industry semiconductors founded 1984 headquarters san jose california united states products microcontrollers flash memory touchscreen controllers touch sensors wireless rf transceivers revenue us 1.43 b fy 2012 1 operating income us 74m fy 2012 1 net income us 30m fy 2012 1 total assets us 1.352526 billion 2013 2 us 1.433533 billion 2012 2 total equity us 996m fy 2012 1 number of employees 5 000 website www.atmel.com atmel corporation is an american based designer and manufacturer of semiconductors founded in 1984 . the company focuses on embedded systems built around microcontrollers . its products include microcontrollers 8 bit avr 32 bit avr 32 bit arm based automotive grade and 8 bit intel 8051 derivatives radio frequency rf devices including wi fi eeprom and flash memory devices symmetric and asymmetric security chips touch sensors and controllers and application specific products . atmel supplies its devices as standard products application specific integrated circuits asics or application specific standard product assps depending on the requirements of its customers . atmel serves applications including consumer communications computer networking industrial medical automotive aerospace and military . it specializes in microcontroller and touch systems especially for embedded systems . atmel s corporate headquarters is in san jose california . other locations include trondheim norway ; colorado springs colorado ; chennai india ; shanghai china ; taipei taiwan ; rousset france ; nantes france ; patras greece ; heilbronn germany ; munich germany ; whiteley united kingdom ; cairo egypt . atmel makes much of its product line at vendor fabrication facilities . it owns a facility in colorado springs colorado that manufactures its xsense line of flexible touch sensors . in 2016 microchip agreed to buy atmel for us 3.6 billion in a deal brokered by jpmorgan chase and qatalyst . 3 4 contents 1 history 1.1 founding and 1980s growth 1.2 1990s expansion 1.3 streamlining 1.4 acquisitions 1.5 acquisition by microchip technology 2 products 2.1 microcontrollers 2.2 wireless rf 2.3 touchscreen 2.4 memory 2.5 security 2.6 analog 2.7 custom 2.8 automotive 2.9 smart energy 3 see also 4 references 5 external links history edit logo from 1984 to 2012 founding and 1980s growth edit atmel corporation was founded in 1984 by george perlegos . 5 atmel was an acronym for advanced technology for memory and logic . perlegos had worked in the memory group of intel in the 1970s and had co founded seeq technology to manufacture eprom memory . using only us 30 000 in capital atmel was initially operated as a fabless company using sanyo and general instrument to make the chip wafers . 6 the first atmel memory products used less power than competitors . customers included motorola nokia and ericsson . in 1987 intel sued atmel for patent infringement . 7 rather than fight the patent claim atmel redesigned its products to use different intellectual property . these had better performance and even lower power consumption . in addition atmel then entered the flash memory business that intel had focused on . atmel used us 60 million in venture capital for the 1989 purchase of a fabrication facility from honeywell in colorado springs . 7 atmel then invested another us 30 million in manufacturing technology . 1990s expansion edit the first atmel avr prototype demo board front side back side in 1991 atmel expanded the colorado facility after acquiring concurrent logic a field programmable gate array fpga manufacturer . the company made its initial public offering ipo in 1991 which yielded more than us 65 million . 1994 saw atmel enter the microprocessor market . the first atmel flash memory microcontroller was based on the intel 8051 . 8 the controller executed an instruction for every clock cycle as opposed to the 12 cycles that legacy 8051 parts required . 9 in 1994 atmel purchased the eerom assets of seeq technology lsi corporation acquired the rest of seeq in 1999 . in 1995 atmel was among the first companies to license the arm architecture creating initially its at91 family of devices followed by the sam family and more recently a full selection of cortex based solutions including ones based on the ultra low power arm cortex m4 . 10 atmel now has dozens of families of arm based devices . in 1995 atmel opened a fabrication facility in rousset france . atmel acquired european silicon structures and digital research in electronic acoustics and music dream in 1996 . atmel formed a design team in trondheim norway to develop the atmel avr line of risc microcontrollers . this team combined technology of former students at the norwegian university of science and technology with atmel s expertise in flash memory . these 8 bit harvard architecture chips were first developed in 1996 . the avr chip is the basis of most arduino open source development boards . in 1998 atmel purchased part of temic from vishay intertechnology which provided them with a fab in germany as well as part of mhs from vishay that gave them a fab in nantes france . 11 in september 2000 atmel acquired a fabrication plant in north tyneside england from siemens via a 28 million grant from the uk government and paying siemens around us 35 million . 12 streamlining edit atmel streamlined operations with a strategy called fab lite . this started in 2005 when atmel sold the mhs fab in nantes france to xbybus . in february 2006 steven laub became a director and in august president and chief executive officer . 1 under laub atmel divested more manufacturing plants and business lines . 13 atmel announced the sale of its north tyneside facility fab9 on october 8 2007 . the manufacturing equipment was sold to taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company ltd. tsmc and the property and associated land to highbridge business park limited . in 2008 atmel sold their fab in germany to tejas semiconductor . in 2010 atmel received approval from the french government to sell its fab to germany based lfoundry gmbh while retaining their design center there . 