September 23, 2009 — Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) and Global Unichip (GUC; TW: 3443), the leading fabless ASIC and SoC design foundry, announced today a collaboration to develop systems-on-chip for their mutual clients, with Atmel’s AT91CAP ARM®-based customizable microcontroller as the technology platform. Under the terms of the agreement Global Unichip will support customers by translating their designs into netlists for the metal-programmable portion of the CAP™. Netlists will be mapped onto a CAP emulation board for validation before being transferred to Atmel for place & route and metal programming.

With proven track record of accomplishing close to a hundred customer projects per year, GUC has distilled its experience into the most efficient design flow. By partnering with GUC, Atmel CAP customers will be guaranteed to get the most efficient service from the leader of fabless ASIC providers.

Michel Le Lan, Atmel's Marketing Director for ASIC products, commented, “Global Unichip is a welcome addition to the growing CAP family of expert design centers and IP providers. Global Unichip’s depth of ASIC and SoC design expertise, coupled with its worldwide presence with a strong focus in China, will strengthen our penetration into this strategic region, to win and support new CAP clients.”

“As the leader of fabless ASIC designers, GUC has been striving to meet customers’ stringent demands for performance, cost and time to market with highest quality. Atmel’s CAP customizable microcontroller family is a perfect complementary solution to our cell-based ASIC solution. The CAP family is perfect to answer customer’s need to reduce risk and accelerate the time to market with lower upfront NRE in application segments with lower volume during the product life cycle”, said Keh-Ching Huang, Marketing Director of Global Unichip.