SanDisk has admitted that far not all solid-state drives (SSDs) that are on the market right now are really reliable, which is why many of them are never used inside branded personal computers.

Price is still a huge barrier for solid state disks (SSD) in the enterprise, but for some datacenters the math already makes sense.

If you thought that quality among DRAM DIMMs was evenly distributed, or that most DRAM errors are not due to hardware problems, Google has proven you wrong.

By the end of 2011, ARM will be a "small but significant" PC processor architecture, said a Gartner analyst.

"Despite positive earnings pre-announcements, the overall tone from companies remains relatively muted and cautious," said Doug Freedman, an analyst for Broadpoint AmTech.

Microsoft's newest operating system for PCs will launch in late October, but it won't boost PC sales enough to help the global DRAM memory chip market until the second quarter of 2010.

Samsung Electronics Friday said global demand for memory chips will improve in the second quarter and expects global shipments of personal computers to rise by a low-single percentage from the preceding quarter.

According to IC Insights' update to its 2009 forecast, released Thursday, the "perfect storm" of negative factors that have damaged business in the first half of 2009 will bring about a much more "friendly" environment for the IC industry in the second half of the year.

Fairchild Semiconductor International recently announced it will close a wafer fabrication plant and eliminate some manufacturing at a second site to save up to US$25 million annually, as part of the power-chip maker's ongoing cost-reduction in response to slumping demand.