In a move that signals a firm and ongoing commitment to future technology leadership, IBM and its Common PlatformTM technology partners Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics, along with joint-development alliance  partners Infineon Technologies AG and Freescale Semiconductor, have signed a series of semiconductor process development and manufacturing agreements.

   IBM announced this on Thursday in New Delhi. The joint development agreements between these companies will now include 32-nanometer (nm) bulk complementary  metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technologies and joint development of process design kits (PDKs) to support  that technology.

    Building on the success of joint development and manufacturing  agreements, Common Platform manufacturing alliance partners will be able to produce high-performance, energy-efficient chips at 90nm, 65nm and 45nm.

Sharing work
The partners plan to pool their combined expertise and collaborate to design, develop and manufacture advanced technology through 2010. Those technologies, which are the leading platform for a broad range of systems-ranging from next-generation hand-held products to the world’s highest performance supercomputers-may be used by the five partners and other companies to help solve real-life problems in fields such as medicine, communications, transportation and security.

“IBM remains convinced that collaborative innovation in an open ecosystem of partners is the key to technology leadership, both now and in the years to come,” said Michael Cadigan, GM, Semiconductor Solutions, IBM Global Engineering Solutions.

“Today’s announcement validates that strategy by meeting client requirements for leadership technology. With the extensions of our agreements to the 32nm generation-including manufacturing.”

Joint development
IBM, Chartered and Samsung, as Common Platform technology manufacturers, will be able to use the jointly developed 32nm process technology and design kits to synchronise manufacturing facilities.
This helps facilitate the flexibility to produce nearly identical chips for their respective high-volume OEM clients, requiring multi-sourcing model and expect early access to process technology.