SHENZHEN, China, November 7 /PRNewswire/ --

- Ultra low power AVR XMEGA - voted leading microprocessor

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), received a leading product accolade in the prestigious Electronic Design News (EDN) China Innovation Awards 2008.

Atmel's highly successful AVR(R) picoPower(TM) 8/16-bit microcontroller, XMEGA(TM), won a leading product award in the Microprocessor and DSP category. Utilizing second generation picoPower technology, XMEGA is the only family of Flash microcontrollers offering true 1.6V operation. The ultra low power consumption is combined with fast 12-bit analog functions, a DMA controller and an innovative event system. With eight routing channels to route direct communication between on-chip resources like ADC, Memory, I/O, timers and comparators the event system reduces the CPU active time by as much as 98%.

Products were assessed and selected by a panel of EDN China judges, consisting of industry experts and specialists from China's leading OEM companies, academic institutes, universities and EDN China's editorial board. Readers and registered users of EDN China were invited to vote for the winners in nine categories.

Commenting on winning the award, Ingar Fredriksen, Atmel's director of AVR product marketing, said, We are very proud that, for the third year in a row, one of our product offerings has received industry recognition from EDN China. It is particularly pleasing that members of China's electronic design community have selected XMEGA for this prestigious award. It is not only a reflection of the quality of the product and the world class capabilities of our engineers but it also validates Atmel's business strategy in China.

We always strive to provide our clients with integrated solutions to help simplify their designs. With a modern AVR CPU, Atmel is capable of serving both the 8- and 16-bit microcontroller market. Many competitors are forced to offer 32-bit solutions since their old 8- or 16-bit CPU often do not meet customers' requirements, Fredriksen added. This EDN China Innovation Award endorses Atmel's leadership in the development and fabrication of advanced semiconductor solutions.

About the Award-Winning XMEGA

The XMEGA microcontrollers range from 16 to 384 KB of Flash and 44- to 100-pin packages. They operate from 1.6V to 3.6V and achieve up to 32 MIPS at 32 MHz. The XMEGA devices are general purpose microcontrollers well suited for a variety of applications including audio systems, ZigBee(R), power tools, medical, board controllers, networking, metering, optical transceivers, motor control, white goods and any battery powered product.

Atmel's picoPower technology already used in megaAVR(R) products, is recognized as a market leader in ultra low power. With AVR XMEGA, using second generation picoPower, battery life is further increased by additional features like true 1.6V operation and a combined Watchdog Timer- and Brown-Out-Detector current consumption of only 1 uA.

The 8-bit AVR CPU is designed for high-level languages like C. It has 16- and 32-bit arithmetic support and 16- and 24-bit memory pointers. Single cycle operation and 32 working registers connected to the Arithmetic Logic Unit makes AVR more efficient than other CPUs.

Like a reflex in the human body, the innovative XMEGA Event System enables inter-peripheral communication without CPU or DMA usage. This ensures 100% predictable and short response time.

The XMEGA provides leading analog performance, its Analog-to-Digital Converter has 12-bit resolution and provides up to two million samples per second with hardware support for oversampling to increase resolution to 16 bits without extra cost.

XMEGA has a hardware crypto engine that supports Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) and Data Encryption Standard (DES). The fast crypto engine increases encrypted communication speed from 10kbps to 2Mbps compared to software solutions.

Information: http://www.atmel.com/products/AVR/default_xmega.asp

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.

(C) 2008 Atmel Corporation. All rights reserved. Atmel(R), Atmel logo and combinations thereof, Everywhere You Are(R), AVR(R) and others are registered trademarks, XMEGA(TM), picoPower(TM) and others are trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Press Contact: Helen Perlegos, Public Relations Tel: +1-408-487-2963, Email: hperlegos@atmel.com Asia Press Contacts: Claire Walker / Karrie Lee, Techworks Asia Ltd. Tel: +852-2525-8186 Email: claire@techworksasia.com / karrie@techworksasia.com

Press, Helen Perlegos, Public Relations of Atmel Corporation, +1-408-487-2963, hperlegos@atmel.com; or Asia Press Contacts, Claire Walker, claire@techworksasia.com, or Karrie Lee, karrie@techworksasia.com, both of Techworks Asia Ltd., +852-2525-8186, for Atmel Corporation