April 3, 2002 – East Fishkill, NY, and Tokyo, Japan – IBM, Sony Corp., Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., and Toshiba Corp. have signed a multi-year agreement to jointly develop advanced semiconductor technologies based on SOI and other IBM materials advances.

The team will spend several hundred million dollars over four years to develop new process technologies for building chips with features as small as 50nm on 300mm wafers.

The new processes are expected to incorporate materials provided by IBM, such as copper wiring, SOI transistors and low-k insulation. The use of new designs and materials will be guided by the applications requirements of Sony. Toshiba will contribute its high-volume manufacturing capability and SoC technology to meet targeted performance and quality levels.

In a separate agreement, IBM will transfer the latest SOI technologies to Sony and Toshiba. The development work will be conducted by a team of scientists and engineers from all parties at the IBM semiconductor R&D center in East Fishkill, NY. Each party then will have the ability to build the chips in its own manufacturing facilities, and for its own semiconductor business customers. A significant portion of IBM’s soon-to-be-completed, 300mm wafer manufacturing facility in East Fishkill will be dedicated to these new processes.