In a government-backed memory development, the Korean government and semiconductor industry are to put $50m over seven years into MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory) R&D.

The rationale for the project is, according to Cha Hong-hyung head of the semiconductor and display division at Korea's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy, to develop Korean technology for the next generation of memory which would avoid the current situation whereby Korean companies pay 'hundreds of millions of dollars' in royalties every year to companies like Toshiba and Intel which hold the fundamental patents on NAND flash and DRAM.

Another reason for the project is, said Cha Hong-hyung, that the Japanese companies Toshiba, NEC and Fujitsu have a $28m four year programme, expiring in 2010, to develop MRAM.

Another reason for the project is the 40nm barrier, which is seen as the point at which oxides will be too thin to allow traditional floating gate flash memory to work effectively.

Samsung and Hynix will put up half the $50m budget and the government will put up the other half.

Cha Dong-hyung said that the project was the first inter-company collaboration in Korea since the co-operative effort to develop 64Mbit DRAMs in the 1990s.

Korean government involvement in the local chip industry dates back to 1982 when the government announced its Semiconductor Industry Promotion Plan aimed first at import substitution then at exports.

See also: Electronics Weekly's Focus on Samsung Electronics, a roundup of content on three main areas of the technology giant's development: memory chips, LCD displays and mobile phone technology.