SUNNYVALE, Calif. –¬ Nov. 30, 2009 – Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (NASDAQ:AMCC), a global leader in energy conscious computing and communications solutions, today announced its new name as AppliedMicro to reflect the company’s drive for breakthrough energy efficiency and low-cost price points for semiconductor devices that will propel the company into new growth markets. In keeping with the 30-year AMCC heritage as an innovator in high-speed connectivity and high performance embedded processing, AppliedMicro will remain dedicated to its customers in the telco, datacenter and enterprise markets, while increasing market share by striving to reduce the power consumption of its products by as much as 50 percent.
“While higher performance continues to be an industry driver, the need for energy efficiency and reduced costs will play a more prominent role in the design considerations and purchasing decisions for our customers in the data center and telecommunications industries,” said Dr. Paramesh Gopi, President and Chief Executive Officer. “AppliedMicro is aligning its innovation efforts to meet energy efficiency and cost reduction requirements so that its products help our customers deliver next-generation systems that will achieve market differentiation. This capability is critical in an environment where demands on energy supplies are increasing while worldwide energy production struggles to keep up with demand. Energy efficiency is rapidly becoming one of the most important performance parameters in the electronics industry and AppliedMicro will lead the industry in introducing a new paradigm in low-power ICs.”
Under the new name, AppliedMicro will leverage its substantial intellectual property, patent portfolio and engineering resources to pursue aggressive migration to advanced manufacturing processes and design techniques for its semiconductor devices that lead the market in optical transport network switches and routers, data center interconnect and enterprise access points.
A migration to open foundry manufacturing for AppliedMicro’s Power Architecture® microprocessor line is also one example of the company’s drive toward low-power products that will enable the company to achieve lower costs for its products and open up design opportunities for consumer and small-to-medium business systems. In addition, new design centers in India and Vietnam will assist the company in bringing advanced hardware and software solutions to market as most of the company’s engineering resources remain at its Sunnyvale headquarters.
“Our plan to rapidly migrate our IC designs to 40-nanometer and 28-nanometer manufacturing processes is a key part of our strategy to introduce the most advanced, power efficient devices on the market,” Gopi said. “At the same time, there are techniques used in the production of mobile devices that make them the most efficient technology available. Some of those methodologies can be applied to devices used in the wired world for the first time, where power consumption has not been a key design consideration until now. AppliedMicro will leverage some of these design techniques to produce a new standard in low-power processors, framers, mappers, physical layer and SerDes devices that will usher in a new era of energy efficiency for the wired world.”
The shift to the AppliedMicro name began when Gopi assumed the executive leadership of the company in January after serving for one year as the chief operating officer. The company sold its 3ware® storage system division so that it could concentrate on its fabless semiconductor business model. New executive leadership was also brought in to help the company focus on advances in microprocessor and transport development. The company’s legal name remains Applied Micro Circuits Corporation and its ticker symbol on the NASDAQ exchanges remains AMCC.
AppliedMicro Overview
AppliedMicro is a global leader in energy efficient sustainable solutions to process, transport, and store information for the next generation of Internet data center and carrier central office. A leader in high speed signal processing, IP and Ethernet packet processing, and embedded processors, AppliedMicro’s patented innovations provide high value solutions in telecom, enterprise and consumer applications. AppliedMicro’s corporate headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, California. Sales and engineering offices are located throughout the world. For further information regarding AppliedMicro, visit the company’s Web site at www.appliedmicro.com.
