China's push to develop its domestic semiconductor technology threatens to harm US chipmakers and put America's national security at risk, the Obama administration warned in a report that called for greater scrutiny of Chinese industrial policy.

Momentum behind the push to transition the semiconductor industry to 450mm wafers - which seemed substantial just a few short years ago - now appears all but dead, at least for now.

Two senior China executives defended the country's big bet on its semiconductor industry here a week after a White House report called for international action against practices it called unfair. Executives from fab and capital equipment companies said the China government is not being unfair in the way it supports its still-infant industry.

The Obama administration is finalizing a study that could lead to restrictions on Chinese investment in the US semiconductor sector.

As the demand for localized processing has grown, FPGAs have offered a way to keep devices running without quickly draining the battery. Lattice Semiconductor, while it has a small share of the FPGA market, has distinguished itself by reducing its FPGA power draw down to the microwatt level.

Analysts with BlueFin Research Partners say that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will begin manufacturing Apple's A11 processor in late April.

Samsung Electronics is considering a reorganization of the System LSI division in order to systematically grow the system semiconductor business. The company is planning to separate the design and manufacturing sectors in the business unit and divide or spin off it to fabless and foundry business divisions.

Samsung in November said it would acquire Harman International Industries for $8 billion in a bid to grow quickly in the automotive market.

A Chinese takeover bid for Aixtron of Germany collapsed Thursday, a week after US President Barack Obama blocked the deal on national-security grounds, according to a statement from the buyer.

China's National Silicon Industry Group, a state-backed semiconductor investment fund, is interested in acquiring a majority stake in German silicon-wafer maker Siltronic, the latest potential Chinese takeover that could face political opposition, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the latest signal from Washington that it's protecting its semiconductor industry from Beijing, US President Barack Obama on Friday issued an executive order barring a Chinese deal to buy a German semiconductor company's California-based subsidiary, citing national security reasons.

Ever since Siemens announced its plan to acquire Mentor Graphics three weeks ago, many in the semiconductor industry have been poking and parsing its implications. They've found, thus far, more questions than answers.

Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a buyout fund that agreed to acquire US-based chipmaker Lattice Semiconductor for $1.3 billion earlier this month, is funded partly by cash originating from China's central government and also has indirect links to its space program, Chinese corporate filings show.

Some insiders of the company are suggesting to reorganize the System LSI division in order to systematically grow the system semiconductor business. They are planning to separate the design and manufacturing sectors in the division and separate or spin off to fabless and foundry business divisions.

Qualcomm US$39 billion deal to buy NXP Semiconductors helped push US announced deal volume this month to US$248.9 billion, according to data provider Dealogic.

Advances in semiconductor technology will be on display at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). Samsung and TSMC will describe 7nm SRAMs, Mediatek will show a 10nm SoC and STMicroelectronics will unveil a neural network accelerator made in a fully depleted silicon-on-insulator process.

Zeiss SMT has been a supplier to ASML for 30 years. It makes lenses and other equipment needed to focus the energy beams ASML uses to help companies such as Intel and Samsung create the circuitry of semiconductor chips.

Massive government investment in China's semiconductor industry risks distorting the global market for integrated circuits, leading to damaging overcapacity and stifling innovation, US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker has warned.

The all-American iPhone may remain somewhat of a fantasy for now, but at least a few more of its internal chips could end up being manufactured on home turf.

The fund will have a size of about KRW200 billion (US$175.4 million), of which KRW50 billion will be financed by Samsung Electronics and KRW25 billion by SK Hynix.

Samsung Electronics said strength in its semiconductor business offset the impact to its mobile phone business caused by exploding batteries in its flagship Galaxy Note 7 products.

In a surprise move on Monday, the German authorities withdrew approval for the takeover of a domestic semiconductor firm by a Chinese bidder, a deal that was set to be an emblem of a new push by Chinese companies to acquire cutting-edge technology businesses and a sign of Berlin's tolerance for such moves.

Total loss at Mubadala's technology companies, mainly made up of semiconductor manufacturer Globalfoundries, deepened from Dh2.9bn in the first half of 2015 to Dh4.9bn in the first half of this year.

Key iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn Technology Group, is trying to expand its foothold in the semiconductor industry by partnering with SoftBank Group-owned ARM to create a chip design center in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to people familiar with the matter.

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) has announced that its Chung Li, Taiwan facility has received the ISO 26262 certification from TUV NORD, a technical service provider that helps companies to validate the safety of products and services.

Semiconductor manufacturers with the most exposure to Samsung business include Maxim Integrated Products, Synaptics, Qualcomm and Qorvo.

Conventional silicon-based electronics are rapidly approaching a fundamental barrier. Below about five nanometers, quantum effects make their behavior unpredictable. That's led to research into alternative materials such as carbon nanotubes. Now, a large collaboration has taken a different material-molybdenum disulfide, or MoS2-and used its distinctive properties to craft a transistor that has a gate size of just one nanometer.

Hitachi is preparing to unload operations in power tools and semiconductor fabrication equipment, further narrowing its focus and resources with the aim of bolstering earning power in an uncertain global economy.

Cypress Semiconductor plans to cut about 500 jobs as part of its latest cost-cutting plan, the company disclosed Monday.

Qualcomm is in talks to acquire NXP Semiconductors, a deal that likely would cost more than $30 billion and accelerate a consolidation rush in the semiconductor industry.

Moore's Law may be coming to an end, but chipmakers and system designers continue to find ways to deliver better performance and integrate more features. In fact, as the industry approaches the fundamental limits of silicon CMOS technology, it seems to be getting more creative, not less. Over the next few years we are likely to see some revolutionary changes to system architecture.

Looking at 2017, the semiconductor industry should see tight DRAM/NAND supply due to unbalanced supply conditions. Mea

Chipmakers plan to significantly expand capacity in China, with total investment expected to reach US$50 billion in the next five years, more than double what they spent during the preceding five years, according to a Nikkei survey.

Slow overall chip market growth, rising cost, diminished venture capital investments in the semiconductor industry, and cheap interest rates are among the reasons tempting chip vendors to keep buying.

ON Semiconductor has agreed to sell its ignition IGBT power device business to Littelfuse for $104 million to allow its acquisition of Fairchild Semiconductor to go ahead.

Intel's recent pledge to expand its business making chips for others highlights its ambition to snatch chip orders for Apple's popular iPhones from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. as early as 2018, industry experts said.

One97 Communications, which runs mobile payment and ecommerce platform Paytm, is in advanced talks to raise fresh funding of about Rs 2,000 crore ($300 million) from Taiwanese semiconductor maker MediaTek, Goldman Sachs, Singapore's Temasek and other investors, according to two persons with knowledge of the development.

China's Tsinghua Unigroup, which has been active in overseas semiconductor investment, is eyeing small and mid-sized South Korean chip firms with specialty solutions, a local report has said.

Cypress Semiconductor led until recently by one of the chip industry's elder statesmen, settled on a much younger successor who started in another field.