Spansion, a pure-play provider of flash memory solutions, announced on August 4 that it has expanded its global engineering network with a new integrated circuit (IC) design center located in Suzhou, China.
Strategically located near many high-profile consumer electronics companies and within Spansion's existing Suzhou manufacturing facility, the center will enable Spansion to leverage regional design expertise and rapidly respond to the rising demand for Spansion MirrorBit and Logic-on-Flash solutions in Asia.
The Suzhou center becomes part of Spansion's growing network of design centers and specialized centers of excellence, which now includes sites in eight locations around the globe, according to the company.
"Establishing the Suzhou center will position Spansion to more effectively serve the rapidly expanding consumer electronics market in Asia," said Bertrand Cambou, president and chief executive officer of Spansion. "By working closely with the region's complementary hardware and software suppliers, as well as end customers, we will have the opportunity to develop sophisticated system-level solutions that reduce cost, time-to-market and design complexity. We believe this will unleash greater innovation and differentiation in end products, while increasing the value that Spansion brings to the market."
The center will initially house a team of ten engineers for developing system-on-chip (SoC) solutions that integrate Spansion MirrorBit Flash memory with logic. Spansion plans to grow the facility to 50 engineers within three years, and expand system and software engineering resources. The center is expected to be fully operational by mid-2007.
Pern Shaw, a 30-year industry veteran with extensive IC and design management expertise, will head up the new site. As director of engineering for Motorola, Pern successfully created and operated a similar design center in the Suzhou area. Most recently, he was CTO for China Core Technologies.
Article translated by Carrie Yu and edited by Eric Mah
