Rambus has acquired privately-held Unity Semiconductor, which develops NAND flash successor technologies, for US$35 million in cash, according to the technology licensing company.
The Unity team members have joined Rambus to continue developing innovations and solutions for next-generation non-volatile memory, Rambus said. This acquisition will expand the breadth of Rambus' breakthrough memory technologies and will open up new markets for licensing, it added.
"With the addition of Unity, we can develop non-volatile memory solutions that will advance semiconductor scaling beyond the limits of today's NAND technology. This will enable new memory architectures that help meet ever-increasing consumer demands," said Sharon Holt, senior VP and GM of Rambus' Semiconductor Business Group.
"Our comprehensive set of design, process and device solutions will complement Rambus' existing strong technology portfolio and system capabilities," said David Eggleston, president and CEO at Unity Semi.
Unity revealed it has developed a novel solid state memory technology intended to replace NAND in the growing non-volatile memory market. Its memory technology, CMOx, has been designed to accelerate the commercialization of the terabit (Tb) generation of non-volatile memories. Devices using CMOx cell technology are expected to achieve higher density, faster performance, lower manufacturing costs and greater data reliability than NAND flash, the company claimed.