Samsung Electronics and Rambus have entered into an agreement settling all claims between them and licensing Rambus’ patent portfolio covering all Samsung semiconductor products including certain current DRAM products.
Under the agreement, the company will make an initial payment of $200m to Rambus and will invest $200m in Rambus stock. The South Korean firm will also make quarterly payments of about $25m for the next five years.
In addition, the companies have signed a memorandum of understanding relating to a new generation of memory technologies which brings together Samsung’s in memory technologies with Rambus’ memory interfaces. Initially, the companies will focus on graphics and mobile memory offerings and will further plan to review a potential collaboration on server and NAND Flash memories.
Harold Hughes, president and CEO of Rambus, said: “We have a tremendous opportunity to renew a partnership which has created solutions that have benefited consumers worldwide. Bringing together Samsung’s market and technology leadership with our innovations for high-performance and high-efficiency memory architectures will make possible an exciting new generation of mobile, computing and consumer electronics products.”
