Taiwan's semiconductor pioneer Morris Chang on Thursday said the protracted protest against the trade pact with Beijing is casting a gloom over the nation's future, calling for a rational and peaceful solution.

Deal will make TSMC Solar's 'CIGS' modules available across North America.

TSMC and AMD, and other companies have seen more than US$200 million in sales in 2013 for computing components used to create Bitcoins, Wedbush Securities said.

"Our latest checks for the 20nm technology production levels at TSMC are weaker than expectations and are projected to reach only 5,000 wpm by year-end," say BlueFin Research Partners anaylsts.

Xilinx has made its first customer shipment of a 20-nm UltraScale device, which is implemented in TSMC's 20nm process technology.

Applied Materials is benefiting from an increase in demand from companies such as TSMC that build semiconductors for other chipmakers, as they upgrade plants for new production processes.

Dongbu HiTek is not exactly a household name in the foundry business like TSMC, Globalfoundries and Samsung. But Dongbu, a company described by some as the industry's best kept secret, has been sharpening its strategy, honing its skills, and steadily expanding capacity in South Korea under Chang-Sik Choi, who became its president and CEO a year and a half ago.

A Taiwan government venture capital fund will sell more than 170 million shares in TSMC in 2014 to help fund Taiwan's budget, a source with direct knowledge of the sale said on Thursday.

TSMC recently held a job fair in upstate New York, helping to drive up expectations that the chipmaker is planning to open a chip fabrication plant in the area to build mobile processors for Apple.

When he founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in 1987, Morris Chang recalls, "Nobody thought we were going anywhere."

Nova Measuring Instruments, the Israeli maker of equipment for semiconductor manufacturing, rebounded in New York after the chief executive officer said he's confident its largest customer won't pare back orders.

The only thing that counts against Globalfoundries is that, being a newcomer with a new US fab, it has yet to build up a long track record of consistent, successful execution. This is one reason Apple would not wish to have all its processor eggs in one foundry, as it does now with Samsung.

ARM chipmakers TSMC and Globalfoundries plan to release ARM processor chips capable of running at 3GHz sometime in 2014.

Xilinx has worked with TSMC to infuse high-end FPGA requirements into the TSMC 20SoC development process, just as it had done in the development of 28HPL.

Both Toshiba and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have developed mask read-only memories (MROMs) that can offer greater data density by storing multiple bits per cell.

Japan's NHK network is scheduled to broadcast an animated documentary on TSMC at midnight Thursday, with TSMC's chairman and CEO, Morris Chang, depicted by the fictional character Shima Kosaku.

Samsung Electronics ranked first in terms of production of sub 28-32 nanometer chip foundry in the first quarter of the year, data showed on Monday.

For 30 years Altera has used the same, sole-sourced foundry - TSMC. Recently it announced it would be going to Intel for sole-sourced foundry at the 14nm generation. Isn't this a risk?

TSMC has pulled in plans for initial production of its 16nm FinFET process to the end of 2013. In addition, it hopes to adopt extreme ultraviolet lithography to make 10nm chips starting in late 2015 but is still researching e-beam as an alternative.

At a recent event in San Jose, California, TSMC CEO Morris Chang said that company sales will rise at a percentage in the teens this year.

Cadence Design Systems has announced an ongoing multi-year agreement with TSMC to develop the design infrastructure for 16-nanometer FinFET technology, targeting advanced node designs for mobile, networking, servers and FPGA applications.

Despite continued rumors that Apple has been working very hard to transition away from Samsung for production of A-series chips, it appears that Apple has not yet been able to make that step on a mass production basis, as this new smaller A5 is still being fabbed by Samsung.

Some local residents and council representatives showed up December 26 at a meeting to protest against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s plan to build its first 450mm wafer fab plant at the Central Taiwan Science Park.

If Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is planning on building a chip plant in the United States, the only place that would make sense is Malta, New York, an analyst said.

There's a hubbub of current speculation which once again claims Apple intends launching the next iteration of its iPhone in or around June: it's important to take claims of a June launch with a pinch of salt as there's been similar speculation in the past and the product didn't actually appear until Q4.

Qualcomm has said that a shortage of its advanced smartphone processors is almost resolved as manufacturing partners including Samsung Electronics boosted production.

Taiwan's TSMC will produce the LG-designed chips with using a finer 28-nanometer processing technology.

Evidence is starting to mount that foundry chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could be about to follow Globalfoundries in building a wafer fab in up-state New York.

Williams Financial analyst Cody Acree told MarketWatch that the gains apparently were due to "more talk of Apple moving away from Samsung as a foundry" which has also led to speculation that either Intel or TSMC may be tapped to manufacture chips for Apple.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) share in the 28nm contract chipmaking sector may drop from 80% to 50% next year on fierce competition from Samsung, according to research firm Topology.

TrendForce believes that, for the A6 and A7 chips, Apple will just as likely turn to Globalfoundries and Intel, which currently provides the Core i processors for Apple's notebooks. The ultimate choice will likely narrow down to whose products fits or performs up to Apple's product standards.

Cadence Design Systems has announced that the first products in the Cadence DDR4 SDRAM PHY and memory controller design IP family have been proven in silicon on TSMC's 28HPM and 28HP process technologies.

Intel's R&D expenditures accounted for 32% of the top-10 spending and about 17% of total R&D expenses at all semiconductor companies worldwide-counting IDMs, fabless suppliers and foundries.

Apple and Qualcomm were rebuffed in separate attempts to invest cash with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in a bid to secure exclusive access to smartphone chips, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Japan's Fujitsu is in talks to sell its main semiconductor plant to TSMC, sources close to the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The multi-year deal sees ARM tie itself even closer to TSMC, its chip-fabber of choice, as it looks to capitalise on the company's technology to help it maintain a lead over Intel for chip power efficiency

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) was the world's largest pure play foundry for MEMS devices in 2011, posting a phenomenal 201% increase in revenue as it gained share from rivals and capitalized on new income streams.