The company will ship the dual-core QSD8672 chip with CPU cores running at up to 1.5GHz, said Mark Frankel, vice president of product management for Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. The chip could go into smartphones, tablets and low-cost laptops, he said.

The OMAP4430 chip will deliver double the performance of existing single-core chips from the OMAP3 family. This will allow applications to run faster on mobile devices, said Robert Tolbert, director of product management for the OMAP smartphone business at TI.

Spansion on August 6 filed three complaints against Samsung, alleging patent violations in a broad range of Samsung flash memory products that go into devices like tablets and smartphones. A Spansion spokesman declined to comment on which products those may be. However, Apple's iPad and iPhone 4 use Samsung flash memory.

Samsung started a 30MW solar cell production line for research and development last September and will incrementally increase capacity to 130MW next year, company spokesman James Chung said today.

...and if Apple misses out, it will likely never get another chance to acquire the wireless technology necessary to do so because the entire mobile component value-chain is consolidating and the remaining players are giants.

Hynix will pay an estimated US$422.89 million for the 19.3% stake in the China-based joint venture, Hynix-Numonyx Semiconductor, according to Micron.

Chip equipment maker UMS, which counts Applied Materials as its biggest client, will boost capacity utilisation to 85% in the third quarter from 65% in a booming industry.

It took firefighters from Boise about a half an hour to put out the fire, which broke out in a building that helps support the company's development of solar panels.

A new solar energy capture technology is able to generate electricity from light and heat at the same time, producing double the efficiency of existing solar panels.

Infineon Technologies is in discussions with interested parties about a transaction concerning the segment Wireless Solutions (WLS), according to the company.

Rambus has introduced a high-performance, low-cost DDR3 memory controller for HDTVs, Blu-ray players and digital set-top boxes.

[A] team of researchers at MIT has found that silicon, the most widely used material for computer chips and solar cells, can exhibit "retrograde melting" when it contains high concentrations of certain metals dissolved in it. This could make it possible to produce some silicon-based devices, such as solar cells, using a less pure, and therefore less expensive, grade of silicon that would be purified during the manufacturing process.

Robert Krakauer succeeds Bruce McDougall, CFO of Globalfoundries since the company's launch in March 2009. McDougall will assume a new role as CFO of ATIC, the majority shareholder of Globalfoundries.

IC Insights' recently updated Strategic Reviews Online database shows that most large memory and foundry companies performed extremely well in 1H10.

Freescale Semiconductor may file to sell shares in an initial public offering by the end of 2010, according to two people briefed on the plan.

Micron Technology has confirmed its support for the phase-change memory product line and R&D inherited when it acquired Numonyx in May 2010. But a company executive declined to give further details of its technology roadmap or how it plans to scale the technology below the 45nm node.

Net income for the second quarter of 2010 was US$37.3 million, compared to US$2.2 million a year ago. Revenues grew by 35.7% to US$435.3 million.

APT has developed ways to improve the quality of audio delivered over bluetooth wireless connections. Its technologies are also widely used in professional audio and broadcasting.

The US$72 billion increase in 2010 would equate to a growth rate of 30% over 2009. This 30% jump would be the sixth largest in the past 32 years and the highest since the 37% increase 10 years ago in 2000.

Samsung Electronics has commented that DRAM prices are expected to fall in the third quarter of 2010, and drop further in the fourth.

Renesas Electronics has announced it will cut about 5,000 jobs mostly in the current fiscal year and completed by March 2013. It also revealed plans to use outside foundries on all of its 28nm and smaller geometry semiconductor products.

Sharp said it made a group net profit of 10.69 billion yen (US$122.2 million) in the April-June quarter, reversing from a 25.2 billion yen net loss in the same period a year earlier.

MEMC, which makes wafers for computer chips and silicon for solar cells, said it earned US$13.8 million, or 6 cents per share, up from US$1.4 million, or a penny per share, during the same period last year.

Panasonic has placed a 820 billion yen (US$9.5 billion) bet on the future of green energy by offering to buy out minority shareholders in two subsidiaries specialising in rechargeable batteries, solar cells and other environmental technology.

Japan's Sharp is investing almost 4 billion yen (US$46 million) at a plant in Britain to double production of solar cell modules to meet growing demand across Europe.

"Apple and other OEMs have procured large volumes of flash, which has forced others to double book in order to get some of the allocation. This action cascaded into other markets especially NOR and serial NOR, where they became supply constrained and prices rose..."

Toshiba has posted its second straight quarterly profit on rising chip demand, beating analyst estimates for a loss.

The new e-book reader has a 15.24 cm display panel and a 10 cm square solar panel; impressively, the solar cell measures just 0.7mm in thickness, thus obtaining the relatively light weight of 20 grams.

One particular type of fly eye has just the right shape that could be perfect for manufacturing efficient solar cells.

Renesas Electronics is cutting nearly 10% of its 50,000 employees by the end of 2010 as it outsources production, according to a Nikkei report.

Automobile demand in Japan and elsewhere has outpaced chip supplies from STMicroelectronics, a Hitachi spokesman said, adding that Nissan had not asked Hitachi for compensation for the disruption.

In the three months ended June 30, Infineon swung to a net profit of 126 million euros (US$164 million) from a loss of 24 million euros in the same period a year ago. The firm has raised its full-year outlook, expecting revenues to grow at least 40% in fiscal 2010 compared to the previous year.

Chip equipment maker Veeco Instruments has posted a second-quarter profit that surpassed Wall Street expectations, helped by strong LED and solar orders, and forecast a strong third quarter.

ARM, the UK's largest technology company by market value, declined to raise its full-year 2010 outlook in spite of beating market expectations with its first-half results.