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Toshiba and NEC reaffirm 32nm chip marriage

Fujitsu gets wandering eyes

Toshiba and NEC are forging ahead with plans to jointly develop manufacturing technology for 32 nanometer chips to better compete with rivals.

The two giants plan to embark on their joint efforts as early as the start of 2008, with mass production beginning in 2010.

In July, rumors circulated of a pact between the Japanese heavyweights. Those earlier reports, however, included Fujitsu as part of the alliance. It now looks like Fujitsu may have grown cautious of the agreement and dropped from the chip making confederacy.

According to Japanese business newspaper Nikkei, Toshiba and NEC are willing to go it alone — although they remain in negotiations with Fujitsu to keep the partnership going.

With or without Fujitsu, the two would join competitors that have already partnered to offset the massive development and production costs required to make chips with minimum circuit features at 32 billionths of a meter. According to VLSI Research, the cost of adopting the new process node can run as high as $4bn.

The pressure is on from Intel, which expects to begin production of 32nm chips in the 2009 time-frame.

NEC is expected to turn over the production of 32nm chips to Toshiba's factory in Oita, rather than equiping its own factory for fabrication. Toshiba and NEC have already worked together on the development of 45nm chips, which could reach mass production as early as next fiscal year.

In May, IBM entered an alliance with Samsung, Chartered, Infineon and Freescale to foster their own 32nm technology. That gang has since been joined by STMicroelectronics. ®

Latest Comments

Response

No, it was just a troll.

Consider touch screens and handwriting recognition: is that a return to paper teletype.

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Teletype

You're still using paper teletype then?

console or GUI, I prefer a screen editor.

I gave up vi & emac style editors shortly after changing from Punched Cards to 8" floppies.

Maybe with 32nm we will get some useful SoC rather than ever more power hungry CPUs that need 5 nanoWales of chips

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Anonymous Coward

32 vs 65 nM

Everyone knows the vi editor works better in small places, whereas emacs needs big real-estate to work properly. Therefore I expect that the move to 32 nM will finally put an end to that silly silly piece of software called emacs.

This is good, and godly, because vi is certainly the Chosen and Blessed Editor. Emacs, as all honest and right-thinking people know, is the - at least spiritual - equivalent of malevolence. Emacs users are at best - if they are forced to used it - existing in a very grey and ambiguous ethical arena.

I look forward to the day when vi triumphs over emacs. It will be the end of the world as we know it, the start of a new era, and it will happen in approx 2010.

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