IBM, Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics will join forces to develop and manufacture chips using an advanced processing technology, the companies said on Wednesday.

The alliance partners, also including Germany's Infineon Technologies AG and privately owned U.S. Freescale Semiconductor Inc., said in a statement they signed development agreements that include 32-nanometre process technologies.

Jointly developing technologies and synchronizing manufacturing processes are growing trends in the industry and help chip makers cut costs and serve high-volume clients.

International Business Machines Corp. is the world's largest technology-services company and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is the biggest maker of memory chips.

They will work through 2010 to design, develop and produce the advanced-generation chips that can be used in products from mobile devices to supercomputers.

Technologies using ever diminishing circuit sizes help boost chip makers' productivity, but companies are finding the ceaseless move to smaller sizes increasingly difficult.

"Major new challenges are expected at the 32-nanometre node, both in materials as well as device structures," said Kwon Oh-Hyun, president of Samsung's System LSI business.