Atmel maXTouch Touchscreen Controller Wins Electronic Product of the Year at British Engineering Excellence Awards

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), today announced that its maXTouch™ mXT224 touchscreen controller IC has won the "New Electronic Product of the Year" award at the recent British Engineering Excellence awards ceremony held in London.

The award, sponsored by Digi-key, was for the most innovative electronics product that had been brought to market during 2009/10. This was a difficult award category for the Judges to decide on the shortlisted products. The Judges compared the technology used, how the company had determined customer need, and the speed with which the product had been introduced into the market.

Commenting on their decision the Judges said, "The product's success with a range of highly credible companies is testimony to the quality of the design. The mXT224's high signal-to-noise ratio is impressive and has given it a clear advantage over competitors. It's one of the key factors that has allowed it to become the market leader within a year of being released and makes it a classic example of good engineering facilitating business success."

The Atmel mXT224 is the first device in the maXTouch family that was launched. It has 224 nodes that allow it to accurately report the positions of unlimited, simultaneous touches and it can completely redraw the screen every 4/1000 of a second (4 mS). The mXT224's large number of nodes and fast performance makes it suitable for advanced touchscreen functionality, such as rejection of unintended touches, stretch/pinch and rotate gestures, handwriting and shape recognition such as face detection on mobile phones, mobile Internet devices (MID) and Netbook screens.

About Atmel maXTouch Technologies

With true unlimited touch functionality and stylus support, the maXTouch technology will enable exciting new applications, such as tablets, Netbooks and MIDs. The microcontroller technology, combined with proprietary algorithms, offers a better touch experience for users of tablets and other applications. The larger screen solution is an enhancement of existing maXTouch products that provide best-in-class configurability to exceed today's user interface requirements for applications such as tablets. For more information, visit http://www.atmel.com/products/touchscreens/. To see the latest Atmel maXTouch videos, visit the Atmel YouTube Channel at http://www.atmel.com/youtube or follow Atmel on Twitter @atmelcorporatio.

The British Engineering Excellence Awards

The British Engineering Excellence Awards, organized by Findlay Media, demonstrate and promote the quality of engineering design within the UK and act as an incentive to the design engineering industry to create world class businesses. The Awards provide a benchmark of excellence from which the industry can learn and from which it can build; and demonstrate the power of engineering design innovation within the UK.

For more on the British Engineering Excellence Awards, go to www.beeas.co.uk. For more on Findlay Media, go to www.findlay.co.uk.

About Atmel

Atmel Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, 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 industrial, consumer, communications, computing and automotive markets.

©2010 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel®, Atmel logo and combinations thereof, and others are registered trademarks, maXTouch™ and others are trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

SOURCE Atmel Corporation