Chalk another deal up to the Internet of Things (IoT). Pure-play foundry United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) has licensed Cypress Semiconductor’s 55 nanometer embedded flash memory intellectual property (IP) for future IoT and wearable applications.
Cypress’ silicon oxide nitride oxide silicon (SONOS) embedded nonvolatile memory technology is said to offer fewer additional mask layers to insert into a standard CMOS process – claiming to only need three to four masks compared to 11 or 12 needed for other technologies.
Cypress said the nonvolatile flash IP does not alter standard device characteristics or models when added to baseline CMOS process, preserving existing design IP. UMC qualified Cypress’ 65 nm SONOS process back in 2013 and were able to scale the technology to smaller nodes.
UMC vice president of Specialty Technology Development, S. C. Chien said in a statement the company will use the SONOS flash IP to “establish more value-added technology platforms to serve future low power, highly integrated IC designs” for applications in the IoT as well as wearables. He added that based on previous specialty processes UMC has licensed including RF, BCD, HV, CIS and eFlash, the company can use the 55 nm flash memory “to fulfill different application requirements for nonvolatile memory IP specifications.”
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