SAN JOSE, California, October 22 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Product Line also Includes First to Market Single Layer ITO 
Touchscreen Solutions for Single Touch Applications

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) today announced its new line of
charge-transfer, capacitive touchscreen controller ICs targeted at some of
the highest growth areas of the electronics market, such as mobile phones and
other personal electronics. Atmel, with millions of custom touchscreen
solutions shipped over the past few years, offers highly reliable standard
Two Touch(TM) and Single Touch touchscreen controllers. Together with
partners, the company also offers complete touchscreen solutions for the most
common screen sizes, including the chips and sensors, typically implemented
as ITO on PET or glass.

Atmel's Two Touch controller ICs can track and report one or two
simultaneous touches as separate X and Y positions. Common user initiated
gestures, including tap, double tap, flick and drag, as well as two touch
gestures such as zoom in, zoom out and rotate are implemented in the
touchscreen controllers. This approach allows designers to incorporate a
comprehensive range of user interface functions such as resizing and rotation
of on-screen graphics, as well as allowing a two finger gesture to replace
multiple levels of menu access.

In addition to the touchscreen functions, the engineer can also implement
the touch surface as a combination of touch keys and scrolling devices for
additional flexibility -- this is configurable by the host processor through
the industry standard two-wire, I2C compatible interface.

Peter Jones, General Manager of Atmel's microcontroller division said,
"Our new Two Touch devices give industrial designers the opportunity to
incorporate next generation, cost effective user interfaces into their new
product developments with ease. To support this activity our End-to-End
reference designs help speed the development cycle. These new products
overcome many of the limitations of traditional resistive and capacitive
touchscreen technologies. Also with our single layer ITO solutions, customers
can achieve excellent performance at a very competitive price."

For single touch applications, Atmel offers a unique single layer sensor
minimizing the mechanical stack, and improving the optical performance of
touchscreen displays. The reduction of scatter and absorption of the
available backlight results in improved light transmission, contrast and
results in highly reduced power consumption.

The first Two Touch devices, AT42QT5320 and AT42QT5480, support screen
sizes of up to 8" with a 16:9 aspect ratio. The single touch devices,
AT42QT4120 and AT42AT4160, support screen sizes of up to 4.3" with aspect
ratios of 16:9 or 4:3. The AT42QT5320 comes in a 5x5 mm QFN package; the
AT42QT5480 is available in 5x5 mm BGA, a 7x7 mm QFN and a 10x10mm TQFP
package and also supports up to four user controlled GPO's. All packages are
RoHS compliant.

The AT42QT4160 and AT42QT4120 single touch devices can operate through up
to 3mm plastic and 4mm glass panel thicknesses. The devices are available in
a 5x5 mm QFN RoHS compliant package.

Availability and Pricing

Samples are now available and production quantities will be available in
Q1 2009. Pricing for touchscreen controller devices start at US$2.50 for high
volume projects.

Footnote:
    ITO = Indium Tin Oxide
    PET = Polyethylene terephthalate



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.

With its new touch technology division, formerly known as Quantum
Research Group(TM), the company now offers dedicated touch sense controllers
addressing applications in the mobile communication and entertainment markets
as well as in PC, appliances and automotive applications.

(C) 2008 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), Atmel logo and
combinations thereof, and others, are registered trademarks, Two Touch(TM)
and others are trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other
terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Information:

Atmel's touchscreen product information may be retrieved at,
http://www.atmel.com/touchscreen

For further information on touch technology products, visit
http://www.atmel.com

Press Contacts:
    Chris Ard, Director of Marketing - Touch technology division
    Tel: +44-23-8056-5600, Email: chris.ard@atmel.com
    Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
    Tel: +1-408-487-2963, Email: hperlegos@atmel.com
    Robert Huntley, (PR agency)
    Tel: +44-1225-470000, Email: robert.huntley@publitek.com



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