US Report: AMD and Motorola team up
Published: 20 Jul 1998 12:04 BST
The two will announce a patent cross-licensing deal on Monday that, among other things, gives AMD access to Motorola's copper manufacturing technology and gives Motorola rights to AMD's embedded flash memory and networking products.
The copper portion of the deal could give AMD the technology to more effectively compete against Intel in terms of performance.
Copper is a more efficient conductor of electricity than aluminium, which is used in current microprocessors. Copper-based chips are expected to be smaller, more powerful and potentially cheaper than current designs.
AMD is expected to have a copper-based microprocessor commercially available next year. The company will also get access to Motorola's HiPerMos (high performance CMOS) technology, which AMD will use to add capability to its core logic products. For its part, Motorola needs AMD's embedded networking and flash memory technology to build system-on-a-chip products for Windows CE devices.
Sources close to Motorola said the company chose to use existing embedded technology rather than design its own because of time-to-market issues.
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