Jay, Thanks for the article. Here is a link to the article:.
biz.yahoo.com
Even though most of us here suspected an agreement with Vanguard was coming, SST investors should not underestimate the importance of this announcement. Contained within the body of this announcement are some items that lay out SST's roadmap for the years ahead as well as confirms the scalability of Superflash technology. In addition, (the icing on the cake), this agreement will allow SST to put its self aligned split-gate architecture to work to gain even greater advantage over its competitors.
"This relationship allows SST to secure additional deep sub-micron capacity which is strategically important for us as we expand into higher density flash markets,'' said Bing Yeh, president and CEO of SST. By utilizing our self-aligned SuperFlash cell, we are on a very aggressive migration path to cutting-edge process geometries of 0.18 micron and below.
Simply stated, the cutting-edge process geometries of 0.18 micron and below referred to in the above paragraph will allow SST to migrate the Superflash technology advantage in to higher densities. With this announcement, SST just acquired a huge new market new market for its products!
Vanguard will serve as a foundry for SST's 0.18 micron and 0.13 micron flash memory products based on the company's advanced self-aligned SuperFlash® memory technology. SST's self-aligned SuperFlash cell, announced in May 2000, is the industry's first split-gate architecture flash memory cell to offer self-alignment. Traditional split-gate flash memory cells require built-in tolerances to align different layers of the memory cell, thereby resulting in a larger flash memory cell size and higher manufacturing cost. With SST's self-aligned process architecture, the need for built-in tolerances is eliminated, leading to a 40 percent reduction in the size of the SuperFlash cell.
Simply stated, the smaller process geometries resulting from the Vanguard agreementl, 0.18 micron and below, will allow SST to employ its self aligned process architecture. The will lead to a 40% reduction in the size of the SuperFlash cell. Again, the importance of this advantage cannot be overestated. SST will continue to have both the lowest cost structure as well as have the small cell size advantage desired in many products ---cell phones for example!
With this announcement I am more confident and optimistic about the future of Silicon Storage Technology than I have ever been. The market for SST products just expanded significantly and the low cost, small size advantage of Superflash technology just got better. Congratulations SST---you deserve it!!
Best, Huey |
