Japanese chip industry splits into two camps

THE Japanese semi-conductor industry is dividing into two camps. Camp One comprises of Renesas and Matsushita. In the other Toshiba, NEC and Sony are all moodily conspiring, having formed a partnership to develop 45 nanometre technologies.

Renesas Technology and Matsushita Electric Industrial are broadening their collaborative partnership to include the development of manufacturing technologies for 45 nanometre chips, says Nikkei.net.

Engineers from both companies will work at Renesas' Itami plant in Hyogo Prefecture with the goal of completing development by the middle of 2007 and moving into mass production in 2008. The two firms will split the development costs, which are estimated at several tens of billions of yen.

Renesas and Matsushita have already worked together to develop manufacturing technologies for 65nm system chips, which Matsushita began implementing last October at its Uozu plant in Toyama Prefecture.

Building a factory to make 45nm chips will cost an estimated 200-300 billion yen, and no one chipmaker in Japan is expected to carry that burden alone. There has been talk of joining forces to build a chip foundry, but nothing has come of that yet. In January, Renesas and Toshiba formed a planning company for 45nm chips at the behest of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, but that fell apart in June.

With two camps now set to develop 45nm manufacturing technologies in Japan, attention has turned to questions of joint production and industrial restructuring. NEC Electronics and Toshiba have spoken of plans for joint production, but as of now it appears that Renesas and Matsushita will produce their 45nm chips independently. µ