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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Micron announced that it is shipping 2 bit per cell flash memory (MLC) and three bit per cell (TLC) 3D flash memory and that the majority of its total NAND flash output will be on 3D NAND by the second half of 2016.

The estimate of its first loss in more than two years sent the company's shares down 5.7% to $13.78 in extended trading on Tuesday.

Intel's move comes as the chip industry undergoes a wave of consolidation and China steps up efforts to build local technology manufacturing capacity.

SK Group is considering pouring about 46 trillion won ($38 billion) over the next few years to expand the production facilities of its chipmaking unit SK hynix, officials said Monday.

Altera has developed a storage reference design based on its Arria 10 SoCs, which doubles the life of NAND flash and can increase the number of program-erase cycles by up to 7X compared to current NAND flash implementations.

The deal, if true, could have broad implications for Micron's technology partner, Intel and NAND-chip competitor SanDisk.

SanDisk has shipped more than two billion microSD cards since it started commercial shipment of the technology ten years ago.

Micron Technology was bullish about the coming year at a conference in May, but its latest quarterly earnings released in late June have investors less optimistic.

Micron Technology said it expects a further decline in prices of chips used in personal computers, and forecast revenue for the current quarter well below market estimates.

Toshiba will decide during the next business year from April on where to build an additional memory chip plant and will consider overseas locations for the facility, according to company CEO Hisao Tanaka.

According to industry sources, Apple has decided to discontinue its use of triple-level cell (TLC) NAND, since the company believes that the functional defects plaguing the 64GB iPhone 6 and the 128GB iPhone 6+ stem from a problem in the controller IC of the TLC NAND flash. The controller IC in question is reportedly made by SSD maker Anobit, which was sold to Apple in 2011.

Users in Apple's support forums have recently highlighted a rare issue that causes iPhones to crash, specifically for users with a large amount of apps installed.

As numerous reports of low read performance of the Samsung SSD 840 and 840 EVO using TLC NAND flash have surfaced on the Internet, a problem in the controller IC is considered to be the more likely cause of the defects.