Ottawa, Ontario, Canada and San Jose, CA – July 26, 2006 – Tundra Semiconductor Corporation (TSX:TUN), the leader in System Interconnect and Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a global leader in the development and fabrication of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced an agreement enabling Atmel to deliver leading-edge system interconnect products to the extended-reliability markets. In this new agreement, Atmel has been licensed to deliver a selection of Tundra’s portfolio of high-performance interconnect devices with enhanced capabilities for applications requiring extended-temperature and extended-reliability specifications. As a result of this announcement, Tundra and Atmel-Grenoble will offer comprehensive processing systems solutions in the high-performance telecommunications, embedded computing, industrial, military and space markets.
Atmel will be able to offer host bridges for PowerPC® and RapidIO® interconnect products as either commercial devices upscreened to meet extended-reliability demands, such as high temperature range, burn-in or other specific qualifications, or as high reliability devices assembled and tested by Atmel to military screening levels such as MIL-PRF 38535.
“We are pleased to partner with Atmel Grenoble. The partnership is important to our commitment to customers – enabling them to design with standards-based System Interconnect products for both PowerPC and RapidIO architectures and now in both industrial and military temperature ranges,” said Daniel Hoste, vice president of Products at Tundra Semiconductor. “Atmel Grenoble is recognized as the specialist in supplying extended reliability microprocessors and we are confident our products will be more widely available to customers who are developing systems suitable for harsh environments.”
Joining the PC106 and PC107, will be the PC109, the extended-reliability version of the Tundra Tsi109TM Host Bridge for PowerPC. The PC109 is an ideal companion chip for the PC74xx high-reliability microprocessors supported by Atmel. It will be available from Atmel during fourth quarter 2006. In addition to the host bridges, Atmel intends to offer extended-reliability versions of Tundra’s portfolio of serial RapidIO switches.
“With more than twenty years of successful support of Freescale Semiconductor’s PowerPC and 68K microprocessors for extended reliability markets, we are delighted by the opportunity to officially team with Tundra. Tundra’s System Interconnect products ideally complement our microprocessor portfolio and will broaden the range of solutions available for our customers,” said Thierry Gouvernel, director of BMS product line at Atmel Grenoble. “Customers will continue to benefit from a high level of services and warranty thanks to Atmel Grenoble’s world-class assembly and test facilities as well as technical support and long term product availability.”
About Tundra Semiconductor Corporation
Tundra Semiconductor Corporation (TSX:TUN) is the global leader in System Interconnect providing world-class customer and technical support, leading-edge semiconductor solutions and design services to the world’s foremost communications, networking, storage system, and information technology vendors. Consistently delivering on system level performance promises that reduce time to market, Tundra System Interconnect products ensure market advantage in wireless infrastructure, storage networking, network access, military, industrial automation, and information technology applications. Silicon Logic Engineering, Inc. (“SLE”), Tundra’s semiconductor design services division, offers industry-leading ASIC design services, semiconductor intellectual property and product development consulting. For more information, please visit www.tundra.com
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, Atmel ICs can be found Everywhere You Are®. For further information on Atmel’s Hi-Rel microprocessors, go to www.atmel.com/products/HighRel