ROUSSET, France, April 21 /PRNewswire/ --

- One of Leading Products Selected by Editors and Industry Experts

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today that its CAP(TM) customizable microcontroller has been named as one of the Products of the Year by Electronic Products China (EPC) Magazine. The selection was made by a panel of editors and industry experts based on the criteria of significant advancements of a technology or its application, innovative design and substantial achievement in price/performance.

Michel Le Lan, Atmel's Marketing Director for ASIC products, welcomed the award, "We are honored to receive this award from a prestigious magazine in one of our fastest-growing markets. This is the third industry award for CAP, and it confirms its stature as a highly innovative product that is closely matched to the performance, price and time-to-market needs of our customers. Since its launch in May 2007 CAP has gained a number of major design wins, and is ramping up to make a substantial contribution to Atmel's revenue stream."

About the Award-Winning CAP

Atmel's CAP(TM) is an ARM(R) microcontroller-based SoC with fast local memory, and a Metal Programmable (MP) Block that allows the designer to add custom logic. CAP enables application-specific products to be developed quicker and more economically than if using standard-cell ASICs. CAP also offers superior performance, smaller form factor and lower power consumption. CAP is fully supported with an emulation board, software development tools, operating systems, code modules and a worldwide network of expert design centers to facilitate application software development. The CAP MP Block can be personalized with IP developed by the customer, by third-party design centers or from Atmel's extensive libraries.

CAP is also supported by the low-cost AT91CAP9A-STK Starter Kit, an ideal vehicle for no-risk evaluation of the customization capabilities of the CAP MCU. The CAP Starter Kit features the fixed portion of the CAP architecture implemented as a microcontroller standard product, together with an FPGA that emulates the application-specific portion of the design that will be implemented in the MP Block. It enables application developers to test the logic of their system together with its software drivers. Errors can be corrected with no cost penalty. This emulation step greatly increases the chances of right-first-time silicon and software.

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), logo and combinations thereof, and others, are registered trademarks, and CAP(TM) and others are trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. ARM(R) is a registered trademark of ARM Ltd. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Information:

Atmel's CAP product information may be retrieved at http://www.atmel.com/products/at91cap/default.asp

The full list of winners of the EPC 2007 Product of the Year awards can be found at http://www.epc.com.cn/Annual/2007/index.htm

Press Contacts: Peter Bishop, Communications Manager, Atmel Rousset, Europe Tel: +33-(0)-4-42-53-61-50, Email: peter.bishop@atmel.com Helen Perlegos, Public Relations Tel: +1-408-487-2963, Email: hperlegos@atmel.com

Web site: http://www.atmel.com

Peter Bishop, Communications Manager of Atmel Rousset, Europe, +33-(0)-4-42-53-61-50, peter.bishop@atmel.com, or Helen Perlegos, Public Relations of Atmel Corporation, +1-408-487-2963, hperlegos@atmel.com