Atmel's Secure Microcontroller With SERMEPA's Advantis Crypto Smart Card Receives VISA Approval

San Jose, California (ots/PRNewswire) -

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) and SERMEPA, a leading
Spanish technical provider for the electronic payments industry,
announced today that SERMEPA's Advantis(R) crypto solution with an
Atmel Secure Microcontroller, has been granted a VISA(R) approval.
SERMEPA has developed Advantis, a family of products and services
that furnish the full suite of infrastructure needed for processing
financial transactions with multi-application smart cards to address
Spanish and international markets. SERMEPA has developed the Advantis
Crypto smart card operating system, which is now available on Atmel's
AT90SC9618RCT secure microcontroller for banking. The Advantis crypto
solution is a native multi-application, multi-currency, and
multi-provider operating system for smart cards. This card offers
issuers performance, security and fraud prevention.

The Advantis Crypto smart card solution is based on Atmel's
AT90SC9618RCT secure microcontroller. Developed primarily for the
banking smart card market, the AT90SC9618RCT features 18 Kbytes
EEPROM, 96 Kbytes ROM and 4 Kbytes of RAM. It shares the same common
features of Atmel's secureAVR(R) family including its outstanding
8-bit/16-bit RISC CPU performance, strong security mechanisms,
firewalls and two cryptographic co-processors, one for asymmetric
algorithms (RSA) and one for DES/Triple DES.

Herve Roche, Atmel's Marketing Manager for banking products,
commented, "This successful solution in partnership with SERMEPA
enhances Atmel's position as a leading supplier of highly secure
smart card ICs for Banking in Europe and South America. The security
features of the secureAVR 8-bit/16-bit RISC family have once again
been highlighted with this new reward."

Carmen Carnero Silvo, SERMEPA's Deputy Managing Director,
commented, "SERMEPA is pleased to offer this new solution to the
bankcard industry in cooperation with Atmel. By bringing the
component AT90SC9618RCT to market, card issuers now have a wider
array of Advantis chip platforms to choose from in order to deploy
EMV payment products in cards manufactured by different providers."

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) 2009 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), Atmel
logo and combinations thereof, secureAVR(R) and others, are
registered trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its
subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of
others.

Atmel Information:

For further information about Atmel, please visit www.atmel.com

About SERMEPA

Servicios Para Medios de Pago, S.A. (SERMEPA) is a Spanish
company that provides a wide array of technical solutions to the
Payment Industry. SERMEPA offers payment card solutions to bank card
issuers, including the full Advantis family of chip operating systems
and applications. SERMEPA operates in Spain and abroad, both as a
communications backbone system and as a technical research and
development center. Its dedication and efforts in these fields have
made of SERMEPA a highly reputed payment transaction processor within
the Payment Industry. In 2008, SERMEPA processed 2 billion
transactions.

(c) 2009 SERMEPA S.A. All Rights Reserved. Advantis(R) and
SERMEPA(R) and combinations thereof and others, are registered
trademarks or trademarks of Servicios Para Medios de Pago, S.A. Other
terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

SERMEPA Information:
For further information about SERMEPA, please visit www.sermepa.es
Atmel Press Contacts:
Carine Bourgon, Communications Manager - Atmel Rousset
Tel: (+33)-4-42-53-60-52, Email: carine.bourgon@atmel.com
Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
Tel: +1-408-487-2963, Email: helen.perlegos@atmel.com
SERMEPA Press Contact:
Rosa Ovejero, Communications Manager - Spain
Tel: (+34)-91-346-5335, Email: rovejero@sermepa.es

ots Originaltext: Atmel Corporation
Im Internet recherchierbar: http://www.presseportal.de

Contact:
Atmel Rousset, Carine Bourgon, Communications Manager,
(+33)-4-42-53-60-52, carine.bourgon@atmel.com, or Helen Perlegos,
Public Relations, +1-408-487-2963, helen.perlegos@atmel.com, both of
Atmel Corporation; or Spain, Rosa Ovejero, Communications Manager of
SERMEPA, (+34)-91-346-5335, rovejero@sermepa.es