National Semiconductor & SST Announce Embedded Flash and Foundry Agreement

Company:  

National Semiconductor

Category:  

Other

Date:  

11-April-2000

In the first year of production at the South Portland, Maine fab, SST will have access to more than 60,000 200 mm wafers. This fab is also capable of manufacturing 0.18µ and 0.15µ products, allowing for future SuperFlash devices in finer process geometries.

"This agreement with SST provides our customers with the most advanced flash technology for embedded applications," said Brian L. Halla, president and CEO of National Semiconductor. "With the current capacity crunch in the flash market, this agreement assures our embedded flash product customers that our supply source is secured. We also gain a volume fab customer in SST, who can take advantage of our leading-edge wafer manufacturing facility." 

Commenting on SST's licensing strategy, Sohrab Kianian, director, technology licensing and business development at SST said, "The agreement with National is another strategic step in our licensing business to make SuperFlash the technology-of-choice for embedded applications."

About SuperFlash Technology
SST's SuperFlash technology is a NOR type, split-gate cell architecture which uses a reliable thick-oxide process with fewer manufacturing steps resulting in a low-cost, nonvolatile memory solution with excellent data retention and higher reliability. The split-gate NOR SuperFlash architecture facilitates a simple and flexible design suitable for high performance, high reliability, small or medium sector size, in- or off-system programming and a variety of densities, all in a single CMOS-compatible technology. 

About Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.
Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, SST designs, manufactures and markets a diversified range of nonvolatile memory solutions, based on proprietary, patented SuperFlash technology, for high volume applications in the digital consumer, networking, wireless communication and Internet computing markets. SST's product families include high-functionality flash memory components, CompactFlash card mass storage products and 8-bit microcontrollers with on-chip flash memory. SST also offers its SuperFlash technology for embedded applications through its world-class manufacturing partners and technology licensees IBM, Motorola, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., SANYO Electric Co., Ltd., Seiko Epson Corp., TSMC-Acer Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TASMC) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC).

About National Semiconductor
National Semiconductor provides system-on-a-chip solutions for the information age. Combining real-world analog and state-of-the-art digital technology, the company’s chips lead many sectors of the personal computer, communications, and consumer markets. With headquarters in Santa Clara, California, National reported sales of $2 billion for its last fiscal year and has about 10,500 employees worldwide.