EBN (03/19/2003 12:07 PM EST)

NexFlash Technology, Inc. today said it has signed a foundry agreement with Winbond Electronics Corp of Taiwan. The agreement allows NexFlash to design and produce flash memory products utilizing Winbond's 0.18-micron "WinStack" flash memory process.

NexFlash said it plans to introduce a new line of serial flash memories in the second half of 2003 to be manufactured at Winbond's fab.

Serial flash memories are becoming a popular alternative to parallel flash as a means to reduce ASIC and controller pin count, system board space, power, noise and overall cost, according to NexFlash. Serial flash is well suited for code-download applications including graphics cards, disk drives, printers, DVDs, wireless LANs, ADSL and networking, and for data, text and voice storage in most microcontroller-based systems, the company claimed.

NexFlash was founded in October 1998, is headquartered in San Jose, CA, and is a partially owned subsidiary of Winbond Electronics Corp.