Toshiba, Fujitsu and NEC Electronics have agreed to jointly develop
advanced 32-nanometre chips to better keep up with rivals, the Nikkei
business daily said on Wednesday.
The three firms had been in talks about shouldering the estimated
100-200 billion yen ($830 million-$1.66 billion) development costs to
help compete against chip industry leaders such as Inteland Samsung
Electronics.
The companies aim to set up a joint venture to make the chips, used
in flat TVs and other high-power home electronics, with Toshiba
expected to hold a leading non-majority share.
Chip makers are racing to halve the production cost per function of a
chip every year or two -- a trend known as Moore's Law, named after a
co-founder of Intel.
In May, Samsung, IBM, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd.,
Infineon Technologies and Freescale Semiconductor said they would
work together on 32-nanometre chips.
Toshiba and NEC Electronics have teamed up to develop chips with 45
nanometre features.
Toshiba was the world's No.4 maker of chips in terms of revenue in
2006 and NEC Electronics ranked No.11, according to research firm
iSuppli. Fujitsu ranked 27th, the paper said.