Motorola Inc and Advanced Micro devices Inc announced their expected strategic technology alliance yesterday. It is a cross- licensing agreement and collaborative development deal involving Motorola’s copper interconnect technology and AMD’s embedded flash memory. Under a planned seven-year agreement, Motorola will license its current HiPerMos 5L copper interconnect technology to AMD, and the two will collaborate on the next generation process HiPerMos 6L with which they both plan to produce 1GHz processors. AMD said the agreement would enable it to bring its forthcoming K7 chip, currently under development as a .25 micron aluminum part, to market as a 1GHz 0.15 micron processor by 2000, using the copper-enabled plant it is building in Dresden, Germany. Motorola promised similar time-scales for a 1GHz PowerPC. Meanwhile, Motorola and AMD are to collaborate on process technology for embedded flash memory. Motorola says it expects to ship its first embedded flash microcontroller products by 2000, and says they will account for 90% of controllers shipped by 2002. The so-called ‘Black Oak’ PowerPc-based controller aimed at engine and transmission control in cars will be one of the first parts to benefit, it says. AMD CEO Jerry Sanders called the deal pre-competitive and said that AMD would continue to concentrate on its K86 Intel-compatible system chips, but admitted that the deal would give AMD the option of moving into the embedded systems market in the future. Work will be carried out through jointly-staffed programs in Austin, Texas and Sunnyvale California. Both say time to market is the primary motivation behind the deal.
