IBM, Samsung Electronics and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing have signed a series of joint semiconductor process development and manufacturing agreements, Samsung Electronics said. 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.

The partners plan to develop and manufacture advanced technology through 2010.

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

The five companies will focus on low cost and minimum complexity while they will implementa new materials such as high-k/metal gate, advanced stress engineering, and extreme low-k films in the back-end-of-line (BEOL). In addition, the cooperaiton is expected to advance the immersion lithography technology to achieve competitive density and chip size. Providing a platform for derivative technologies such as RF CMOS and embedded DRAM, or eDRAM is also among the goals of the new alliance.

As with previous nodes, 32nm development activities will be conducted at IBM's 300 millimeter (mm) semiconductor fabrication facility in East Fishkill, N.Y. Freescale originally announced its membership in the alliance on Jan. 23.