Toshiba is reportedly working on a deal to outsource fabrication of chips to U.S. firm GlobalFoundries, the Nikkei business daily reported, citing company sources. The two sides are in the final stages of negotiations, Doug Grose, chief executive officer of the American foundry, told the Nikkei in an interview.

"We had been considering outsourcing production to Samsung Electronics Co and GlobalFoundries since last year," a Toshiba official told Nikkei.

Toshiba is trying to outsource fabrication of 28-40 nanometers chips to save on R&D and production costs and have its engineers focus on design, the paper said.

Samsung will likely handle low-cost fabrication of Toshiba's mainline image-processing chips, while GlobalFoundries will churn out semiconductors using the latest technologies, the Nikkei reported.