ROUSSET, France, October 28 /PRNewswire/ --

- Portable Design China Readers Voted the AT91SAM9G20 Best in Class for
Performance and Performance & Functionality vs Cost

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today that its 400 MHz
AT91SAM9G20 ARM926EJ-S(TM)-based embedded microprocessor has been voted one
of the five best microcontrollers by the 2008 Portable Design China Reader's
Survey. The AT91SAM9G20 was the overall winner in two significant categories:
performance, and performance & functionality vs cost. The awards were the
outcome of one month of on-line voting by Portable Design China's extensive
readership base.

Alfredo Vadillo, Atmel's Managing Director for ARM(R) microcontrollers,
commented, "This is the second consecutive year that an Atmel microcontroller
has won a leading product award from the readers of Portable Design China.
This underlines the leadership of our MCUs in the essential marketplace for
portable devices, and also indicates their high level of acceptance in the
Chinese market. The AT91SAM9G20, with its outstanding combination of high
performance and low power consumption, at a very affordable price, is one of
the exciting new products that we are adding to our well-established AT91SAM
ARM-based product family, in order to ensure its continued leadership."

About Atmel's Award-Winning AT91SAM9G20. The 400 MHz AT91SAM9G20 features
Atmel's market-leading peripheral DMA (direct memory access) and distributed
memory architecture that, together with the 6-layer bus matrix, enables
multiple simultaneous data transfers between memories, peripherals and
external interfaces without consuming CPU clock cycles. The external bus
interface (EBI) is clocked at 133 MHz for high-speed transfers to off-chip
memories. This architecture gives the device the high internal and external
data bandwidth required by many embedded networked applications.

Networking and communications requirements are met by an Ethernet 10/100
Base T MAC, seven USARTs, 12M bps USB Full Speed Dual Host and Device ports,
dual SPI, SSC and Two-Wire Interface (TWI). Image sensing requirements are
met by a fully integrated Image Sensor Interface (ISI).

Power consumption in full-power operating mode at 400 MHz with all
peripherals turned on is only 80 mW. The AT91SAM9G20 also features four
reduced-power modes, including Backup Mode where the main power supply is off
and the device power consumption is sufficiently low (9uW) for an extended
period of operation under battery supply.

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

Information:

Atmel's AT91SAM9G20 product information may be retrieved at
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=4337

Press Contacts:
    Peter Bishop, Communications Manager, Atmel Rousset
    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 
              http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=4337