Officials with Micron Technology have said the company intends to break ground this year on a new 50,000-square-foot research facility at its main campus in Boise. At least half of the new building will be devoted to R&D of 300mm wafer microchips.

Shares of Elpida Memory were up 2.3% in early Tokyo trading after business daily Nikkei reported in an unsourced story that the chipmaker plans to raise DRAM prices by about 10% as early as this month.

Nanya Technology may sell its stake in Inotera Memories to Micron Technology, a move that will herald an industry reorganization, an analyst said.

OCZ Technology, once primarily known for its DRAM/memory products, has in recent years expanded its product portfolio to include cooling products and power supplies. Another product category that has seen large gains for the company has been the SSD market.

Elpida plans to finalize the business integration talks by the end of this month by obtaining approval from Taiwan authorities and securing support from financial institutions in Taiwan, sources said. Rexchip Electronics would become a holding company with Powerchip and ProMOS under its umbrella.

Amid a slowdown in DRAM, Samsung Electronics is reducing its capital spending by 14% for 2011.

Hynix Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing on January 6 that it plans 3.4 trillion won (US$3.03 billion) in facility investment in 2011.

Hynix has completed development of a 30nm-class DRAM chip, with volume production slated for the first quarter of 2011, according to company CEO Kwon Oh-chul.

Elpida Memory intends to launch capital tie-up talks with Taiwan firms that are currently the world's sixth- and seventh-biggest DRAM chipmakers. Elpida president Yukio Sakamoto plans to visit Taiwan early next month (January 2011) to start the talks and hopes to reach a deal by the end of the company's fiscal year, according to sources.

Micron Technology said it expects prices for NAND to drop another 10% in the current quarter but pointed to signs of improvement as demand for the chips used in smartphones, tablets and solid-state hard drives grows.

Auriga analyst Daniel Berenbaum has reiterated a Buy rating on Micron Technology and an US$11 price target, writing that the company's in much better shape to weather plunging DRAM prices.

"Chip prices remained strong until the first half of this year, but they dropped sharply, especially during the fourth quarter," CEO OC Kwon said in a recent interview. "Due to the sharper-than-expected fall, a considerable decline in both our sales and profit is inevitable in the fourth quarter."

Under the agreement, IBM receives a five-year license to certain of Misaud patents. IBM's processor and ASIC products that contain embedded DRAM are licensed under the agreement.

Smart Modular Technologies has said prices of DRAM chips were decelerating at 20-25%, hurting profits, especially in its key Brazil markets that account for over half of its revenues.

Intellectual Ventures has filed patent lawsuits against nine tech companies. The first lawsuit targets software security vendors Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and Check Point. The second lawsuit targets DRAM and flash memory vendors Hynix and Elpida. The third names FPGA vendors Altera, Lattice and Microsemi, which recently acquired Actel and its FPGA business.

Infineon Technologies was sued by the insolvency administrator of Qimonda who filed an action in a Munich court seeking a liability judgment for an unspecified amount.

For 2011, the fab tool growth will be driven by foundry and NAND to offset a "pause in DRAM" ...

"Compared with its peer, Nanya Technology, which saw lukewarm demand and was undersubscribed in a mid--November offering, issued at par, too, we don't see significant upside potential to Elpida's planned TDRs," Primasia Investment Consultancy Co said in a client note.

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).

Micron and SanDisk are chief competitors of South Korean chip giants Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor in the memory-processor market.

Micron Technology is investing US$56 million to expand its Manassas facility and bring 123 new jobs to the area, Virginia officials said Tuesday.

The equipment vendor has commented that DRAM companies are expected to scale back their spending "considerably" throughout 2011, and investments in LCD technology will likely be weak for at least a couple of quarters.

Instead of using China as a production base, Hynix in its early days produced a wide range of high-tech products in South Korea that it then exported to China and other countries.

Citigroup analyst Timothy Arcuri asserted in a research note that Samsung is pushing out US$750 million to US$1 billion of equipment orders targeted at DRAM capacity expansion. Lam is the company most exposed to the move, Arcuri said.

Kingston Technology has appointed Ingram Micro as one of its national distributors for its DRAM business in India.

Elpida will slash production at its Hiroshima site and at the plant of Taiwanese subsidiary Rexchip Electronics and will consider postponing the construction of a plant in Taiwan, the Nikkei reported.

The Nikkei business daily recently reported that the resistive random access memory chip to be developed by Elpida and Sharp could write data 10,000 times faster than NAND flash memory technology, while consuming less power. The next-generation memory chip is expected to be commercialized around 2013.

"Memory chip prices are expected to continue their downtrend even through the first half of next year, but they will likely bounce back from the middle of the second quarter," said Kwon Oh-hyun, president of Samsung's semiconductor division. Hynix CEO Kwon Oh-chul echoed his view, but said a price rebound may not start until the second half of 2011.

The global dominance of South Korean chipmakers is unlikely to be toppled anytime soon, even as Japanese and Taiwanese rivals consider forging stronger ties, according to a ratings agency. "In the medium term, Elpida's and Taiwanese chipmakers' increased competitiveness is unlikely to unseat the Korean's established advantages in technology and scale..."

Elpida Memory plans to issue 60 billion yen (US$730 million) in convertible bonds and use the funds for bond redemption and capital spending, a source familiar with the matter said.

Powerchip Technology, ProMOS Technologies and Winbond Electronics are among possible targets, Elpida President Yukio Sakamoto said in interviews this week.

"In the DRAM sector, Hynix, which focuses its production on 44-nano DRAM products, aims to finish its development of 38-nano products within this year for mass production early next year," a company spokesman said.

Oracle has sued Micron Technology, alleging it overcharged Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired, by conspiring to fix prices for computer memory chips.

In a nutshell, DRAM suffers from data and power concerns, NAND flash is plagued by reliability issues, and system integration is becoming more complex...

"Memory fundamentals have slipped more rapidly than we had anticipated due to weak PC and consumer electronics demand," Auriga USA told clients, adding later: "It now seems highly likely that MU's gross margin will dip over the next several quarters as DRAM and NAND pricing continues to weaken."

LG Group said on September 17 it will not buy Hynix Semiconductor, dismissing market speculation that the group will join a bidding race for the purchase of a major stake in the memory chipmaker.

Don't look now, but a fab tool downturn could be on the horizon.

"It's difficult to set a clear plan for the coming year 2011, but we're considering around 30 trillion won [in investments]," Samsung Electronics CEO Choi Gee-sung told reporters on the sidelines of consumer-electronics show IFA on September 3.

OCZ Technology is discontinuing the production of some lower-margin DRAM products as part of a shift to focus on higher-margin specialty and high-performance memory products.

Hynix said in a filing to the Korea Exchange that it plans to invest 677.0 billion won (US$572.7 million) to expand an existing facility.