Geneva,Switzerland/Austin, Texas, USA:
In a move to add more strength and diversity to their product lines, a joint agreement was forged between Freescale and STMicroelectronics.

The two companies, major semiconductor suppliers to the automotive industry, plan to create a joint microcontroller design team. They will also align process technologies and share intellectual property, including, for instance, highpower MOS technologies.

The agreement covers high-performance, cost-effective 32bit microcontrollers based on PowerPC cores; the basic intellectual property (IP) for automotive and navigation applications; alignment of 90nm embedded flash process technology; and high-voltage Power MOSFETs and IGBTs technologies.

The design program, to be comanaged by the companies, will be headquartered in the Munich, Germany area. Each are set to manufacture the microcontrollers using aligned process technologies, starting at 90nm.