The Intel wafer fab complex in Leixlip, Ireland, is set to receive investment to allow it to manufacture 14nm silicon and beyond, the company revealed in a presentation to analysts on May 10. The investment is expected to be more than US$1 billion.

EpiGaN NV, a startup spun out of the IMEC research institute in 2010, has officially opened a production facility for gallium nitride on silicon wafers at the Research Campus in Hasselt, Belgium.

Researchers have revealed details of a promising way to make a fundamentally different kind of computer memory chip.

Black Sand Technologies has been selected to provide silicon PA technology for integrated RF front end products by Murata Manufacturing. The products will be used to increase integration and improve the performance of 3G smartphones, tablets and datacards.

Konica Minolta IJ Technologies has announced that is has developed a silicon MEMS-based inkjet printhead for printed electronics applications. It is due to begin sampling in the second quarter of 2012.

Since entering into a global distribution agreement in February 2011, Arrow and SiTime have been actively promoting MEMS oscillators and clock generators in the Asian market to drive the replacement of quartz crystal products with silicon MEMS.

iFixit's teardown shows an abundance of TI silicon, with flash memory storage and system memory from Samsung and Hynix, respectively.

MEMS foundry Silex Microsystems has licensed its Sil-Via technology for through silicon vias (TSVs) to Nanoshift for use in the early development of complex MEMS products.

"[Making] bulk silicon HKMG at 28nm is hard. All foundries are having yield issues and defect density issues right now," said Bob Johnson, research vice president at Gartner.

X-FAB Silicon Foundries and Senodia Technologies (Shanghai) announced they have concluded development and are ramping production of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscopes for high-volume consumer applications.

Japan's Sumco, the world's No.2 supplier of silicon wafers used to make chips, slashed its annual operating profit forecast by 37% on weak PC demand and slower-than-expected growth in smartphones and tablet PCs, and it said the fragile economy could make chip demand retreat further.

3M and IBM have announced that the two companies plan to jointly develop the first adhesives that can be used to package semiconductors into densely stacked silicon "towers."

Fuji Electric has announced that it will spend JPY18.5 billion (US$240 million) to build an assembly line for power semiconductors at its Yamanashi Prefecture plant. The line will process 8-inch silicon wafers to make the semiconductors.

Citing the "deterioration in the overall industry climate as well as delays in the recognition of sales and earnings for projects currently under way," Roth & Rau has cut expectations for the second half of 2011 and withdrawn its forecast guidance for the year. "Given the reduction in demand for solar modules," the company stated, "some customers have reviewed their investment projects intended to expand their production capacities and postponed the agreed delivery dates."

Tata BP Solar India Ltd, a joint venture of Tata Power and BP Solar, has installed and commissioned a megawatt scale solar power plant under the Rooftop and Other Small Solar Power Generation Plant scheme administered by IREDA under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) for the first time in the country. The plant is coming up in Mayiladuthurai district, Tamil Nadu.

A recent report into the silicon and ferrosilicon markets has found rebounding prices as demand for solar grade polysilicon continues to grow. The report also finds higher profit margins in photovoltaic industry supply than silicon production for other industries.

STMicroelectronics and CMP (Circuits Multi Projets) have announced that the CMOS 28nm process from STMicroelectronics is now available for prototyping to universities, research labs and companies through the silicon brokerage services provided by CMP.

Canadian Solar Inc.'s first-quarter profit soared as shipments jumped and gross margins expanded, although the bottom line missed analysts expectations as silicon costs increased and the company recorded a derivatives loss.

The proposed transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2011. SiBEAM provides high-speed wireless communication products for uncompressed HD video in consumer electronics and PC applications.

Shin-Etsu Chemical has said that it will partially resume production at an earthquake-stricken silicon wafer factory in Fukushima Prefecture within a week or two.

Chinese silicon wafer producer Jiangsu Huantai, a joint venture partner of MEMC Electronic Materials, aims to go public in 2012, according to company chairman Wang Lubao. Huantai expects to begin manufacturing LED materials later in 2011.

The move leaves some to wonder if the silicon foundry giant is gradually moving into the IC-packaging world, thereby competing against Amkor, ASE and other subcontractors. Rick Cassidy, president of TSMC North America, said TSMC remains focused on the foundry market. But "lines are blurring" between some parts of the wafer manufacturing and packaging processes, Cassidy said.

Micron Technology is trying to secure its supply of crucial silicon wafers following Japan's devastating earthquake and said it was too soon to gauge the disaster's impact on its business.

Integrated Silicon Solution (ISSI) has announced that it is working with Micron Technology to become an alternate supplier of Micron's third-generation reduced-latency DRAM (RLDRAM 3 memory).

The US$2.5 billion chip factory is producing chips on 12-inch silicon wafers, mainly chipsets to be used in desktop computers, laptops and servers. The factory is already fully operational.

"Silicon shipments reflect the tremendous recovery experienced by the semiconductor industry this year," said Stanley Myers, president and CEO of SEMI. "While current data suggest that growth rates are moderating, we expect that the industry will continue to be positive for the next two years."

He pushed the silicon foundry giant into the platform arena. TSMC originally launched the so-called Open Innovation Platform in 2008 as an industry-wide design enablement initiative.

"The SiT8503 leverages its silicon MEMS technology and programmable architecture to offer many unique features that are not available from quartz, such as frequency and voltage configurability, small size, low power and extreme ruggedness," said Piyush Sevalia, VP of marketing at SiTime.

Silicon Valley may be an epicenter of the nascent electric car industry, but don't expect the battery revolution to mimic the computer revolution, one of IBM's top energy storage scientists advises.

Memristors made from pure silicon could enable resistive random access memory (ReRAM) that are simpler and cheaper to manufacture than Hewlett-Packard's titanium-based formulation, according to researchers at Rice University.

A conversation on August 20 with Joseph Sawicki, VP and GM of the Mentor Graphics Corp.'s Design to Silicon Division, provided a snapshot of the conundra facing foundries and EDA vendors as they approach sub-20nm process geometries. The landscape is filled with uncertainties, Sawicki warned, but there is no time left to wait for resolution.

IBM and Infineon Technologies have closed a transaction to sell 100% of the share capital of Altis Semiconductor to a new corporation. They have also entered into supply agreements with Altis, and will continue to use Altis' production facility in France.

[A] team of researchers at MIT has found that silicon, the most widely used material for computer chips and solar cells, can exhibit "retrograde melting" when it contains high concentrations of certain metals dissolved in it. This could make it possible to produce some silicon-based devices, such as solar cells, using a less pure, and therefore less expensive, grade of silicon that would be purified during the manufacturing process.

MEMC, which makes wafers for computer chips and silicon for solar cells, said it earned US$13.8 million, or 6 cents per share, up from US$1.4 million, or a penny per share, during the same period last year.

Applied Materials has announced it will stop new sales of its "turnkey" SunFab thin-film solar manufacturing line and concentrate on silicon solar and LED lighting. The restructuring of its Energy and Environmental Solutions business will lead to the elimination of 400-500 positions and a third-quarter charge between US$375-425 million.

Chinese wafer supplier Huantai Silicon has suspended its partnership with the country's solar cells and panels giant Suntech Power on their joint venture Glory Silicon, and will jointly build a new venture with U.S. veteran wafer producer MEMC Electronic Materials.