Spansion Inc., a global leader in embedded systems solutions, today announced Spansion HyperBus Interface, a breakthrough that dramatically improves read performance while reducing the number of pins. The Spansion HyperBus Interface is being implemented broadly by leading system-on-chip (SoC) manufacturers.

Spansion is also introducing today the first family of products based on this new interface, Spansion HyperFlash NOR Memory devices, with read throughput of up to 333 megabytes per second-more than five times faster than ordinary Quad SPI flash currently available with one-third the number of pins of parallel NOR flash.

Spansion Inc., a global leader in embedded systems solutions, today expanded the company's high-speed Serial NOR portfolio with a high-performance family of 1.8V flash devices, the Spansion FS-S Serial Flash family.

With read speeds up to 133 MHz in Single/Dual/Quad I/O mode and 80 MHz in double data rate (DDR) mode, the FS-S family delivers up to 80 MBytes/second (MB/s) of read throughput and is 50 percent faster than competing solutions. In addition, industry leading programming performance of up to 1.08 MB/s - twice the programming speed of competing solutions - accelerates manufacturing throughput and lowers programming costs dramatically. Spansion's FS-S family also offers the fastest erase time in the industry of up to 0.5 MB/s.

Macronix International Co., Ltd. , a global leader providing non-volatile memory solutions, announced that it has filed a patent infringement law suit against Spansion LLC and Spansion Inc. in the United States for infringement of seven Macronix patents directed to numerous aspects of flash memory. Macronix has taken this step to address Spansion's rampant infringement of Macronix's patent rights.

The seven patents relate to manufacturing of flash memory chips, compact memory with serial interfaces, security of memory cells, and circuit designs for flash memory. The patents in suit represent only a small fraction of Macronix world-wide patent portfolio.

Spansion Inc., the leading innovator in Flash memory solutions, today announced the industry's first single-die 8 (Gigabit) Gb NOR Flash memory product at 45 nanometer (nm). The 8 Gb Spansion GL-T delivers high-quality, fast random access read performance to enable a better user experience with interactive graphics, animation and video in games and industrial applications.

Based on Spansion's proprietary, highly reliable MirrorBit technology, the 8 Gb Spansion GL-T will begin sampling next month. The Spansion GL-T family at 45 nm is the newest addition to the Spansion GL parallel NOR product line and complements the 65 nm Spansion GL-S product family, which ranges from 128 Megabit (Mb) through 4 Gb densities. With the fastest read and program speeds for NOR Flash memory in the industry, Spansion continues to expand its customer engagements and design wins for the Spansion GL product family, which is targeted at enriching the user experience in consumer, automotive, gaming, telecom and industrial applications.

Spansion Inc., a leading innovator in Flash memory solutions for embedded markets, today announced production of a new low-density serial Flash memory family to expand its product portfolio and address additional applications in the consumer segment and in Greater China. The new 4 Mb, 8 Mb and 16 Mb Spansion FL-2K family is targeted for code storage applications in consumer electronics such as optical disk drives, cable and DSL modems, printers and routers as well as industrial applications such as smart meters. The family features read performance of up to 85 MHz for fast application boot, industrial temperature range, high quality and reliability.

Seagate Technology plc (NASDAQ: STX) today announced that Gary Gentry has rejoined Seagate to lead its solid state drive (SSD) business as senior vice president, SSD. Mr. Gentry will have responsibility for driving Seagate leadership in the SSD space, with time-to-market, competitive product offerings. He will be located in Longmont, Colorado and will report directly to Rocky Pimentel, chief sales and marketing officer.

Mr. Gentry has over 25 years of experience in the storage industry, including most recently as the general manager of the Enterprise SSD Division of Micron Corporation. Prior to rejoining Seagate, he held leadership positions focusing on solid-state technologies at Spansion Corporation and Storage Genetics. He also served as chief marketing officer for Maxtor, and provided strategic consulting to Hitachi Global Storage Systems. While at Seagate he held various management positions including vice president, strategic marketing and planning.

Spansion Inc., a leading innovator in Flash memory solutions for embedded markets, today announced it has started sampling its first family of single-level cell (SLC) Spansion NAND products using 4x nm floating-gate technology, targeted specifically for data storage in automotive, consumer and networking applications.

