CES, Las Vegas, NV, January 7, 2010 – Atmel® Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML), a leader in touch- and microcontroller-based solutions, today announced that Atmel’s RF4Control platform has received ZigBee® RF4CE certification using the new ATmega128RFA1 wireless AVR® microcontroller. Atmel can now offer its customers an immediate, low-cost, easy-to-implement solution for various remote control applications using the ATmega128RFA1.

The ZigBee RF4CE specification is a standardized specification for radio frequency (RF) remote controls promoted by the ZigBee Alliance. The specification enables flexible control from nearby rooms, enables unique two-way communications between the remote and device, and delivers improved remote battery life for a variety of consumer electronic (CE) devices such as HDTV, home theater equipment, set-top boxes and other audio equipment.

“We are pleased to be among the first to have our wireless platform ZigBee RF4CE certified,” said Magnus Pedersen, product marketing director of MCU wireless solutions at Atmel Corporation. “With this certification, Atmel’s recently launched ATmega128RFA1 can now offer customers more flexibility, reliability and freedom to operate their devices from greater distances. The two-way communication between the device and remote, and by removing the ‘line-of-site’ barrier, enables our consumers to enjoy an even richer experience.”

“The certification of Atmel’s RF4Control platform is another step towards spreading ZigBee’s reach in homes everywhere,” said Benno Ritter, vice president of marketing for the ZigBee Alliance. “ZigBee RF4CE will offer manufacturers a number of advanced remote control features while offering increased flexibility and ease of use.”

“As the authorized ZigBee test lab, we are pleased to certify Atmel’s ATmega128RFA1 to develop products based on the RF4CE standard,” said Osman Sakr, chief technology officer of National Technical Systems Inc. “We look forward to testing more products and platforms to move towards interoperable RF products across multiple vendors based on this new standard.”

More Information

For more information about Atmel’s ZigBee RF4CE solutions, please click the following link:
http://www.atmel.com/RF4CE.

For additional information on Atmel’s wireless microcontrollers, please click the following link:
http://www.atmel.com/wireless.

ZigBee: Control your world

ZigBee is the global wireless language connecting dramatically different devices to work together and enhance everyday life. The ZigBee Alliance is a non-profit association of more than 300 member companies driving development of ZigBee wireless technology. The Alliance promotes worldwide adoption of ZigBee as the leading wirelessly networked, sensing and control standard for use in consumer electronic, energy, home, commercial and industrial areas. For more information, visit: http://www.ZigBee.org.

About NTS

National Technical Systems, Inc. is a leading provider of engineering and testing service to the defense, aerospace, telecommunications, automotive and high technology markets. Through a world-wide network of resources, NTS provides full life-cycle product integrity support, offering world class design engineering, compliance, testing, certification, quality registration and program management. For additional information about NTS, visit our website at http://www.ntscorp.com/ or call 800-794-0926.

About Atmel

Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of capacitive touch solutions, 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.

SAN DIEGO and HSINCHU, TAIWAN, R.O.C., Jan. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Qualcomm Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM), a leading developer and innovator of advanced wireless technologies, products and services, today announced that the Company is working closely with foundry partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) on 28 nanometer (nm) process technology. The advanced process node enables more features to be integrated into smaller chips with a high level of cost efficiency, accelerating the expansion of wireless into new market segments.

Small form factor and low power consumption are important features of Qualcomm’s next generation of system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions, including the Snapdragon™ chipset platform. The two companies are capitalizing on their long-term relationship as Qualcomm works on migrating directly from the 45nm to the 28nm node.

“TSMC prides itself on its ability to deliver cutting-edge technology platforms, including the related design ecosystems.  Our 28nm platform supports the high-performance, low-power products that deliver next-generation experiences,” said Jason Chen, vice president of Worldwide Sales and Marketing.  “We are pleased to be working with Qualcomm, a market leader in wireless technology, on bringing these new experiences to reality.”

“Qualcomm’s close collaboration with TSMC has always been a key part of our ability to deliver significant advantages to our customers through the industry-leading integration, power efficiency and cost efficiency of our products – enabling them to do more with less,” said Jim Clifford, senior vice president and general manager of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies.  “Qualcomm’s integrated fabless manufacturing model and migration to smaller geometries will allow us to continue enabling the best mobile user experience possible on handsets, smartphones and smartbook devices.”

Qualcomm and TSMC worked closely on 65nm and 45nm technologies.  They are continuing their relationship into low-power, low-leakage 28nm designs for high-volume manufacturing.  Delivering up to twice the density of previous manufacturing nodes, 28nm technology allows semiconductors that power mobile devices to do far more with less power.  Qualcomm and TSMC are working on both high-k metal gate (HKMG) 28HP and silicon oxynitride (SiON) 28LP technologies.  Qualcomm expects to tape out its first commercial 28nm products in mid-2010.  

