Qualcomm has entered into a collaborative agreement with the global consortium of chipmakers. As the first fabless chip company to join Sematech, Qualcomm plans to participate in a high-level engagement to assess the feasibility of technologies that are designed to extend Moore's Law.

Just once, it would be nice if a president would level with Americans on energy. Barack Obama isn't that president.

ARM is more valuable as a standalone company and a buyer would be wasting money, said company CEO Warren East. The chip designer rose last week to an eight-year high on takeover talk.

When compared to carbon-intensive electricity sources such as coal, which supplies 45 percent of U.S. electricity, a significant role for PV technology in the energy mix may have a difficult road ahead.

SunEdison, a division of MEMC Electronic Materials,has purchased two ground-mount solar PV development projects in Ontario from TransAlta, Canada's largest publicly traded generator and marketer of electricity and renewable power.

Infineon has hired JPMorgan to sound out a possible sale of its wireless business. People close to the situation said at least one possible buyer had approached the German chipmaker.

A Wolfson audio chip is included in Samsung's soon to be released smartphones, Wave and Galaxy S. Edinburgh-based Wolfson Microelectronics makes microchips for mobile phones, TVs and gaming consoles.

Hynix Semiconductor has said it would invest 456 billion won (US$373.4 million) to boost and upgrade its production capacity.

Korea Finance, a state-run financing group, plans to provide more than US$80bn in policy loans over the next five years to support Seoul's push into strategic industries such as renewable energy and nuclear power plants.

Altera has announced it is shipping in production the highest density member of its 40nm Stratix IV FPGA family. Featuring 820K logic elements, the device is for a variety of high-end applications including ASIC prototyping and emulation, wireless, wireline, military, computer and storage.

According to Semiconductor Industry Capacity Statistics (SICAS), total industry IC capacity dropped 2.9% in the first quarter of 2010 from the prior quarter.

Samsung Electronics' foundry business, Samsung Foundry, has qualified 32nm low-power (LP) process with high-k metal gate (HKMG) technology. The process has successfully completed reliability testing at Samsung Foundry's 300mm logic fabrication line in Giheung and is now ready for production of customer designs.

The drive is available in 8GB and 16GB capacities, carrying suggested retail prices of US$34.99 and US$69.99, respectively.

An Abu Dhabi state-owned company on Wednesday announced plans for the biggest single solar power plant in the world, as the emirate tries to diversify energy supplies from oil.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington has rescheduled hearings for Oct. 7. Rambus has been involved in long-standing disputes with Hynix and Micron over patent infringement as well as antitrust issues.

"The acquisition of Sound Design Technologies solidifies our position as a leading supplier of ultra-low-power digital signal processing (DSP) technology for hearing aids and audio processing applications," said Robert Tong, VP of ON Semiconductor's Medical Division.

German solar energy company Q-Cells SE (QCE.XE) raised prices for its key products in the second quarter due to higher material costs and can't rule out further price hikes, said Chief Executive Officer Nedim Cen.

Samsung Electronics has said due to projected heavy demand for its advanced logic chips, it will invest US$3.6 billion to expand capacity at its plant in Austin, Texas, and hire 500 more workers there by 2011.

Altera now expects second-quarter revenues to be at the high end of previous guidance, growing 10-12% sequentially.

TI now expects profits of US$0.60-0.64 per share in the current quarter. Revenue should be US$3.45-3.59 billion.

Creditors rescued Hynix after it almost collapsed in 2001 under the weight of its debts. However, they have since struggled to find a local strategic buyer for Hynix, having excluded foreigners from the auction because of worries about sensitive technology information leaking outside of the country.

Anteryon, which makes wafer-based, miniature optical modules for mobile phone cameras and laser projection, has drawn investment from Qualcomm.

At the beginning of this year, it was clear that only a few companies would spend more than US$1 billion each in 2010. This has suddenly changed: some companies have announced record levels of capex plans.

STMicroelectronics will be ready to tape out designs using a 20nm CMOS low power process technology in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to company CTO Jean-Marc Chery.

Providing a rare glimpse inside an IC design and R&D center in China, Freescale Semiconductor revealed that it plans to expand its efforts amid booming demand in the nation.

The company will "definitely go into" China with a Taiwanese chipmaker by as early as 2012 and seek support from the China government, said Elpida's president Yukio Sakamoto in an interview. It is also accelerating plans to add a second manufacturing plant at Rexchip Electronics.

Germany's upper house is unlikely to pass cuts to solar incentives on Friday, so a mediation committee would be needed to resolve the matter, government sources told Reuters on Thursday.