Five Japanese firms are planning to cooperate against Samsung and Intel in chip production. According to a report Hitachi, Toshiba, Matsushita, NEC and Renesas will build a huge semiconductor foundry to produce chips in volumes like their competitors do.
The next-generation production site should be operational in 2007 and will cost the joint venture 200-300 billion yen ($1.82-2.74 billion).
The chip foundry will focus on logic production and not on DRAM. However, their are no details whether or not the member companies will share intellectual property.
All five companies will get an equal stake in the venture.
Japanese firms stick together against Intel, Samsung
