ZF Micro Settles With NSC And Begins Accepting Orders

PALO ALTO, CA – After an almost three year legal battle, ZF Micro Solutions has entered into a settlement with National Semiconductor Corporation. ZF now has all of its intellectual property and has received a confidential amount of cash with which ZF can now rebuild and bring the ZFx86 FailSafe® PC-on-a-Chip back into production as quickly as possible. The ZFx86 will once again be produced exclusively by ZF Micro Solutions.

"When we heard the news that the dispute had been settled, we immediately placed an order with ZF and notified our customer base that we will be able to continue building our ZFx86-based products," said Doug Stead, President of Tri-M Systems. "Even though three years have passed, no one in the industry has been able to come close to offering what the ZF chip can do and we're elated that we can now expand into new markets," added Mr. Stead.

The ZFx86 had garnered more than 400 design wins worldwide because of its unique feature set tailored specifically to the requirements of the embedded control market. No other device includes ZF's patented FailSafe® crash recovery mechanism, low power consumption and a complete BIOS — reducing BIOS investment to zero while offering full compatibility with Linux, Windows and most of the Real Time Operating Systems on the market today.

"We believe that the market for the ZFx86 may actually be stronger today than when it was initially introduced because so many other processor companies have abandoned the x86 embedded market over the last three years," stated Feldman when asked about the future of the product that was focus of the clash between ZF and National Semiconductor. ZF has taken delivery of its intellectual property and immediately began discussions with potential new foundry partners to commence production as soon as the data can be converted to the appropriate process technology. ZF hopes to have chips available in less than six months.

"This settlement will allow us to begin the process of rebuilding the company and restart the other projects that had been put on hold during the past three years," said Feldman. "We will carefully select a highly reliable and well-thought-of foundry partner and put in place protections that will guarantee a source of supply to our customers," he added.