NEC teams up with IBM on chip development

NEC Electronics is the latest chip maker to team up with its competitors in the battle against rising development costs.

Chip makers are working together to shrink chips and squeeze more power out of them, even as they try to keep costs below sliding prices.

NEC Electronics will be the eighth manufacturer to join an alliance of companies that comprises IBM, Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, STMicroelectronics, Infineon Technologies, Freescale Semiconductor, and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing.

They have said they would work through 2010 to develop and produce 32-nanometre chips. A nanometre is a billionth of a meter, or roughly the amount a person's fingernail grows in one second.

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