Atmel Announces World's Most Powerful Touchscreen Technology With Revolutionary
Performance
SAN JOSE, Calif., May 26 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ --
maXTouch represents the market's most advanced Touchscreen
Technology for Mobile Phones, Netbooks and other Electronic Devices
Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today a new fully
integrated capacitive touchscreen technology - maXTouch(TM) - providing
touchscreen performance which significantly exceeds today's leading edge
solutions. Atmel's patented capacitive touch technology combined with an
optimized and touch-sensing enabled AVR(R) microcontroller provide unlimited
touch capability, the fastest response times and the highest acquisition
precision.
The general release of products based on the new maXTouch technology is
scheduled for September 2009, and is already being demonstrated to major OEMs
around the world. "The initial reception of those customers who are already
designing with the maXTouch technology exceeds our highest expectations,"
said Vegard Wollan, Managing Director and General Manager of Atmel's
Microcontroller Business Unit. "Many of our mobile handset customers have
commented that maXTouch clearly provides better performance than any
touchscreen phone in the market today and is superior compared to products
and technologies currently being offered by other suppliers. In addition, it
provides the lowest power consumption and a solution with a significantly
smaller form factor than the existing solutions," concluded Vegard Wollan.
maXTouch represents the market's first fully integrated, unlimited touch,
low power touchscreen solution. An unlimited number of unique touch points
can be read and utilized through Atmel's advanced maXTouch algorithms.
Advanced chip functions related to user gestures such as zoom, rotate, flick
and tap are also recognized and reported. More complex functions are also
derived from the on-chip shape recognition capabilities. Unintended touches
are detected and rejected through the technology's unique ear/cheek/grip
suppression algorithms.
The maXTouch technology provides excellent multiple touch finger
adjacency for screen sizes surpassing 10". In addition, it enables extremely
fast reporting of touch positions to the host, which means that there is no
compromise in the user experience enabling advanced features such as
handwriting recognition. The maXTouch technology also reports 'size of the
touch' and 'width of line', and is the first capacitive technology based
solution that recognizes stylus and finger nails as touch input.
The innovative maXTouch technology is based on a touch optimized version
of Atmel's industry leading XMEGA(TM) AVR(R) microcontroller CPU, coupled
with a new advanced and fully-integrated analog sensing front-end to capture
the charge image from the touchscreen sensor. Two on-chip dedicated DSP
systems are used for the precise X-Y matrix position calculations. Atmel's
patented Capacitive Charge Transfer technology provides the best possible
signal-to-noise ratio and excellent linearity, and enables extremely robust
performance even in noisy environments such as a mobile phone.
Atmel's first single-chip product utilizing the maXTouch technology is
offered in an ultra-thin 5x5mm BGA package enabling customers to build the
thinnest possible high-performance touchscreen products. The highly
integrated maXTouch solution only requires 3 bypass capacitors to form the
complete sensing solution, minimizing board space significantly compared with
existing solutions which usually require in the range of 25 - 40 external
components.
Touchscreens have become the user interface of choice for electronic
devices and the market opportunity for capacitive touchscreen solutions is
recognized as one of the fastest growing in the electronics industry.
According to iSuppli, touchscreen shipments are projected to rise from
approximately 300 million units in 2008 to well over 800 million units by
2013.
The maXTouch technology is focused directly on the heart of this market
and is ideal for customers building touchscreen solutions across a broad
range of end markets including mobile handsets, netbooks, printers, GPS,
portable media players, digital cameras, and point of sale terminals.
Availability
Products based on the maXTouch technology are scheduled for general
release in September 2009 and are currently available for demonstration and
design-in purposes.
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.
(c) 2009 Atmel Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Atmel(R), Atmel logo and
combinations thereof, AVR(R) and others, are registered trademarks,
maXTouch(TM), and others are trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its
subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.
Information:
Atmel's maXTouch Touchscreen Technology information may be retrieved at www.atmel.com
Chris Ard, Director of Product Marketing - Touch Technology
Tel: (+44) 23 8056 5600, Email: chris.ard@atmel.com
Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
Tel: (+1) 408 487-2963, Email: helen.perlegos@atmel.com
SOURCE: Atmel Corporation
CONTACT: Chris Ard, Director of Product Marketing - Touch Technology
(+44) 23 8056 5600
chris.ard@atmel.com, or
Helen Perlegos, Public Relations
+1-408-487-2963
helen.perlegos@atmel.com,
both of Atmel Corporation
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