Microchip Technology Again Recognized for Leadership and Innovation; Named to Forbes 400 List of America's Best Big Companies

Company Honored by National Publications for Product and Business Excellence

CHANDLER, Ariz.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Microchip Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHP), a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, today announced that it has been recognized by the following national business and electronics publications for product and organizational leadership.

"As the worldwide leader in 8-bit microcontrollers and a recent addition to the S&P 500 Index, our greatest reward is that design engineers prefer Microchip for their embedded designs," said Steve Sanghi, Microchip's president and CEO. "We are extremely honored to be recognized for the technology and business excellence that our customers and long-term investors have come to expect."

Forbes magazine named Microchip to its 10th annual list of the 400 Best Big Companies in America. Also known as the "Platinum 400," companies chosen for the list must pass Forbes' benchmarks for financial growth rates and returns, while also meeting with their approval for corporate governance, accounting standards and background checks.

EDN magazine included Microchip's recent entry into the $4 billion 32-bit microcontroller market, the PIC32 Family, on its prestigious "Hot 100 Products of 2007" list. By seamlessly integrating this new 32-bit family with its existing microcontroller portfolio, Microchip has become the only company to offer its customers support for a complete 8-, 16- and 32-bit microcontroller line under a single development environment.

EDN editorial director Maury Wright said, "Our editorial team covers new product introductions on a daily basis and we see a lot of worthy products. We look back once a year and choose the introductions that we believe will have the greatest significance to the design engineer and create the Hot 100 list."

Microchip's PIC24FJ64GA004 16-bit microcontroller family was chosen by the readers of ECN magazine as the best product in the "Embedded Systems" category of the "ECN 2007 Readers Choice Tech Awards." Visitors to ECN's Web site voted for the best new products that appeared in the magazine over the previous 12 months. The winning products were recognized for their excellence in helping design engineers to meet the challenging issues they face, such as time to market, getting the most functionality into a design, space constraints and cost.

The PIC24FJ64GA004 family offers more Flash and RAM memory in a 28-pin package than any other 16-bit microcontroller, and has a unique pin-mapping feature for optimum design flexibility.

Microchip Customer Support

Microchip is committed to supporting its customers by helping design engineers develop products faster and more efficiently. Customers can access four main service areas at www.microchip.com. The Support area provides a fast way to get questions answered; the Sample area offers free evaluation samples of any Microchip device; microchipDIRECT provides 24-hour pricing, ordering, inventory and credit for convenient purchasing of all Microchip devices and development tools; finally, the Training area educates customers through webinars, sign-ups for local seminar and workshop courses, and information about the annual MASTERs events held throughout the world.

About Microchip Technology

Microchip Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MCHP) is a leading provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, providing low-risk product development, lower total system cost and faster time to market for thousands of diverse customer applications worldwide. Headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, Microchip offers outstanding technical support along with dependable delivery and quality. For more information, visit the Microchip website at www.microchip.com.

Note: The Microchip name and logo, and PIC are registered trademarks of Microchip Technology Inc. in the USA and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective companies.

Source: Microchip Technology Inc.

Released January 15, 2008