Spansion has extended its 65nm manufacturing contract with Shanghai foundry SMIC to include 43nm manufacturing. SMIC is also to ramp production of 65nm MirrorBit Eclipse and Spansion EcoRAM.

"Spansion's expanded agreement with SMIC for leading-edge MirrorBit production is a strategic move to increase Spansion's ability to serve our customer base with a richer range of solutions," said Bertrand Cambou, Spansion’s CEO, “the deepening of our relationship with SMIC also further expands our presence in China, one of the fastest growing markets for flash memory."

MirrorBit technology is used in a number of  Spansion flash products: MirrorBit ORNAND2, MirrorBit NOR, MirrorBit Eclipse and EcoRAM.

After development at its Submicron Development Centre (SDC) in Sunnyvale, California, Spansion will transition 43nm MirrorBit ORNAND2 technology to SMIC's 300mm facility in Wuhan, China.

ORNAND2 is the next generation of  ORNAND, Spansion’s MirrorBit charge trapping technology, with memory cells connected in a NAND array architecture. ORNAND2 will have faster write performance as well as greater density.

ORNAND2 requires 25% fewer masking layers than MirrorBit NOR, says Spansion, and should deliver superior quality over floating-gate NAND.

Spansion also plans to ramp production of 45nm Spansion EcoRAM, MirrorBit NOR and Eclipse flash memory at its own SP1 300mm wafer fabrication facility  at Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan, in 2009.

Spansion expects to complete development of 32nm ORNAND2 technology, MirrorBit Eclipse and Spansion EcoRAM at SDC and ramp the technology to production in 2010.

As floating gate NAND flash memory faces scaling challenges, Spansion’s long record in Mirrorbit allows it a unique advantage in continued scaling possibilities as floating gate approaches its scaling limits.