SAN JOSE, Calif., April 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Atmel(R) Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) and SERMEPA, a leading Spanish technical provider for the electronic payments industry, announced today that SERMEPA's Advantis(R) crypto solution with an Atmel Secure Microcontroller, has been granted a VISA(R) approval. SERMEPA has developed Advantis, a family of products and services that furnish the full suite of infrastructure needed for processing financial transactions with multi-application smart cards to address Spanish and international markets. SERMEPA has developed the Advantis Crypto smart card operating system, which is now available on Atmel's AT90SC9618RCT secure microcontroller for banking. The Advantis crypto solution is a native multi-application, multi-currency, and multi-provider operating system for smart cards. This card offers issuers performance, security and fraud prevention.

The Advantis Crypto smart card solution is based on Atmel's AT90SC9618RCT secure microcontroller. Developed primarily for the banking smart card market, the AT90SC9618RCT features 18 Kbytes EEPROM, 96 Kbytes ROM and 4 Kbytes of RAM. It shares the same common features of Atmel's secureAVR(R) family including its outstanding 8-bit/16-bit RISC CPU performance, strong security mechanisms, firewalls and two cryptographic co-processors, one for asymmetric algorithms (RSA) and one for DES/Triple DES.

Herve Roche, Atmel's Marketing Manager for banking products, commented, "This successful solution in partnership with SERMEPA enhances Atmel's position as a leading supplier of highly secure smart card ICs for Banking in Europe and South America. The security features of the secureAVR 8-bit/16-bit RISC family have once again been highlighted with this new reward."

Carmen Carnero Silvo, SERMEPA´s Deputy Managing Director, commented, "SERMEPA is pleased to offer this new solution to the bankcard industry in cooperation with Atmel. By bringing the component AT90SC9618RCT to market, card issuers now have a wider array of Advantis chip platforms to choose from in order to deploy EMV payment products in cards manufactured by different providers."

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) 2009 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), Atmel logo and combinations thereof, secureAVR(R) and others, are registered trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

Atmel Information:

For further information about Atmel, please visit www.atmel.com

About SERMEPA

Servicios Para Medios de Pago, S.A. (SERMEPA) is a Spanish company that provides a wide array of technical solutions to the Payment Industry. SERMEPA offers payment card solutions to bank card issuers, including the full Advantis family of chip operating systems and applications. SERMEPA operates in Spain and abroad, both as a communications backbone system and as a technical research and development center. Its dedication and efforts in these fields have made of SERMEPA a highly reputed payment transaction processor within the Payment Industry. In 2008, SERMEPA processed 2 billion transactions.

(C) 2009 SERMEPA S.A. All Rights Reserved. Advantis(R) and SERMEPA(R) and combinations thereof and others, are registered trademarks or trademarks of Servicios Para Medios de Pago, S.A. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.

SERMEPA Information:

For further information about SERMEPA, please visit www.sermepa.es

    Atmel Press Contacts:
    Carine Bourgon, Communications Manager - Atmel Rousset
    Tel: (+33) 4 42 53 60 52, Email: carine.bourgon@atmel.com
    Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
    Tel: (+1) 408 487-2963, Email: helen.perlegos@atmel.com

    SERMEPA Press Contact:
    Rosa Ovejero, Communications Manager - Spain
    Tel: (+34) 91-346-5335, Email: rovejero@sermepa.es

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