Solar Frontier, a unit of Japanese refiner Showa Shell Sekiyu,said it began production at a 100 billion yen(US$1.2 billion)thin-film solar module factory.

"We are excited to complete the transition to the next generation 2Xnm NAND components which reiterates our strategy of producing high performance SSDs at the most attractive price point available for consumer applications," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology.

Intel has announced that the company is sampling its 32nm "Medfield" handset chip with customers. Scheduled for introduction this year, the Medfield chip will extend the performance benefits of Intel architecture into a low-power solution specifically designed for the smartphone market segment.

ProMOS has been negotiating with the Taiwan authorities and banks to improve its financial standing, a precondition for the firm to join the Elpida-Powerchip business integration.

Freescale Semiconductor has filed to go public on February 18, seeking to raise money to pay down its debt load.

The memory-chip industry will keep a lid on capital expenditures this year, helping avoid a repeat of the production glut that plagued the industry until 2010, Micron Technology CEO Steve Appleton said.

OCZ Technology, a provider of solid-state drives (SSD) for computing devices and systems, has signed an agreement with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) for asset-based financing of up to US$25 million.

The TI OMAP 5 offers quad-core computing at up to 2GHz with power consumption barely breaking into double-digit wattage figures. In terms of raw figures, that level of performance is very near that of current Intel and AMD desktop chips.

TriQuint Semiconductor's (TQNT) fourth-quarter earnings more than doubled as revenue jumped by nearly one-third, but results still fell short of analysts' forecasts. "With the world transitioning to a mobile Internet, I expect a strong market and see another solid growth year for TriQuint in 2011," said company president and CEO Ralph Quinsey.

"There are certainly server applications today for which ... a lack of 64-bit is not a barrier..."

Fabless LCD developer Pixel Qi has announced it has struck a manufacturing partnership with Chunghwa Picture Tubes (CPT) of Taiwan.

On January 19, 2011, the 3.5 billionth CoolMOS high-voltage MOSFET came off the production line at Infineon's manufacturing facility in Villach, Austria.

Rising demand for vehicles in China has boosted profits at Infineon. Back orders are expected to last through summer.

The profit gain was largely due to "a significantly improved performance in electronic devices, driven mainly by the return to profit of the LCD business and demand expansion in NAND flash memories," Toshiba said in a statement.

"In 2010 there was a big bounce in the semiconductor market marking a recovery year which has seen the industry overall grow about 15%," said Tim Score, ARM's CFO. "ARM grew about 30%, and this year we expect the industry to grow about 5% to 8%, and that we will grow faster."

Speculation ARM could become a takeover target is misguided and ignores the importance of the chip designer staying independent, ARM's president said.

"A fall in DRAM prices, the appreciation of the yen, and inventory valuation losses resulted in a 26.9 billion yen operating loss," said CFO Yasuo Shirai. Elpida shares closed 0.24% higher in Tokyo trade ahead of the earnings announcement on February 2.

When a final agreement is reached, Powerchip will phase out the sales of own branded DRAMs and Elpida will purchase all PC DRAMs from Powerchip to sell them as its own branded products. Powerchip currently has 80,000 wafers per month capacity for commodity DRAM production.

Net income for the fourth quarter of 2010 was US$33.1 million as compared to net losses of US$20.6 million in the prior quarter and losses of US$23.3 million a year ago. Net profits for 2010 were US$150.9 million, compared to losses of US$92.2 million in 2009.

Flash memory specialist SanDisk topped Wall Street's estimates with its fourth-quarter results, boosted by strength in Asia and its mobile business.

The recession caused fab tool vendors to de-accelerate their investments and programs in 450mm. As a result, 450mm production has been delayed at least to 2017 or 2018, said Trevor Yancey, an analyst with IC Insights.

China plans to step up efforts to develop clean energy and other technology industries this year, government officials said Thursday, a strategy that has strained trade ties with Washington and other governments.

Amid a loss and some US$454.0 million in disputed claims against the company, Spansion has raised its capital spending for 2011.

STMicroelectronics, Europe's largest chipmaker, fell the most in five months in Milan trading after the company's ST-Ericsson wireless venture reported increased losses in the fourth quarter.

Texas Instruments has admitted that Nvidia beat it to market with the first dual-core processor for tablets. This is surprising statement from a company that has been in the business of building power-efficient chips based on the ARM design for close to two decades.

Yesterday First Solar closed at a new 52 week high after Goldman Sachs posted a Buy recommendation and news of a $1 billion manufacturing plant in Vietnam hit.