San Diego, California–JMAR Technologies Inc., a supplier of microtechnology products, announced today that its fabless semiconductor division has signed a 3-year supply and manufacturing agreement with 1st Silicon Sdn. Bhd., a recently established 200mm foundry located in Sarawak, Malaysia.

Under the agreement, 1st Silicon will manufacture as many as 400 8-in. wafers per month to JMAR Semiconductor Inc.’s (JSI) proprietary design specifications, using 0.25- and 0.18-micron CMOS logic and mixed-signal processes. Depending on the specific product designs, each wafer may contain up to several thousand individual chips with selling prices to the end users starting at less than $10.

“We are very pleased to be one of the earliest customers to sign on with 1st Silicon as they extend the capability of their new foundry to higher performance microcircuits with ever-smaller dimensions,” says Marvin W. Sepe, president of JMAR. “Initially, our products will be produced by 1st Silicon’s 0.25-micron process. 1st Silicon anticipates that its 0.18-micron process will come on-line in Q4’01. When that occurs, we plan to transition our higher-speed products to that smaller feature size process. The availability of 1st Silicon’s leading-edge fabrication capacity provides JMAR with a solid basis for the continuing development and production of its broad line of advance proprietary semiconductors for the telecommunications industry.”