ST joins IBM ecosystem

By Ed Sperling, Editor in Chief -- Electronic News, 7/24/2007

The last remaining member of the Crolles2 Alliance, STMicroelectronics, will join IBM’s ecosystem to share the costs of semiconductor development down to 22-nanometers and possibly beyond.

ST was the big holdout from the alliance that once included Philips Semiconductor (now NXP) and Freescale. In the past year, both NXP and Freescale have left the Crolles2 Alliance and Freescale has moved into IBM’s circle of cooperating companies. The addition of ST makes the end of the Crolles2 Alliance final..

Whether ST joins the Common Platform piece of the IBM ecosystem remains to be seen. But Gary Patton, VP of IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center, said the move is yet another affirmation about IBM’s model.

“What we have developed is an open model with open collaboration,” Patton said. “We started with IBM and Chartered, and have expanded it to include Infineon, Samsung, Freescale, and now ST.”

The alliance is largely a recognition of both the cost and complexity of developing semiconductors at advanced process nodes. With the Crolles Alliance all but gone (it formally ends this year), the remaining ecosystems are those run by IBM, TSMC and UMC in Taiwan, and a deep research consortium driven by IMEC in Belgium. Only Intel continues to do its own primary research, although it has been working with IMEC for several years.