Taiwan's government will invest in an innovative memory chip company to a maximum of NT$10 billion, and only if such an enterprise can secure core technology and help Taiwan to stay competitive in the field, Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang said on October 15.

EDA company Mentor Graphics has entered into a multi-year software and services agreement with Globalfoundries which includes the provision of Calibre software for the design of 32nm and 28nm chips.

First Solar is the first pure-play renewable energy company to join the S&P 500 Index.

German conglomerate Siemens and US powerhouse General Electric (GE) have both underlined their commitment to the renewable energy sector after shelling out to acquire two high-profile Israeli solar energy firms.

SVTC and TSMC will work with developers to bring to market new applications in emerging technologies such as micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), biochips and other devices incorporating new materials and novel structures.

"I am encouraged by the broad-based recovery in our business," said Moshe Gavrielov, Xilinx President and CEO. "September quarter operating margin was 20%, up from 15% in the prior quarter."

Taiwan's DRAM makers "don't have enough money to invest in new technology," said Keich Lee, manager of memory marketing for Samsung Electronics. "We think after the downturn, the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker."

Samsung's new SSD conforms to the new mini-SATA (mSATA) interface, and is about one-quarter the size of a 2.5-in SSD.

ASML generated net income of 20 million euro in the third quarter of 2009 compared to a net loss in the prior quarter. "ASML's third quarter sales doubled from the second quarter, stemming from technology transition demand for our immersion lithography systems as new DRAM devices are introduced and as Foundry customers are ramping 40nm products..."

Germany's next government plans to reduce incentives to generate solar power as early as 2010, the energy spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats said.

Qimonda already laid off 600 staff in April this year. Another 800 employees were sent on forced leave. Now, 590 of these will be laid off, while the remaining 200 employees will continue their force leave, according to local Portuguese media reports.

Elpida Memory plans to increase its stake in Rexchip Electronics to 71% by the end of 2009, Nikkei English News said, without citing anyone.

SanDisk is incorporating the X4 chips into existing storage cards, without any identifying labeling or change in pricing. The fact that it is not immediately passing cost savings on to consumers is a sign of easing conditions in the volatile market.

A better global economy and the launch of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system are expected to support demand for memory chips through the first half of 2010, the chief executive of Hynix Semicondcutor has commented.

Kingston Digital, the flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology, has announced it has partnered with Spyrus for hardware-based encryption, authentication, and digital content security products.

Tokyo Electron, the world's No.2 supplier of machines used to make microchips after Applied Materials, has said orders were 83 billion yen (US$931.5 million) in July-September, nearly double from the previous quarter's 48.7 billion yen.

This purchase for automated NSX Inspection Systems with Discover yield management software reflects a trend to incorporate real-time process control into advanced back-end fabrication processes, according to Rudolph Technologies.

Don't bet on it. The retiring chairman and CEO of National Semiconductor may be taking a break but the industry will still be hearing from him.

Chip design outsourcing growth fell to 6.5% in 2008, down from nearly 34% the year earlier, and the number of chip design starts are expected to fall another 18% this year...

Hynix, IMEC, Intel, Samsung, Toshiba and possibly TSMC are the initial customers for ASML's "pre-production" extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography tool, according to an analyst.

Samsung sees size and power benefits in phase-change memory (PCM), a memory type that is being pushed as a replacement for memory that goes into devices like mobile phones today.

If you thought that quality among DRAM DIMMs was evenly distributed, or that most DRAM errors are not due to hardware problems, Google has proven you wrong.

IMEC's revenues will be down only about 5% this year, compared to drops of 20% generally among electronics vendors. "R&D is the last part to cut because they need to continue to innovate," said company CEO Van den hove.