Atmel's ARM-based System-on-Chip Powers M-Systems DiskOnKey

ROUSSET, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 20, 2001--Atmel® Corporation (Nasdaq:ATML - news) announced that its ARM®-based System-on-Chip (SoC) products are being used by M-Systems® (Nasdaq:FLSH - news) for its DiskOnKey® PC data storage device. Atmel is already shipping in volume an ARM-based standard product for the current generation of this revolutionary product, and has developed a customer-specific derivative for the next generation. The Atmel SoC provides central system control and the USB interface of the DiskOnKey.

DiskOnKey is a small form-factor removable solid-state data storage device designed to be used with laptops and PCs and other USB-compatible devices. When plugged into the USB port of a PC, it is immediately recognized as a hard disk. Data can be read from or written to the DiskOnKey by all PC applications. Capacity is up to 128 Mbytes, with a peak transfer rate of 12 Mbits/sec.

For most PC operating systems, DiskOnKey requires no software driver. It is compatible with Windows®, Mac®OS and Linux® operating systems, and is ideal for transferring data between these systems. It is hot-pluggable, enabling it to be plugged in or unplugged at any time without disturbing the operation of the PC.

Atmel's ARM-based microcontrollers are optimized for maximum performance at minimum power consumption. Based on an ARM7 or ARM9 core with on-chip RAM and a rich set of peripherals and standard interfaces, they include an advanced interrupt controller and peripheral DMA controller for enhanced real-time performance, as well as an external bus interface for high-speed connection to a variety of external memory devices including Atmel's Flash memory.

Commented Dan Harkabi, M-Systems' VP for DiskOnKey, "We chose Atmel's ARM-based solution for its performance and low power consumption on the extremely small footprint required for our portable device. We built an Atmel ARM-based standard product into the current version of our product to shorten our time-to-market and reduce our initial investment. We are able to re-use a number of software IP blocks in the next version. This has significantly reduced our design cycle time and cost."

Alfredo Vadillo, Atmel's Director of Customer and Application-Specific Products, added, "The M-Systems project is another tribute to the success of our strategy of maximum re-use of IP blocks, both hardware and software. Using a standard product enabled M-Systems to get its product to the market extremely rapidly with minimal development cost. The widespread market acceptance of DiskOnKey has motivated us to jointly develop a cost-optimized customer-specific SoC. This was done in a very aggressive timescale because it is based almost entirely on a qualified standard product. We can leverage our expertise and experience in ARM cores and our modular library of bus-compatible peripherals and industry-standard interfaces to produce a device that totally dedicated to a specific application extremely rapidly and with minimal risk."

About Atmel

Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose, California with manufacturing facilities in North America and Europe. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets worldwide, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and RF semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system-level integration semiconductor solutions using CMOS, BiCMOS, bipolar SiGe, and high-voltage BCDMOS process technologies. Further details can be obtained from Atmel's Web site at www.atmel.com.

About M-Systems

M-Systems (Nasdaq:FLSH - news) is a leader and innovator of flash-based data storage products known as flash disks. M-Systems' flash disks provide the functionality of a mechanical hard drive in a silicon chip. M-Systems' products are based on its patented TrueFFS® technology and target applications in a vast array of markets, including connected devices, mobile and telecom. M-Systems' products include the DiskOnChip®, DiskOnKey(TM), Fast Flash Disk (FFD) and Compact Flash product families. For more information, please contact M-Systems at www.m-sys.com.

Note to Editors: Requests may be sent via e-mail to literature@atmel.com or by visiting Atmel's website at www.atmel.com.

Atmel, the Atmel logo and combinations thereof and others contained herein, are trademarks of Atmel Corporation. M-Systems and DiskOnKey are registered trademarks of M-Systems Other terms and product names in this document may be the trademarks of others.

     Atmel Corporation
     Alfredo Vadillo, +33-0-4-42-53-60-00
     avadillo@atmel.com
     Peter Bishop, +33-0-4-42-53-61-50
     pbishop@atmel.com
        OR
     M-Systems
     Dan Harkabi, +972-9-764-5006
     media@diskonkey.com