SAN FRANCISCO—Programmable logic vendor Lattice Semiconductor Corp. said Monday (July 9) it signed a long-term technology partnership with Taiwanese foundry United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC).
As part of the agreement, Lattice (Hillsboro, Ore.) and UMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) will continue work already underway on non-volatile products based on advanced technology nodes and then quickly expand their efforts to include other Lattice product lines, Lattice said.
A spokesman for UMC said the news is considered a win for UMC at the 28-nm node, where he said the company has been gaining momentum recently. Last week, the
Taiwan Economic News reported that mobile processor giant
Qualcomm Inc. enlisted UMC and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to build 28-nm processors for the company. The UMC spokesman declined to confirm the report. Qualcomm said earlier this year it
would engage with multiple foundries in light of a 28-nm capacity crunch at its primary foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.
“We are pleased to expand our relationship with Lattice Semiconductor to bring their upcoming 40-nm and 28-nm products to market," said Shih-Wei Sun, CEO of UMC, in a statement.
"Lattice is already actively engaged with UMC, and we plan to release 40-nm non-volatile products manufactured by UMC by the end of 2012," said Darin Billerbeck, Lattice president and CEO, in a statement. "We are also targeting future generations of our key product lines at the 28-nm node."