Toshiba is reportedly working on a deal to outsource fabrication of
chips to U.S. firm GlobalFoundries, the Nikkei business daily
reported, citing company sources.
The two sides are in the final stages of negotiations, Doug Grose,
chief executive officer of the American foundry, told the Nikkei in
an interview.
"We had been considering outsourcing production to Samsung
Electronics Co and GlobalFoundries since last year," a Toshiba
official told Nikkei.
Toshiba is trying to outsource fabrication of 28-40 nanometers chips
to save on R&D and production costs and have its engineers focus on
design, the paper said.
Samsung will likely handle low-cost fabrication of Toshiba's mainline
image-processing chips, while GlobalFoundries will churn out
semiconductors using the latest technologies, the Nikkei reported.