Atmel Ships Industry's First RISC-based Programmable System-on-a-Chip; 30 MIPS FPSLIC Brings the Benefits of Programmable Logic to System-on-Chip.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 28, 2000

Atmel Corporation, (Nasdaq: ATML) Today announced that it has begun shipments of the industry's first RISC Processor-based FPSLIC (Field Programmable System Level Integration Circuit)(TM) to customers in the United States and Europe. FPSLIC devices are rated at 30 MIPS at 40 MHz operation and consume a fraction of the power of conventional FPGA devices. FPSLIC is ideal for low power and portable applications including telecommunications, networking, instrumentation and automotive. Today FPSLIC can increase speed, reduce size and lower power consumption in systems requiring an 8-bit microcontroller and up to 50,000 gates of programmable logic (FPGA or PLD).

FPSLIC devices combine Atmel's embedded AT40K FPGA core with a high performance version of the popular AVR 8-bit RISC Microcontroller, 2 UARTs, Timer/Counters, Interrupt Controller, Programmable I/O Ports and 36K bytes of Program and Data SRAM on a single chip. Additional peripherals and custom logic can be programmed in the FPGA. The benefits of this solution include 70% area reduction, 50% lower power consumption, 50% performance improvement, and significantly faster time-to-market than discrete and other programmable solutions. The microcode for the AVR microcontroller and the FPGA logic can be reconfigured an unlimited number of times, making FPSLIC devices an ideal platform for developing multiple end products based on a single integrated solution.

"There are 2 emerging programmable technologies available to implement system-on-chip designs," according to Joel Rosenberg, Atmel's Product Line Director for Programmable SLI products. The first involves implementing the design in a traditional high density FPGA, while the second is implemented in a programmable system chip, such as FPSLIC. A single FPSLIC device is made up of embedded system blocks including processor, peripherals, memory, programmable logic and other intellectual property cores.

"The economics of system design - including unit cost, speed, power consumption, design tools, time-to-market, risk and availability make FPSLIC the technology of choice over FPGA for implementing system-on-chip designs. It simply doesn't make sense to delay product development and increase design risk by utilizing expensive, scarce engineering resources to recompile an already proven processor core in a more expensive, less efficient FPGA. The cost of a million gate equivalent FPGA today is more than $250 in high volume; while the cost of a faster, lower power, more efficient FPSLIC device is under $50 today. With Atmel's co-verification tools, design time can be reduced by several months by allowing both hardware and software development and verification to be performed early in the design cycle, eliminating costly design changes and production delays." Rosenberg concluded.

"Like their custom gate array and ASIC predecessors in the 1980s and 1990s, custom system-on-chip capability is extremely expensive and out of reach for most design projects today," according to Martin Mason, Programmable SLI Marketing Manager for Atmel. "Design tools, including co-verification, can cost in excess of $100K per seat; intellectual property cores are expensive and largely unproven, the mask charges for a gate array are in excess of $200K, and the system level knowledge and experience required to successfully implement a SOC is not readily available. Unless a company will ship millions of systems utilizing the custom system-on-chip, it is hard to justify the cost, risk and time-to-market issues associated with custom SOC development today.

"Now every designer can benefit from the combination of system-level integration and programmability in a single device -- at a price level that supports volume production. In addition, the Atmel software/hardware design environment is the first programmable solution to include co-verification, a design methodology that enables designers to evaluate hardware/software tradeoffs early in the design process, resulting in faster, more efficient lower power designs while reducing design time by 1-3 months. Until now co-verification has been used primarily for embedded processors implemented in ASIC designs requiring much more expensive development tools." Mason continued.

"Shipping our first FPSLIC products today is a significant milestone in bringing System Level Integration to the desktops of designers everywhere. While other PLD and FPGA vendors are just realizing the potential of this enormous market, Atmel has already addressed the SOC issues and is shipping products today. Atmel has designed and manufactured ASICs (application specific integrated circuits) with embedded AVR, ARM, DSPs and other processor cores for many years now. The FPSLIC architecture is fully scalable and takes full advantage of Atmel's advanced ASIC and FPGA experience and capabilities. In addition our design tools are modular, providing the ability to support most industry standard 8-, 16-, 32- and 64-bit processors available today." Mason concluded.

Pricing and Availability - The 1.3 million gate equivalent AT94K40 FPSLIC device is sampling now and is priced from $50. Additional AT94K family members will start shipping Q4 2000. Prices in 2001 for AT94K products will start below $7 in production volumes of 250K units.

The SystemDesigner(TM)EDA tools suite for FPSLIC is available now for use on Windows(R) 95/98/200/NT platforms, and is priced at an annual subscription rate of $995.

Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose, California with principal manufacturing facilities in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Irving, Texas; 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 1-800-292-8635 or Internationally, call 1-408-441-0732. Requests may be made via e-mail to [e-mail] or by visiting Atmel's web site at www.atmel.com.

Atmel, the Atmel logo and combinations thereof are trademarks of Atmel Corporation. Additional terms and product names in this document may be trademarks of others.