Even during the most bullish Bitcoin days, video card partners had shied away from creating specific SKUs for the purpose of cryptocurrency mining, and that has remained the case since - until now. With the Ethereum mining mania hitting new heights (ed: and arguably new lows), add-in board vendors ASUS and Sapphire have released mining-specific video cards, with variants based off of NVIDIA's GP106 GPU, and AMD's RX 470 & RX 560 video cards.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has published a patent application from Apple titled "Electronic Devices with Sapphire-Coated Substrates." The invention is designed to add a sapphire coating to future OLED displays like those that will begin shipping in 2017 and beyond.

A story that Apple tried for three weeks to suppress is now part of the public record.

Apple and GT Advanced fought to keep key documents related to their sapphire agreement out of the public eye after the latter company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection, but earlier this week, a judge ruled that the documents did not contain trade secrets or confidential information, and would thus be largely unsealed.

GT Advanced Technologies has announced a multi-year, US$578 million contract with Apple to supply advanced sapphire material.

Amtech Systems, a supplier of production and automation systems and related supplies for the manufacture of solar cells, semiconductors, and sapphire and silicon wafers, has received approximately US$10 million in new solar orders.

Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth claims that Apple has acquired a large supply of sapphire displays, possibly alluding to displays with sapphire material that would be used on a future Apple iPhone.

GTAT will own and operate ASF furnaces and related equipment to produce the materials at an Apple facility in Arizona.

Soitec of Bernin, France, which makes engineered substrates including silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers (as well as III-V epiwafers through its Picogiga International division), has more than doubled production of bonded silicon-on-sapphire (BSOS) substrates to meet increased demand from strategic partner Peregrine Semiconductor Corp of San Diego,US.

Following the massive material shortage in 2010, sapphire material and finished wafer prices remained high through early 2011, says market research firm Yole D矇veloppement.

Rubicon Technology says that it has shipped over 200,000 six-inch sapphire wafers to LED manufacturers worldwide.

The new Dimension Edge PSS atomic force microscope from Bruker Corporation delivers precise 3D profile information to control advanced patterned sapphire substrate processes for LED manufacturing.

Rubicon Technology is beginning volume production of 6-inch and 8-inch sapphire wafers at its state-of-the-art facility in Penang, Malasia, while GT Solar is investing $27 million to triple its sapphire production capacity in Salem, Mass.

Several large sapphire furnace orders have helped GT Solar to almost double its equipment order backlog guidance from approximately US$1 billion to US$1.6 billion. However, technical upgrades offered to existing customers of DSS650 furnaces are tracking ahead of schedule, enabling GT Solar to raise revenue guidance for the current quarter to approximately, US$225 million, up from previous guidance of between US$140 million - US$150 million.

GT Solar International Inc of Merrimack, NH, USA (a provider of polysilicon production technology as well as sapphire and silicon crystalline growth systems and materials for the solar, LED and other specialty markets) has reported revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter (ended 2 April) of $271.6m, up 3.3% on $262.9m last quarter and 40% on $194.7m a year ago. Revenue by business segment was $79.2m in polysilicon, $186m in photovoltaic (PV), and $6.4m in sapphire (all of which was sapphire materials revenue).

LDK Solar has announced a business investment of approximately US$40 million to establish a new manufacturing plant in Nanchang City, Jiangxi Province (China). This new manufacturing facility will have capacity to supply two million 2-inch equivalent pieces of sapphire wafers per year and be positioned to capture the growing opportunities in the LED industry.

180 grams of gold. Followed by 45.5K black diamonds and an African Blackwood back panel. Each key on the keyboard is made from a single manually polished and laser engraved crystal sapphire.