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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.

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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.