Making small gadgets smarterAtmel was founded in 1984 as Advanced Technology for Memory and Logic by current CEO George Perlegos, a former design engineer for Intel. Atmel manufactures logic chips, which process information, and nonvolatile memory chips, which retain memory when a device is turned off. These products are used in portable electronic devices such as pagers, telephones, computers and smart cards.
Branching out
Atmel went public in 1991, and has grown into the world's largest manufacturer of Parallel and Serial EPROMs (erasable programmable read-only memory chips) and EEPROMs (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory chips). Its other products include Microcontrollers, flash-memories, and application-specific devices, including Smart Card ICs. In 1993, Atmel purchased Concurrent Logic, which makes user-programmable chips. The company opened its Colorado Springs manufacturing facility in 1994 and began building a manufacturing plant near its San Jose headquarters one year later. That year, it forged an agreement with Paradigm Technology to license its SRAM (static random-access memory) technology used in multimedia chips.
Riding out the volatile nonvolatile market
By 1996, nonvolatile memory was in high demand, so profits at Atmel were soaring. The company was one of the major suppliers of flash chips, EPROM and EEPROM. But in 1997, the Asian financial crisis, compounded by falling prices for its core technologies led to serious losses -- earnings plummeted 99 percent per share, and revenues fell $112 million from the previous year. The company was forced to implement a restructuring program, including a 10 percent workforce reduction, decreased production, and a shift in focus to system-level integration products and more advanced technologies. Despite the cutbacks in personnel, the numbers look prosperous for the future, with the company planning to build a factory in Scotland. Atmel hopes to hire as many as 200 new employees for this Lanarkshire plant by 2002.
The Temic solution
To bring itself back to profitability, the company purchased Temic Semiconductor, in March 1998, a European chipmaker previously owned by Daimler Benz. Operating as an independent entity, the acquisition has been a source of increased revenues since. In April 1999, Atmel purchased Motorola's Smart Information Transfer semiconductor business to strengthen its phone data storage position, and didn't stop there. Atmel purchased an unoccupied Hitachi plant in Irving, Texas in November 1999, creating several hundred new jobs while avoiding the costs of building from scratch. Eight months later, the company acquired Thomson-CSF Semiconducteurs Specifique, gaining access to image sensor and security technologies, vital to wireless products and digital cameras.
A new royal family
The company brought forth an impressive family of programmable system-level chips in October 1999, the world's first. These smart devices enable programmers to attain optimized designs at a faster rate while reducing power consumption. Atmel received the 1999 Product of the Year Award by Electronic Products magazine for this breakthrough.
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