NEC, Fujitsu and Toshiba to co-develop 32nm chips

The three firms had been in talks about shouldering the estimated 100-200 billion yen ($830 million-$1.66 billion) development costs to help compete against chip industry leaders such as Intel Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co.

The companies aim to set up a joint venture to make the chips, used in flat TVs and other high-power home electronics, with Toshiba expected to hold a leading non-majority share.

Chip makers are racing to halve the production cost per function of a chip every year or two -- a trend known as Moore's Law, named after a co-founder of Intel.