Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata told a news conference that while production at the company's fire-hit plant looked likely to resume within a month, recovery to pre-fire levels was expected to take around 100 to 120 days from the incident.

In 2016, NXP in the Netherlands overtook Renesas Electronics in Japan as the world's largest microcontroller supplier with MCU revenues climbing 116% following its US$11.6 billion purchase of US-based Freescale Semiconductor in December 2015.

Tsinghua's ambitions in the memory chip business are well known. It is reportedly targeting an investment in Renesas as a vehicle for China to gain a foothold in the logic business - especially in the automotive and MCU segments.

Texas Instruments (TI) has announced the new SimpleLink ultra-low power wireless microcontroller (MCU) platform that helps customers go battery-less with energy harvesting or enjoy always-on, coin cell-powered operation for multiple years.

The merged entity will become the market leader in auto semiconductor solutions and the market leader in general purpose MCU products, according to the companies.

Chip companies serving the automotive industry know exactly where the next-generation MCU battle will be played out: high-performance MCUs with fast-access flash memory at 40-nanometer process.

Renesas Electronics said its alliance with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will help boost market share and operating margin.

Japanese chipmaker Renesas has seen its shares tumble to a record low amid reports it is planning to raise cash and cut jobs.

Loss-making Japanese chipmaker Renesas Electronics plans to cut 6,000 jobs, about 15% of its workforce, and raise JPY50 billion (US$630 million) through a third-party share allotment, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported on Tuesday.

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.

It took just three months to put the microcontroller manufacturer's hard-hit Naka facility back in operation.

Fujitsu Semiconductor has announced the release of 113 microcontrollers, including chips from the MB96600 Series of 16-bit microcontrollers and chips from the MB91520 Series of 32-bit microcontrollers.

Disruptions and shortages continue to loom over MCU product suppliers who are already facing severe pressure in the supply chain.

MagnaChip Semiconductor has signed a wafer foundry agreement with Atmel, a major provider of microcontrollers and touch solutions.

Production was suspended at the plant in Iwate Prefecture after suffering damage in the March 11 earthquake. The plant makes microcontrollers and large scale integration chips.

Firms across the world fear shortages of parts that used to be made in the Japanese factories now shuttered because of power and water shortages, or because of road and port closures, following the quake and the floods. And carmakers, whose products often contain some 20,000 individual parts, are expected to be among those worst hit.

Renesas Electronics has resumed operations at the factory sites in Aomori and Yamagata prefectures, northern Japan. The facilities were shut down following a massive earthquake and resulting tsunami on March 11.

The Certitude software enables engineers to raise the quality of verification environments and IP design components required to develop microcontroller unit solutions for automotive electronics applications.

Freescale Semiconductor has introduced its Xtrinsic sensing solutions, which are designed with the combination of high-performance sensing capability, processing capacity and customizable software to help deliver differentiated sensing applications.

Completing a merger transaction between the former NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology, the newly established Renesas Electronics has commenced business operations.

Renesas Technology has announced a variety of structural reforms that will be undertaken to reinforce its business structure as part of the company's key strategy in achieving growth from FY2009 onward.

...Well, 32-bit microcontrollers, especially multi-core designs with sophisticated peripherals, are in many ways highly flexible ASSPs. That is really a more accurate characterization than to call them MCUs in anything but a purely architectural sense. As such, they can compete against ASSPs from fabless semiconductor vendors. But they can also compete against FPGAs, offering lower design time, higher performance, much better power consumption, and much lower price for large designs...