National Semiconductor Corp has been looking long and hard for a new high-volume chip family to fabricate, and may have found one answer to its problems with a new agreement with Toshiba Corp that will make NatSemi a major manufacturer of Flash memory chips, a field in which only Intel Corp and AT&T Co are well established, although it was Toshiba that invented the things. The two have agreed a 10-year partnership to design, manufacture and license NAND and NOR Flash EEPROMs, and to co-operate in establishing a de facto standard in the semiconductor industry for NAND-type Flash devices. Under the partnership, NatSemi will manufacture and market 16M-bit and 32M-bit NAND chips based on Toshiba’s technologies and is licensed to make and market 1M and 4M NOR-type devices. The Santa Clara company also plans to develop derivative and value-added products, including 512K, 2M and 8M NOR chips, which Toshiba will get access. Key benefit of the non-volatile Flash chips is that they are easily erasable and re-writable cost-effectively when installed in a system, offering a compact solid-state alternative to disk in portable devices. NAND Flash is used for mass storage, NOR Flash for user upgradable firmware in personal systems, communications and automotive applications. NatSemi will transfer the Flash process to its manufacturing facilities and design additional value-added products. NatSemi says the development effort is expected to accelerate its migration to its planned 0.5-micron process from the current 0.8-micron process technology. The initial contract is for five years, and National Semiconductor describes it as a long-term extension of its existing relationship with Toshiba, including their alliance on logic devices.
