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Founded in 1984, 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) portfolios, Atmel provides electronics systems manufacturers with complete system solutions. This enables its customers to lead the markets they serve with electronic products that are smaller, smarter, more cost-effective and versatile than ever before. Focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets, Atmel ICs can be found Everywhere You Are®.
Product Line Overview
Atmel’s ICs range from nonvolatile memories and microcontrollers, through user-defined programmable logic and ASICs, to ASSPs (Application Specific Standard Products). Atmel products are supported by development tools, third-party software and customer training necessary to ensure shortened design cycles and increased competitive advantage.
Nonvolatile Memories
Atmel is a pioneer of NVM (nonvolatile memory) chips that retain their content in the absence of power. The Company’s extensive NVM offering includes EEPROMs that can be updated one word at a time, making them ideal for data storage; and high-density Flash memories, which can be updated a block at a time, making them suited to storing programs or large data objects such as images. A wide variety of configurations and interfaces is available in order to match the precise requirements of many applications.
A product line that combines the advantages of Flash and EEPROM is the patented DataFlash® family that uses an on-chip RAM buffer to enable a large Flash memory to be read and updated one bit at a time via very few connection pins.
Microcontrollers
Atmel’s industry-leading AVR® advanced 8-bit RISC microcontroller family provides instruction and data throughputs many times those of traditional CISC architectures. AVR features extensive on-chip analog and digital peripherals together with in-system programmable EEPROM and Flash memories, greatly increasing flexibility, eliminating the bottleneck of external memory accesses, and providing increased program and data security. The series ranges from the tinyAVR™ (1K bytes of on-chip Flash) to the megaAVR™ (128K bytes of on-chip Flash).
For applications requiring superior processing capability while keeping power consumption to a minimum, Atmel offers a wide range of 32-bit microcontrollers based on the ARM® advanced RISC core. This series offers a variety of memory sizes and onchip functionality in order to meet the precise requirements of many high-performance applications.
The comprehensive range of Atmel’s microcontrollers based on the industry-standard 80C51 architecture includes In-system Programmable Flash, OTP and ROM memory versions. Advanced on-chip peripherals include CAN bus controller, USB controller, MP3 decoder or smart-card interface. Atmel also offers a series of high-reliability microcontrollers based on the Motorola PowerPC® architecture for military and space applications.
Programmable Logic and Programmable System Level Integration
Atmel's programmable logic product range extends from simple PLDs (Programmable Logic Devices) to high-density FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays). Using state-of-the art design tools, system designers can customize these logic blocks in order to perform the data processing operations required for their applications. The benefits are rapid time-to-market at minimal development cost.
A revolutionary product that combines the processing power of a microcontroller with the flexibility of an FPGA is the FPSLIC™ (Field Programmable System Level Integrated Circuit) family. This integrates, on a single IC, an AVR core, peripherals and SRAM program memory, together with a large FPGA block. A secured variant encapsulates, in a single package, an FPSLIC IC together with its EEPROM for application and configuration code. This reduces board size and makes the code resistant to reverse engineering. The System Designer™ application development suite includes co-verification tools to enable concurrent hardware and software development for FPSLIC applications.
ASICs
Atmel’s customer-specific ASIC product range is intended for medium- and high-volume applications where optimum performance is required at the lowest power consumption and unit cost. Most
of Atmel’s ASICs are system-on-chip (SoC) solutions, integrating microcontroller cores and peripherals, DSPs (Digital Signal Processors), memory blocks, standard interfaces (USB, Ethernet, PCI, Bluetooth™, CAN bus, etc.), application-specific logic, power management cells and analog
functions into multi-million transistor ICs. In addition, a range of military-qualified and radiation-tolerant ASICs is available for military and space applications.
Secure ICs
Atmel’s industry-leading secure ICs for Smart Cards and embedded security applications combine a tamper resistant 8- or 32-bit microcontroller core with Flash memory or ROM on a single die. Flash gives the benefits of flexibility and rapid time-to-market while ROM gives minimum unit cost for stable products. The product portfolio includes an ISO 7816-compatible contact interface and dual-interface contactless products complying with the ISO 14443 Type B standard as well as a USB interface. These products have some of the highest security certifications in the industry, including ITSEC E3, Common Criteria EAL4+ and Level 3 approval from Visa® International. They are complemented by Atmel’s industry-leading FingerChip™ fingerprint sensor, aimed at space-constrained mobile and low-power commercial and consumer end products.
ASSPs (Application - Specific - Standard - Products)
A key focus of Atmel's ASSPs (application-specific standard products) is multimedia and communications. This extensive product range includes wireless and wireline networking products, audio, video and digital still camera processors, digital TV decoders and a range of sound synthesis products marketed under the Dream™ logo. Associated products include floating-point DSP for advanced communications applications, ICs for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), a GPS receiver and a family of broadband data conversion ICs. Other ASSPs are dedicated to data storage, USB (Universal Serial Bus) networks for advanced PC connectivity, automotive and industrial control applications.
A fast-growing application is power management, required by all hand-held devices in order to maximize battery autonomy, particularly as they become more feature-rich. Atmel has a growing family of power management ASSPs to address this market.
RF Products
The Company's radio frequency (RF) products are complementary to many of its data processing devices. Conforming to the 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi®, Bluetooth® and ZigBee™ standards, Atmel supplies both the RF front-end devices and single-chip controllers that integrate ARM or AVR microcontrollers. A range of RF ICs for GSM, GPS, CDMA and DECT telephones complements the baseband processors for these protocols available or under development.
The rapidly-expanding market for security systems is addressed with a range of RFID (RF Identification) and access control ICs. The SmartRF product line of Micro Transmitters and Micro Transceivers focuses on low-cost, battery-operated wireless data communications applications. Automotive RF products include remote keyless entry and RF remote control devices.
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