Toshiba Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp, both of Japan, announced on Wednesday that they will be working together to jointly develop the technology required to produce next generation semiconductors. Their goal is to come up with design and manufacturing processes that will yield chips that are smaller, faster, and more economical to produce.
With circuit widths measuring as small as 45 nanometers, or 45 billionths of a meter, these developments will allow electronics manufacturers to reduce the size of their products and add more features in the same or less space than products currently on the market.
The high cost of products development coupled with the cost of developing the technology to manufacture advanced semiconductors has always been an impairing factor for component manufacturers. Both Toshiba and NEC claim that by sharing the burden of these expenses they will be able to decrease the amount of time from development to manufacturing.
The news of this partnership came on the heels of a warning issued by NEC Electronics in late October that its numbers would fall deep in to the red for the fiscal year due to a decline in sales and reductions in prices for some of its semiconductor products. NEC shares rose 5.5 percent on the Tokyo Stock Exchange after the Nihon Keizai Shimbun carried a report of the companies' agreement ahead of the official announcement.
News source: The Daily Progress
