Infineon Technologies announced on Dec. 20 that has entered into an agreement with IBM in which its 130nm Embedded Flash technology will be licensed to IBM and will be available for new chip designs manufactured by IBM in North America. Additionally, Infineon will utilize IBM foundry services for future products based on this process.
The Infineon 130nm Embedded Flash process is used for advanced microcontroller chips across applications ranging from automotive systems to low-power chip card devices. Along with related Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) intellectual property also licensed to IBM, the 130nm Embedded Flash process expands IBMs foundry capability to address applications requiring custom logic and high-density flash memory on a single chip.
"With this collaboration, Infineon leverages the value of its own manufacturing IP, gains a new source for volume manufacturing, and strengthens our working relationship with a long-term partner," said Peter Bauer, head of Automotive, Industrial & Multimarket business group at Infineon Technologies.
Integration and qualification of the process in IBMs 200mm semiconductor fab in Burlington, Vt., has already begun, and preliminary design kit availability is planned for the second half of 2008.
