PRESS ANNOUNCEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE





Atmel and Micro Digital, Inc. Offer Complete Solution To Support Customizable Microcontroller Projects

Out-of-box AT91CAP9 solution enables faster time-to-market, lower BOM cost and higher performance for consumer and industrial applications

San Jose, CA, January 26, 2010 - Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), the leader in microcontroller and touch-based solutions, and Micro Digital, Inc. today announced immediate availability of a complete out-of-the-box board support package for Atmel’s AT91CAP9 starter and development kits. In this complete solution, Micro Digital will provide the board support package, while Atmel provides the AT91CAP9 (CAP9) starter and development kits. Micro Digital software includes SMX® RTOS, USB stacks, TCP/IP stack, File System, and WiFi support targeting the industrial and consumer markets to enable an easier, higher performing design.

“We are excited to team with Micro Digital to provide designers a complete out-of-the-box solution for industrial and consumer designs using our CAP9 products,” said Jay Johnson, product marketing director for Atmel’s CAP products. “By combining Atmel’s AT91CAP9 value-added alternative to using a standard ARM9-based microcontroller plus an FPGA to Micro Digital’s board support package, designers can now quickly jumpstart their CAP9 projects. With Atmel’s AT91CAP9, the Metal Programmable block can be programmed with IP to create a single chip for many industrial and consumer markets that require a royalty-free RTOS like SMX.”

Micro Digital’s SMX board support package offers turn-key AT91CAP9 (ARM9) support, and fast time-to-market at minimal cost. Using the software package as an evaluation tool decreases programming costs and results in a more reliable end product. The small size and high speed of the SMX RTOS reduces the bill of materials (BOM) cost and enables CAP9 to handle more demanding applications.

“As a pioneer in embedded software, we are thrilled to team with a leader in microcontroller technology to deliver a best-in-class solution,” said Ralph Moore, President of Micro Digital. “We believe this solution, which combines Micro Digital’s SMX RTOS with Atmel’s CAP9, will enable designers to bring their CAP9 projects to market before their competition.”

More on the Out-of-the-box Solution

The core of SMX RTOS is the smx® real-time multitasking kernel. smxBSP for the Atmel AT91CAP9 processor family provides startup code and board support functions for MDI products and is included with smx. smxAware, also included with smx, extends the IAR debugger to display smx kernel objects, queues, and diagnostic information, as well as task, ISR, and LSR timelines, processor usage, and task stack usage. It also displays networking, USB, and file system information.

The smxNS TCP/IP stack is available for CAP9. An Ethernet driver for the CAP9 Ethernet controller provides turnkey TCP/IP support. Similarly, a USB device controller driver for CAP9 provides turnkey USB device support using the smxUSBD USB device stack. smxUSBD permits connecting an embedded device to a PC, laptop, PDA, or other USB host as though it were a USB disk drive, USB serial device, USB HID, Ethernet device (RNDIS), or audio device, as desired.

A USB host controller driver for the CAP9 USB host controller provides turnkey USB host support using the smxUSBH USB host stack. smxUSBH permits connecting USB peripherals to a CAP9 embedded device. Supported are: USB disk drive, serial device, modem (CDC ACM), USB to serial converter, USB to Ethernet converter, audio device, HID device, USB hub, printer, Sierra wireless dongles, and WiFi dongles.

An MMC/SD driver for CAP9 provides turnkey file system support using the smxFS FAT file system, which is media-compatible with Windows, thus providing easy transfer of information between a CAP9 embedded device and a Windows-based computer. The smxFS FAT file system can be seamlessly integrated with the USB stacks to provide USB disk access or emulation. A NAND flash driver is also available for CAP9.

smxWiFi, a recently added product, provides wireless communication for CAP9-based devices by using USB WiFi dongles. It is 802.11 a, b, g, i, and n compliant. All products work seamlessly with the SMX RTOS. A free smx and smxNS evaluation kit can be downloaded directly from www.smxrtos.com/eval. USB and file system demos can be downloaded from www.smxrtos.com/demo.

Availability and Pricing

Evaluation kits are available at no charge for qualified evaluators. All products are licensed on a per-product basis without royalties, and no per-developer charges. smxAware for the IAR Embedded Workbench is sold per development seat.

Atmel’s AT91CAP9A-STK is available now for $750 USD and Atmel’s AT91CAP9A-DK is priced at $3500 USD.

More Information

More information about Atmel's AT91CAP product information is available at http://www.atmel.com/products/at91cap/
Further information on the board support package from Micro Digital, Inc. is available at ../cap9.htm

About Micro Digital

Micro Digital is located in Costa Mesa, California. Micro Digital has been in the embedded systems business for 35 years and has been producing SMX® for 20 years. The company is dedicated to providing quality products and support for embedded systems developers at moderate prices. For more information, please visit www.smxrtos.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.

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

Glossary of Terms:

RTOS: Real-Time Operating Systems
USB: Universal Serial Bus
TCP/IP: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
smxNS: A TCP/IP stack for ARM
smxUSBD: A USB Device Stack
PDA: Personal Device Assistant
HID: Human Interface Device
RNDIS: Remote Network Driver Interface Specification
smxFS: A FAT file system that is media-compatible with DOS/Windows
MMC/SD: MultiMediaCard/Secure Digital

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