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Atmel Extends Arrow Electronics Relationship to Include SiliconCity ASICs

October 08, 2006 by Jeff Shepard

Atmel® Corp. announced that it has extended its full franchise relationship with Arrow Electronics Inc. to include SiliconCity® ASIC design services for North America.

Arrow's newly-formed Custom Logic Solutions Group, chartered to offer ASIC sales and design services, will complement Atmel's internal design teams by offering customers technical support, competitive NREs and reduced turn-around times. The extended relationship offers a substantial increase in Atmel's design resources. Atmel is gearing up for increased SiliconCity ASIC designs using its new 130nm Metal Programmable Cell Fabric (MPCF) technology. MPCF offers an alternative to traditional full-custom standard cell-based designs with competitive density, engineering and unit prices. Arrow® will be able to assist in the migration of FPGA plus ARM7™ and ARM9™ core-based standard product to customer defined MPCF platforms in as little as 12 to 15 weeks from net list to silicon.

Atmel manufactures their ICs in their own facilities using industry-leading process technologies. A wide range of embedded non-volatile memory (EE or Flash) options are offered in all its ASIC technologies. This makes ASICs even more viable as the movement to Flash-based SoCs for high-security markets increases.

According to Chris Miller, Director for Arrow's CLS Group, "Atmel helps us fill the gap for low-cost designs with ARM®-based IP. In addition, their strength in the military, industrial, security and transportation markets is a great fit with both our existing and new target customer base."

"Arrow's dominant presence in the marketplace and their in-house design teams will be important factors for Atmel's growing ASIC business. SiliconCity ASICs offer a seamless migration from standard micros and FPGAs with a BOM reduction of up to 60%," said Jay Johnson, Marketing Director for Atmel's SiliconCity ASICs. "MPCF platform-based ASICs are a viable alternative to going into production with expensive FPGAs."