SINGAPORE: Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, one of the world's top dedicated foundries, today announced it has made a strategic investment in SOCLE Technology Corp., a Taiwan-based firm specializing in system-on-chip (SoC) design services and embedded platforms that reduce development time. Financial terms of the investment were not announced.

The investment will be used to support future growth and expansion by SOCLE. The two companies will collaborate on further developing and optimizing design services for customers targeting Chartered's advanced manufacturing processes. SOCLE provides design services and development kits that span the chip design process from initial specification through design implementation to final chip assembly and testing.

SOCLE and Chartered have a long track record of implementing their mutual customers' designs, with SOCLE offering development kits to reduce the time and effort in achieving working silicon for complex IC designs featuring embedded technology. The company is one of several qualified Chartered design services partners around the world.

"SOCLE has developed a strong expertise in helping customers develop complex SoC designs, and its embedded platforms are production-proven. Its experience in hardening ARM cores and developing ARM-based platforms is especially appealing to our customer base" said Kay Chai "KC" Ang, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for Chartered. "As an investment for Chartered, we believe SOCLE has a solid business model and is well-resourced to address new opportunities."

"Chartered's management experience and success in working with companies doing advanced IC design will be of great value to SOCLE as we plan our next phase of growth. We appreciate the confidence Chartered has demonstrated in us as both a strategic supplier of services to its customer base, as well as in our business model and potential to expand." said David Lyou, President and CEO of SOCLE.