After accepting a proposition from Dialog Semiconductor that is to be voted by the Atmel shareholders in March 2016, the semiconductor manufacturer up for sale announced this week that it has received an unsollicited but potentially more interesting offer from an anonymous party. According to Reuters this mystery bidder would be Microchip. For the moment neither Atmel nor Microchip has acknowledged the announcement.



In 2008 together with ON Semiconductor Microchip tried a similar takeover but withdrew before concluding the deal. Will they succeed this time? If they do the Microchip microcontroller family now consisting mainly of MIPS and (ds)PIC members might be extended with ARM and AVR controllers, which would unite all the major players in one super team.