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Toshiba to make world's smallest chip
By Alex Frew McMillan
TOKYO, Japan (CNN) -- Toshiba Corp. said Thursday it plans to start making the world's smallest chips as early as April, ahead of its rivals. The Tokyo-based company plans to start making chips with a circuit width of 90 nanometers, down from the standard size of 130 nanometers. Smaller circuits save on energy and allow for faster processing speeds. "This is the next-generation process technology," spokesman Makoto Yasuda told CNN. "We are planning to start production by spring." The world's two biggest chipmakers, Intel Corp. of the United States and Samsung Electronics of South Korea, have said they both expect to start producing the same kind of chips by the northern summer. NEC Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. are also planning commercial production of 90-nanometer chips later this year. 'Happy to be the first'But Toshiba may begin production as early as April at its factory in the city of Oita, on southerly Kyushu island. "We are very happy to be the first," Yasuda said. Japanese chipmakers have been falling behind competitors such as Samsung and have looked to offload many of their lower-end chip lines. One report suggests Toshiba will produce around 10,000 90-nanometer chips a month, though Toshiba says it will let the market establish demand. The company will be selling the chips for use in consumer-electronics products such as DVD players and in game consoles. Chips half the sizeThe 90-nanometer circuits are combined with dynamic random access memory to form the chip. Their smaller circuit size means the chips can be either almost half the size, or twice as powerful. "This allows for the high-speed processing of image data," Yasuda said. "Compared to the current generation, if the function is the same, the size will be half of the current version." Toshiba is Japan's largest chipmaker and also one of the world's largest makers of laptop computers.
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