AMD and Motorola Plan Technology Alliance

Staff -- Semiconductor International, 9/1/1998

M otorola's Semiconductor Products Sector (Austin, Texas) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD, Sunnyvale, Calif.) announced plans for a strategic alliance that includes a patent cross-license agreement and collaborative development of common process technology platforms for microprocessors and embedded flash memory. The collaborative development of process technologies will take place through jointly staffed programs in Austin and Sunnyvale. The benefits of the alliance are believed to include improved time-to-market across multiple product lines and substantially increased leverage on research and development spending. Both companies expect to begin incorporating the initial results of this combined technology development in their respective manufacturing operations next year.

Under the terms of the planned seven-year agreement, Motorola will license its current copper interconnect technology and High Performance Logic Process (HiPerMOS) to AMD. The companies will collaborate on the development of future logic process technology platforms featuring copper interconnects. In turn, AMD will license its flash-memory technology to Motorola, and the two companies will co-develop process technology for embedded flash. Motorola also will receive rights to use certain networking technologies from AMD.