These three big guns are working on tiny chips.
We love smaller chips. With every advancement in manufacturing process we get more speed for less power.
Intel, Samsung and Toshiba are banding together to tackle the big task of getting chips down to a 10nm semiconductor line width.
Such a task, would be huge for one company alone, and even the trio will be inviting more to the team to help. The three companies will form a consortium and will invite about 10 more companies into the group.
Japan will be helping out too, with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry expected to provide around 5 billion yen ($61.21 million) of the roughly 10 billion yen in initial funds for the R&D efforts, according to Reuters.
Much smaller and you start to lose structural integrity and run into other quantum road blocks. I think the next major push (which is already starting) is efficiency. How many instructions per clock cycle can you push with the same die size?