Panasonic, which runs a hybrid and electric car battery joint venture with Toyota, has secured a controlling stake in rechargeable battery maker Sanyo.

The sector's recovery depends on what happens at the global climate change summit taking place in Copenhagen and incentives for the renewable resource in China, according to Mark Pinto, CTO and general manager of Applied's Energy and Environmental Solutions group.

Elpida Memory may post its first annual operating profit in three years as growth in demand outpaces industry production, according to company CEO Yukio Sakamoto.

Hynix Semiconductor plans to invest about 2.3 trillion won (about US$2 billion) in its semiconductor business – 1.5 trillion won in DRAM and 800 billion won in NAND flash memory and logic – in 2010, a 130% jump from one trillion won this year.

Xilinx and Altera, which together control more than 85% of the programmable logic market, are poised to grow twice as fast as the broader semiconductor industry going forward, according to a Wall Street analyst.

Europe's top antitrust regulator agreed to end its investigation of memory chip maker Rambus on December 9, after the firm agreed to change the way it licenses its industry-standard technology.

Hynix is slated to boost its production capacity of NAND flash memory at its 12-inch, Cheongju fab (M11) to 90,000 wafers per month in 2010 from the current level of 45,000 units, according to industry sources.

Samsung doesn't get it. The foundry sector is a service business. It has nothing to do with churning out cheap and simple commodities like memories.

EDA vendors Mentor Graphics and Magma Design Automation have both reported quarterly revenues that exceeded Wall Street estimates and their own sales targets, but offered outlooks for the current quarter that fell short of analysts' expectations.

This project seeks to optimize the patterning process from design to manufacturing, extend characterization tools and methods to develop new correction and compensation techniques for reducing variability. The project will also explore lithography options for manufacturing complex chips at sub-30nm nodes.

Rambus has announced that Samsung Electronics will offer a 1Gb XDR DRAM memory device, which will broaden the availability of XDR technology for gaming, computing and consumer electronics applications.

"DRAM revenues historically fall by 20% in the first quarter, but I don't think it will fall that much in 2010...," said Hynix CEO Kim Jong-Kap on the sidelines of semiconductor equipment trade show Semicon Japan.

"The group's top decision makers have reached a broad consensus that more measures would be needed to nurture future growth engines. But that doesn't necessarily mean LG will participate in an auction next month," an LG representative said. Despite such internal views, market analysts say LG could be the "right buyer" for Hynix.

The fall in cost is due to the increased lifetime, according to the independent EU Energy Institute.

Samsung Electronics plans to invest around seven trillion won (US$6.05 billion) in its semiconductor business for 2010 - five trillion won in DRAM and two trillion won in NAND flash memory and system LSI, according to industry sources.

Spansion has announced its MirrorBit flash memory is now available as a verified configuration solution for the new Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA family.

"Apple has asked Korean semiconductor makers to produce a certain amount of chips for its digital products, only to actually purchase a smaller volume eventually. The company doesn't make immediate purchases, but waits until chip prices to fall to the level it internally targets..."

Passenger car sales at Ford Motor's China joint venture will likely rise by close to 50% in 2009, partly due to government incentives for purchases of small vehicles, according to Nigel Harris, general manager of the joint venture.

OCZ said it will demonstrate an external hard drive at the CES show in Las Vegas. The drive uses Symwave's USB 3.0 storage controller and will deliver 10 times the transfer rate of USB 2.0 - which transfers data at 5Gb/s.

The Portuguese DRAM test and assembly operation subsidiary of insolvent Qimonda has been offered a financial life line and is taking on a new name, according to local reports.

"Once the STT-MRAM is developed, South Korea may be able to control roughly 45% of the 30nm type memory chip market by 2015..."