This is unabashed good news! First it converts some of NECs capacity into ASIC fab supply, which might otherwise have been used to produce more pure DRAMS and it helps expand the universe of DRAM utilization by using an embedded DRAM architecture:
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted at 4:30 p.m. EDT/1:30 p.m. PDT, 9/10/98
NEC, Lucent in embedded DRAM partnership
TOKYO -- NEC Corp. announced here today that it had enetered an alliance
with Lucent Technologies Inc. that allows the U.S. company to combine NEC's
embedded DRAM technology with its own logic circuitry in ASICs. The
agreement is another step in the industry-wide trend of integrating more and more
functional blocks into system-on-chip devices.
Lucent will have access to NEC's embedded DRAM cell designs from its ASIC library. The Japanese firm will manufacture the resulting chips, using 0.25-micron technology.
"NEC's strength in developing such advanced logic products, coupled with our
prowess in designing and manufacturing logic and DRAM, make us well-suited to
work with Lucent," said Hajime Sasaki, senior executive vice president at NEC.
Lucent's executives agreed. "By putting DRAM and logic together on the same
chip, we offer design engineers a new capability in tackling their system-level
design challenges," said Ahmed Nawaz, vice president, integrated circuits, for
Lucent's microelectronics group.
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