Toshiba has predicted profit will rise 83% as sales recover from a slump caused by the strong yen, falling prices and natural disasters.

Intel and Micron Technology have entered into agreements to expand their NAND flash memory joint venture relationship. The agreements include a NAND flash supply agreement for Micron to supply NAND products to Intel and agreements for certain joint venture assets to be sold to Micron.

"Industry experts - even the best ones - are often shortsighted, and sometimes outright wrong," said Eli Harari at ISSCC on Monday. "And therefore, perseverance in the face of naysayers sometimes does pay off. And in the case of NAND, big-time."

As the circuitry of NAND flash-based, solid-state drives shrinks, performance drops precipitously - meaning the technology could be doomed, according to new research.

Mark Durcan became interim CEO hours after Appleton died Friday, in accordance with Micron's bylaws. Micron's board wasted no time in making the job permanent Saturday, ensuring no gap in leadership at the top of a company that employs 6,000 people in the Treasure Valley.

Price declines accelerated in the latter part of the fourth quarter, CFO Judy Bruner said on a conference call. That, along with lower orders from some mobile-phone customers, will hurt sales in the first quarter, she said.

Marvell Friday launched what it's calling the industry's first PCI Express (PCIe) NAND flash controller, which it describes as a building block that allows solid state drive (SSD) and system manufacturers to scale products up or down in capacity and performance using commodity hardware.

Samsung Electronics has won government approval for its plans to set up a memory-chip factory in China.

Micron Technology has posted a net loss of US$187 million, or US$0.19 per diluted share, on net sales of US$2.1 billion for the company's first quarter of fiscal 2012 (ended December 1, 2011).

Apple is reportedly going to use part of its enormous pile of cash to buy an Israeli fabless semiconductor company that specializes in flash storage solutions.

20nm seems to be the new cutting-edge process for memory production, but Intel and Micron might be surprised to find Hynix has just surpassed them. The Korean manufacturer has used the IEDM to announce it has managed to manufacture middle-1Xnm-generation NAND flash.

Micron Technology is seeking Taiwanese partners to supply solid-state drive (SSD) controller chips to cope with the company's expansion in NAND memory chips in 2012, an executive said yesterday.

The firm unveiled the chip at a recent exhibition hosted by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.

Viking Technology has launched the ArxCis-NVTM DRAM memory module, which the company said can automatically detect I/O interrupts and back up data to NAND flash prior to an outage.

The Japanese semiconductor industry, which has been in decline for more than 20 years, needs to select key technology areas and refocus to rise again, Junshi Yamaguchi, former chairman of Renesas Electronics, told the International Electronics Forum being organized here.

Fusion-io has released the first upgrade to its in-server NAND flash card, the ioDrive2, doubling the card's speed, bandwidth and density, while maintaining its resiliency and endurance.

While many experts have expressed doubts about the ability of flash memory to scale and indicated the need for an alternative non-volatile memory technology, Hynix has just gone ahead and produced a 15nm NAND flash memory cell which it plans to unveil at this year's International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM).

Texas Memory Systems, best known for its pricey, yet extremely high-performance NAND flash-based storage arrays, has introduced a new system that it said competes with Tier 1 hard drives on a price-per-gigabyte basis.

A Wall Street analyst has predicted that Intel may acquire Micron Technology as the move would diversify its product offerings.

SandForce has announced the first public demonstration of its SSD controllers working in concert with Toshiba's 24nm MLC NAND flash for SSD applications. SandForce also revealed that to data, it has shipped well over two million SSD controllers.

A single SuperScale controller equipped Z-Drive R4 is capable of transferring up to 2800 megabytes per second (MB/s) and completing over 500,000 input-output operations per second (IOPS), while a dual SuperScale controller card reaches an astounding 5600 MB/s and 1.2 million IOPS.

Kingston Technology has announced it is shipping the HyperX SSD, its first SATA Rev. 3.0 6Gb/s solid-state drive. The Kingston HyperX SSD features the latest SandForce controller and is designed for enthusiasts, gamers and performance users.

Toshiba has said that operating profits for the fiscal quarter fell 88% as the earthquake hit its power operations and a strong yen bit into earnings, and it kept its annual forecast in line with expectations.

Toshiba and SanDisk on July 12 celebrated the opening of Fab 5, the third 300mm wafer NAND fabrication facility at Toshiba's Yokkaichi Operations in Mie Prefecture, Japan.

Toshiba President Norio Sasaki also said the company is gaining on South Korea's Samsung Electronics in terms of flash memory global market share, though warned that the rivalry could undercut prices.

Micron Technology has announced net profits for the quarter ended June 2 were US$75 million, down from the US$939 million posted a year ago.

Toshiba has announced that it will realign its storage products businesses in a unified organization by merging its Semiconductor Company and Storage Products Company in a new in-house company on July 1.

IM Flash Technologies, the NAND flash memory joint venture between Intel and Micron Technology, is expanding its operations in Lehi, Utah, and adding 200 jobs, according to a statement issued Monday (June 20) by Utah's Governor and the state's economic development office.

Code-named Lyndonville, the 710 will be available in 100GB, 200GB, and 300GB capacities, and use MLC NAND flash storage. The 720 Series, or Ramsdale, will be the first Intel SSD line to use PCI Express (at least a PCIe x8 slot) as the interface instead of SATA...

Consumer solid-state drives will have a break-out year in 2012 due to falling prices, which will make SSDs a primary storage option for mainstream users, Gartner said.

Toshiba has said it returned to the black for the year to March 2011, but warned the outlook remains uncertain due to the impact of the massive quake and tsunami in Japan.

Shares of NAND flash drive maker SanDisk are off by US$1.68, or 3.4%, at US$47.31 after the company reported revenue and earnings per share for 1Q slightly ahead of expectations and said Japan's disaster would not derail its earnings outlook for the year.

Intel and Micron Technology will make an announcement about NAND flash on April 14. The companies have not disclosed the details. "I believe that they will announce the finalization of their Singapore agreement-IMFS-that will bring up 25nm first and then 20nm later," said Alan Niebel, CEO of Web-Feet Research.

IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), Intel and Micron's joint venture, released 25 nanometer (nm) circuitry a little over a year ago. In the next few weeks, IMFT plans to annouce 20nm NAND flash chip production.

Toshiba said it will cooperate with Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) request to cut electricity consumption by operating only those of its businesses related to provision of essential services required for social and economic activities.

The two Toshiba-SanDisk JV semiconductor manufacturing plants, Fab 3 and Fab 4, were down for a short period of time due to the earthquake and were back up and operational as of Friday morning, Pacific Time. SanDisk's current assessment is that there has been minimal immediate impact on wafer output due to the earthquake.

Japan's biggest-ever earthquake halted production briefly at Toshiba's chip plants on Friday and could delay crucial shipments. Toshiba and SanDisk share cutting-edge facilities in Yokkaichi, where they make NAND chips increasingly in demand by Apple and other mobile device makers.