14 DAY TRIAL // The IT industry is a place where many companies call each other to court, but at least two such names are putting some effort into avoiding the possibility entirely.
To get right to the point, Spansion and SK Hynix have entered a cross-license agreement that covers all their single-level cell (SLC) NAND Flash technologies.
In other words, SK Hynix now has a stable supply of SLC NAND Flash products for its embedded products, while Spansion will provide its own for digital TVs, mobile phones, cars, etc.
Meanwhile, SK Hynix will provide Spansion with its SLC NAND for testing, selling and support, among other things.
"We look forward to partnering with Spansion and leveraging each other's strengths," said Oh Chul Kwon, president and CEO of SK Hynix.
"Together we can deliver innovative NAND products to the embedded market- combining Spansion's leadership position and established customer relationships across multiple embedded segments with SK Hynix's NAND manufacturing size and scale."
The Spansion SLC NAND Flash chips will be produced based on the 40nm, 30nm and 30nm process technologies.
The first actual products won't be ready until the second quarter though, which starts about a month from now.
“As the market for NAND memory grows in embedded segments, we are now well positioned with the broadest portfolio of flash memory products to meet the demanding requirements of the embedded market by cooperating with SK Hynix,” said John Kispert, president and chief executive officer of Spansion.
“Our cooperation with SK Hynix will enable us to expand our leadership in the embedded market with serial NOR, parallel NOR and now SLC NAND products.”
For those wondering, Hynix changed its name to SK Hynix because it recently joined the SK Group. Thus, the deal with Spansion is in line with its broadening horizons and its availability as custom chipmaker.