A consortium of technology corporations has joined forces to research nano-scale chip technology.

The alliance consists of IBM, Toshiba, AMD, Samsung, Chartered, Infineon and Freescale. They will share resources to develop the ‘32 nanometer’ chip manufacturing process, which can place billions of transistors on a single chip.

There is still much expensive work to be done before chips built in this fashion are a commercial viability. The companies have agreed to co-operate in developing the fundamental elements of the technology until opportunities for competitive differentiation open up.

Conspicuously absent from the group is Intel, which has instead decided to develop the 32nm process on its own. This, it claims, gives it an advantage over the consortium, as it will not have to deal with inter-corporate politics.

Meanwhile, some sources believe that the link between processing power and performance is breaking down. According to a report by the New York Times this week, the proliferation of multi-core processors in computer hardware has not been met with the advancements in programming necessary to take advantage of the new speed.

Further reading

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IBM joins virtual chip parade