SAN FRANCISCO—Chip vendor Integrated Silicon Solution Inc. (ISS) said Thursday (July 19) it signed a deal to acquire specialty memory chip vendor Chingis Technology Corp. for $33 million in cash.
The deal is valued at about $16 million net of the $17 million in cash on Chingis' books,
ISSI (San Jose, Calif.) said. The transaction is expected to close in September.
Chingis, headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, was founded in 1995. The company markets NOR flash memory chips based and licenses embedded non-volatile-memory solutions IP. The company describes itself as a pioneer in the pioneer in the development of PMOS nonvolatile memory technology.
Chingis claims more than 80 patents and patents pending worldwide. The company has 75 employees in Taiwan, Korea, China and the U.S.
ISSI said the acquisition would strengthen its specialty memory product portfolio with the addition of NOR flash. The company said it would leverage its existing infrastructure to increase scale and lower Chingis' costs, utilize its foundry relationships to grow Chingis' embedded business and expand the Chingis flash product line.
"For our target markets, the NOR flash product line offers many of the same key attributes as our specialty memory portfolio, including stable pricing and gross margins, plus long product life cycles," said Scott Howarth, ISSI's president and CEO, in a statement.