Posted on Tuesday, December 04 2007 @ 4:40 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Samsung and Toshiba announced a licensing agreement which gives the firms the rights to produce, market and sell memory with the specifications and trademarks of Samsung's OneNAND and Toshiba's LBA-NAND memory chips.
As a result of the reciprocal arrangement, OEMs will have a broader choice of suppliers for each premium memory chip, thereby reducing any potential risk of over-dependence on a single supplier for any of the selected chips. The arrangement is expected to result in increased availability of premium-performance OneNAND and LBA-NAND flash devices worldwide.
Under the terms of the agreement, Samsung will license product specifications of its integrated OneNAND and Flex-OneNAND "fusion" memory chips to Toshiba, while Toshiba will license product specifications of its single-package LBA-NAND and mobileLBA-NAND flash chips to Samsung. Both companies will develop and market products that are compatible with the respective original-source technology. Samsung and Toshiba each plan to release products next year based on the respectively licensed product specifications, according to the companies.
Masaki Momodomi, flash memory technology executive of Toshiba's Semiconductor Company, said, "Signing this agreement will provide a major boost for market development and we believe it will trigger substantial new growth. It will allow our customers more options – both in terms of high performance technologies and suppliers. We believe that this agreement will bring positive results to the industry as a whole."
Source: Digitmes
