WBC, AMCC in distribution agreement

The Contributor, an Avnet company, and Applied Micro Circuits Corporation, a networking and storage technology developer headquartered in the US, have signed a distribution agreement, effective immediately. Under this agreement, WBC will sell and provide technical support for, on a pan-European basis, AMCC's PowerPC 4xx processor portfolio, acquired earlier this year from IBM Microelectronics. This enables WBC to continue to develop projects and business with the PowerPC 4xx series that has already been distributed before, under the IBM Microelectronics franchise. Klaus Mueller, President of WBC, greatly appreciates the continuity of this agreement for his business: "AMCC is clearly committed to continue production of the current PPC405 and 440 families and to further enhance its PowerPC roadmap with new derivatives. This is good news to our customers. We have been very successful with IBM in the past and expect to continue that with AMCC and their future innovations." "AMCC deems the PowerPC technology vital for the evolution of our core networking and storage business. We are confident that the 4xx series can play a major role as an embedded architecture in the European mass market. WBC provides an important combination of in-depth knowledge of the PowerPC market, and first-class support from field application engineers with a deep level of embedded experience," said Liam Livesey, AMCC's EMEA sales director. AMCC is fully committed to the PowerPC 405 and 440 family roadmap, and will introduce several new products and derivatives in the near future. AMCC has sought the input and support from many customers on the further development of the roadmap, additional features, performance enhancements and other market requirements. Livesey continued, "We are absolutely committed to making the PowerPC technology a pervasive and successful standard architecture."