Semiconductor manufacture
Est: 1984
Headquarters: San Jose, CA
Founded by: George Perlegos
Atmel Corporation manufactures semiconductors with a focus on embedded systems built around microcontrollers. Atmel was founded by George Perlegos, a former Intel employee, in 1984 and initially provided memory products. Today it serves the automotive, communications, industrial, medical, IOT, aerospace, and military fields with a variety of products such as security chips, touch sensors and controllers, Wifi devices, and RF devices. Instead of fighting Intel's lawsuit regarding patent infringement 1987, Atmel redesigned its products to have higher performance and lower power consumption then entered the flash memory memory field that Intel was focused on. In 2016, Atmel Corporation was purchased by Microchip Technology for $3.6 billion.