Siemens AG and IBM Corp caused a ripple of surprise with the announcement yesterday that they have delivered the first samples of their jointly-developed 64M-bit memory chips to a handful of customers. The delivery of the first functional samples of the 64-megabit DRAM is an important cornerstone in the joint development project, Jrgen Knorr, head of Siemens’ semiconductor division, said in Munich. But Siemens’ Klaus Knapp told Reuters they would not decide on where and with whom they would build a production plant for the parts until 1994. Siemens officials have estimated the development costs of the chip at about $800m and pre-production costs at up to $1,800m. Siemens and IBM are already doing 16M-bit chips at IBM’s Essones plant near Paris, and are also working with Toshiba Corp on the development of 256M-bit chips.NEC Corp is believed to have been the first to deliver functional samples of 64M parts.
