Tosh and Sony team up on chip production

LET BY-GONES BE BY-GONES says Tosh, now that it has bowed out, in ceremonial fashion, from its HD-DVD foray. Toshiba and Sony announced the conclusion of a deal today whereby Tosh will take a 60 per cent stake in Sony’s 300mm wafer production lines in Nagasaki, following the creation of a Sony/Sony Computer Entertainment Inc./Toshiba joint venture.

Fab2 in Nagasaki hosts production of Cell processors, RSX graphics chips and soon-to-be-introduced, 65nm SoCs from Toshiba. The joint venture will be incorporated soon, but management will be shared between both (Tosh outranks Sony in the bigger picture, though). Part of the master plan is to support the move to 45nm, which - we presume - also means next-gen Cells.

Toshiba also announced it will be stepping up investment in NAND Flash, in co-operation with Sandisk, as we noted here. A sensible investment as Flash (in all its forms, including SSD) will populate IT/CE devices to one extent or another – and is guaranteed a (sort of) place in the tech History Hall of Fame.

The Sony-Tosh deal is actually part of a MoU signed by both parties back in October and is worth 90 billion yen (almost $835 million), it’s also part of a bigger effort from Sony to streamline business (ie: cut their losses) as PS3 had been bleeding badly until Q3 of last year. On Tosh’s side, it seems a simpler matter of moving onwards, with the added benefit of reinforcing its position as a Sony partner. Keizoku ha chikara nari, eh Nishida-san?

This is Nippon, you see, and although Japanese think it’s extremely rude if you blow your nose in public, they are civil to a fault and have no qualms in doing business after your opponent beat you fair and square. This deal seems unrelated to Tosh’s withdrawal from the Hi-def battle, in case you’re wondering. Because if it was, it means they were laying this out since Q3 last year... shurely not... µ