OREANDA-NEWS.  Atmel® Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML), a leader in microcontroller (MCU) and touch technology solutions, today announced that Atmel's maXTouch® firmware development facility in Whiteley, U.K., has achieved the Automotive SPICE® Level 3 certification—a certification that addresses rigid requirements for the software development process for tier 1 and tier 2 partners in the automotive industry.

SPICE, also known as Software Process Improvement and Capability dEtermination, is a process assessment model with a set of technical standards documents for the computer software development process and related business management functions. It is one of the joint International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standards, and it was developed by the ISO and IEC joint subcommittee ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 7. Automotive SPICE is a version of SPICE that applies specifically to the automotive industry, however the benefits of the Automotive SPICE certification will also apply to the consumer industry and other industries that use maXTouch technology in the future.

For Atmel, achieving this certification is evidence of its recognition as a world-class leader in touch software development capabilities and processes for automotive electronics and embedded systems.

To achieve the certification, Atmel redefined and redesigned its software development process over a three-year period. Atmel achieved Automotive SPICE Level 2 compliance in 2014, and Level 3 after the final independent assessment was completed at the Atmel Whiteley facility between November 23, 2015, and November 27, 2015. That assessment was conducted by an independent third-party organization, Vector Consulting Services of Germany, a leading company for organizational change management in product development.

"Atmel joins an elite group of organizations that have achieved an Automotive SPICE Level 3 certification," said Thomas Wunderlich, Principal SPICE Assessor and Manager at Vector Consulting Services. "This is a significant achievement for an embedded semiconductor provider and underscores Atmel's commitment to following best practices when developing capacitive touch interfaces for the automotive industry."

"As we shift to an era of smart, connected cars with sleek, touch interfaces, quality and reliability becomes that much more important in the automotive space," said Brian Daly, Vice President, Touch Business Unit, Atmel. "We are proud to be one of the few embedded solution providers—and the only automotive touchscreen supplier—that have achieved the prestigious Automotive SPICE assessment. This certification is further testament that through our popular maXTouch devices, we are committed to bringing more innovation to the automotive markets."

Powering thousands of automotive touchscreens and touchpads in vehicles on the roads today, the Atmel maXTouch T Series products are the industry's first auto-qualified self- and mutual-capacitance controllers that meet high reliability standards in harsh environments.

About Atmel
Atmel Corporation (NASDAQ: ATML) is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, capacitive touch solutions, 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 intelligent and connected solutions focused on the industrial, consumer, communications, computing and automotive markets.