Independent foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (Nasdaq: TSEM; TASE: TSEM) has licensed intellectual property from Santa Clara, California-based Kilopass Technology.

Tower, which does business as TowerJazz since acquiring Jazz in 2008, licensed Kilopass's one-time programmable (OTP) memory intellectual property (IP) for its 0.13 micron CMOS process. The technology is used to produce embedded non-volatile memory solutions. Kilopass was the first to pioneer antifuse technology, which is used to permanently program integrated circuits (ICs) in a standard CMOS process without extra mask steps. Antifuse is known to provide the highest degree of physical security for the permanent storage of sensitive information and is ideal for design IP protection. OTP devices can store data even during power shutdown. These types of devices frequently are used in video game consoles, mobile phones, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, and implantable medical devices. TowerJazz VLSI Design Center VP Ori Galzur said, "By offering Kilopass OTP, we continue to expand the world-class services we provide to our customers for the cost-effective manufacture of their differentiated products and this expands our addressable market by approximately $100 million.”

Tower shares closed yesterday at $1.46, giving a market cap of $Q302.1 million.

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 15, 2010

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2010