Toshiba has joined a group led by International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) to jointly develop 32nm chips, following the trend of manufacturers banding together to keep escalating research costs down. The alliance also comprises Advanced Micro Devices, Samsung Electronics, Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, Germany's Infineon Technologies AG and privately owned U.S.-based Freescale Semiconductor Inc. The seven companies have agreed to work through 2010 to design, develop and produce chips using tiny circuitry. Using smaller circuit sizes helps boost chip makers' productivity by making smaller chips more powerful, but the move to smaller sizes is becoming too difficult and expensive for a single manufacturer to undergo alone.