Toshiba, NEC to collaborate on 45nm processes

By Steve Malone

Posted on 10 Nov 2005 at 10:56

Japanese electronics giants Toshiba and NEC have signed a deal to work together on developing a 45 nanometer production process for the next generation of microelectronics.

As Toshiba already has an agreement in place to develop 45nm technology with Sony, the expectation is that NEC engineers will join in the existing effort taking place at Toshiba's Advanced Microelectronics Centre in Yokohama. The hope is that by sharing the huge investments needed to create a commercial production process Japan will be able to overtake Intel and Samsung in chip design.

As the worldwide demand for mobile consumer electronics devices ranging from mobile phone, digital cameras, handhelds and MP3 players continues to grow so does the demand for innovation to drive new products to the market. Although consumer electronics growth is expected to slow over the next few years with saturation in many of the markets from the current level of around ten per cent a year, it is still expected to grow at a healthy four per cent according to a recent survey by iSuppli

Toshiba and NEC Electronics have revealed they have also begun negotiations over a comprehensive alliance to share costs over other developments such as design environments and product development, as well as collaboration in manufacturing.

The two companies will need to compromise on their approaches, however. For example, in the embedded memory field, Toshiba's expertise is in trench capacitor memory while NEC Electronics utilises stacked capacitor memory techniques.