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Numonyx and Hynix have entered into a five-year agreement to develop next-generation NAND flash memory, which extends the level of collaboration previously undertaken, which includes 300mm fabrication at Hynix facility in Wuxi, China. The cost sharing deal includes product design, process development and packaging, such as multi-chip. One of the key markets being addressed is Solid State Drives (SSD).

“To become successful in the rapidly evolving semiconductor industry, addressing technology issues jointly rather than independently reduces the risk by leveraging the best of both companies,” said Jong-Kap Kim, Chairman and CEO of Hynix. “Future joint technology development will be the key success factor in our alliance and we expect to make significant progress in developing memory solutions by focusing on the introduction of new products through systematic co-development in product, software and controller areas. Together, Hynix and Numonyx will develop a complete range of products on leading edge technologies that will enable both companies to win in the NAND segment. We’ll now have one of the broadest NAND design communities in the world and we look forward to continued success as we now work to develop new NAND memory solutions today and in the future.”

“Success and growth in the NAND segment over the next five years will require a unique set of capabilities that we believe we can achieve with Hynix,” said Brian Harrison, president and chief executive officer at Numonyx. “By combining our expert resources, engineering activities and Hynix’s absolute focus on driving cost, we believe we’ll have leading-edge technology, cost-effective and scalable manufacturing, industry leading memory system “know-how” and a history of bringing system-level NAND solutions to market very quickly. The complementary expertise from Hynix will certainly help strengthen our NAND position in the wireless segment in particular.”

Both companies are to develop new NAND flash products based on Numonyx’s Charge-Trapping process technology.