14 DAY TRIAL // STMicroelectronics is a Switzerland electronics manufacturer that recently signed up with IBM in order to jointly develop a new technological process for building computer chips using the 32 and 22 nanometer scales metal-oxide-semiconductors (CMOS) on 300 mm wafers. While now the standard is the larger 45 nm process used by Intel in the Xeon processor family and in its other quad core processors, IBM expects to have a ready for sale smaller technological process by 2009 or 2010.
As the battle for technological supremacy is getting hotter by the day, IBM has much to gain if it can realize a better and more efficient manufacturing process for computer chips, as all other chip manufacturer will have to license its product or develop a new one from scratch. And this is not an easily undertaken process as it will most probably cost a few hundred million dollars or more to design only the process, with every additional chip design costing some millions more.
This is not the first time that IBM enters an alliance with a computer hardware parts producer in order to develop and license a new technology or manufacture process. The most important players on the hardware market for computers (Advanced Micro Devices, Chartered, Infineon, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Freescale) have long-standing agreements with IBM in order to develop or simply use new technologies. A new thing in the STMicroelectronics and IBM joint venture is that the two firms will send a team of engineers to each other's development centers in order to accelerate the process.
According to the news site TGDaily, ST will send a research team at IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center in East Fishkill and Albany, New York, while the IBM team will go to the ST development and fabrication facility in Crolles, France. Sometimes, these alliances really work, sometimes they fail. Among IBM's successful joint ventures, the partnership with AMD in implementing the "strain silicon" process in its chips stands out.