IBM said on Thursday that it has reached an agreement with Toppan Printing of Japan to jointly develop photomasks for next generation, 45-nanometer (nm) chip manufacturing processes.

The two companies will jointly invest about 200 million US dollars to develop a photomask process intended to enable early production of 45nm devices, according to IBM.

Development work will be conducted and evaluated at IBM's facilities in the United States and Toppan is expected to assign engineers to work with IBM's mask development team.

By combining their respective 65nm photomask manufacturing technologies, which have already been developed, the two companies have set a goal of developing 45nm photomasks that will be ready for production around mid-2007, when industry demand is expected to gather momentum, IBM said in a statement.

Toppan plans to transfer the jointly developed manufacturing process from IBM's facility to its own plants and to establish its own production system in order to provide customers with 45nm photomasks for the early stages of commercialization.

Advanced photomasks are a critical part of the semiconductor production process.

"It is vital that semiconductor manufacturers and photomask manufacturers work closely together to develop the chip manufacturing process and the appropriate photomask for that process at the same time," IBM said.

Source: Xinhua