The memo sent to employees by Cypress founder and CEO TJ Rodgers on Wednesday shows plans to lay off about 1,600 workers worldwide with severances over the next three weeks, equally split between the two companies, with all North American employees being notified of their status by Friday.

Spansion has introduced the newest 512Mb density member of the FS-S serial NOR flash family. Spansion's FS-S family boasts the industry's fastest 1.8V serial peripheral interface (SPI) read performance at 80MBytes/s with quad DDR (Double Data Rate) at 80MHz clock speeds, 50% faster than most other high-density 1.8V SPI devices currently available.

Spansion has launched a family of industrial-grade e.MMC NAND memory products for the consumer, communication and industrial equipment markets.

Chip companies serving the automotive industry know exactly where the next-generation MCU battle will be played out: high-performance MCUs with fast-access flash memory at 40-nanometer process.

Spansion has announced a complete family of microcontrollers addressing high performance and low power needs for industrial applications such as factory automation, building management, inverter drives, smart meters, home appliances and medical devices.

Spansion has expanded its serial peripheral interface (SPI) portfolio with the introduction of FL-1K family.

Spansion and United Microelectronics (UMC) have announced the joint development of a 40nm process that integrates UMC's 40nm LP logic process with Spansion proprietary embedded Charge Trap (eCT) Flash memory technology. As part of this non-exclusive agreement, UMC is licensed to manufacture products based on this technology for Spansion.

Spansion has announced what it claims is the industry's first single-die 8Gb NOR flash memory product at 45nm. The 8Gb 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.

Embedded and consumer markets and a broadening porfolio of flash memory devices will continue to drive increased business for memory maker Spansion in the coming months, but global economic uncertainty marked by political change is dampening industry growth, Spansion CEO John Kispert said Thursday (Oct. 25).

Memory maker Spansion, which reported strong second-quarter earnings today, has an "aggressive" roadmap to boost its product-introduction rate and break its latest design-win record.

Infineon Technologies has selected Spansion's FL-serial flash memory to provide a high-performance, quad I/O SPI data storage solution for its Hexagon Development Kit System. The Hexagon kit, a modular, expandable platform built around the XMC4000 microcontroller, provides engineers a fast method to prototype industrial applications such as motor control, industrial automation or any kind of power conversion like solar inverters.

Spansion announced that Freescale Semiconductor has selected Spansion serial peripheral interface flash memory to provide its new Vybrid automotive and industrial solutions platforms with a simplified, high-bandwidth memory subsystem.

Spansion has unveiled what it claims is the industry's first human machine interface (HMI) coprocessor that enables voice-controlled system interfaces. Leveraging Nuance Communications' voice technology, the new product is ideal for voice recognition systems in automotive, gaming and consumer electronics, significantly improving response time and accuracy over conventional voice interfaces by supporting larger acoustic databases.

Spansion's five-year technology roadmap includes 1Gb-8Gb SLC NAND solutions on 4Xnm technology today, 3Xnm technology by end of 2012 and 2Xnm in 2014.

"We delivered a solid fourth quarter amid challenging market conditions," said company president and CEO John Kispert. "2011 was a year of transition and intense product development. Spansion is now well-positioned for growth in the future in areas such as automotive, industrial, communications and gaming..."

The US Supreme Court left intact a ruling that lets Tessera Technologies seek damages from Qualcomm and four other companies for infringing patents covering computer-chip packaging.

Fears about a wave of successive layoffs by semiconductor firms were stoked last week when two chipmakers gave out walking papers.

Flash memory provider Spansion said it would cut 750 jobs, 610 of which will come from closing down its Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, facility by the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2012.

Spansion plans to consolidate its two test and assembly manufacturing operations which will result in the closing of its Kuala Lumpur facility, according to the company.

Shares of flash memory chip maker Spansion are taking a beating Friday after the company disclosed weaker-than-expected 3Q11 results and highly disappointing guidance for the fourth quarter.

The majority of the reduction is from the company's wireless products, which have experienced an unexpected decline in demand and pricing.

Jay Legenhausen previously managed worldwide sales for Actel/Microsemi. Prior to Actel, he spent 17 years working at Cypress Semiconductor in various sales and marketing positions.

Michael Van Buskirk, former chief technology officer at Spansion and a longtime engineer at AMD, was named CTO of non-volatile memory chip startup Adesto Technologies Tuesday (Aug. 16).

Spansion has announced a collaboration with Freescale on a memory expansion module for the Freescale Tower System that provides design engineers more flexibility in prototyping a growing range of embedded applications.

Spansion and Samsung Electronics have agreed to settle all ongoing patent litigation and disputes, including their respective investigations with the US International Trade Commission.

Spansion has entered production of its 1Gb and 512Mb GL NOR flash memory for automotive, consumer electronics, gaming and telnet applications.

Samsung Electronics won a US trade ruling in its efforts to block imports of flash-memory chips made by Spansion. Shares of Spansion fell after the close of regular-hours trading.

Amid a loss and some US$454.0 million in disputed claims against the company, Spansion has raised its capital spending for 2011.

The six-member commission has said it will not review an October finding by ITC judge Charles Bullock that Samsung didn't violate Spansion patent rights, according to a posting on the Washington-based agency's website.

Shares of Tessera Technologies, which owns and makes money licensing numerous patents for combing computer chips together, are up 7% at US$22.09 after an appeals court ruled in favor of the company in its suit against Qualcomm, Spansion and STMicroelectronics.

ISO/TS 16949, in conjunction with ISO 9001, defines the quality management system requirements for the design and development, production and, when relevant, installation and service of automotive-related products.

Following the acquisition of Numonyx earlier this year, Micron Technology has reorganized its memory operations. The company has also recruited Tom Eby, a former executive vice president and chief marketing and sales officer at NOR rival Spansion.

But net sales for its third fiscal quarter ended September 26, 2010 grew to US$307.6 million, from US$255.7 million in the prior quarter and US$327.6 million a year ago.

The complete Spansion SPI product portfolio now spans densities from 4Mb through 256Mb.

NOR flash supplier Spansion has named Saied Tehrani as senior vice president of research and development. Tehrani joins Spansion from Everspin Technologies, a supplier of MRAMs, where he was founder and chief operating officer.

Freescale has prequalified all three densities of Spansion Multi-I/O SPI, 32-megabits (Mb), 64Mb and 128Mb devices with all three densities shipping in volume production today.