Most of the hand-wringing over the fate of Moore's Law focuses on the ever-shrinking silicon transistor. But increasingly researchers are concerned with another critical part of the infrastructure: the copper wires that connect individual transistors to form complex circuits.

How will this affect Samsung's businesses? For the time being, they seem to flourish or flounder no matter who the company's titular leader is.

Toshiba wants to pick the preferred bidder or bidders for a majority stake in its chip unit by the end of May and will hold the first round of bids next month, a source with knowledge of the plan said.

Toshiba has asked potential bidders for its memory chip business to peg the operations' value at JPY2 trillion (US$17.6 billion) or more, aiming to maximize income from the sale of its crown jewel.

Toshiba is looking to raise at least JPY1 trillion (US$8.8 billion) from the sale of its memory chip business and will aim to complete the transaction by March 2018, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Despite the calamities surrounding Samsung's heir apparent Lee Jae-Yong right now, the shareholders of Harman International have voted to approve the company's merger with Samsung Electronics.

Samsung hopes to avoid another disastrous recall by adding a third battery supplier for its new smartphone.

An upcoming Apple iPhone is likely to have a customized wireless charging system made with Broadcom, according to JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur.

Infineon does not expect to be able to salvage its $850 million purchase of Cree's Wolfspeed Power, which is under US scrutiny over unspecified government security concerns, the German chipmaker said on Thursday.

TetraVue, a company setting out to arm autonomous cars with ultra high-resolution 3D image-capturing smarts, announced it has raised $10 million from Robert Bosch Venture Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Foxconn.

Apple will in the coming months start assembling its lower-priced iPhone SE models at a contract manufacturer's plant in the southern Indian technology hub of Bengaluru, an industry source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Friday.

Apple's widely expected 5.8-inch iPhone with an edge-to-edge OLED display will feature a front-facing 3D laser scanner for facial recognition, corroborating previous rumors, according to JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall.

For what Intel's data center chief Diane Bryant called the upcoming "10nm+" node, as well as the 7nm manufacturing node to follow, Intel's data center chips will be first on those lines.

Toshiba may delay the sale of its prized flash-memory chip unit after the conglomerate said it would consider selling most, even all, of the marquee business, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Micron no longer expects DRAM prices to increase in H2 of this year and 2018.

This amended complaint also expands the accused products to include the Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus which use Intel's PMB5750 transceiver chip, which is based on Intel's SMARTi architecture.

An Apple patent grant on Tuesday suggests the company is looking to leverage its LuxVue acquisition to integrate display technology capable of reading a user's fingerprint without a dedicated sensor, a design feature rumored to see release with "iPhone 8."

Intel's Atom C2000 processor family has a fault that effectively bricks devices, costing the company a significant amount of money to correct. But the semiconductor giant won't disclose precisely how many chips are affected nor which products are at risk.

Researchers at MIT have developed a low-power chip specialized for automatic speech recognition that could result in a power savings of up to 99%.

Apple is in discussions with China's BOE Technology to supply next-generation displays for future iPhones, a key component that's being provided by a Samsung Electronics unit, people familiar with the matter said.

After a day of delays and confusion, Japan's Toshiba said on Tuesday it expected to book a $6.3 billion hit to its US nuclear unit, a writedown that wipes out its shareholder equity and will drag the group to a full-year loss.

Toshiba has delayed its earnings announcement, planned for Tuesday, after it was not able to immediately secure the approval of its auditor, a source briefed on the matter said.

Sony has announced the development of the industry's first 3-layer stacked CMOS image sensor with DRAM for smartphones.

As if the earlier reports suggesting 10 million Galaxy S8 shipments wasn't sufficient that a new one pops up claiming that Samsung is aiming to ramp up production to bring that grand total up to an unbelievable 17 million units.

When Intel added a third 14nm chip 2015, signalling the end of the company's vaunted "tick-tock" manufacturing process, the industry freaked out. A fourth, then, would be absolutely unprecedented.

The British company that designs iPhone microchips has posted a huge rise in sales in the first quarter since it was acquired by the Japanese tech giant SoftBank.

If Qualcomm sold its baseband processors at approx. $20 per unit and collected or demanded royalties from Apple amounting to more or less the same amount, that would correspond to $40 per iPhone (or cellular iPad).

Osram is focusing the business on semiconductors after the German Economy Ministry signed off on the sale of Ledvance to a Chinese consortium. After the disposal, the company's portfolio will center on automotive lighting as well as sensors and specialty LEDs.

TSMC's paper described a test chip that could pass for a commercial part and said it had "healthy" yields. Samsung described its use of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to repair what was clearly a research device, suggesting what it will call 7nm could still be years away.

Toshiba wants investment funds including Bain Capital to buy a stake in its flash memory business rather than industry peers such as Micron Technology because doing so will speed up the planned sale, a source said.

Austrian chip maker AMS said on Tuesday it saw potential for strong revenue growth in 2017 helped by its acquisition of optical sensor maker Heptagon in Singapore, sending it shares up nearly 19%.

"China will find it very tough to buy US high-tech companies and difficult to leverage Chinese joint ventures or wholly-owned enterprises to access key US intellectual property," Andrew Lu wrote in a Jan. 10 report for Smartkarma. "We thus expect more senior Taiwan veterans to join China's semiconductor industry as a second wave of talent moves to China."

Nexperia is NXP's former Standard Products division which was sold to Chinese financial investors JAC Capital and Wise Road Capital for $2.75 billion last June. The company is a leader in discretes, logic and MOSFETs.

The agreement covers the use of Rambus patented memory solutions, including server DIMM chipsets, for Winbond products through 2021.

Toshiba has received bids from South Korea's SK Hynix, Taiwan's Foxconn, private equity fund Silver Lake and at least three other groups for a minority stake in its profitable memory chip business, according to people close to the negotiations.

South Korea's SK Hynix has entered the running for a stake in Toshiba's memory chip business, seeing an opportunity to gain on rivals in the booming NAND market, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are expected to engage in the automotive semiconductor industry in earnest as the global market is expected to grow 7.1% annually by 2020.

AMD has filed a legal complaint against a number of companies accusing them of infringing its patents covering graphics processing technologies.

Samsung Electronics is discussing a supply deal with Japan's Murata Manufacturing for batteries for its next-generation smartphone.