Toshiba Corp., a leading maker of consumer electronics and also a leading manufacturer of chips, said on Tuesday that it will prolong its technology agreement with IBM and will join IBM semiconductor alliance in development of bulk 32nm fabrication process.

Since December 2005, IBM and Toshiba have collaborated on fundamental advanced research related to semiconductor process technologies at the 32nm technology generation and beyond at the research facilities in Yorktown and Albany, New York. Building on the success of this ongoing research collaboration, the two companies have agreed to extend the scope of the joint development work to now include 32nm bulk CMOS process technology.

Under the new agreement, Toshiba joins a six company IBM Alliance, which includes AMD, Chartered, Freescale, Infineon, Samsung and IBM itself, for 32nm bulk CMOS process technology development based in East Fishkill, New York.

“This is a promising collaboration. In addition to continuing the successful collaboration on fundamental advanced research, Toshiba will jointly develop the state-of-the-art 32nm bulk CMOS process integration technology, as a member of the world-class seven-company IBM Alliance. Concurrently we will also accelerate our own development of integration technology for the 32nm process at Toshiba’s Advanced Microelectronics Center in Yokohama, toward achieving early production of leading-edge devices,” said Mr. Shozo Saito, corporate senior vice president of Toshiba Corp. and president and chief exec of Toshiba’s Semiconductor Company.

Through this collaboration IBM and Toshiba plan to accelerate development of next-generation technology to achieve high-performance, energy-efficient chips at the 32nm process level.

With 32nm process technology available at a variety of contract semiconductor manufacturers as well as at developers and producers of their own chips, many devices, including leading-edge game consoles, such as Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3, will get processors that are cheaper to make and which consume lower amount of energy.