The companies plan to jointly develop and align on 90 nanometer (nm) and 65nm logic processes for foundry chip production on 300 millimeter (mm) silicon wafers. They may explore an extension to the agreement to include 45nm technology. To assist foundry customers in designing with these technologies, IBM and Chartered also agreed to work together with third-party providers of design tools and open-standard formats to help customers more easily move their products between the two companies for production.

The agreement also includes a reciprocal manufacturing arrangement between Chartered and IBM. Chartered will be able to offer its customers some capacity in IBM’s new 300mm chip manufacturing facility in East Fishkill, New York. In turn, IBM expects to utilise some capacity in Chartered’s 300mm Fab 7 in Singapore to help meet additional future capacity requirements. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed. The companies expect to achieve scale, cycle time and cost efficiencies in both leading-edge process technology development and 300mm manufacturing, while also providing customers multiple sources of supply.

Historically, foundry customers were characterized as companies who completed their own chip designs and looked to high-volume, low-cost manufacturers to simply build wafers. The model is changing, however, as chip designers are finding it difficult to deal with the latest, more complex design technologies, as it, for example, happened with NVIDIA’s GeForce FX and TSMC. Increasingly, they are depending on foundry suppliers to provide advanced manufacturing processes and additional design support.