Toshiba Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp. on Wednesday announced that they have agreed to collaborate on the development of 45nm fabrication process that will be used to manufacture large-scale integrated circuit (LSI) products for consumer electronics made by both companies. The manufacturers also began discussing about sharing of manufacturing resources.

Under the terms of the agreement, engineers from Toshiba and NEC Electronics will collaborate at Toshiba’s Advanced Microelectronics Center in Yokohama on development of fundamental 45nm CMOS (complementary metal oxide semi-conductor) process technology, which both companies will be able to implement at their manufacturing facilities.  The companies will also separately discuss how to handle the development of value-added and differentiated process technologies.

Given that 45nm and thinner manufacturing technologies require a lot of resources to be developed, numerous companies form technology alliances in order to share the resources and, thus, expenses. Going forward, advanced manufacturing facilities, such as those which will process 400mm wafers will also cost several billions of dollars and will require full utilization in order to be commercially feasible, which will spur not only technology-development alliances, but semiconductor manufacturing alliances as well.

The companies have also begun to discuss comprehensive alliance in development, such as design environments and product development, as well as collaboration in manufacturing to achieve more efficient use of capital investment and increase capacity utilization rates.

Toshiba and NEC Electronics expect the joint effort to reduce development burdens and to shorten turn-around times for highly advanced system LSI. Toshiba sees future increases in utilization rates at its most advanced system LSI production facility, while NEC Electronics expects to focus on the development of value-added system LSI products, by focusing on differentiated process technologies.