According to industry sources, Samsung Electronics brought in managing director Kye Jong-wook from Globalfoundries last month. He is currently working as the head of the design enablement team of its R&D office, which is a key foundry business unit. Earlier, managing director Song Byeong-moo moved from Intel to Samsung, too.

Samsung Electronics will start construction of Line 18 at its Hwasung plant in November, with total investment estimated at KRW6 trillion (US$5.4 billion). The construction was originally scheduled for 2018.

Samsung Electronics has decided to reduce its reliance on Qualcomm chips for next year's Galaxy S9 in an apparent tit-for-tat against the US chipmaker for making new foundry orders with its Taiwanese rival TSMC only, industry sources said on Aug. 21.

Samsung Electronics plans to triple the market share of its contract chip manufacturing business within the next five years by aggressively adding clients, a senior company executive said, as it targets new growth drivers for the chips business.

In the second half of 2018, it is planning to deploy the 7-nanometer process, using extreme ultra violet (EUV) lithography for the first time. It will be followed by 6-nanometer and 5-nanometer in 2019.

Samsung Electronics is planning to elevate its market share ranking, which is 4th now to second place this year. As Samsung Electronics can specialize its technology competitiveness ahead of its competitors', the company disclosed its aspiration to overtake Taiwan's TSMC, the industry leader in the future.

Samsung Electronics Foundry Business Department has set up a plan to go straight to 6-nano process based on 7-nano process. This is its strategy to counterattack Taiwan's TSMC as it took a supply of 7-nano chips from major customers such as Qualcomm and others that are consigned.

Samsung is set to lead the industry with 8nm, 7nm, 6nm, 5nm, 4nm and 18nm FD-SOI in its newest process technology roadmap.

Samsung Electronics is increasing its effort in semiconductor outsourcing, separating the company's foundry business into a new unit as part of a challenge to market leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

SK Hynix will decide on whether to spin off its foundry business on May 24 at the earliest or by the end of this week at the latest, according to industry sources. All eyes are on the company's next move as it can improve its status as integrated device manufacturer (IDM) by strengthening the non-memory chip business and seek various ways to reorganize the business by using its subsidiaries.

Samsung Electronics' plan to spin off foundry operations from the system LSI division is expected to increase Samsung's share of global contract chipmaking at the expense of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and smaller rivals.

It has been found that Samsung Electronics is planning to set up a foundry business unit in its Device Solutions (DS) Division in charge of semiconductor business and so on. This has to do with today's rapid growth of the global foundry market.

Western Digital has warned Toshiba that the proposed sale of its memory business contravenes the terms of their flash foundry joint venture.

Even if China doesn't build all of these fabs, there are still some worrisome signs. For example, a large percentage of the projected capacity from China's foundry vendors is slated for 28nm processes and above. So over time, some see a potential capacity glut, if not a price war, looming for these technologies.

Under the terms of the deal, Cypress will sell a subsidiary that owns the fab to a startup foundry, SkyWater Technology Foundry, backed by a Minnesota-based holding company. SkyWater will operate the fab, manufacturing wafers for Cypress and for other chip firms, Cypress said.

Nexperia has been officially launched as an independent supplier of discrete, logic, and MOSFET devices.

According to industry sources, SK Hynix is planning to triple its investment in foundry business this year. To this end, SK Hynix recently organized a task force at its M8 foundry plant located in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province.

The Crossbar ReRAM for embedded non-volatile memory applications is in production at partner foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) using a 40nm CMOS process and is sampling to SMIC customers, according to Sylvain Dubois, Crossbar's VP of strategic marketing and business development.

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.

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.

It includes confidential information about Samsung's 14nm and 10nm fabrication processes.

Citigroup chip analysts Roland Shu and Christopher Danely conclude TSMC is a year ahead of Intel in foundry technique, even though Intel overall makes better transistors.

Samsung Electronics is slated to hold a foundry forum in China later this month (August 2016) to attract Chinese fabless firms amid its growing idle foundry lines, industry experts said on Tuesday.

TSMC now has all of Apple?？ foundry business but is seen behind Intel on the more advanced 10nm processors.

Applied Materials has announced its next-generation e-beam inspection system is delivering the highest resolution and image quality at the fastest throughput to leading foundry, logic, DRAM and 3D NAND customers as they move to advanced nodes.

Samsung will have the thinner, 10-nanometer chipmaking technology in production later in 2016. Samsung also announced plans for a new cost-optimized 14-nanometer process as well as a second generation of 10-nanometer technology that it says will offer 10% better performance than the first generation.

The Shanghai Integrated Circuit Investment Fund (SICIF) has announced a plan to invest CNY20 billion (US$3 billion) in foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) and two other Shanghai-based chip manufacturers, according to a Moody's Investors Service report.

In a bid to catch up and potentially gain new customers, Globalfoundries licensed 14nm LPE and 14nm LPP technologies from Samsung Electronics. However, going forward Globalfoundries hopes to develop its own manufacturing processes.

"We expect to see continued overall business strength in the second half of 2015 due to increased demand from memory and foundry customers compared with our previous expectations," ASML president and CEO Peter Wennink said.

Altera has been a key customer at TSMC for years, especially at the advanced tech node, accounting for around 3% of TSMC's revenue at 20/28 nodes.

RBC Capital Markets chip analyst Doug Freedman this morning writes that chip maker Nvidia, which makes no parts itself, appears to have moved some of its orders for making its chips from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) to Samsung Electronics, and that this may presage giving some foundry business to Intel.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) of China is seeking to take over Dongbu HiTek, industry sources said Monday.

International Rectifier (IR) has commenced initial production at its new ultra-thin wafer processing facility in Singapore. Wafer thinning, metallization, testing and additional proprietary wafer level processing are undertaken at the new 60,000 square foot manufacturing site which receives processed wafers from IR's internal fabs and foundry partners.

Marvell Technology might be the next big client for Intel's contract manufacturing operations, said Citigroup's chip analyst Glen Yeung.

Qualcomm will take a wait and see approach before turning to Intel's expanding foundry operation to manufacture its chips, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said Wednesday.