Atmel and Rockchip Join ARM Global University Program Alliance

Cambridge, UK, and Beijing, China -- April 18, 2016 - ARM has expanded its Global University Program Alliance in China through new partnerships with Atmel, a subsidiary of Microchip and a global leader in microcontroller (MCU) and touch solutions, and Rockchip, a leading China-based integrated circuit (IC) design company.

The addition of both partners will further enable the development of cutting-edge and high-quality education kits based on their respective areas of expertise. As a result, university students across China will have access to an even wider range of professional-standard ARM^® based hardware and software platforms, technologies and development tools. The first deliverables as part of this expansion will be an Atmel version of the ARM Education Kit for smart hardware design, and a Rockchip kit for mobile game design.

"ARM's active involvement in China's national university and college curriculum reform project has resulted in an increasing number of students developing and enhancing the skills required to succeed in the modern workplace," said Khaled Benkrid, director of education, worldwide university program, ARM. "Atmel and Rockchip's participation in the program is an important step toward further driving the development of these skills across applications ranging from mobile computing to Internet of Things (IoT) devices."

"We believe that it is essential for students to gain early access to ARM-based SoC technologies, which will in return foster their future career development and create a new pool of talent for our industry,' said Wayne Wu, general manager, Atmel Shanghai. "Working with ARM, Atmel will deliver a range of technologies designed to enable students to create competitive, secure designs and implement them seamlessly."

As part of the initiative, Atmel will provide customized ARM Cortex^®-M7 based SAMS70 DSP application courseware, Cortex-M0+ based SAML21, Crypto encryption technology for wireless IoT application courseware, and Atmel Studio8.

"The work undertaken as part of the Global University Program Alliance will help the industry to continue to meet the demand for diverse engineering talent, accelerating ecosystem development by linking enterprise, educators and students,' said Mr. Feng Chen, senior vice president, Rockchip. 'We will be providing universities with access to a series of Rockchip based development kits, focused on applications including IoT and the increasingly popular mobile internet field."

Rockchip technology provided within the program will include Cortex-A17 and ARM Mali™-T764 based RK3288, as well as additional IoT development kits.

To find out more about this initiative along with ARM's comprehensive educational solutions, please visit: www.arm.com/university.