Toshiba's main bank creditors have urged the embattled borrower to conclude a deal to sell its memory chip subsidiary this month (August 2017) to ensure the transaction is completed by the fiscal year-end next March, bringing in desperately needed capital

Everspin announced it is sampling a Gbit MRAM chip and will be in production this year with 1-2 Gbyte cards based on its 256 Mbit chip. The news at the Flash Memory Summit here marks a small but significant advance for a growing collection of persistent memories at an event focused on the still rising market for mainstream NAND.

Western Digital said it will move forward with arbitration to get a say over Toshiba's sale of its chip unit after the Japanese company agreed to provide notice before closing.

It has been confirmed that SK Hynix started mass-producing 4th generation (72-layer) 3D NAND flash wafers and achieved ?？olden yield', which had been SK Hynix's biggest obstacle. Its solution product that uses its own controller and firmware passed certifications.

Micron Technology is expected to report US$1.9 billion for the three months ended in May. That puts the company on track to post more than US$5 billion in operating earnings for its fiscal 2017.

Western Digital has announced what the company claims is the world's first client solid state drives built with its 64-layer 3D NAND technology.

Tech giant Samsung Electronics said on Monday it is considering adding NAND memory chip production capacity at its manufacturing base in China amid an industry-wide boom that will likely fuel record sales for memory suppliers.

Toshiba is well within its rights to sell its memory operations, the Japanese conglomerate has told business partner Western Digital in response to efforts by the hard-drive supplier to block the auction, it was learned Tuesday.

Toshiba temporarily canceled all meetings and decisions related to the sale of its memory chip business to address concerns raised by an industry partner, people familiar with the matter said.

A recent report out of Japan says three of tech's biggest and most prominent companies are interested in bidding on Toshiba's memory chip business. Can this be true?

A Japanese public-private consortium is being assembled to bid for a stake in Toshiba's newly spun-off memory unit in hopes of heading off potential outflows of technology and talent from the country, it was learned Friday.

Struggling Toshiba's planned semiconductor business sell-off has attracted bids of more than JPY2 trillion ($18.1 billion) from two foreign companies.

Toshiba shareholders agreed to split off its prized NAND flash memory unit on Thursday, paving the way for a sale to raise at least $9 billion to cover US nuclear unit charges that threaten the conglomerate's future.

Toshiba's plan to divest its memory chip business has Japanese corporate leaders worried that critical information technology could leak to foreign companies - particularly those in China.

Intel is warning its channel partners that demand for SSDs is expected to outstrip supply for all of 2017, forcing the company to prioritize its production for data center SSDs over lower-cost consumer SSDs.

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday its chip factory under construction in southern Seoul is expected to start production in the first half of 2017 as scheduled. The new line is expected to focus on the production of 3-D Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory.

As major player Toshiba's flash memory business is up for sale, global chipmakers are weighing their chances of competing against Samsung, which has a runaway lead in 3D NAND flash technology.

Toshiba wants to pick the preferred bidder or bidders for a majority stake in its chip unit by the end of May and will hold the first round of bids next month, a source with knowledge of the plan said.

Toshiba has asked potential bidders for its memory chip business to peg the operations' value at JPY2 trillion (US$17.6 billion) or more, aiming to maximize income from the sale of its crown jewel.

Toshiba may delay the sale of its prized flash-memory chip unit after the conglomerate said it would consider selling most, even all, of the marquee business, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Toshiba has received bids from South Korea's SK Hynix, Taiwan's Foxconn, private equity fund Silver Lake and at least three other groups for a minority stake in its profitable memory chip business, according to people close to the negotiations.

South Korea's SK Hynix has entered the running for a stake in Toshiba's memory chip business, seeing an opportunity to gain on rivals in the booming NAND market, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Toshiba said it will sell a minority stake in its memory chip business as it urgently seeks funds to offset an imminent multi-billion dollar writedown, adding that its overseas nuclear division-the cause of its woes-was now under review.

Toshiba is expected to sell no more than 19.9% of the unit to be created in a spinoff of its memory chip operations.

Last week, Toshiba confirmed that it's looking to spin off its core semiconductor business. Toshiba's chip division includes its lucrative NAND memory business, which generated 15% of the group's JPY5.7 trillion annual revenue (about $50 billion), and has an estimated value of about JPY1.5 trillion (about $13 billion).

Samsung Electronics plans to mass produce 64-layer NAND flash memory for the first time in the world early in 2017, while SK hynix plans to mass produce 72-layer NAND flash in the second half of 2017 jumping over 64-layer NAND flash.

SK Hynix, one of South Korea's leading manufacturers of memory semiconductors, plans to leapfrog rival Samsung Electronics to mass produce the most-advanced generation of NAND flash - chips that feature 72 layers of data-storing cells.

CEO Durcan sees supply-demand balance persisting in 2017.

Samsung was Apple's main supplier for the iPhones from the very beginning, making the A-series processors and supplying both NAND flash and DRAM memory chips.

According to the company, the output of 3D NAND at its fabs has surpassed the output of 2D NAND in terms of bits. Meanwhile, the costs of the first-generation 3D NAND are in line with expectations and the company is gearing up to start high-volume production of its second-gen 3D NAND in the coming weeks.

Micron Technology has said it is seeing signs of tight supplies of memory chips, a good omen for the company's bottom line but a potential worry for makers of smartphones, computers and other high-tech products.

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

Tech giant Samsung Electronics is gearing up to fully operate a production line for 3D NAND flash memory at its plant in Hwaseong City, Gyeonggi Province. Considering the one-month period to build the equipment and tools, it is expected that the facility will likely be in full operation around the end of 2016.

We note that Intel has been building new capacity at Dalian - it could be cheaper for Intel to buy NAND capacity from Micron than to invest in expanding new capacity at Dalian.

Toshiba is planning to start the manufacturing of the world's first 64-layer 3D NAND flash memory chips in the third quarter of 2016 with Samsung Electronics being expected to release the same type of products in the following quarter.

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.

Toshiba and US partner Western Digital will commit 1.5 trillion yen or US$14.6 billion over three years toward stepping up flash memory production at their jointly run Japanese plant, in a bid to widen global market share, Nikkei reported.

The announcement comes after Korean news media reported that Samsung is planning to invest around KRW25 trillion (US$21.2 billion)- some claimed KRW2.5 trillion - to beef up its production lines for 3D NAND flash memory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.

Samsung Electronics is widening its lead with competitors in the solid-state drive (SSD) market, which is considered a growing field in the NAND memory semiconductor industry, dominating the market.

SK Hynix plans to invest up to KRW15.5 trillion (US$12.5 billion) to build a new memory chip plant next to its Cheongju facility in North Chungcheong Province.