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Technology Stocks : SILICON STORAGE SSTI Flash Mem -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: brian h who wrote (1319)	12/5/2000 10:58:51 AM
From: brian h	Respond to of 1881

more ssti.

To: brian h who wrote (1319)	12/5/2000 4:48:33 PM
From: Liatris Spicata	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1881

SST Announces Acquisition of Agate Semiconductor, Inc.; Acquisition Strongly Positions SST for High Density Flash Memory Market BusinessWire, Tuesday, December 05, 2000 at 03:46 SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 5, 2000--SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.) (Nasdaq:SSTI) announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Agate Semiconductor, Inc. (Agate), a specialty memory design house. Prior to this acquisition, SST had already owned more than 50 percent equity interest of Agate. Founded in 1996, with capital infusion primarily from SST, Agate has developed and patented circuit design techniques in the area of multi-level memory cell and has been closely collaborating with SST using SuperFlash technology to design 256Mbit density level products. The acquisition is a cash transaction and is expected to result in a one-time charge related to in-process R&D of approximately $6 million to SST's Q4 financial statement. "We plan to incorporate Agate circuit design technology into some of our future SuperFlash-based high density flash memory products," said Bing Yeh, president and CEO of SST. "This acquisition is expected to allow SST to achieve optimum performance-cost target for this growing market," added Bing Yeh. Agate has amassed an impressive portfolio of patents and design expertise. As part of the acquisition, Agate's engineering team will join SST. The team has been marrying the advanced generation of SST's Self-Aligned SuperFlash with Agate's circuit design over the past two years. "We were impressed with SST's SuperFlash technology while evaluating various flash technologies for our products. We believe that SuperFlash memory cell is most suitable for multi-bit designs among all competing flash cells. We are extremely pleased to join forces with SST to offer best-of-bread high density memory solutions," said Sakhawat Khan, president of Agate. About SuperFlash Technology SST's SuperFlash technology is a NOR type, split-gate cell architecture which uses a reliable thick-oxide process with fewer manufacturing steps resulting in a low-cost, nonvolatile memory solution with excellent data retention and higher reliability. The split-gate NOR SuperFlash architecture facilitates a simple and flexible design suitable for high performance, high reliability, small or medium sector size, in- or off-system programming and a variety of densities, all in a single CMOS-compatible technology.