Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 8, 1990                   TAG: 9003081544
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-7   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: TOKYO                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEC, AT&T PLAN TO WORK AS TEAM

The agreement should enhance the U.S. company's access to Japan's world-dominating electronics market.

NEC, the world's largest maker of semiconductors, agreed to cooperate with AT&T's Microelectronics Division on various projects for at least five years.

Under the agreement, AT&T Microelectronics will receive a license to market, design and produce NEC's advanced gate-array computer chips, which are used widely in computers and other electronic devices.

AT&T does not have the technology to produce these chips on its own, spokeswoman Barbara Baklarz said from AT&T Microelectronics headquarters in Berkeley Heights, N.J.

In return, NEC will receive AT&T's most sophisticated computer-aided tools used to design computer chips, William Warwick, president of AT&T Microelectronics, told reporters in Tokyo.

He said the two companies also are working on accelerating the placement of AT&T semiconductor products into a variety of NEC products, such as communications systems and computers.

In addition, AT&T Microelectronics will help manufacture certain NEC chips widely used in consumer electronics products.

"This will allow Japanese customers to obtain products made by an American firm, and will give AT&T a greater presence in the Japanese market, especially with consumer electronics companies," Warwick said.

"This agreement shows that one single company cannot stand alone and needs more resources to survive," said Tomohir Matsumura, an NEC executive vice president and director of its semiconductor division.

AT&T Microelectronics announced two weeks ago that it will produce semiconductor memory chips for the international market in a joint venture with Mitsubishi Electric Corp., another major Japanese chip manufacturer.

International Business Machines Corp. said in January that it would set up a joint venture with Siemens AG of West Germany to develop advanced memory chips.

Neither AT&T nor NEC would attach monetary figures to the accord, but Warwick said he was confident it would be continued after five years.

Gate-array chips are the logic chips that customize computers according to their use. They are a key component of a computer, along with its microprocessor, or "brain," and its memory.