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Atmel Introduces US$5 GPS Baseband IC With 3 Meter Accuracy

San Jose, California (ots/PRNewswire)

- Magellan(R) GPS IP Now Available Directly From Atmel
Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) today expanded its global
positioning  systems (GPS) offering with the industry's first
14-channel, GPS baseband IC  to carry a US$5 price tag and
three-meter accuracy. Atmel's Baldur(TM) chip  is priced about 45%
lower than any other comparably featured GPS baseband IC.  The chip
was developed jointly with Thales Navigation for Thales' Magellan(R)
eXplorist(TM) handheld GPS units. Thales licensed the GPS IP to Atmel
in December of 2004. Hundreds of thousands of eXplorists with the
Atmel chip have been sold since November of 2004.
The Baldur GPS baseband IC achieves horizontal resolution of as
little as one meter, corrected, and three meters, autonomous.
Vertical resolution is five meters (corrected) and velocity is
measured to within 0.1 meters/second. The chip's superior acquisition
(-137 dBm) and tracking (-150 dBm) sensitivities are possible because
Baldur can receive and process signals from as many as 12 different
tracking satellites at the same time. Additionally, it has two
Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) channels for Wide Area
Augmentation System (WAAS), European Geostationary Navigation Overlay
Service (EGNOS) or Multi-functional Transport Satellite Augmentation
System (MSAS). The maximum position update rate is once per second.
Developed specifically for portable handheld applications, Baldur
dissipates only 70 mW under continuous operation at 16 MHz, and 18 mW
in power-saving mode. Battery life for an eXplorist device is 14
hours. Baldur's time-to-first-fix (TTFF) signal acquisition takes
less than 90 seconds from a cold start, 30 seconds from a warm start
and only 15 seconds from a hot start. Once fixed, signal
reacquisition takes less than a second.
According to Bill Gross, Atmel's GPS Marketing Manager, "Never
before has such a fully-featured GPS baseband been available at such
a competitive price. Competing GPS baseband ICs with comparable
sensitivity and accuracy typically costs about US$9 with a total
chipset price of about US$17. Until now, GPS technology had been
limited to expensive, high-end equipment such as luxury cars, premium
mobile phones and PDAs. GPS is a huge, rapidly growing market," Gross
added. "By 2008 US$10 billion of in-vehicle navigation systems and
US$1.3 billion of GPS-based asset tracking systems are expected to be
sold. Baldur's US$5 price is going to help accelerate this growth,
opening a floodgate of new GPS product designs and making GPS
technology pervasive in cars, mobile phones, PDAs and other personal
tracking devices. We wouldn't be surprised to see GPS systems in
kid's lunch boxes and dog collars."
Pricing, Packaging and Availability
Baldur, part number ATR0640, is available now in a 12mm x 12mm
LFBGA package. It is priced at US$5 in quantities of 100,000. Atmel
expects to offer complete GPS chipsets with Atmel's radio receiver
chips for less than US$8 by the third quarter of 2005.
Footnote: (1) A global positioning system (GPS) is a satellite
navigation system using a constellation of 28 satellites to provide
accurate determination of location. GPS systems are used for
aviation, communications, in-vehicle navigation, marine, military,
people tracking, recreation surveying and mapping, timing and vehicle
and freight tracking. Although signals from as few as two satellites
can be used to determine a location, accuracy increases linearly with
the number of different satellite signals processed. Accuracy can
also be improved by applying correction algorithms to signals from
the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), European Geostationary
Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) or Multi-functional Transport
Satellite Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS). Using current
technology most GPS systems can resolve a location to within about
three meters. However, it is possible to achieve resolution of a few
centimeters (e.g. surveying applications).
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(SM).
NOTE: Atmel(R), logo and combinations thereof, and others, are
registered trademarks, and Everywhere You Are(SM) and others are
trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Magellan and
eXplorist are trademarks of Thales. Other terms and product names may
be trademarks of others.
Information
Atmel's GPS product information may be retrieved at
http://www.atmel.com/products/GPS .
Press Contacts:
    Vicki McCann, Director of Marketing Communications
    Phone: +1-719-540-1724
    Email:  vmccann@cso.atmel.com
    Veronique Sablereau, Corporate Communications Manager -- Europe
    Phone: +33-1-30-60-70-68, Fax: +49-71-31-67-24-23
    Email:  veronique.sablereau@atmel.com
Web site: http://www.atmel.com

Contact:

Vicki McCann, Director of Marketing Communications, +1-719-540-1724,
or vmccann@cso.atmel.com; or Veronique Sablereau, Corporate
Communications Manager -- Europe, +33-1-30-60-70-68, fax,
+49-71-31-67-24-23, or veronique.sablereau@atmel.com, both of Atmel
Corporation

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