Lead times - the gap between when a chip is ordered and when it is delivered - averaged 26.3 weeks in the period, according to research by Susquehanna Financial Group. That compares with nearly 27 weeks the prior month.

Manufacturers have seen their stocks of semiconductors plunge amid the global chip shortage, the US Department of Commerce has warned. A survey of more than 150 firms found supplies had fallen from an average of 40 days' worth in 2019 to just five days in late 2021.

SK Hynix System IC, a subsidiary of SK Hynix, will close down its M8 plant in Cheongju, Korea in February 2022 and relocate all its equipment to its plant in Wuxi, China by May.

Tsinghua University officially inaugurated its new school for integrated circuits on Thursday, striving to cultivate talents for the country's IC industry and make indigenous Chinese chips.

Thanks to a licensing deal with AMD and a complex joint-venture arrangement, the Chinese chip producer Chengdu Haiguang IC Design (Hygon) is now producing x86-based server processors that are largely indistinguishable from AMD's EPYC processors - so close in design that Linux kernel developers had to do little in the way of patching to support the new processor family, called "Dhyana." The server chips are being manufactured for domestic use only - part of an effort to break China's dependence on foreign technology companies.

Fueled by heavy government investment, IC packaging and testing in China generated $29 billion in revenue in 2017.

Tsinghua Unigroup has signed an agreement with the government of the Chinese city of Chongqing and Sino IC Capital to set up an integrated circuit (IC) investment firm, which will invest up to $100 billion in the Chinese state chipmaker's IC sites over the next decade.

Two China-based fabless companies made the top 10 ranking last year-HiSilicon, which sells most of its devices as internal transfers to smartphone supplier Huawei, and Unigroup, which includes the IC sales of both Spreadtrum and RDA.

Sondrel, an IC design services firm based in the UK, has agreed to buy Imagination Technologies' IMGworks division for an undisclosed sum.

Ever since Siemens announced its plan to acquire Mentor Graphics three weeks ago, many in the semiconductor industry have been poking and parsing its implications. They've found, thus far, more questions than answers.

Slow overall chip market growth, rising cost, diminished venture capital investments in the semiconductor industry, and cheap interest rates are among the reasons tempting chip vendors to keep buying.

KLA-Tencor has introduced six advanced wafer defect inspection and review systems for leading-edge IC device manufacturing.

Buoyed by strong sales of automotive chips and improved sales of devices for communications and industrial equipment, Texas Instruments Wednesday (April 27) reported higher than expected first quarter sales and profit and delivered a forecast for the second quarter that was within range of Wall Street's estimates.

Abundant financial resources available from China's National IC Industry Investment Fund, often called the Big Fund, augmented local government-led funds, have lent China's "memory" dream an air of credibility. But setting aside China's aspirations, there is intense scrutiny here about the sources of IPs and engineering talent that China badly needs.

BOE Technology Group said August 18 that it will establish an IC fund of CNY4 billion (US$626 million). BOE invested CNY1.5 billion in the fund, along with other investors including the government-backed National IC Fund.

Silicon-based nanowire transistors (NWTs)-otherwise known as gate-all-around transistors-are getting ready to replace FinFETs at the 7nm or 5nm integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing nodes, according to experts in the field.

Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore commented on the rumor that BLX IC Design is interested in acquiring Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and outlined some obstacles that may face a potential suitor for the company.

This is the first Android smartwatch based on the Broadcom system-on-chip (SoC) platform which includes a 1.2GHz Quad-core ARM Cortex A7 processor (BCM23550), an improved GPS and Sensor processing SOC (BCM47531) capable of simultaneously tracking five satellite systems (GPS, GLONASS, QZSS, SBAS, and BeiDou), the now popular Wi-Fi/BT/NFC/FM quad-combo connectivity chip (BCM43341), and a highly integrated power management IC (BCM59054).

The Quintic Wearable & BTLE team of approximately 65 world class engineers located in China (Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai) and Sunnyvale, CA, and its leadership is expected to join NXP at close of this transaction which is targeted for Q1 2015.

According to industry sources, Apple has decided to discontinue its use of triple-level cell (TLC) NAND, since the company believes that the functional defects plaguing the 64GB iPhone 6 and the 128GB iPhone 6+ stem from a problem in the controller IC of the TLC NAND flash. The controller IC in question is reportedly made by SSD maker Anobit, which was sold to Apple in 2011.

As numerous reports of low read performance of the Samsung SSD 840 and 840 EVO using TLC NAND flash have surfaced on the Internet, a problem in the controller IC is considered to be the more likely cause of the defects.

Dialog Semiconductor has launched what it claims is the industry's first digital pulse width modulation (PWM) controller that can easily and efficiently drive low-cost, 10W power bipolar junction transistor (BJT) switches to reduce the BOM cost in 5V/2A smartphone adapters and chargers.

IC Insights has lowered its 2013 IC market growth forecast 1pp to 5%.

IC Insights forecasts that in 2017, fabless IC companies will command at least one-third (33%) of the total IC market.

After strong gains in 2010 and 2011, power transistor sales fell more than 8% in 2012 to US$12.3 billion primarily due to weak economic growth and high levels of uncertainty, which caused equipment makers to rein in semiconductor purchases, according to IC Insights.

Data from Chinese semiconductor industry sources identifies Allwinner as, by far, the number one apps processor supplier for Chinese tablets in 2012, followed by Rockchip, ViaTech, Amlogic and Vimicro.

Lenovo, which has maintained a small IC design team consisting of about 10 people over the last decade, is now committed to expanding this team to about 100 engineers by the middle of 2013, according to a China-based industry source with direct knowledge of the company's recruitment of chip designers.

Worldwide microprocessor sales are expected to regain strength in 2013 and grow 12% to US$65.3 billion after rising just 5% in 2012 to US$58.2 billion due to weakness in standard PCs and the shaky global economy, according to IC Insights.

or most of the last two decades personal computers have accounted for a third or more of annual IC sales, but standard PCs are now on the brink of being replaced as the largest end-use product category for ICs.

Smart TVs, LED technology, emerging markets will help boost the IC market for TVs.

The communications and automotive IC markets are forecast to outpace the growth of the total IC market through 2016, according to IC Insights.

ALi has acquired Abilis, a fabless semiconductor company providing RF modulators, secure media processors and broadcast-to-IP solutions, according to the Taiwan-based set-top box IC firm.

KLA-Tencor has announced two new additions to the company's IC fab-based reticle inspection portfolio: the X5.2 and Teron 611 systems. As the latest offering in the successful 5XX product line, the new X5.2 applies its high performance to capture defects and pattern degradation on masks currently in production, with extended capability for the upcoming 20nm node.

MediaTek and Mstar shares soared yesterday after announcing an acquisition deal last week, which was seen as positive for both integrated circuit (IC) designers, dealers said.

Multinational semiconductor companies are no longer able to compete with China's fabless chips vendors in the consumer electronics IC business, according to Vincent Tai, CEO of RDA Microelectronics. "It's game over" for them, Tai asserted in a recent interview.

Although only 2% growth was registered in the worldwide semiconductor market in 2011, several companies posted results that were far different, according to IC Insights.

Dialog Semiconductor has announced it is working closely with TSMC to develop its next generation of bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) technology specifically tailored to high-performance power management ICs (PMICs) for portable devices.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to announce 3D IC assembly service as a general offering at the beginning of 2013, according to Maria Marced, president of TSMC Europe.