US-Japanese alliances are now seen as orthodoxy in the world of Flash memory chips, but rather than go with a US major, Oki Electric Industry Co Ltd has taken an unorthodox approach, and agreed to develop the chips with a start-up, Flash pioneer Catalyst Semiconductor Inc of Santa Clara, California. Catalyst announced a 512K-bit 5V CMOS device, the CAT28F512V5 at the end of 1990 (CI No 1,582) – the part is divided into 2K-byte sectors, any one, or all, of which can be erased at the same time. The tie-up involves joint development of chips and relies heavily on Catalyst’s design technology, Reuter reports from Tokyo. The companies will manufacture and sell the chips separately under their own names; Oki will make wafers for Catalyst, which does not have its own foundry. Catalyst plans to ship 4M-bit Flash chips by the end of this year, followed by a 16M-bit version in 1993. Oki expects to have a 4M-bit product out in 1993. The other alliances in the non-volatile technology, which is expected to replace disk storage in portable computers and related devices, are IBM Corp with Toshiba Corp, Intel Corp with Sharp Corp, and Advanced Micro Devices Inc with Fujitsu Ltd. AT&T Co, which is allied with NEC Corp in the chip business, has developed its own line of Flash memories, but has not announced a specific pact with NEC on them.
