Toshiba Corp has reportedly recalled engineers from one of its joint memory chip projects with IBM Corp, Siemens AG and Motorola Inc at IBM’s East Fishkill, New York base. According to the Nippon Keizai Shimbun, Toshiba had about 70 engineers at the site, but the ones working on a second generation shrink of a 64M-bit memory chip being developed with IBM and Siemens are apparently staying, but it is ending its participation in a 256M- bit design with all the other three. Toshiba is now said to be afraid the project could hamper its attempts to maintain a technology lead in Japan where most of its fabrication facilities are located. Toshiba also intends to maintain the relationship with the three other companies by joining development of a 1G-bit memory chip, the newspaper reported.
