Editing Atmel (section)

===Founding and 1980s growth===
Atmel Corporation was founded in 1984, by [[George Perlegos]].<ref name="SVHA">{{Cite web |title= Atmel |publisher= The Silicon Valley Historical Association |year= 2008 |url= http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/#!atmel-company-history/c3t8 |access-date= September 27, 2013 }}</ref> Atmel was an acronym for "advanced technology for memory and logic". Perlegos had worked in the memory group of [[Intel]] in the 1970s and had co-founded [[Seeq Technology]] to manufacture [[EPROM]] memory. Using only US$30,000 in capital, Atmel was initially operated as a [[Fabless manufacturing|fabless]] company, using [[Sanyo]] and [[General Instrument]] to make the chip wafers.<ref name="Funding-Universe">[http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/atmel-corporation-history/ fundinguniverse.com], "Atmel Corporation History"</ref>
The first Atmel memory products used less power than competitors. Customers included [[Motorola]], [[Nokia]], and [[Ericsson]]. In 1987, Intel sued Atmel for patent infringement.<ref name="About-Atmel">[http://components.about.com/od/Companies/p/Atmel-Corporation.htm about.com] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130511131848/http://components.about.com/od/Companies/p/Atmel-Corporation.htm |date=2013-05-11 }}, "Atmel Corporation"</ref> Rather than fight the patent claim, Atmel redesigned its products to use different intellectual property. These had better performance and even lower power consumption. In addition, Atmel then entered the [[flash memory]] business that Intel had focused on. Atmel used US$60 million in venture capital for the 1989 purchase of a fabrication facility from [[Honeywell]] in Colorado Springs.<ref name="About-Atmel" /> Atmel then invested another US$30 million in manufacturing technology.