China aims to bring online at least 1 gigawatt of solar power capacity annually from 2013 under its "Golden Sun" pilot program, aided by increases in subsidies to boost the domestic solar industry, the Ministry of Finance said

The milestone has been reached by an XT:870 and an XT:400 , which are in operation at two different customer sites in Asia and which have raised the bar for 300mm lithography productivity.

Infineon Technologies was sued by the insolvency administrator of Qimonda who filed an action in a Munich court seeking a liability judgment for an unspecified amount.

Rambus is giving out another round of subpoenas to all of its friends in the tech industry. Most interesting among the defendants perhaps is Nvidia, who only months ago signed a licensing agreement with Rambus to end an ITC blockade of its products.

Germany's environmental minister said he can't guarantee feed-in tariffs will continue, but scrapping them would play poorly at the polls.

Sharp will spend 15 billion yen to add a new assembly line for mass-producing highly efficient solar cells at its Sakai plant this fiscal year. The line will be able to churn out the equivalent of 200,000kw a year, driving up Sharp's total annual solar cell output capacity more than 20% to 1.07 million kilowatts.

Following the acquisition of Numonyx earlier this year, Micron Technology has reorganized its memory operations. The company has also recruited Tom Eby, a former executive vice president and chief marketing and sales officer at NOR rival Spansion.

Sony, Nikon and SanDisk have developed a new specification for CompactFlash memory cards that promises photographers the ability to continuously shoot high-quality RAW images. The proposed new format supports data transmission at up to 500MBps, according to their joint statement.

IBM seems to be shifting away from semiconductor manufacturing, and planning to rely on Samsung and GlobalFoundries as foundry suppliers. Both foundries are set to have wafer fabs for foundry operations in the US, which could help cement relations.

Tesla has incorporated Infineon's power semiconductors in its battery-powered Roadster, and is also testing them for its Model S, which is scheduled to begin production in 2012, according to Infineon spokesperson Christian Hoenicke.

STATS ChipPAC announced it has shipped over 100 million semiconductor packages with copper wire bond interconnect, and expects copper wire bond production volume to grow another 75% by the end of 2010 due to a rapidly growing customer base.

Altera, which along with competitor Xilinx dominates the programmable logic chips market, said it was increasing its 2011 R&D budget by 26% to US$330 million as it introduces a new generation of chips. It will ship a 28nm microchip in the first quarter, and announce more 28nm chip families during 2011.

Device fingerprinting, or collecting digital identifiers from computers, cellphones and TV set-top boxes, is emerging as the latest tool for companies who sell the information to advertisers willing to pay for granular data about people's interests and activities.

For 2011, the fab tool growth will be driven by foundry and NAND to offset a "pause in DRAM" ...

Applied Materials and Samsung Electronics have reached a settlement agreement that resolves potential civil claims and removes the risk of civil litigation between the parties relating to the alleged acquisition, misappropriation and misuse of Samsung's confidential semiconductor information in Korea.

More Americans went shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend than in recent memory, and online shopping accounted for the highest percentage of the weekend's sales yet.

"Compared with its peer, Nanya Technology, which saw lukewarm demand and was undersubscribed in a mid--November offering, issued at par, too, we don't see significant upside potential to Elpida's planned TDRs," Primasia Investment Consultancy Co said in a client note.

Over the past five years, ST has reduced the size of MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes from more than 500mm3 to less than 10mm3 while increasing resolution, accuracy, temperature stability and reducing power consumption by a factor 10.

Verigy has reported a profit for the August-October period, as higher sales of semiconductor test systems helped it come back from a loss a year earlier. The company's guidance fell short of Wall Street's expectations, however.

Samsung Electronics has said its new SSD with built-in hardware encryption provides the highest level of protection against unauthorized access to sensitive information on a lost or stolen laptop.

Integrated Silicon Solution (ISSI) has announced that it is working with Micron Technology to become an alternate supplier of Micron's third-generation reduced-latency DRAM (RLDRAM 3 memory).

Micron and SanDisk are chief competitors of South Korean chip giants Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor in the memory-processor market.

China will make energy saving a compulsory target, establishing carbon trading markets and green taxes.

The semiconductor sector of Abu Dhabi's economy is set to pump US$4 billion into the capital, creating up to 6,000 new employment positions in Abu Dhabi over the next decade, according to industry insiders.

Micron Technology is investing US$56 million to expand its Manassas facility and bring 123 new jobs to the area, Virginia officials said Tuesday.

Shares of SanDisk jumped Monday after a Robert W. Baird analyst upgraded the stock, projecting better prices for the company's flash memory cards heading into next year. The analyst even predicted there could be NAND shortages in the second half of 2011.

With this arrangement, Samsung Electronics gains access to Intellectual Ventures' patent portfolio, which includes IP in a variety of segments "critical" to Samsung's business operations.

"Capex will go up when our customers see the potential of the market. It will go down when it's not there. Every discussion we've had with customers indicates capex will not go down (next year)," ASML CFO Wennink said.

The investment will be spent by the end of December, the company told the stock exchange.