News : NEC joins IBM on chip project

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's NEC Electronics Corp, the world's No.12 chipmaker, said on Thursday it would team up with IBM and others on next-generation microchips in a bid to beat mounting development costs.

Chip makers are working together to shrink chips and squeeze more power out of them, even as they try to keep costs below sliding prices.

NEC Electronics will be the eighth manufacturer to join an alliance of companies that comprises IBM, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Toshiba Corp, STMicroelectronics, Infineon Technologies, Freescale Semiconductor, and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd.

They have said they would work through 2010 to develop and produce 32-nanometre chips. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or roughly the amount a person's fingernail grows in one second.

(Reporting by Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Chris Gallagher)