Spansion SLC NAND will be offered in densities from 1 Gb to 8 Gb in 3.0V and 1.8V families that feature high performance, extended temperature range, long-term product support and stringent reliability demands, such as 1-bit error correction code (ECC). Additionally, Spansion also unveiled its SLC NAND product roadmap through 2017.

Spansion Inc. and SK Hynix today announced an alliance to deliver Spansion SLC NAND products at the 4x, 3x, and 2x nodes to the embedded market. The first Spansion SLC NAND products resulting from this alliance will be available beginning in the second quarter of 2012. As part of the relationship, the companies will enter into a patent cross-licensing agreement.

Spansion's NAND products complement its NOR offering and complete its product line, which is targeted at embedded applications such as automotive, industrial and telecommunications. Spansion's high performance and high reliability SLC NAND product portfolio will come with Spansion's recognized customer support and commitment for longevity of supply, which is highly valued in the embedded market, where Spansion has established relationships. Spansion will apply its stringent process for qualification, testing, extended temperature support and packaging to its NAND products. The company plans to introduce a family of NAND products over the next few quarters.

Spansion Inc., a leading provider of parallel and serial NOR Flash memory, today announced it has entered volume production of its 512 Mb Spansion FL-S Serial (SPI) NOR Flash memory featuring the highest-density single-die serial Flash.

The Spansion FL-S family spans from 128 Mb to 1 Gb and features an industry-leading programming speed that is three times faster than competing solutions and has 20% faster double data rate (DDR) read performance. The speed improvements are key to enriching the user experience for a growing range of embedded applications, such as automotive instrument clusters and infotainment systems, industrial and medical graphic displays as well as home networking gateways and set-top boxes.

Investment firm Barclays Capital lowered its ratings on semiconductor majors Intel, Applied Materials Inc, Freescale Semiconductor Holdings Ltd, Microchip Technology Inc., and Spansion Inc., from "equal weight" from "overweight", meaning that these companies are no longer outperforming, and are doing average, with negligible growth. Towards the end of 2011, Intel adjusted its Q4 forecast, lowering it by $1 billion, blaming factors beyond its control such as HDD supply problems. Weakened PC sales growth is another major factor. On the other hand, DRAM and NAND flash memory maker Micron Technology got its rating upgraded to "overweight", as Barclays notes that the industries Micron is in, are on the verge of a boom. Reacting to this, Micron's shares shot up by 11 percent during trading early this week, sending its shares' valuation from $6.2 billion, up 9 percent to $6.88 billion.

Spansion Inc., today announced the industry's first single-die 4Gb (gigabit) NOR Flash memory product at 65nm. The 4Gb Spansion GL-S delivers high-quality and fast read performance to enable a better user experience with interactive graphics, animation and video in games and automotive applications.

The newest addition to the flagship Spansion GL-S product line is sampling this month. Based on Spansion's proprietary, highly reliable MirrorBit charge-trapping technology, the Spansion GL-S delivers the fastest read performance in the industry, up to 45 % faster read than competing NOR Flash products. The Spansion GL-S family is currently offered at 128Mb through 2Gb densities and the company is gaining design win momentum for the product family with consumer, automotive, gaming, telecom and industrial applications.

The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) Working Group, the organization dedicated to simplifying integration of NAND Flash memory into consumer electronic devices, computing platforms, and industrial systems, today published the new ONFI 3.0 standard. By using the non-volatile DDR2 (NV-DDR2) interface, the newly ratified standard reaches speeds of up to 400 megabytes (MB)/sec, doubling the current NAND interface transfer rates.

The ONFI 3.0 standard details the interface and infrastructure that ONFI's more than 100 members can employ to develop products that deliver the industry's fastest NAND interface. Improvements in ONFI 3.0's NAND interface speeds will also enable future NAND controllers to achieve similar performance with half the number of channels, providing both a cost and space savings, which are key requirements for solid-state drive (SSD) design. The ONFI 3.0 incorporates a sophisticated die selection feature that reduces the number of chip enable (CE) pins, which in turn lowers the number of controller pins making PCB routing more efficient. Reducing the number of CE pins is especially important for SSDs, providing a significant cost reduction and allowing the extra pins to be assigned to other applications within the system.

