US ceramics manufacturing group CoorsTek is buying Japanese semiconductor-materials maker Covalent Materials from Carlyle and a local buyout fund, ending a rocky lossmaking investment spanning eight years.

Many sensors, including MEMS devices, require thorough calibration and test before being assembled into the end node device.

According to Qualcomm, everything is working as scheduled, and the Snapdragon 810 will still be able to ship in 2015H1.

While I do think building the entire stack on 14-nanometers will afford Intel a manufacturing lead, and perhaps performance lead, over competitors, the important thing here is that Intel has a complete stack that it can offer to its customers. This means Intel can be a one-stop shop for smartphone and tablet OEMs looking to build out a family of products, as Qualcomm is today.

Intel said it would invest up to US$1.6 billion over the next 15 years in its chip plant in Chengdu, China, as the company continues to expand its operations in the country.

Intel's continuing to push aggressively into the world of wearables. On Wednesday it signed a deal with Luxottica Group to develop smart eyewear in time for a product launch next year.

British chip designer Imagination has produced a barebones computer to compete with the Raspberry Pi.

According to sources from South Korea, Samsung may be planning to build not just its own CPU core based on the ARMv8 architecture, but also its own GPU technology. We could see the new GPU, and possibly the new CPU as well, inside next year's Galaxy Note 5 device.

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).

Samsung Electronics has joined hands with US-based Thermo Fisher Scientific in a bid to expand its presence in the medical industry with its smartphone business slowing down.

The next generation of Google Glass may have new guts, according to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), which expects a deal between Google and Intel.

Samsung Electronics' semiconductor sales are expected to jump 15.6% on year in 2014, closing the gap with industry leader Intel, a global market tracker said Sunday.

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.

Samsung Electronics spent KRW1.38 trillion (US$1.2 billion) in patent fees in the nine months to September, the most in four years, the company said.

RF Micro Devices (RFMD) and TriQuint Semiconductor have set Wednesday, December 31, 2014, as the anticipated closing date for the transaction.

Xilinx and NXP have announced their collaboration to reduce capex and opex costs of wireless infrastructure radios.

Marvell's ARMADA Mobile PXA1802 5-mode 4G LTE modem is at the core of Meizu's flagship MX4 Pro Premium smartphone, now available for more than one billion of combined subscribers of China Mobile and China Unicom.

Qualcomm, which uses processor technology licensed from ARM, follows a handful of other ARM chip suppliers that are trying to offer server chips.

Qualcomm said it is holding "difficult discussions" with Chinese authorities as the world's largest maker of mobile-phone chips tries to resolve an investigation that's hurting the collection of licensing revenue.

According to Qualcomm, who builds many of today's key technologies in mobile, 4K smartphones are just around the corner, and they'll take pixel counts to an - arguably absurd - new level.

Marvell Technology has forecast lower-than-expected revenue for the current quarter as weak demand for its chips used in third-generation mobile communication offset a rise in sales of its more profitable 4G LTE chips.

Designed with LTE connectivity, both products are designed to work together to support fast downloads, swift application performance, as well as provide enhanced thermal efficiency and optimized power consumption. These two new products are currently sampling with customers and are anticipated to be commercially available in 2015.

Korea Times is claiming that a deal has been struck with Apple for Samsung to supply 80% of the chips for next year's iPhones and iPads, with TSMC picking up the balance of orders.

Intel plans to combine operations that handle chips for personal computers with those targeting smartphones and tablets, according to an email sent to employees by Chief Executive Brian Krzanich.

Fairchild has announced management changes that streamline the company's reporting structure.

Marvell has announced two new 64-bit mobile processors targeting the fast growing global LTE market: a new mobile SoC based on octa-cores for high performance smartphones and tablets and another that uses quad-cores for economy models.

Toshiba has become the latest electronics giant to move into a very different business line - the production of vegetables.

Spansion has launched a family of industrial-grade e.MMC NAND memory products for the consumer, communication and industrial equipment markets.

Trade negotiators from China and the US have reached a preliminary deal they say could end tariffs on as much as a trillion dollars in annual global sales of high-tech goods, eliminating tariffs as high as 25% on some next-generation semiconductors. The deal requires approval of the World Trade Organization, which could take up the issue as early as December.

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich expects new semiconductor partners in China to migrate to the US chipmaker's architecture within a few years and give up on ARM technology more widely used in smartphones and tablets.

PowerVR Series7 is architected for the broadest range of next-generation products from wearables and IoT through automotive, mobile and consumer electronics devices, up to high-performance GPU compute.

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.

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.

Globalfoundries has announced a partnership with Invecas, a newly formed design services provider focused on accelerating customer introduction of new products on leading-edge semiconductor process technologies.

Synaptics has completed its acquisition of Renesas SP Drivers (RSP), a supplier of small- and medium-size display driver ICs for smartphones and tablets.

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

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.

Samsung is expected to start producing application processors (APs) for clients such as Apple, Qualcomm, and AMD, using its 14-nanometre process around the end of the year.

Kilopass Technology has successfully ported its one-time programmable (OTP) NVM technology to TSMC's 16 nanometer (nm) FinFET process.