Rambus Inc., one of the world's premier technology licensing companies specializing in high-speed chip interfaces and Spansion Inc., the world's largest pure-play provider of Flash memory solutions, announced today that they have signed a patent license agreement. This five-year, royalty-based agreement grants Spansion a license to a broad range of Rambus patents. Rambus management does not expect revenue generated from this license agreement to be material. Specific terms of the agreement are confidential.

"This license agreement with Rambus enables Spansion to expand our memory solutions for cellular phone applications," said Robert Melendres, executive vice president and chief legal officer at Spansion. "Working with the Rambus team to secure access to their patent portfolio will provide us more design freedom as we develop next generation Flash memory technology and solutions."

"Rambus has a history of innovation in advanced interface designs, and some of those innovations are applicable to Flash memory," said Sharon Holt, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales, Licensing and Marketing at Rambus. "Our patented inventions add value to the industry and leaders such as Spansion can benefit from our innovations, which push the bounds of various technology platforms."

Spansion joins a growing list of semiconductor suppliers and system manufacturers who have signed patent license agreements for various products covered by Rambus patents. Other companies include AMD, Elpida, Fujitsu, Qimonda, Matsushita, NEC, Renesas, and Toshiba.

Since its founding in 1990, Rambus has focused on advancing electronic system performance through innovations in logic and memory interfaces, controller architectures, and system design. Such innovations include the application of micro-threading to a DRAM core, the elimination of trace length matching with FlexPhase circuit technology, and industry-recognized dynamic point-to-point memory-enhancing technology. These and other innovations result in a broad portfolio of innovations and patents that enable semiconductor manufacturers and system designers to achieve ever-increasing levels of functionality and performance, to lower system costs, to mitigate risk with silicon-proven designs, and to reduce time to market. For more information on Rambus' patent portfolio, please visit www.rambus.com/patents.