With the global economy recovering and chip demand picking up in the seasonally strong second half of the year, many analysts now forecast that Japan's chip suppliers started making money as early as the current fiscal second quarter ending Sept. 30.

MagnaChip Semiconductor is poised to exit from Chapter 11 with the successful conclusion of its financial restructuring which was executed under the supervision of the US Bankruptcy Court.

Uni-chem has signed a MOU to buy Hynix's memory chip plant and the accompanying land in Eugene, Oregon, for US$50 million. It plans to use the plant to make solar cells as part of the company's new business.

Micron Technology will begin to pursue manufacturing of LED devices with the help of a US$5 million federal economic stimulus grant announced Sept. 24.

"Our roadmap for 32nm SOI has not slipped," according to a spokesman for the company. "Yes, the timeframe for introduction has been altered slightly compared to the roadmap we showed you in July, but that is not because of any issues with the technology."

An international solar-related company is in talks with Hynix Semiconductor to buy the South Korea-based company's shuttered computer-chip plant in west Eugene, according to local government and economic development officials.

Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner in charge of antitrust issues, would undoubtedly be most satisfied to see the Microsoft dossier closed before she goes.

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.

The Numonyx eMMC architecture is comprised of an embedded storage solution with multi-media card interface, flash memory device and host controller – all in a small BGA package. With interface speeds of up to 52MB per second, Numonyx eMMC also allows for an interface voltage of either 1.8V or 3.3V.

Virage Logic and SMIC have jointly announced a RFID optimized version of Virage Logic's AEON multi-time programmable non-volatile memory (NVM) solution. The RFID-optimized NVM solution, ideal for use in passive tags, is being developed on SMIC's 180nm low leakage process.

Seagate Technology now expects revenues for the September quarter to be at or slightly above the high end of its original guidance.

The world's leading semiconductor manufacturers plan to discuss ways to prevent overproduction and enforce fair competition at an industry-wide annual meeting on Jeju Island, according to the South Korean government.

Suntech Power has announced that it has beaten all previous records for multicrystalline silicon module conversion efficiency. The new world record conversion efficiency (aperture area only) was measured at 16.53%.

South Korean telecom regulators have approved the sale of Apple's iPhone in a market currently dominated by local handset manufacturers. Officials at KT, the country's number-two mobile service provider, said they plan to start selling iPhones next month.

Korea Exchange Bank sent out bid notices to around 40 conglomerates on September 7, and four to five were believed to be interested. But only textile conglomerate Hyosung submitted a letter of intent.

GTM Research says boom in US solar manufacturing to create 20,000 jobs between 2009 and 2012.

The organization responsible for Serial ATA has announced the formation of a mini-SATA spec, suitable for small-form-factor SATA drives and mini SSDs. The mSATA connector will still transmit up to 1.5Gb/s or 3Gb/s SATA signals, but do so in a smaller connector.

A court in August had sentenced Lee Kun-Hee to a suspended three-year prison term and a fine of 110 billion won (91.2 million dollars) for his role in a 1999 bond issue.

LDK Solar is scheduled to complete the installation of more than 50 MaxEdge wafering systems in October.

"We continue to make progress in every aspect of the SunFab lines and are well on our way to delivering 10% efficient SunFab panels and US$1 per watt production costs in 2010," said company CTO Mark Pinto. He also laid out plans for SunFab panels with 12% conversion efficiency and module costs below US$0.70/watt by 2012.

Canon is reportedly telling customers it will no longer develop future, leading-edge lithography tools, namely 193nm dry and immersion scanners, according to industry sources.

Backend tool giant Kulicke & Soffa Industries has raised its revenue outlook for its fiscal fourth quarter ending October 3.

DRAM sales will probably climb 21% to US$22.4 billion in 2010, the first gain in four years, a Seoul-based analyst at Morgan Stanley wrote in a report.

In addition to a DRAM recovery, the NOR and NAND flash memory market has been extremely active. The volume of requests for Spansion and Numonyx flash memory has tripled over the last two months.

The SSD market has been one of several factors that have boosted demand for NAND flash memory and, as a result, boosted NAND flash prices, too. While this trend will likely continue to benefit Micron and SanDisk, it is equally likely to work against STEC in the longer term.

The IBM eDRAM in 32nm SOI technology is the fastest embedded memory announced to date, achieving latency and cycle times of less than 2 nanoseconds.

The serial-ATA (SATA) SSDs, from Samsung Electronics, are aimed at supporting virtualized environments and I/O intensive applications.

Rambus and Kingston Technology have jointly announced a collaborative development of a threaded module prototype using DDR3 DRAM technology.

"The worst is behind us. The upward trend has stabilized, so we now anticipate second-half sales growth of about 40% compared to the first half of 2009," said the analog/mixed-signal foundry.

Russia's government is in talks with Germany on buying a stake in Infineon Technologies, said AFK Sistema, tycoon Vladimir Yevtushenkov's holding company.

Buyers can expect price erosion for NOR flash memory for the rest of the year, but prices will stabilize in 2010, according to market researcher IC Insights.

"We believe this delay in fab closures is due to stronger than expected demand, and Fairchild wanting to continue manufacturing product at those facilities to meet this stronger than expected demand...