Toshiba joins IBM for 32nm research

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 18 Dec 2007 at 08:14

Toshiba has joined a group led by IBM to jointly develop 32nm chips, following the trend of manufacturers banding together to keep escalating research costs down.

Toshiba joins a group of industry leading lights that already consists of AMD, Samsung, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Infineon Technologies and Freescale Semiconductor. The seven companies say they will work through 2010 to design, develop and produce chips using the tiny circuitry.

The electronics company already has an agreement in place with NEC to jointly work on 32nm technology, however, Toshiba says that alliance will remain distinct and focus on ways to mass produce chips.

The chip makers did not discuss how they will share the development costs involved in setting up the specialist equipment, which includes immersion steppers, multi-million dollar machines that use purified water between the lens and the silicon wafer to draw thin circuit lines onto microchips.

Chip makers are racing to move to smaller circuit sizes to cut production costs and lower energy usage, but the shift is exposing chip makers to huge initial costs, prompting Sony to pull out of its own 32nm research earlier in November.