BusinessWire
September 21, 2005 04:48 PM US Pacific Timezone

Avnet, Atmel Supercharge Battery Technology Inc.'s Design Process; New Laptop Batteries Are Now Smaller While Boasting Higher Performance Than Before

PHOENIX & SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 21, 2005--It's true that two heads are better than one. Three are even better.

When Battery Technology Inc. (aka Battery Tech) began working on its next generation of batteries, it enlisted engineering aid from the silicon chip expertise of Avnet Electronics Marketing, a division of Avnet Inc. (NYSE:AVT) and Atmel(R) Corp. (Nasdaq: ATML). Together, Avnet and Atmel field application engineers (FAEs), in conjunction with Battery Tech's internal engineering department, created a new line of batteries for laptop computers that rely on Atmel's AVR(R) line of microcontrollers. The AVR features an award-winning RISC-based processor core and is the world's highest performance, low power 8-bit Flash memory microcontroller.

"With help from Avnet and Atmel, we brought engineering in house and now we control our own design destiny," said Andy Tong, Battery Tech vice president of research and development.

The collaborative group effort also resulted in a design that uses fewer components, has a smaller form factor and features improved performance. "We created a total team effort between Atmel, Avnet and Battery Tech," said Andy Barbosa, Avnet account manager.

Rodney McCray, Atmel's field application engineer, added, "All of this was done to make Battery Tech more competitive. We looked at everything to help them become more competitive -- from performance and power consumption to cost and flexibility."

Tapping Avnet's supply chain expertise, Battery Tech was also able to speed the product's time to market. By using Avnet's Point of Use Replenishment System (POURS), Battery Tech is assured of the right amount of inventory at exactly the time it's needed on the production floor. Today, Battery Tech has plans to migrate additional products to the same microcontroller platform, and it continues to rely on its relationship with Avnet and Atmel in bringing new products to life.

About Avnet Electronics Marketing

Avnet Electronics Marketing is the largest operating group of Phoenix-based Avnet Inc., a Fortune 500 company. Avnet Electronics Marketing serves electronic original equipment manufacturers (EOEMs) and electronic manufacturing services (EMS) providers in 68 countries, distributing electronic components from leading manufacturers and providing associated design-chain and supply-chain services. The group's Web site is located at http://www.em.avnet.com.

Avnet enables success from the center of the technology industry, providing cost-effective services and solutions vital to a broad base of more than 100,000 customers and 300 suppliers. The company markets, distributes and adds value to a wide variety of electronic components, enterprise computer products and embedded subsystems. Through its premier market position, Avnet brings a breadth and depth of capabilities that help its trading partners accelerate growth and realize cost efficiencies. Avnet and the company it acquired in July 2005, Memec Group Holdings Ltd., together generated more than $13 billion in revenue in the past year through sales in 68 countries. Visit www.avnet.com/.

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).

(C) Atmel Corp. 2005. All rights reserved. Atmel(R), logo, AVR(R) and combinations thereof, Everywhere You Are(R) and others, are registered trademarks or trademarks of Atmel Corp. or its subsidiaries. Other terms and product names may be trademarks of others.