IBM and Toshiba have agreed to jointly develop 32nm bulk CMOS process technology.

The firms have been collaborating on research related to semiconductor process technologies at the 32nm technology generation and beyond at facilities in Yorktown and Albany, New York since 2005.

The new agreement will Toshiba is the sixth firm to joint the IBM Alliance for 32nm process development.

"This agreement caps a year of extraordinary momentum for IBM and its semiconductor Alliance Partners," said Gary Patton, v-p for IBM's Semiconductor Research and Development Center.

Toshiba is the latest firm to throw in its hand with IBM. Earlier this year the European semiconductor development alliance called Crolles II – made up STMicroelectronics, Freescale Semiconductor and NXP - came to an end. IBM has already signed Samsung, Chartered Semiconductor, ST, Freescale, AMD and Infineon Technologies.

While the Alliance is described as a technology collaboration, sources in the industry suggest it is a matter of simply buying IBM’s technology.

Shozo Saito, corporate senior vice-president of Toshiba and president & CEO of Toshiba's Semiconductor Company said: "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."

Toshiba is also in a collaboration with NEC and Fujitsu. It is not known how this latest move will affect that arrangement, if at all.