Hedge fund Jana Partners said in April Qualcomm should spin off the chip business from its patent-licensing business to improve shareholder value, calling the chip business "essentially worthless".

Samsung Electronics recently signed a new SSD supply contract for its 256GB SSDs to be used in the laptops of major suppliers such as Apple and Microsoft.

Intel's Cannonlake, originally slated for 2016 and later 2017, is now on hold indefinitely. Instead, Intel's current processors - of the Skylake platform - will be succeeded by the less drastic Kaby Lake platform.

A former executive vice president at Qualcomm was sentenced Friday to 18 months in prison and fined $500,000 on charges related to a three-year-long insider trading scheme.

Micron Technology said it expects a further decline in prices of chips used in personal computers, and forecast revenue for the current quarter well below market estimates.

The government is telling local companies and Chinese news media that it plans to invest as much as 1 trillion yuan ($161 billion) over 10 years to develop chips, about as much as Intel spends per decade on facilities and research and development.

Toshiba's chief executive fought back against shareholder calls for his resignation, promising an overhaul of a corporate culture that had overlooked accounting malpractices for years until they were revealed by a whistleblower.

The Japanese company's Synergy Platform joins similar efforts by such vendors as Intel, ARM, Broadcom and MediaTek.

The bidding war for Integrated Silicon Solution (ISSI) intensified with rival chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor further sweetening its offer to US$22.60 per share.

Apple has renewed its exclusive rights to use Liquidmetal Technologies' unique metal alloys in its line of products, according to a document filed today with the SEC. The new agreement extends Apple's relationship with Liquidmetal Technologies until February 5, 2016.

American chip manufacturers argue that, without the trade deal, they will be squeezed out of the growing Asian market for computer chips by competitors in countries like China.

Silicon-based nanowire transistors (NWTs)-otherwise known as gate-all-around transistors-are getting ready to replace FinFETs at the 7nm or 5nm integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing nodes, according to experts in the field.

The US International Trade Commission staff is recommending that Samsung Electronics and Qualcomm be cleared of patent-infringement accusations brought by Nvidia.

Applied Micro Circuits recently appointed hedge fund manager Christopher Zepf as one of its board of directors, which has led many to believe that perhaps the company might soon present itself for sale.

The design center will focus on the development of leading edge technologies targeting 4G/5G protocols and the Internet of Things.

Any split of AMD would result in two smaller companies, heavily interdependent, taking on larger, entrenched, and determined competitors.

Goldman analysts added that they expect DRAM prices to drop 30% over the next three quarters.

Samsung Electronics has asked that a full bench of an appeals court should review a damages award in a long-standing patent infringement dispute with arch-rival Apple.

The proximate source of a lot of this pressure is China, say SouthBay Economics' Andrew Zatlin. Semiconductors are suffering a fallout stemming from China's slowing economy just like other commodities have.

Intel's CEO, Brian Krzanich, made his commitment to wearable technology very clear shortly after assuming his current role in 2013.

Pricing of DRAM, based on his "checks" with entities in Taiwan, is weak in PC, servers, and in graphics applications, writes Moore.

Chip makers are feeling pressures to find new sales, including by merging with rivals, amid declines in some businesses such as personal computers and rising expectations for margin growth.

Demand for semiconductors continued to weaken in the second quarter with some PC assemblers in Asia suggesting a decline in purchases of some parts of as much as 15-20% from the second quarter of 2014, according to a report from Wall Street analysts at Deutsche Bank.

Facebook showed the world its first commercial version of virtual reality on Thursday - and offered tantalizing hints of how it hopes to turn three-dimensional goggles into a new kind of computing and communications device.

Meng has 30 years of telecommunications experience, eight of those with Qualcomm, which included serving as senior vice president and president of Qualcomm Greater China from 2008 to 2010.

Integrated Silicon Solution (ISSI) has finalized a definitive agreement to be acquired by Cypress Semiconductor for US$20.25 per share in cash, according to the fabless memory supplier.

In the data center, where Intel has handily trounced AMD in sales of server microprocessors, there is still a need for x86-compatible chips, of which AMD holds the only cards outside Intel. That could make AMD a target in the data center for Xilinx or for Chinese state-owned investment vehicles.

Cypress Semiconductor's latest acquisition ambitions have been stopped due to anti-trust concerns.

Applied Materials announced that its board of directors has elected Willem Roelandts as chairman effective immediately. Roelandts succeeds Michael Splinter, who has retired from the board.

Synopsys has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Atrenta, a privately held provider of SoC realization solutions for the semiconductor and consumer electronics industries.

Toshiba and Microsoft have announced that the two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to jointly develop solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT).

According to industry sources, SK Hynix will start processing 20-nano wafers for mass production from next month, and start the full-fledged production of 20-nano class DRAM in July.

MagnaChip Semiconductor now offers a new 0.18-micron Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) 100V high voltage process. This new process features operability up to 100V for various applications that include DC-DC converters, Power-over-Ethernet, LED drivers, motor drivers, audio amps and PMICs.

Rohm has moved to acquire a 200mm wafer fab from Renesas Electronics for JPY450 million (US$3.7 million).

A new low-power, high-speed memory technology on the horizon could replace solid-state drives, hard drives and DRAM in PCs, and bring higher levels of storage capacity to mobile devices and wearables.

But company officials and market experts say if the two raise their production capacity, the long-term supply growth will remain constrained due to technological complexity.

Altera has been a key customer at TSMC for years, especially at the advanced tech node, accounting for around 3% of TSMC's revenue at 20/28 nodes.