ALLENTOWN, Pa., Aug. 10 -- Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing have agreed to research and develop new technologies for future generations of integrated circuits for the communications market. The $700 million agreement will take place over a five-year period. The project's 600-person R&D team comprises scientist and engineers from Bell Labs as well as Chartered Semiconductor's technology development organization. The teams will work at labs in Singapore, Murray Hill, N.J. and Orlando, Fla. with the mutual goal of creating innovations in manufacturing technology. The companies hope to create chips containing hundreds of millions of transistors -- six times the amount held by current chips. Such chips would shrink the size of communications products and deliver greater processing power, reliability and energy efficiency. Our agreement with Chartered ensures we'll have the technology and manufacturing capacity we need to meet customer demand and maintain our leadership in the fast-growing market for communications semiconductors, said John Dickson, executive vice president and CEO of Lucent's Microelectronics and Communications Technologies group. We'll implement newly developed technologies into manufacturing operations at both companies' sites to reduce time-to-market and leverage our investment across a wider range and higher volume of products.