Elpida Memory, Inc. and Spansion Inc., today announced they have created the industry's first charge-trapping 1.8 V, 4-gigabit SLC (Single Level Cell) NAND Flash memory. This NAND memory, based on Spansion's MirrorBit charge-trapping technology, is being produced at Elpida's Hiroshima factory. The advanced technical expertise and strong cooperation of the two companies has made it possible to develop and manufacture the world's first charge-trapping NAND Flash memory.

Compared to floating-gate NAND Flash memory, charge-trapping NAND Flash memory is more scalable and has a simpler cell structure. It offers superior performance, faster read and faster programming speeds.

Spansion Inc., a leading provider of Flash memory solutions, today announced the filing of an additional three separate patent infringement complaints against Samsung to further address past and ongoing widespread patent violations in a broad and growing range of Samsung Flash memory products. Spansion filed the complaints with the International Trade Commission (ITC) and in the U.S. District Courts in the Eastern District of Virginia and (an ITC mirror case) in the Northern District of California. The company first initiated action against Samsung in November, 2008, with the ITC and the U.S. District Court in Delaware. The judge in the first ITC case has set a target date of mid September to issue his initial determination.

Spansion's ITC complaints seek to exclude and enjoin from the U.S. market infringing Samsung Flash memory products and downstream products that contain them. Flash memory is a critical part of billions of dollars worth of consumer electronics such as MP3 players, cell phones, digital cameras, and tablet computers. Over the years, Samsung's infringement has and continues to unjustly enrich Samsung by many hundreds of millions of dollars. The District Court actions also seek compensation for Samsung's unjust enrichment in disregard of Spansion's extensive patent holdings.

Spansion Inc., the world's largest pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions, today filed a voluntary petition for reorganization under chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code as part of its strategy to strengthen its financial position and focus its business for long-term success. The company's strategic plan is designed to restructure its burdensome debt obligations and intensify its focus on market segments with greater profit potential. Each of Spansion's domestic subsidiaries also simultaneously filed chapter 11 petitions.
"Given our focus on Spansion's future, management and the Board have concluded that chapter 11 provides the most effective means for Spansion to preserve its business, meet its post-petition obligations and maintain customer confidence and continuity while we complete this restructuring," said President and CEO John Kispert. "At the same time we will continue to explore opportunities for a strategic transaction to ensure that we are doing all we can to maximize value for our stakeholders."

Spansion Inc., announced that its Japanese subsidiary, Spansion Japan Ltd., has entered into a proceeding under the Corporate Reorganization Law (Kaisha Kosei Ho) of Japan. Spansion Japan Ltd. voluntarily chose to enter the proceeding to obtain protection from its creditors while it continues its restructuring efforts. This action does not include any of Spansion's other subsidiaries or their operations outside of Japan.

Spansion Inc. does not expect the filing in Japan to materially affect its global operations. Spansion Japan Ltd. will continue its operations and intends to pay, in a timely manner, for all goods and services that it obtains after the date of filing.

Samsung was hit on Monday by two separate patent infringement complaints issued from Spansion Inc., the world's No. 3 maker of flash memory chips by revenue. The complaints were filed with both the International Trade Commission (ITC) and the U.S. District Court in Delaware. Sunnyvale-based Spansion claims that more than "one hundred million mp3 players, cell phones, digital cameras and other consumer electronic devices" are made with Samsung flash memory chips that violate Spansion patents. As a result, over $30 billion worth of Samsung products that contain patented Spansion technologies were sold over the past five years.
"Spansion has patents that are fundamental to flash memory. Samsung itself has cited these patents many times in its own patent filings, underscoring industry acceptance of the fundamental nature of Spansion's (intellectual property)," Robert Melendres, Spansion's executive vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.
Samsung defended itself, saying that it "forbids infringement and unauthorized use" of the intellectual property and "plans to respond actively to this litigation," according to Lee Eun-hee, a company spokeswoman. Spansion is now seeking for damages and for the court to ban sales in the U.S. of products with the affected Samsung chips.

Rambus, one of the world's premier technology licensing companies specializing in high-speed memory architectures, today announced that it has signed an agreement for DDR engineering services and a memorandum of understanding for future development of MirrorBit Flash memory solutions with Spansion, the world's largest pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions.