The original goal was two fabs and after the latest chip initiative was formed two years ago, it managed to finally shortlist two consortia to set up chip fabrication units in the country.

The two companies have reached an agreement to share patents for chipmaking technologies.

With Toshiba's existing chip facilities now running at full capacity, the company may spend some of a 38% hike in its capex budget this year on extending a factory, the company's incoming president, Hisao Tanaka, said in a recent interview.

Toshiba also may be among the initial customers since the three companies partner with SK Hynix on the development of resistive random access memory, or ReRam.

The July order for Galaxy S4 parts is for 6.5 million handsets, which is only about a half of the same order placed for May.

Chipmaker Qualcomm is now Sharp's third-largest shareholder following the completion of a US$120 million investment in the ailing electronics firm.

The cost of designing system-on-chip silicon at 28nm went up by 78% over the previous node, but the software cost was larger and more than doubled.

Qualcomm has expanded its entry-level offerings with the addition of six new processors to its Snapdragon 200 class, featuring dual- and quad-core CPUs. The new Snapdragon 200 processors are manufactured on a 28nm process technology and feature key modem technologies that are important in China and emerging regions, including support for HSPA+ (up to 21Mbps) and TD-SCDMA.

A lack of new licensing agreements triggered a 7% fall in adjusted pre-tax profits last financial year, and analysts have suggested that the company, whose designs are used to make graphics-processing chips used in mobile devices, could be volnerable to increased competition from US rivals Qualcomm and Nvidia.

"Our checks indicated that Samsung planned to increase the 28nm node starts to a target level of 40,000-50,000 wpm in September, from 6,000 to 7,000 in May. But our recent checks are indicating that the semi material suppliers have been recently caught off guard with a sudden change of production plans at this site."

Nvidia on Tuesday said it would begin licensing its GPU cores and "visual computing" patent portfolio to device manufacturers - a new business model for the company. The technology could appear in a full range of products from phones to supercomputers, with products likely emerging in 2015.

Both Toshiba and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have developed mask read-only memories (MROMs) that can offer greater data density by storing multiple bits per cell.

AMD plans to sample its first ARM-based processors for servers early next year, alongside paired CPUs and integrated graphics cores in an attempt to oust Intel's Xeon from its dominance in the server market.

Globalfoundries and Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics announced that Rockchip's next-generation mobile processors are ramping to production on Globalfoundries' 28nm HKMG process technology.

Toshiba has expanded its package line-up of interface-converter bridge LSIs for high resolution LCD display that are used in tablets, Ultrabooks and other applications.

Infineon Technologies has settled its patent infringement claim against Atmel, and both Infineon and Atmel have agreed to seek dismissal of all pending patent infringement claims.

SK Hynix has signed a five-year licensing deal worth US$240 million to settle an ongoing patent infringement lawsuit brought against it by intellectual property licensing firm Rambus.

Japan's NHK network is scheduled to broadcast an animated documentary on TSMC at midnight Thursday, with TSMC's chairman and CEO, Morris Chang, depicted by the fictional character Shima Kosaku.

Contract chipmaker Globalfoundries will spend US$4.5 billion to boost production capacity in 2013, anticipating a burst in orders for chips used in low-cost smartphones.

Qualcomm has expanded its Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors portfolio to include support for Microsoft Windows RT 8.1.

IC Insights has lowered its 2013 IC market growth forecast 1pp to 5%.

Samsung Electronics has chosen an Intel processor to power a new version of one of its top-tier Android tablets, a source with knowledge of the plans told Reuters.

ST-Ericsson, which focuses on mobile and wireless chips, announced the sale on Tuesday without naming the buyer. An Intel spokesman later said the US chipmaker bought the assets.

Worldwide semiconductor revenues decreased by 2.2% to US$295 billion in 2012, according to IDC.

This is the second major project driven by the government of Taiwan that relies on security chips from Infineon: more than 25 million pieces have already been shipped for the electronic health cards of the Taiwan Health Care Project.

Toshiba said it will soon begin mass producing a new type of 64Gbit NAND flash that is the smallest and fastest in its class, though it still lags rival Samsung Electronics in the development of an even denser flash technology.

RFMD will phase out manufacturing in its UK-based GaAs pHEMT facility and transition most GaAs manufacturing to its GaAs HBT manufacturing facility in Greensboro, NC. RFMD will also partner with leading GaAs HBT foundries for additional capacity.

Samsung Electronics ranked first in terms of production of sub 28-32 nanometer chip foundry in the first quarter of the year, data showed on Monday.

It may seem strange but Chinese chip vendor Allwinner Technologies (Zhuhai, China) probably sold more application processors for tablet computers in 2012 than Intel and Qualcomm put together.

Imec and Renesas Electronics have entered into a new strategic research collaboration at Holst Centre. Together, the companies will collaborate to enhance ultra-low power (ULP) wireless technologies for short range communication, targeting sensor networks for automotive and industrial purposes.

IC Insights forecasts that in 2017, fabless IC companies will command at least one-third (33%) of the total IC market.

Rubinstein's experience at a handset vendor, as well as at a large computing company like HP, will help Qualcomm with its strategy.