U.S. tries to dam flood of Japanese DRAMs: IBM leads chip consortium to keep edge over Japanese.

In a move that is by far die most aggressive attempt to thwart the influx of Japanese technology, seven American chip manufacturers are banding together to try to stem the flood of memory chips from Japan. Japan cuff enfly holds a 90percent share of the worldwide market for dynamic random- access memory, or DRAM (pronounced dee ram) chips, which hold 1 megabit (Mb) of storage and are key components of computers and other electronics, such as high-definition television sets. But IBM, which is apparently head of the Japanese in developing a 4-Mb DRAM chip, is changing its closed- door policy on technology and joining with six other chip manufacturers to try to swing the …