SMIC, Brite Semiconductor to provide integrated IC design and manufacturing services

SHANGHAI, CHINA: Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China's leading foundry, has announced an agreement to invest in Brite Semiconductor, a Shanghai-based IC design and turnkey service company.

The agreement allows Brite to provide customers with complete semiconductor design and manufacturing solutions based upon SMIC's leading foundry and IP technology. Value-added services include application-specific architecture and RTL design, leading-edge physical design, and full productization services including testing and packaging services through a well-established network.

This collaboration provides a complete solution, which integrates IC design and manufacturing processes allowing customers to focus more on product and market development.

"As a leading ASIC company, our backend engineers have maintained a 100 percent silicon success record across various technologies and with challenging designs such as a 100M gate wireless networking chip announced earlier this year," said Charlie Zhi, President & CEO of Brite Semiconductor.

"In addition, we recently collaborated with SMIC on 40nm design flow development including tapeout of a 40nm ASIC. A closer partnership with SMIC allows us to provide our customers with the complete services, advanced technologies, and low costs needed to fuel their growth."

"Open-Silicon founded Brite Semiconductor to provide custom silicon customers another way to access leading edge technology and engineering expertise. Watching the company grow through strong partnerships, like the one with SMIC, has shown that offering a network of integrated services and silicon solutions best meets those customers' needs," said Naveed Sherwani, CEO and president, Open-Silicon. "Continuing as a Brite board member as it further establishes itself in the marketplace will also prove beneficial to Open-Silicon."

"Not all of our customers were able to use SMIC technology due to the accelerated migration to advanced nodes with challenges of availability and integration of IP in the design process," said Chris Chi, senior VP and chief business officer of SMIC. "Brite will play a critical role to enable our customers to use SMIC's technology and IP warehouses."