“Our customers are keenly interested in the forthcoming automotive microcontroller designs resulting from our joint development efforts,” said Mike McCourt, vice president and general manager of Freescale’s Microcontroller Division. “In addition to our combined product and process technology capabilities, the dual-sourcing capabilities we plan to bring to the market are also generating a lot of interest in the automotive industry. We plan to deliver four new products in early 2008 and expect to roll out a comprehensive roadmap of scalable microcontroller designs within the next couple of years.”

The companies have established design centers in Naples, Agrate, Sao Paulo and New Delhi, each dedicated to extending the joint product roadmap. Staffed by a total of 130 design engineers, these design centers are focusing on developing MCU products optimized for specific automotive market segments.

“Operational excellence and flexibility are key to our continued success in jointly developing automotive microcontrollers,” said Marco Maria Monti, vice president and general manager of ST Powertrain & Safety Division. “Both companies offer complementary areas of expertise. One area where we collaborate extremely effectively is around embedded flash memory development. The first test chips, based on 90nm embedded flash technology, are under validation and are showing very good results. We plan to offer customers a fully scalable roadmap from very cost-effective flash-based MCUs for car body applications up to very high-performance products for advanced powertrain and chassis systems.”

One of the most significant developments to date has been the recent delivery of a common microcontroller architectural platform design. This design enables multiple products to be derived simultaneously using optimized peripheral sets, each for a specific target application. This approach can significantly reduce time to market and can help to accelerate both companies’ goal of making Power Architecture technology the leading automotive microcontroller core.

Freescale and ST plan to manufacture jointly designed Power Architecture MCU products on mutually aligned 90-nm process technology. Lead customers are expected to receive samples of the jointly developed products throughout Q1 2008.

About Freescale Semiconductor
Freescale Semiconductor is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial, networking and wireless markets. The privately held company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries. Freescale is one of the world's largest semiconductor companies with 2006 sales of $6.4 billion (USD). www.freescale.com