Atmel Targets Contactless Credit Card Markets with Introduction of Industry's SecureAVR Microcontroller
ROUSSET, France, November 15/ --Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a global leader in the development and fabrication of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced today the availability of its new contactless secureAVR(TM) microcontroller, the AT90SC6404RFT.
The secureAVR 8-/16-bit RISC microcontroller providing 16-bit CPU performance whilst offering state of the art security features is now available as a contactless only product, optimizing performance with smaller die size for price sensitive contactless applications. These features include DFA/DPA/SPA resistant, DES/TDES processor, true RNG (Random Number Generator), firewalls, and environmental protections. The AT90SC6404RFT, comprising of 64K ROM, 4K EEPROM and 1.2K RAM is a derivative of the popular AT90SC12872RCFT dual-interface chip targeted at e-Passport and ID applications, but having only a single RF ISO-14443 contactless interface. It is ideally suited to the emerging USA Contactless Card Payment market based on the standard Credit/Debit magnetic stripe profile offerings from "American Express (ExpressPay)", MasterCard(R) (PayPass(TM)) and Visa(R).
The ROM/EEPROM memory sizes provide sufficient capacity to allow additional applications, such as Loyalty or Mass Transit or alternatively as a Physical or Logical Access contactless card.
Ian Duthie, Atmel's Smart Card IC Marketing Manager, commented, "The success of our first PayPass product, which established Atmel as a leading IC vendor in the USA Contactless Card Payment market, convinced us of the potential growth and need for further product development to serve the USA payment industry. The customer interest in the AT90SC6404RFT bears this out; we are sampling now and planning volume production capability for 1Q 2006.
Preliminary estimates from our customers indicate that the USA Contactless Card Payment market will grow from several million cards this year to 25M+ next year and 40M+ by end 2007."
According to Frost & Sullivan, the USA market is expected to grow from 6.2 million unit shipments in 2004 to 78.7 million unit shipments in 2010, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 52.7 percent. [Source: Frost & Sullivan, World Banking (Financial & Loyalty) - Smart Card Market, October 2005]
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(R).
NOTE: (C) Atmel Corporation 2005. All rights reserved. Atmel(R), logo and combinations thereof, Everywhere You Are(R) and others are registered trademarks, SecureAVR(TM) and others are trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. MasterCard(R) and others are registered trademarks or trademarks of MasterCard International Inc., or its subsidiaries in the United States. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.
Product Information:
For further information on Atmel's secureAVR family, go to:
http://www.atmel.com/products/SecureAVR
