Et Cetera

The cost of developing new computer chips has propelled some formerly fierce rivals into unlikely alliances. The latest: IBM, Toshiba and Siemens will unite to create memory chips 16 times as powerful as any existing today, while Advanced Micro Devices and Fujitsu will work together on flash memory chips, which could one day replace disk drives. Suddenly a major weapon in the U.S.-Japanese trade war looks more like a plowshare than a sword.