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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

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    Toshiba to speed up system chip shrinkage

    TOKYO
    Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:33pm EDT

    TOKYO (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp, Japan's largest chip maker, said it plans to mass produce 28-nanometre system chips in the next business year as it fights to stay relevant in an area dominated by the likes of Intel Corp and Texas Instruments Inc.

    Japan

    Toshiba, the world's second-largest maker of NAND flash memory chips after Samsung Electronics, is hurrying to restructure its system chip business, which has been smarting from shrinking demand, high costs and falling prices.

    Toshiba and NEC Electronics also said on Thursday that they would extend their development agreement with an IBM-led group of firms to develop 28-nanometre chips together.

    Toshiba had previously said it planned to start mass-producing 32-nanometre chips next year, but it now plans to skip 32-nanometre production altogether at its system chip plants in southern Japan.

    Systems chips control multiple functions in electronics or cars and look like a maze of circuits on a single sliver of silicon. Producers have been racing to shrink their chips, packing more power into each unit.

    Prior to the announcement, shares of Toshiba were down 2.9 percent, in line with a 2.7 percent fall in Tokyo's electrical machinery index.

    (Reporting by Mayumi Negishi; Editing by Joseph Radford)
    Japan


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