The South Korean chip industry is tightening its monitoring of increasing protectionist moves by China and the US as they are faced with probes and suspicions of price collision.

Toshiba is considering an IPO of its prized memory chip business if an agreed $18 billion sale to a Bain Capital-led consortium fails to gain antitrust approval by the end of March, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

SK Hynix has just made their next generation GDDR6 memory available to customers which can include graphics card manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD.

If this is the case, it would be the first time that Apple has not retained the previous year's model to allow for a wide range of iPhones available at many price points.

Beijing-based Naura Microelectronics Equipment has completed a deal to buy US semiconductor manufacturing equipment company Akrion Systems.

Two China-based fabless companies made the top 10 ranking last year-HiSilicon, which sells most of its devices as internal transfers to smartphone supplier Huawei, and Unigroup, which includes the IC sales of both Spreadtrum and RDA.

In an interview with Reuters, Trump and his economic adviser Gary Cohn said China had forced US companies to transfer their intellectual property to China as a cost of doing business there.

Built on 10nm process technology, the new GDDR6 memory comes in a 16Gb density, which doubles that of the company's 20nm 8Gb GDDR5 memory.

China will have capacity in place to run 700,000 300mm wafers a month by the end of this year, according to TrendForce.

The Dutch maker of lithography systems said on Wednesday its outlook for 2018 had been bolstered by a growing backlog of orders. Its products play a decisive role in shrinking the size of chips so as to cram ever more circuits onto them.

Outside of Samsung's Galaxy, the only other Exynos customer is Meizu.

Price increases for both DRAM and NAND flash memory are raising the outlook for the overall semiconductor market.

The acquisition has now received 8 of the 9 approvals around the world, with China remaining.

A Democratic U.S. lawmaker asked Intel and two other microchip makers on Tuesday to provide a briefing on the recently detected Spectre and Meltdown security flaws that could allow hackers to steal information from most computers and devices.

At CES 2018, Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua has explained that millions of cars hitting the streets this year, simply equipped with a front-facing camera and Mobileye's new fourth-generation EyeQ system-on-chip, will play a crucial role in the delivery of a driverless future.

At CES 2018 Nvidia has unveiled details of its functional safety architecture for Nvidia Drive, its AI autonomous vehicle platform, which uses redundant and diverse functions to enable vehicles to operate safely, even in the event of faults related to the operator, environment or systems. The Nvidia Drive architecture enables automakers to build and deploy self-driving cars and trucks that are functionally safe and can be certified to international safety standards, such as ISO 26262.

At CES 2018, Qualcomm Technologies International has announced that its Qualcomm Smart Audio Platform now supports Microsoft Cortana. The platform integrates the hardware and software required to help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) reduce the time and cost of developing smart speakers with support for the intelligent digital assistance provided by Microsoft Cortana.

"All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time..."

Tech firms are working to fix bugs that could allow hackers to steal personal data from computer systems. Google researchers said the "serious security flaws" were in chips made by Intel, AMD and ARM, and affected devices which use them.

A serious flaw in the design of Intel's chips will require Microsoft, Linux and Apple to update operating systems for computers around the world. It is believed to affect chips in millions of computers from the last decade.

Complaints by Chinese smartphone companies over increases in Samsung Electronics semiconductor prices have prompted Chinese government officials to submit an opinion to Samsung, the Chinese economic daily 21st Century Business Herald reported on Dec. 22. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), which oversees China's economic policies, has already "invited Samsung for discussions" on the issue after recently taking an interest in the continued rise of semiconductor prices, the newspaper said.

NXP Semiconductors in collaboration with Internet-of-Things (IoT) industry partners: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Accenture, Au-Zone and ClearBlade, showcase the innovative frontiers and powers of edge computing by giving NXP VIP guests a comprehensive, personalized glimpse into the future of edge-computing and artificial intelligence applications.

Toshiba, Toshiba Memory Corporation (TMC) and Western Digital have entered into a global settlement agreement to resolve their ongoing disputes in litigation and arbitration, strengthen and extend their relationship, and enhance the mutual commitment to their ongoing flash memory collaboration.

Thales and Gemalto have reached an agreement on a recommended all-cash offer for all issued and outstanding ordinary shares of Gemalto, for a price of EUR51 per share cum dividend.

Efinix has received silicon product samples for its first Quantum accelerated programmable product platform built on SMIC's 40nm process. A milestone was achieved with record breaking efficiency, going from product development using SMIC's Physical Design Kit (PDK) to system validation of the samples in less than six months, according to the companies.

Qualcomm has confirmed receipt of Broadcom's nomination of a slate of candidates to replace Qualcomm's existing board of directors at the company's 2018 annual meeting of stockholders.

Shares in Dialog Semiconductor, the publicly listed British firm which supplies power management chips for the iPhone and other Apple products, are plunging after its chief executive admitted that Apple could one day bring iPhone chip design in-house.

Kenji Kano has been named president and CEO of Toshiba America Energy Systems (TAES) effective December 1, 2017. Fumio Otani, chairman of the Board of Directors of TAES, had served as president and CEO on an interim basis since March 1, 2017, and will continue to serve as chairman of the Board of Directors for TAES.

Infineon supplies key components for the Audi A8, the world's first series production car featuring level 3 automated driving.

Qualcomm is seeking to limit sales of the iPhone X in the US with another new round of litigation that accuses Apple of patent infringement.

Samsung Electronics is positively considering rolling out a next-generation DRAM using an early 10 nano process as early as the beginning of 2019 by constructing a dedicated production line with EUV exposure equipment in the Hwasung Semiconductor Factory Complex in Gyeonggi-do. Experts say that this strategy aimed to secure profitability while widening micro-process technology gaps with competitors in the booming DRAM market.

It is heard that Samsung Electronics is looking into receiving sensors, which are major parts of fingerprint recognition function, from a Taiwanese manufacturer while it is planning to place fingerprint recognition sensor on the back of Galaxy S9.

Asian stocks retreated from Friday's record after Morgan Stanley downgraded Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, saying their shares had risen too much.

It is heard that the American manufacturer already agreed up to production of test chips and is making preparations accordingly. Chinese manufacturer is a company that develops SoC for mobile devices and is discussing internally about entrusting Samsung rather than Taiwanese companies with production of 7-nano chips.

The upped offer includes more of Broadcom's own stock, following consultation with several of Qualcomm's top shareholders.

On Thanksgiving 2017 the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that relates to a possible foldable iPhone model.

At this year's ARM TechCon, Samsung Electronics re-clarified its ambitions for 7nm technology in 2018, followed up quickly by a move to 6nm, 5nm, and even 4nm by as early as 2020.

According to industry sources, Samsung Electronics brought in managing director Kye Jong-wook from Globalfoundries last month. He is currently working as the head of the design enablement team of its R&D office, which is a key foundry business unit. Earlier, managing director Song Byeong-moo moved from Intel to Samsung, too.

Chipmaker Broadcom is considering raising its offer to buy rival Qualcomm by offering more of its own stock, following consultation with several of Qualcomm's top shareholders, according to people familiar with the matter.

Qualcomm investors want at least US$10 more than the US$70-a-share Broadcom is offering. If history is any guide, they might get partway there.