-mail] or by visiting Atmel's web site at www.atmel.com.

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