Close collaboration with strategic technology and foundry partners is a key part of Qualcomm’s Integrated Fabless Manufacturing (IFM) business model, which delivers greater efficiencies and accelerated technology advancement to the industry.

About TSMC

TSMC is the world’s largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry’s leading process technology and the foundry’s largest portfolio of process-proven libraries, IP, design tools and reference flows. The Company’s total managed capacity in 2009 exceeded 10 million 8-inch equivalent wafers, including capacity from two advanced 12-inch – GigaFabs™, four eight-inch fabs, one six-inch fab, as well as TSMC’s wholly owned subsidiaries, WaferTech and TSMC (China), and its joint venture fab, SSMC. TSMC is the first foundry to provide 40nm production capabilities. Its corporate headquarters are in Hsinchu, Taiwan. For more information about TSMC please visit http://www.tsmc.com.

About Qualcomm

Qualcomm Incorporated (Nasdaq: QCOM) is a leader in developing and delivering innovative digital wireless communications products and services based on CDMA and other advanced technologies.  Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., Qualcomm is included in the S&P 100 Index, the S&P 500 Index and is a 2009 FORTUNE 500 company.  For more information, please visit Qualcomm around the Web:

www.qualcomm.com

Blog: www.qualcomm.com/blog

Twitter: www.twitter.com/qualcomm

Facebook: www.facebook.com/Qualcomm

San Jose, CA – January 7, 2010 – Alpha Data, a leading supplier of COTS board solutions, today announced the release of its first Virtex-6^TM FPGA based platform, the ADM-XRC-6TL XMC card.

The card is fully compliant with the VITA 42.3 industry standard (PCI-Express^® backplane) and delivers unprecedented levels of digital signal processing capability making it an ideal platform for the development of the most demanding ELINT and Image Processing applications.

The flexible board architecture supports the larger Xilinx Virtex-6 devices, including the LX240T, LX365T, LX550T, SX315T and SX475T. Initially supporting the SX240T-ES device, other density options will be offered as soon as they are made available.

A key feature of the ADM-XRC-6TL is Alpha Data’s PCIe to Local Bus bridge design, which provides a simple, high-performance interface, between the host and FPGA system. This reliable bridge solution, coupled with Alpha Data’s comprehensive Software Development Kit, enables the rapid development and instantiation of complex cores while maximizing available FPGA resources.

“The Xilinx Virtex-6 offers users new levels of performance and logic density,” said Adam Smith, Director of Sales and Support at Alpha Data, “the ADM-XRC-6TL balances these features with improved host, memory and I/O bandwidth making it an ideal platform for a wide range of compute-intensive applications.”

”The high-density, DSP rich architecture, and high performance with relatively low power delivered by the 40nm Virtex-6 family provides the ideal programmable architecture for Alpha Data’s XMC card”, said Raj Seelam, Xilinx senior manager, Platform Solutions, Xilinx, Inc. “As an upgrade from the successful Virtex-5 FPGA-based ADM-XRC-5T2 product range, we expect significant uptake in the Virtex-6 based version.”

The board is supplied with 1 or 2Gbyte of DDR3 SDRAM supporting transfer rates of up to 3.2GB/s and arranged in 4 independent banks for maximum flexibility. In addition, battery back-up of IP encryption keys is provided, ensuring maximum security and design protection.

Up to 146 LVCMOS/LVDS I/O and 8 high-speed serial links are provided to the front connectors, while 12 high-speed serial links, a x4 PCI Express^® I/F and 24 General Purpose IO (GPIO) are provided as standard to the rear connectors. For I/O intensive applications, an additional 32 GPIO can be supported through an optional Pn4 connector. Application specific I/O options are also available via a comprehensive range of front-panel adapter products, including LVDS, high-performance analog, Cameralink^TM, and optical and copper RocketIO^TM.  

The Software Development Kit supplied with the ADM-XRC-6TL, includes reference designs, API and drivers for Windows, Linux and VxWorks.

Further product details and ordering options for the ADM-XRC-6TL are available from Alpha Data’s web site:
http://www.alpha-data.com/products.php?product=adm-xrc-6tl

About Alpha Data

Established in 1993, Alpha Data is a world leader in embedded FPGA platforms and systems. The company supplies essential hardware and development tools to OEMs developing innovative systems for defense, communications, signal processing, instrumentation and life sciences applications. Its products and services provide an integrated framework from prototype-to-production and support a variety of protocols and standards, including AMC, PMC/PMC-X, VME/VXS, CompactPCI, PCI/PCI-X, PCI Express and the proprietary XRM-IO hardware format.