IMEC's revenues will be down only about 5% this year, compared to drops of 20% generally among electronics vendors. "R&D is the last part to cut because they need to continue to innovate," said company CEO Van den hove.

Dongbu has begun shipping the display chip used in 19-inch computer monitors to LG Display. The contract will pave the way for us to strengthen our position as a display chip-focused manufacturer," a company spokesman Kwon Ki-joo has said.

The European Commission's new proposal to boost solar technology development focuses too much on research and not enough on deploying commercial technologies, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA).

The cell chip in Toshiba's TV is the same as the one in Sony's PS3.

If the current IC recovery will continue or fall back into a dreaded double dip, specialty foundry vendors also see a new competitive threat on the horizon: TSMC.

As China primes its energy market for explosive growth, the country could see one gigawatt of solar power generation capacity by 2011, said a new report by GTM Research.

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

Samsung Electronics has estimated it made a record quarterly operating profit of 4.1 trillion won (3.5 billion dollars) in July-September. Consolidated sales for the quarter are estimated at 36 trillion won, up from 30.27 trillion a year ago.

The R&D costs for process technology are expected to climb from US$310-to-US$400 million for the 90nm to 65nm nodes, to US$600-to-US$900 million for 45nm to 32nm, to US$1.3 billion for 22nm to 12nm. A fab would run from US$2.5-to-US$3.5 billion for the 90nm to 65nm nodes, to US$3.5-to-US$4 billion for 45nm to 32nm, to US$4.5-to-US$6 billion for 22nm to 12nm.

In recent times, copper has been rapidly gaining a foothold as a substitute material for gold in wire bonding. Some of the advantages include superior electrical and thermal conductivity, less intermetallic compound growth and greater mechanical stability.

"We spend many months developing and then fine-tuning the controller and firmware technology for our SSDs, working very closely with most of the major PC OEMs..."

For the quarter ended Aug. 28, Smart Modular reported a loss of US$289,000 compared with a loss of US$3.53 million a year ago. Gross margin rose to 21.4% from 15.5% on the price gains.

Murata Electronics North America has asked the US International Trade Commission to investigate whether two subsidiaries of Samsung Electronics have been importing electronic components into the country that infringe four of its patents covering ceramic capacitors.

Micron's recent performance was "a really strong signal" that things have been improving in the chip market, which had suffered from an industry-wide glut that drove prices into the ground, according to an analyst.

The US solar energy industry hopes to persuade Customs officials to reverse a decision to impose a 2.5% tariff on solar panel imports after more than two decades of duty-free trade in the product, an industry official said on Thursday. In the worst case scenario, US importers of solar panels could face some US$70 million in tariffs and penalties for product already imported this year.

"Of course every transition to a new process has its problems," stated one source who requested anonymity. "We just weren't expecting it to be this slow."

Samsung, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments already use ARM designed chip cores. Intel used to have an ARM license too, but flogged it to Marvell.

Samsung and Hynix sources said strong demand for advanced DRAM or DDR3 chips, has resulted in a price upturn for both DRAM and NAND flash memory chips used in high-end handheld gadgets such as smart phones.

SST (Silicon Storage Technology) has revised its estimates to reflect an improvement in its expected results for the third quarter, ending Sept. 30, 2009.

Like many other chip makers, TI discovered that the cost of Moore's Law–industry shorthand for the race to shrink transistors on digital chips–is too costly for the payoff it brings. It began placing greater emphasis on manufacturing analog chips.

Micron Technology has reported a narrower loss after an industry glut eased and product prices rebounded. DRAM sales increased 28% from the previous three months, helped by an 8% gain in ASP and a 19% rise in shipments.

Toshiba plans to relocate as many as 700 engineers by October to help cut semiconductor-research spending.