14 atmel completed the sale of their secure microcontroller solutions smart card business to inside secure . in february 2011 atmel sold its digital research in electronics acoustics and music dream business which sold products for karaoke and other entertainment machines for us 2.3 million . atmel s dataflash serial interface flash memory products were sold to adesto technologies in october 2012 . 15 acquisitions edit atmel corporate headquarters in san jose california as atmel divested several fabs and ancillary business lines laub also oversaw acquisitions . one strategy was to participate in the touch screen market both in the semiconductor chips and the sensors themselves . in 2008 atmel purchased quantum research group ltd. now known as atmel technologies ireland limited a wholly owned subsidiary a supplier of capacitive sensing technology . 16 work done at quantum led to the 2012 release of atmel s xsense product line a flexible touch screen based on copper mesh electrodes . 17 atmel moved into internet of things technology . they completed the acquisition of advanced digital design s.a a spanish company that develops power line communication . ozmo devices which developed products for wi fi direct was acquired by atmel in december 2012 . ozmo was founded in 2004 as h stream wireless by kateljin vleugels and roel peeters and was based in palo alto california . 18 in 2012 atmel had approximately us 1.4 billion in annual revenue with over 60 % of their revenue from microcontrollers and net income of us 30 million . 1 atmel purchased the smart metering product lines of idt corporation in march 2013 . 19 atmel purchased newport media in july 2014 . this will provide atmel further capability in wireless bluetooth and wi fi . 20 acquisition by microchip technology edit in 2016 microchip agreed to buy atmel for 3.6 billion . 3 4 jpmorgan chase and qatalyst partners served as financial advisers to microchip and atmel respectively . the company had previously heard offers from cypress semiconductor and dialog semiconductor in 2015 21 22 and the deal with microchip is expected to be finalized at the end of q2 2016 . 23 previously in october 2008 atmel received an unsolicited offer from microchip technology and on semiconductor estimated at us 2.3 billion . 24 25 the offer was eventually rejected and the companies gave up on their hostile takeover attempt . 26 27 products edit microcontrollers edit atmel at90s2333 microcontroller atmel atmega32 microcontroller a large part of atmel s revenue is from microcontrollers . these include the avr 8 and 32 bit microcontrollers arm architecture microprocessors and arm based flash microcontrollers . in addition atmel still makes microcontrollers that use the 8051 architecture albeit improved to do single cycle instructions . supporting the microcontrollers is the studio 6 integrated development environment which atmel offers for free . they also provide an atmel software framework . 28 wireless rf edit to provide for the internet of things iot atmel offers dual band 2.4 ghz 5 ghz a b g wi fi chips from its ozmo acquisition . also atmel offers 2.4 ghz b g n wi fi chips wilc1000 wilc3000 and winc1500 from its newport media inc acquisition . winc1500 provide a full 802.11 b g n network controller with full ip stack tcp ip udp with upper layer protocols as dhcp dns http sntp tls etc. also atmel makes wireless transceivers using regional 700 800 900 mhz as well as global 2.4 ghz frequency bands some chips are standalone transceivers while others are integrated with a microcontroller . they also sell the zigbit module that comes with fcc certifications . atmel also makes remote control rf products using the license free ism band industrial scientific medical frequencies 5.8 ghz 2.4 ghz 868 to 928 mhz 433 mhz and 315 mhz . the wireless segment also provides rfid chips for tracking access and identification . finally atmel offers a line of ir controllers that can support infrared as well as rf wireless . citation needed touchscreen edit atmel xsense is a flexible touchscreen film that uses a copper mesh instead of indium tin oxide ito . atmel makes both touchscreen controller ics and its xsense flexible touchscreen . 17 the company makes sensor hubs that manage accelerometers gyroscopes inertial measurement units and magnetometers . these sensors give consumer products and embedded systems context awareness . the sensor hub offloads the main application processor and allows product functionality without the need to power the main processor . atmel also makes simple touch controller chips for buttons sliders and wheels used on industrial and consumer products . the touch wheel interface became popularized by the apple ipod . to support the application of its touch controller chips atmel provides a free qtouch library of software routines . citation needed memory edit atmel s original business was in memory and it still sells several memory products . it offers serial and parallel eeprom as well as one time programmable otp eprom . in addition it offers secure memory with its cryptomemory product line of eeproms in capacities from 1 to 256 kbits . citation needed security edit in addition to the secure memory mentioned above they have the cryptoauthentication product lines that provide hardware authentication capability with both symmetric and asymmetric key algorithm authentication . these ics are used in many applications including secure access communications control and to prevent cloned products like batteries or ink cartridges not approved by the product manufacturer . atmel s cryptorf products add hardware encrypted security to rfid applications . finally atmel offers a trusted platform module that gives strong hardware based public key rsa algorithm security for both personal computers and embedded processors on a single chip . citation needed analog edit atmel makes led driver chips . it also has a line of digital output temperature sensors . the company also makes power management and analog companions pmaac that combine a