Atmel and Lead Tech Design Collaborate for Video Systems-on-Chip based on Atmel's AT91CAP Customizable Microcontroller

Lead Tech Design to Contribute Video Expertise and IP Blocks; Atmel to Contribute Customizable Microcontroller Solution

Rousset and Rennes, France -- September 6, 2007 -- Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) and Lead Tech Design (LTD) announced today a collaboration to develop video systems-on-chip, based on Atmel's AT91CAP customizable microcontroller for their mutual clients, with video expertise and hardware and software IP blocks contributed by Lead Tech Design.

In terms of this agreement, Lead Tech Design will work with clients to transform their design specifications into netlists for the metal programmable portion of the AT91CAP customizable microcontroller, incorporating, as required, IP blocks from LTD's extensive library of video signal processing functions. Lead Tech Design will also supply software drivers for these blocks and for the ARM® core that is the central architectural element of the AT91CAP. These netlists will be validated on the AT91CAP emulation board by mapping them onto an FPGA, before being transferred to Atmel for placement & routing, and metal programming of the AT91CAP platform.

Atmel's CAP™ microcontroller, with its integrated metal programmable block, is the ideal platform for applications of this nature that require a general-purpose microcontroller for system control, coupled with dedicated functional blocks for compute-intensive signal processing. Michel Le Lan, Atmel's Marketing Director for ASIC products, commented, “We welcome this agreement with Lead Tech Design that enables us to offer a turnkey solution to clients wanting a system-on-chip for video applications with an extremely short development cycle, low development cost and an attractive unit price in volume.”

Eric Fouchard, LTD's Sales Manager, explained, “We provide know-how, up-to-date technological knowledge and experience in video processing to ensure that Atmel's customers receive a cost-effective solutions. We architect, design and verify high integration IPs and systems using Video IPs, ASIC, System-on-Chip (SoC), FPGA technologies and embedded operating systems such as Linux®, RTAI and XENOMAI.”

Atmel's AT91CAP Customizable Microcontroller

Atmel's AT91CAP is an ARM® microcontroller-based system-on-chip with fast local memory, a wide range of industry-standard peripherals and interfaces, and a Metal Programmable (MP) Block that allows the designer to add custom logic. By combining the performance, density and low power consumption of the fixed portion of the device with the flexibility of the MP Block, CAP enables application-specific products to be developed in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of standard-cell ASICs, but at a unit price close to that of standard cell devices. CAP also offers superior performance, smaller form factor and lower power consumption at a unit price significantly lower than an MCU-plus-FPGA combination for the same functionality. CAP is fully supported with an emulation board, software development tools, operating systems and code modules to facilitate application software development.

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.

About Lead Tech Design

Lead Tech Design (LTD) is a French service company specializing in the design of integrated circuits (SoC, ASIC and FPGA) and embedded software (Linux, low level development, hard real-time / XENOMAI, etc.). LTD benefits from a high level of expertise in two fields that are strategic for the "mobility" market:

• audio/video (pre-processing, MPEG 2/4, JPEG 2000, etc.)
• networks and telecommunications (streaming, IPv4, IPv6, etc.)
  

Apart from its teams that are endowed with significant technical knowledge, LTD benefits from another key asset for customers: its capability to control each of the IC and embedded software design stages, across the complete product life cycle. The company can thus offer a wide array of services: consulting, project achievement, verification.

Integrated circuits:

• Complete IC design, whatever the complexity, from specification to final netlist
• Circuit verification with formal proof solution
• IC backend design with a perfect command of the ‘place and Route’s’ field
  

Embedded software:

• Software design in the broadest sense: architecture definition, design of multi-purpose and multitasking software, protocol or real-time kernel selection.
• Test and validation of products and related software
• Product upgrade maintenance.