Toshiba and Tessera Announce Innovative Technology Licensing Agreement
TOKYO, Sep 13, 2000 (BUSINESS WIRE) --
Agreement Will Expand Tessera's Product Offerings and Enable Broad
Availability of Toshiba's Chip-Scale Packaging Solution
Toshiba Corporation and Tessera Inc., a leading provider and licensor of
chip-scale packaging (CSP) technology, today announced they have signed an
innovative technology licensing agreement that will enable Tessera to act as the
exclusive licensor of Toshiba's wire-bonded version of Tessera's microBGA(R)
chip-scale package. Based on Tessera's core patents, the wire-bonded microBGA
package is currently used by Toshiba in its main memory products (64Mb SDRAM and
128/144/256/288Mb Rambus DRAM), which ship not only in PCs, but also in the new
Sony PlayStation(R)2 game console.
The agreement represents an important milestone for both companies: it is a
unique opportunity for Toshiba's Semiconductor group to appoint another company
to exclusively license one of its packaging processes for sublicensing to the
rest of the industry, and it will be the first packaging process licensed by
Tessera that was not fully developed internally. This arrangement marks the
first step in Tessera's strategy to broadly license and standardize packages
that its licensees have developed using Tessera's patent portfolio.
"Toshiba licensed Tessera's intellectual property and used it to develop an
innovative derivative of our microBGA CSP," said Bruce McWilliams, president and
CEO of Tessera. "Through our new relationship, Tessera will enable Toshiba to
leverage its R&D investment by licensing the wire-bonded microBGA technology to
Tessera's broad, worldwide customer base of semiconductor manufacturers and
assemblers and helping to standardize this CSP technology. In return, Toshiba is
making it possible for Tessera to offer a wider range of packaging solutions to
its current and future licensees."
By expanding Tessera's product offerings, the licensing agreement will enable
the company to provide its licensees with a broad range of packaging processes
that meet the needs of current and next generation applications that require CSP
technology. The design of the wire-bonded microBGA package makes the technology
well suited to a wide range of semiconductor applications, and also allows
assemblers to leverage the well-established wire-bonding infrastructure. The
wire-bonded microBGA package is currently available to all of Tessera's
licensees.
"Tessera is one of the few companies in the world that has the infrastructure
required to broadly license advanced packaging technology, as well as a services
organization that can enable assemblers to achieve production capability as
quickly as possible," said Shigeo Koguchi, vice president of the Memory Division
at Toshiba Corporation Semiconductor Company. "The agreement creates an
opportunity for Toshiba to broadly introduce our technology to the world, and
for our current material and equipment vendors to expand their business - which
creates a more cost-competitive standard supporting infrastructure for our
wire-bonded microBGA package while providing second sourcing for our internal
test and assembly business. Additionally, our wire-bonded microBGA technology
enables assemblers to use existing wire-bonding equipment."
Terms of Agreement
According to the terms of the agreement, Toshiba will transfer technical and
engineering information related to the manufacture of the wire-bonded microBGA
chip-scale package to Tessera, and also provide technical assistance to Tessera
during the transfer. Tessera will become the exclusive licensor of Toshiba's
wire-bonded microBGA process, except for a few on-going second sourcing
partners, and will offer this technology to its licensee base of semiconductor
manufacturers and assemblers in the form of expanded licensing, technical
training, consulting and licensee services. Tessera will endeavor to drive the
wire-bonded microBGA technology as an alternative standard to Tessera's microBGA
package for Rambus DRAM, SDRAM and DDR SDRAM. |
