US sanctions against Fujian Jinhua will force the Chinese state-owned company accused of stealing trade secrets from American memory chipmaker Micron to stop production by March, according to people familiar with the situation.

Taiwan's United Microelectronics will move nearly half of its DRAM team to new positions within the company in what sources say is the first step toward terminating its memory chip development business.

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday unveiled an indictment against two companies based in China and Taiwan and three individuals.

More than 30 years after it served as the setting for the birth of the semiconductor foundry industry with the founding of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in 1987, Taiwan shows no sign of relinquishing its stranglehold on the US$62 billion global business.

UMC is turning out to be the perfect patsy in China's ongoing campaign to stick it to the US over technology, intellectual property and trade.

One case involved a Taiwanese unit of Idaho-based Micron Technology. On a spring day in 2016, a 41-year-old engineer for the unit opened his company laptop and, according to Taiwanese prosecutors, tapped into Google search: "clear computer use records."

A number of chips will require mature processes in 200mm plants for a long time.

United Microelectronics Corporation has announced that its Singapore-based Fab 12i has been awarded the Water Efficiency Award by the Singapore Ministry of Environment and Water Resources. Fab 12i became the only Singapore fab to win the award from the Wafer Fabrication sector.

United Microelectronics (UMC) has surpassed 15 million shipments for customer small display driver ICs (SDDI) manufactured using the foundry's 55nm embedded high voltage (eHV) technology.

There's now a rumor that the fruity iPhone maker will make its own chips, thus entering the fab industry thanks to a purchase of an unnamed chip fabricator. There's speculation that Taiwan-based chipmaker UMC was Apple's purchase of choice.

Spansion and United Microelectronics (UMC) have announced the joint development of a 40nm process that integrates UMC's 40nm LP logic process with Spansion proprietary embedded Charge Trap (eCT) Flash memory technology. As part of this non-exclusive agreement, UMC is licensed to manufacture products based on this technology for Spansion.

UMC has signed a strategic partnership agreement with Allegro for Allegro to utilize UMC for foundry technology and production for power management chips.

UMC has certified Synopsys' StarRC parasitic extraction solution for its latest 28nm process technologies, according to the EDA and IP vendor.

Faraday will optimize a complete IP portfolio for UMC processes ranging from 0.11-micron to 28nm nodes to help mutual customers shorten their SoC design time-to-market for a variety of applications.

"TSMC has ceased to participate in the program," said Ebun Caldeira, director of finance and market research at SIA. Caldeira declined to say why TSMC has pulled out. "We do have some efforts underway to get TSMC to rejoin," she said.

Robert Tsao, honorary chairman of United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), said recently in a TV interview that he has given up his Taiwan citizenship. Disappointment in the domestic judicial system is the major reason why Tsao decided to become a Singaporean.

Taiwan's UMC will take the "lead role" in making the OMAP 5 device on a foundry basis for TI, said Kevin Ritchie, senior VP and manager of TI's technology and manufacturing group. For the OMAP 5, TI may work with other foundries, but Samsung does not appear to be one of the candidates. With the OMAP 4, TI has been "dissatisfied" with its foundry arrangement with Samsung, Ritchie said.

Globalfoundries expects revenues to rise at least 14% to more than US$4 billion in 2011, and aims to overtake United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) of Taiwan to be the world's second-largest contract chipmaker by revenues, CEO Douglas Grose said in an interview.

IC Insights' recently updated Strategic Reviews Online database shows that most large memory and foundry companies performed extremely well in 1H10.

Following a third consecutive record-breaking sales quarter reported by Xilinx Wednesday (July 22), at least one Wall Street analyst reiterated his contention that extending lead times by the leading FPGA supplier put it at risk of double ordering.

"ATIC is not in a position to do this in this stage of our capital deployment," said Ibrahim Ajami, CEO of Advanced Technology.

GlobalFoundries, Samsung and TSMC appear to be engaged in a new capital spending race in an effort to gain share in current and future cycles. They will survive, observers said, adding that UMC and SMIC could hit the wall and/or may get acquired.

Taiwan's high court has warned the former head of United Microelectronics Corp. he risks being arrested after shouting at the judges and walking out of his trial for illegal investment.

The big news at Xilinx' annual analyst day on February 22: A new partner for foundry services at the 28nm node.

In 2009, TSMC topped the list of foundries with US$9.0 billion in sales. TSMC's sales were about 3X that of UMC, which in turn had more than the combined foundry sales of Chartered and SMIC in 2009.

Xilinx has completed multiple iterations of 28nm test wafers with TSMC, and could disclose the move to TSMC at its analyst day in March.

In the US, we've seen chipmakers shut down their fabs one-by-one over the years. How can we reverse that trend? One possible solution: Why not tell the Asian silicon foundries (TSMC, UMC, SMIC, etc.) that they must build fabs in the US?

Solid state drive (SSD) controller start-up SandForce has closed US$21 million in series C funding. Led by new investor TransLink Capital, the round also included new investors UMC Capital, LSI, Red Maple Ventures, Darwin Ventures and A-Data Technology.

Virtex-5 sales are expected to increase significantly in the September quarter, surpassing 20% of total sales, according to Xilinx. The company is scheduled to report its second quarter financial results on October 14, 2009.

NEC Electronics will likely outsource more production of semiconductors used in consumer electronics to outside foundries to insure against a sudden plunge in demand following losses last year tied to a rapid drop in orders.

Cypress Semiconductor has announced it is sampling SRAM devices on 65nm linewidth. The new 72-Mbit QDR2 and DDRII memories leverage process technology developed with foundry partner UMC.

Rumors at ISSCC and other events are that Taiwan foundry vendor United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) is mulling over plans to join IBM's "fab club." The group, which co-develops advanced process technology and shares the associated costs, consists of AMD, Chartered, IBM, Infineon, ST, Toshiba, NEC, Freescale and Sony. AMD's proposed foundry spin-off is also part of the group.

Reiterating the 'severe deterioration' in order intake caused by the global economic recession, lithography toolmaker ASML has announced that its 2008 fourth-quarter sales hit 494 million euros--a 29% drop from the previous quarter, and a 48% decline year-over-year. The quarterly sales fall within ASML's revised guidance, which the company announced last month along with reorganizing efforts that includes a layoff of 12% of its workforce. Full-year 2008 net sales were 2.95 billion euros, down 21.6% over 2007.

Former United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) chairman Robert Tsao and former vice chairman John Hsuan were found not guilty by the Taiwan High Court yesterday of illegal investments in a Chinese company.

Wafer shipments at the world's top two foundries, TSMC and UMC, are set to plunge further than anticipated in 4Q, but the picture for 1Q is even uglier with "historic lows" looming for utilizations, according to an analyst report.

The world's top two contract chip makers, TSMC and UMC, are preparing to cut costs by up to 20 percent as their industry heads into a sharp downturn, industry sources said on Friday. Taking about a two-thirds share of the global foundry market together, the two Taiwan firms are facing a global economic slowdown that has forced consumers to cut spending on new PCs, cellphones and flat-screen TVs that require microchips.

"We don't have plans on manpower reduction," UMC said in a statement, in response to an Apple Daily report on Tuesday that UMC was considering laying off 1,300 employees, or about 10%of the company's headcount...