Toshiba, NEC Electronics to team up on 32-nm chips
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Japanese chipmakers Toshiba and NEC Electronics said Tuesday they would jointly develop 32-nanometer chips to better keep up with rivals. The companies will decide in 2008 how and if they will jointly produce the chips, they said.
Samsung Electronics, IBM, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Infineon Technologies, STMicroelectronics and Freescale Semiconductor have said they would work through 2010 to develop and produce 32-nanometer chips. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter. Actual production would require new equipment such as immersion steppers, which are multimillion-dollar machines that use purified water between the lens and the silicon wafer to draw thin circuit lines onto microchips.
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