European Union regulators are expected to fine nine makers of memory chips, including Samsung, Infineon and Hynix, this week on charges of illegally fixing prices. Others set to be fined are Elpida, NEC Electronics, Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Nanya.

Infineon is in talks with Intel about a sale of its wireless chip business, according to German business daily Financial Times Deutschland.

Samsung has revealed plans to invest nine trillion won in the memory-chip business, compared with an earlier budget of 5.5 trillion won. Spending on LCDs will rise to five trillion won from three trillion won, it said.

Market speculation on the size of the investment has grown since the South Korean firm said two weeks ago that its chip unit would sharply raise capital spending for 2010, with some media reports penciling in a record 20 trillion won (US$17.7 billion).

Silver Lake Sumeru, the middle market investment group of Silver Lake, has announced that it recently closed on an investment in Spansion. Spansion has successfully emerged from bankruptcy.

Professor Peter Denyer, a pioneer of CMOS imaging sensor technology for cameras, died of cancer on April 22.

Hynix Semiconductor has said it sold 5-year bonds worth US$500 million abroad that could be converted into its shares at 34,580 won apiece.

The 23.3 trillion Korean won (US$21 billion) investment is aimed at developing five new businesses that the company expects to create 45,000 new jobs and generate 50 trillion won in annual revenue for affiliate companies by 2020, Samsung said in a statement Tuesday.

The factory will be Toshiba's fifth at its manufacturing base in Yokkaichi in western Japan. It will initially be used to produce conventional NAND flash chips, but Toshiba plans to expand this to new types of 3D memory where chips and components are stacked vertically.

"Advanced technology is not only about cost. At 45nm we have showed that we can go to high volume production very quickly at high yield..."

Micron Technology has completed its acquisition of Numonyx in an all stock transaction valued at approximately US$1.2 billion.

The German parliament yesterday approved long-expected cuts to solar energy incentives prompting US shares in solar companies to tumble amid fears that demand from one of the world's largest markets for soalr panels will now fall.

Hynix Semiconductor's board has approved the issuance of 557.9 billion won in five-year convertible bonds to secure operating funds and expand production capacity.

Micron officials did not return phone calls to the Statesman, but Boise fire spokeswoman Lynn Hightower said regular operations at the Micron campus were not affected.

TSMC, working with ASML and Mapper, have developed a prototype multi-e-beam tool for semiconductor lithography, according to company CTO Jack Sun speaking to the International Electronics Forum 2010 in Dresden.

MEMC Electronic Materials will raise its prices for silicon wafers in both the second and third quarters by the "low- to mid-single digits." SEH, Sumco, Wacker and others are also believed to be raising their silicon wafer prices.

The 32GB model is being positioned for use as a boot drive for basic setups, whereas the the larger 256GB SSD is reccomended for use in more high-end systems.

GlobalFoundries, Samsung and TSMC appear to be engaged in a new capital spending race in an effort to gain share in current and future cycles. They will survive, observers said, adding that UMC and SMIC could hit the wall and/or may get acquired.

Research institute IMEC has appointed Kees Den Otter, former president of TSMC Europe, to the position of vice president of emerging business.

Company's E19 Series Offers Record Efficiency of 19 Percent or Greater

Amkor has posted profits of US$0.18 a share on revenues of US$646 million in the first quarter. The Street had been expecting US$0.20 and US$644.2 million. Amkor expects second-quarter revenues to be US$710-736 million, and profits of US$0.22-0.27 per share.

Spain is lancing an 18 billion-euro ($24 billion) investment bubble in solar energy that has boosted public liabilities, choking off new projects as it works to cut power prices and insulate itself from Greece's debt crisis.

Beijing residents and developers will be able to apply for government subsidies totaling 200 million yuan to install solar water-heating systems in residential and public buildings.

A new research report predicts that the number of solid-state drives (SSD) in enterprise servers and storage systems will explode over the next five years, increasing by a factor of 50.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has approved a controversial plan to build the nation's first offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound... The decision to build the 130 wind turbines has followed almost a decade of reviews, challenges and appeals at the local, state and federal level.

Xilinx has reported revenues of US$529.0 million for the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2010, up 3% sequentially and 34% on year. It expects sales for the current quarter to grow 5-9% sequentially.

Spansion has reported net profits of US$3.7 million for the first quarter, a return to profitability from net losses of US$512.6 million in the same quarter of 2009.

ARM CEO Warren East said the company was planning to hire about 100 more engineers in 2010 - the first headcount additions for four years - mainly to work on high-end processors that are used in smartphones and netbooks.

Apple has bought Intrinsity, the Texas-based chip outfit that (supposedly) played a role in the design of the chip driving the iPad.

Texas Instruments said it is ramping up a second phase of expansion at a factory near its Dallas headquarters. The expansion will double the plant's capacity to produce chips that go into products such as cell phones, computers and telecommunications equipment.

Infineon Technologies has raised its 2010 outlook for a second time this year on higher demand from automotive and industrial customers for chip cards and security applications. The chipmaker's fiscal second-quarter net income was 79 million euros (US$104.2 million) compared with net lossES of 239 million euros a year earlier.

Net income for the first quarter of 2010 was US$27.5 million, compared to net losses of US$51.1 million a year ago. "We were pleased with the successful ramp into high volume of new technologies such as embedded wafer-level ball-grid array (eWLB) and the continued growth of our business in advanced technologies such as hybrid flip-chip and wafer level packaging..."

Veeco Instruments, which makes equipment used to produce LEDs, solar cells and data storage, expects second-quarter earnings of US$0.78-0.90 a share, before items, on revenues of US$220-240 million.