Spansion - AMD and Fujitsu brand their Flash memory

By Alun Williams

Posted on 15 Jul 2003 at 12:17

AMD and Fujitsu has announced 'Spansion' as the global product brand name for its jointly-produced Flash memory products. Spansion memory will be produced by the specially-formed company FASL LLC.

'We plan to make Spansion Flash memory the pre-eminent brand in the memory market,' said Dr. Bertrand Cambou, president and CEO of FASL LLC. 'The Spansion brand symbolizes new horizons and possibilities for our customers, helping them to create products with greater value and differentiation.'

We reported back in April on the merger AMD and Fujitsu merge Flash memory operations.The new company, FASL LLC, included the companies' existing joint manufacturing venture, Fujitsu AMD Semiconductor Limited, which was first set up in 1993.

As part of the merger deal AMD contributed its Flash memory group, Fab 25 in Texas, its R&D facilities and assembly plants in Thailand, Malaysia, and China. For its part, Fujitsu threw in its Flash memory business division and the Malaysian Fujitsu Microelectronics final assembly and test operations. AMD owns a 60 per cent share of the new company and Fujitsu 40 per cent, with the accounts appearing on AMD's books.

With 7,000 employees worldwide, FASL LLC is head-quartered in Sunnyvale, California and is reported as having a net book value of $3 billion. AMD and Fujitsu claim this makes it the largest Flash memory company in the world.

You can read more about Spansion at www.spansion.com/overview.