Atmel Announces World's Most Powerful Touchscreen Technology With Revolutionary Performance

San Jose, California (ots/PRNewswire) -

- maXTouch represents the market's most advanced Touchscreen
Technology for Mobile Phones, Netbooks and other Electronic Devices

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today a new fully
integrated capacitive touchscreen technology - maXTouch(TM) -
providing touchscreen performance which significantly exceeds today's
leading edge solutions. Atmel's patented capacitive touch technology
combined with an optimized and touch-sensing enabled AVR(R)
microcontroller provide unlimited touch capability, the fastest
response times and the highest acquisition precision.

The general release of products based on the new maXTouch
technology is scheduled for September 2009, and is already being
demonstrated to major OEMs around the world. "The initial reception
of those customers who are already designing with the maXTouch
technology exceeds our highest expectations," said Vegard Wollan,
Managing Director and General Manager of Atmel's Microcontroller
Business Unit. "Many of our mobile handset customers have commented
that maXTouch clearly provides better performance than any
touchscreen phone in the market today and is superior compared to
products and technologies currently being offered by other suppliers.
In addition, it provides the lowest power consumption and a solution
with a significantly smaller form factor than the existing
solutions," concluded Vegard Wollan.

maXTouch represents the market's first fully integrated,
unlimited touch, low power touchscreen solution. An unlimited number
of unique touch points can be read and utilized through Atmel's
advanced maXTouch algorithms. Advanced chip functions related to user
gestures such as zoom, rotate, flick and tap are also recognized and
reported. More complex functions are also derived from the on-chip
shape recognition capabilities. Unintended touches are detected and
rejected through the technology's unique ear/cheek/grip suppression
algorithms.

The maXTouch technology provides excellent multiple touch finger
adjacency for screen sizes surpassing 10". In addition, it enables
extremely fast reporting of touch positions to the host, which means
that there is no compromise in the user experience enabling advanced
features such as handwriting recognition. The maXTouch technology
also reports 'size of the touch' and 'width of line', and is the
first capacitive technology based solution that recognizes stylus and
finger nails as touch input.

The innovative maXTouch technology is based on a touch optimized
version of Atmel's industry leading XMEGA(TM) AVR(R) microcontroller
CPU, coupled with a new advanced and fully-integrated analog sensing
front-end to capture the charge image from the touchscreen sensor.
Two on-chip dedicated DSP systems are used for the precise X-Y matrix
position calculations. Atmel's patented Capacitive Charge Transfer
technology provides the best possible signal-to-noise ratio and
excellent linearity, and enables extremely robust performance even in
noisy environments such as a mobile phone.

Atmel's first single-chip product utilizing the maXTouch
technology is offered in an ultra-thin 5x5mm BGA package enabling
customers to build the thinnest possible high-performance touchscreen
products. The highly integrated maXTouch solution only requires 3
bypass capacitors to form the complete sensing solution, minimizing
board space significantly compared with existing solutions which
usually require in the range of 25 - 40 external components.

Touchscreens have become the user interface of choice for
electronic devices and the market opportunity for capacitive
touchscreen solutions is recognized as one of the fastest growing in
the electronics industry. According to iSuppli, touchscreen shipments
are projected to rise from approximately 300 million units in 2008 to
well over 800 million units by 2013.

The maXTouch technology is focused directly on the heart of this
market and is ideal for customers building touchscreen solutions
across a broad range of end markets including mobile handsets,
netbooks, printers, GPS, portable media players, digital cameras, and
point of sale terminals.

Availability

Products based on the maXTouch technology are scheduled for
general release in September 2009 and are currently available for
demonstration and design-in purposes.

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, AVR(R) and others, are registered
trademarks, maXTouch(TM), and others are trademarks of Atmel
Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be
trademarks of others.

Information:

Atmel's maXTouch Touchscreen Technology information may be
retrieved at www.atmel.com

Chris Ard, Director of Product Marketing - Touch Technology
Tel: +44-23-8056-5600, Email: chris.ard@atmel.com
Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
Tel: +1-408-487-2963, Email: helen.perlegos@atmel.com

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

Contact:
Chris Ard, Director of Product Marketing - Touch Technology,
+44-23-8056-5600, chris.ard@atmel.com, or Helen Perlegos, Public
Relations, +1-408-487-2963, helen.perlegos@atmel.com, both of Atmel
Corporation