Toshiba Joins IBM Alliance for 32 nm Bulk Process Development

David Lammers, News Editor -- Semiconductor International, 12/18/2007 9:37:00 AM

IBM Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.) and Toshiba Corp. (Tokyo) announced Tuesday (Dec. 18) that they have extended their relationship at the IBM-led process development alliance, entering into a joint development agreement on 32 nm bulk CMOS process technology. The work will be conducted as part of the now seven-company alliance, based in East Fishkill, N.Y.

Since late 2005, Toshiba has been a member of a research-oriented alliance, based at research facilities in Yorktown, N.Y., and the Albany NanoTech complex in Albany, N.Y. That research effort considered key technologies, such as high-k/metal gate technology.

Until now, Toshiba did not participate in the alliance’s process development effort, preferring to create its own process flow in Japan. The two companies have now agreed to extend the scope of the joint development work to include 32 nm bulk CMOS process technology.

The IBM bulk CMOS alliance has expanded to seven members with the addition of Toshiba Corp.

On Dec. 9, IBM announced that the alliance partners had developed a test SRAM array, based on 32 nm bulk CMOS and high-k/metal gate technology.

Shozo Saito, corporate senior vice resident of Toshiba and CEO of Toshiba’s semiconductor company, said that in addition to continuing the collaboration on fundamental advanced research, Toshiba will jointly develop the 32 nm bulk CMOS process integration technology with the alliance, which now has seven partners. “Concurrently we will also accelerate our own development of integration technology for the 32 nm process at Toshiba’s Advanced Microelectronics Center in Yokohama toward achieving early production of leading-edge devices,” he said.

Toshiba and NEC Corp. (Tokyo) are working in another collaborative process development relationship, based at Yokohama.

Toshiba manufactures several of the key chips used in the Sony Playstation video console, which are now based on silicon on insulator (SOI) technology developed within the IBM Alliance.