SAN JOSE, California, May 5 /PRNewswire/ --

- Leading Research Firm Ranks Companies by Combined Total Revenues, Revenue Growth and Product Sales

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) has been named by Gartner, Inc. in its most recent 2009 market research (Source: Gartner, Semiconductor Industry Worldwide Annual Market Share: Database April 2009) as the fastest growing 8-bit microcontroller supplier in 2008. Atmel is also identified as among the best-performing semiconductor companies in 2008. Gartner noted that Atmel increased its position to fifth in overall shipments of 8-bit microcontrollers while citing Atmel's performance in three areas of company and financial performance over the past four quarters: total revenues, revenue growth and product sales. Atmel's 8-bit microcontroller based revenue for the 12 months ending December 2008 grew over 16 percent to US$466 million, growing faster than other major 8-bit microcontroller vendors in the industry in the overall research ranking.

We are delighted to be recognized as the fastest growing 8-bit microcontroller supplier among the top ten, said Alf-Egil Bogen, Atmel's Vice President of Corporate Marketing. We believe that we are well positioned for continued success with our strong proprietary AVR(R) microcontrollers and our leading QTouch(TM) capacitive touch technology, he concluded.

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 provides the electronics industry with complete system solutions focused on consumer, industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets.

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For more information about Atmel, please visit http://www.atmel.com

Atmel Press Contact: Clive Over, Director of Press Relations Tel: +1-408-436-4305, E-mail: clive.over@atmel.com

Clive Over, Director of Press Relations of Atmel Corporation, +1-408-436-4305, clive.over@atmel.com