Earlier this week Samsung unveiled the new processor for smartphones, tablets and netbooks, which is codenamed Orion. Analysts at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) said our "checks suggest that this processor also uses ARM GPU".

Anadigics has announced that its AWT6264 power amplifier drives the WiMAX connectivity in Samsung's recently-released Epic 4G handset.

Arm Holdings has taken the wraps off its next major chip design, promising a five-fold increase in performance that the company hopes will take it beyond smartphones and into new types of equipment such as high-performance routers and servers.

Don't look now, but a fab tool downturn could be on the horizon.

Silicon Valley may be an epicenter of the nascent electric car industry, but don't expect the battery revolution to mimic the computer revolution, one of IBM's top energy storage scientists advises.

ARM has reiterated that it wouldn't make sense for a rival to purchase the company after shares rose on takeover speculation.

The cells make use of proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do work. The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry, could lead to much longer-lasting solar cells

"It's difficult to set a clear plan for the coming year 2011, but we're considering around 30 trillion won [in investments]," Samsung Electronics CEO Choi Gee-sung told reporters on the sidelines of consumer-electronics show IFA on September 3.

"We believe Globalfoundries will continue to ramp capacity over the next few quarters despite a weakening macro environment," said an analyst with Needham & Co. LLC, in a report. "We estimate Globalfoundries' capex will grow from about US$2.6 billion in 2010 to US$3.0-4.0 billion in 2011..."

Memristors made from pure silicon could enable resistive random access memory (ReRAM) that are simpler and cheaper to manufacture than Hewlett-Packard's titanium-based formulation, according to researchers at Rice University.

LDK Solar said it has filed a lawsuit against solar module maker Canadian Solar demanding compensation from contract termination.

IBM has announced details of what it claims is the world's fastest computer chip - the microprocessor in a new version of the IBM mainframe that begins shipping to customers on September 10.

China Power Investment Corp has won bids for seven of the thirteen solar concession projects, China Securities Journal reported, without saying where it got the information.

Globalfoundries and Freescale Semiconductor have jointly announced plans to bring a new class of thin film storage (TFS) flash memory products to market on 90nm technology.

Sematech has announced the completion of its 300mm 3D IC pilot line. Operating at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering's (CNSE) Albany NanoTech Complex, the pilot line includes all processes and test vehicles necessary to demonstrate the viability of the via-mid technology in conjunction with advanced CMOS.

GCL-Poly, in which China's sovereign wealth fund holds a stake, signed an agreement with DelSolar to supply 664MW of wafers to the Taiwanese solar-cell maker.

Rather than install racking systems to hold heavy glass-covered solar panels, the company's PowerFlex BIPV modules can be adhered onto a roof or built right into roofing materials. The modules are quicker to installer, lighter, and don't require any penetrations into the roof, according to the company.

"Never stop thinking" - the Infineon claim that employees once revised to "Never stop shrinking." That was five years ago, when Infineon spun off memory-chip unit Qimonda.

There appears to be a sudden slowdown in the cell-phone, LCD, LED, PC and other product segments - a trend that impacts chipmakers. And chip inventories are on the rise. Still, VLSI Research has raised its chip and fab tool forecasts for 2010.

Two Russian tech companies, preparing to launch domestic microchip production in partnership with STMicroelectronics, are lobbying the state to ban imports of similar products, according to local newspapers.

It looks like we should expect frequencies introduced at 2,133MHz and it will scale to over 4.2GHz with DDR4.

As analyst Simon Dong-je Woo notes in a research report, TLC NAND pricing is down about 20% already in the current quarter. And he also reports that SanDisk has more exposure to TLC NAND than other players in the sector, accounting for 65% of the company's overall NAND chip sales.

STATS ChipPAC also indicated it is actively developing next-generation eWLB technology to enable larger package sizes, higher I/O density and 3D PoP solutions to address a wider application market.

Shares of OmniVision Technologies jumped on August 27, a day after the maker of image sensor devices for digital cameras, mobile phones, computer Webcams and other consumer electronics posted a strong outlook for the current quarter, which ends in October.

Looks like Intel is getting serious about competing with mobile chip vendors, ranging from applications chip makers such as Marvell to intellectual property companies such as ARM.

Samsung has seen its semiconductor revenues rise at CAGR of 13.5% from 1999-2009, while Intel's sales have increased at a CAGR of just 3.4% in the same period. Extrapolating these growth rates, Samsung would pass Intel in semiconductor sales in 2014, according to IC Insights.

Suntech Power China's largest maker of solar panels, said on Thursday that it has signed a deal to develop solar plants in South Africa with up to 100 megawatts in capacity.

The next big play in broadband is delivering carrier services to multiple consumer devices in the home over a variety of wired and wireless networks. So chipmakers need to be able to provide a portfolio of Wi-Fi, powerline and coax solutions for STBs, gateways and other devices.

OCZ Technology is discontinuing the production of some lower-margin DRAM products as part of a shift to focus on higher-margin specialty and high-performance memory products.

The report comes out after a similar study has been commissioned by Samsung Electronics, which itself has faced complaints that unusual clusters of cancers have occurred at its semiconductor factory in Gi-Heung, south of Seoul.

China-based Hanvon has selected Freescale Semiconductor's i.MX51 applications processor for its next-generation e-reader products.

Renesas Electronics has agreed to sell some of its semiconductor-related patents to US-based Acacia Research, according to the company.

Net revenues were $370.8 million, an increase of 10.1% sequentially and 147.2% year-over-year.

Hans Mosesmann, an analyst at Raymond James Associates Inc., talks about the outlook for Nvidia Corp.

A conversation on August 20 with Joseph Sawicki, VP and GM of the Mentor Graphics Corp.'s Design to Silicon Division, provided a snapshot of the conundra facing foundries and EDA vendors as they approach sub-20nm process geometries. The landscape is filled with uncertainties, Sawicki warned, but there is no time left to wait for resolution.