Lattice to buy Agere’s FPGA business

Oregon-based Lattice Semiconductor accelerated its plans to penetrate the FPGA microprocessor market today by announcing plans to buy Agere Systems’ FPGA business for $250 million in cash.

Expected to close in the first quarter of 2002, the deal calls for Lattice to get Agere’s general-purpose ORCA FPGA product portfolio, field programmable system chip (FPSC) product portfolio and related software design tools. About 100 Agere employees will also join Lattice as part of the deal.

Lattice also would acquire intellectual property cores and patents unique to Agere’s FPGA business. The companies also would enter a cross-license agreement in which Lattice would get rights to Agere patents and intellectual property for use in FPGA and FPSC products. In return, Agere would continue to have access to the ORCA FPGA technology to incorporate into its “system-on-a-chip” integrated circuits.

--Amalia D. Parthenios, staff writer