ST 65nm BSI Process to be Openly Available through UMC

PR Newswire, EETimes: UMC joins forces with ST to develop 65nm BSI process. The partnership follows upon the two companies' success to port ST's FSI processes to UMC's 300mm Fab 12i in Singapore. The 1.1um pixel BSI process, which will also be developed at Fab12i, will be available as an open platform for customers through a licensing agreement with ST.

Po-Wen Yen, Senior Vice president of 12-inch Operations at UMC said, "We are happy to extend our relationship with our long-time partner STMicroelectronics through this co-development effort. This agreement is consistent with UMC's open collaboration strategy to deliver customer-driven foundry solutions to address ever evolving market requirements. We look forward to further strengthening our comprehensive technology portfolio with this CIS BSI process."

"ST's previous successes in imaging technologies with UMC gives us great confidence in the development of this next-generation image-sensor process technology with UMC," said Eric Aussedat, Corporate Vice President Imaging, Bi-CMOS, ASIC and Silicon Photonics Group.

Initially, the new process is targeted to fast-growing applications such as smartphone, tablet, high-end surveillance, and DSC/DSLR. The long lifetime expectancy of the BSI process should help it to be adopted for automotive and industrial fields in the coming years.

Thanks to RF for sending me the link!