TSMC, working with ASML and Mapper, have developed a prototype multi-e-beam tool for semiconductor lithography, according to company CTO Jack Sun speaking to the International Electronics Forum 2010 in Dresden.

A new research report predicts that the number of solid-state drives (SSD) in enterprise servers and storage systems will explode over the next five years, increasing by a factor of 50.

South Korea plans to invest 60 billion won (US$54 million) until 2015 to build up its analog chip industry to help local companies expand their presence in the global semiconductor market, according to the government.

Canon expects China's camera market to become the world's largest as early as 2015, overtaking the US, its head of the business said. The world's biggest camera maker is doubling the number of outlets and boosting its marketing workforce in the Asian nation.

The "oil crunch" or "peaking oil" will start to destabilize economies, politics and society in general as early as 2015. "The rise in the oil price will have a major impact on anything from fertilizer to computers to clothes," Virgin Airlines owner Richard Branson has warned.

Intel expects to complement 193nm immersion lithography with either EUV or electron-beam direct write lithography for the 11nm generation, expected to arrive in 2015, according to Yan Borodovsky, director of Intel's Advanced Lithography and Manufacturing Group.

450mm production fabs could be pushed out to 2015 or 2016 - or two years later than some had hoped, according to analysts. And EUV may miss the insertion into the 16nm node, thereby pushing the technology out to the 13nm logic node in 2015.

3D integration investments continue unabated despite the economic downturn, according to analysts from Yole Developpement and TechSearch International.