The Board of Directors has formed a special committee to oversee the succession process and has initiated a search, with the assistance of an executive search firm, to identify and vet candidates.

Qualcomm's $39 billion acquisition of NXP, expected to close at the end of this year, could hit a snag, according to a recent report by the Capitol Forum.

Shares of AMD, which had already risen more than fivefold since last February, jumped another 16% to over $12 on Wednesday after the company reported revenue for the fourth quarter and expected revenue for the first quarter above what analysts had expected.

Apple is designing a new chip for future Mac laptops that would take on more of the functionality currently handled by Intel processors, according to people familiar with the matter.

Intel's next big Moore's Law advance will be a 7nm pilot plant it is establishing this year to explore the upcoming manufacturing process.

AMD's eagerly-awaited Ryzen processor will launch in early March, according to AMD chief executive Lisa Su. Su specified the target date during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call recently.

For the coming year, Intel said that revenues would be flat on 2016, in part due to the sale of its security business, but with earnings returning to growth, up from $2.12 a share last year to $2.53 in 2017.

Business weekly Toyo Keizai reported that Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest contract manufacturer, is interested in either taking a stake in or buying some of Toshiba's businesses.

Toshiba said it will sell a minority stake in its memory chip business as it urgently seeks funds to offset an imminent multi-billion dollar writedown, adding that its overseas nuclear division-the cause of its woes-was now under review.

Western Digital reported a better-than-expected fiscal second quarter amid strong enterprise and solid state demand.

Qualcomm reported a lower-than-expected 3.9% rise in quarterly revenue on Wednesday, and defended its licensing model in the face of multiple legal challenges over its alleged "anticompetitive" tactics.

Toshiba is expected to sell no more than 19.9% of the unit to be created in a spinoff of its memory chip operations.

Last week, Toshiba confirmed that it's looking to spin off its core semiconductor business. Toshiba's chip division includes its lucrative NAND memory business, which generated 15% of the group's JPY5.7 trillion annual revenue (about $50 billion), and has an estimated value of about JPY1.5 trillion (about $13 billion).

South Korea's LG said in a filing on Monday it agreed to sell a stake in silicon wafer producer LG Siltron to SK Holdings for KRW620 billion (US$531.9 million).

Texas Instruments Inc., the largest maker of analog semiconductors, forecast first-quarter revenue and profit that may top projections, indicating stronger demand from makers of industrial equipment.

TSMC is expected to undergo risk production of 7nm chipsets this year, and mass production next year, while Samsung now also cites an aggressive roadmap for "early 2018," meaning that the Galaxy S9 will most likely flaunt a 7nm processor.

"The Snapdragon 835 won't be available in large quantities until after the Galaxy S8 launches," source said.

The core of the new attack from Apple and the FTC is aimed at Qualcomm's practice of charging royalties based on a device's total value, as opposed to just the value of the mobile chips inside the device.

EDA firm ATopTech has filed a voluntary petition under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

Texas Instruments laid off a small but undisclosed number of people mainly in Silicon Valley as part of a restructuring of its Analog and Embedded Processing groups. No products will be eliminated in the reorg.

The higher battery density of the Galaxy Note 7 compared to its predecessor was not the root cause of the phones catching fire, according to Samsung Electronics' mobile boss DJ Koh.

Apple has sued Qualcomm accusing it of monopolizing the market for chips for wireless devices and withholding $1 billion in retaliation for cooperating with South Korean antitrust authorities.

Four foreign investment funds have reportedly offered to take a stake in Toshiba's memory chip operations should the Japanese electronics giant spin off the business.

The US International Trade Commission began a patent infringement probe on Wednesday after ZiiLabs charged that several firms were importing products to the US in violation of its patents on graphics processors and DDR memory controllers. It identified 17 firms whose products it wanted to examine, including AMD, Lenovo, LG Electronics, MediaTek, Motorola Mobility, Qualcomm and Sony.

The Chromebook Plus is powered by an unnamed ARM-based chipset, but it seems most likely that this is either an Exynos chipset or one from Rockchip, the latter being the most likely based on the evidence we've seen so far.

China's government has conveyed its concern over Foxconn Technology Group billionaire Terry Gou's plan to expand the Apple assembler's operations in the US after President-elect Donald Trump takes office, people familiar with the matter said.

ASML's forecast for its first-quarter profitability has topped analysts' estimates, as Europe's largest semiconductor-equipment maker won orders for six more of its newest lithography machines in the fourth quarter.

Qualcomm used anticompetitive tactics to maintain a monopoly over semiconductor supply, the Federal Trade Commission alleged in a complaint on Tuesday.

Toshiba is looking to sell a minority stake in its core semiconductor business to Western Digital, a source said, in a bid to dull the blow from a looming multi-billion-dollar writedown on a US nuclear acquisition.

The Crossbar ReRAM for embedded non-volatile memory applications is in production at partner foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) using a 40nm CMOS process and is sampling to SMIC customers, according to Sylvain Dubois, Crossbar's VP of strategic marketing and business development.

China's push to develop its domestic semiconductor technology threatens to harm US chipmakers and put America's national security at risk, the Obama administration warned in a report that called for greater scrutiny of Chinese industrial policy.

The results of the investigation will likely be announced on Jan. 23, a day before it announces detailed fourth-quarter earnings results, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter and declined to be identified.

A non-volatile memory technology based on carbon nanotubes that's poised for commercialization in 2018 is expected to be more disruptive to enterprise storage, servers and consumer electronics than flash memory, according to a new report from BCC Research.

Momentum behind the push to transition the semiconductor industry to 450mm wafers - which seemed substantial just a few short years ago - now appears all but dead, at least for now.

Rosenblatt Securities's Jun Zhang today reiterates a Buy rating on shares of Qualcomm, and raises his price target to $75 from $70, writing that the company's set to ride the wave of smartphone sales by Chinese phone makers Vive and Oppo.

Two senior China executives defended the country's big bet on its semiconductor industry here a week after a White House report called for international action against practices it called unfair. Executives from fab and capital equipment companies said the China government is not being unfair in the way it supports its still-infant industry.

Corephotonics, an Israeli maker of dual camera technologies for smartphones, said on Wednesday it raised $15 million in a funding round that included Samsung Ventures, iPhone manufacturer Foxconn and chipmaker MediaTek.

HTC is officially hosting a press event later this week, on January 12, when it's likely going to announce (at least) two new smartphones.

Recently Qualcomm claimed that it'll be the only ARM partner that will support x86 apps on its platform. Now, ARM executives clarify that not only Qualcomm, but any other manufacturer out there will be able to run x86 apps on its platform - whether its Samsung, Apple, Huawei or others.

Using a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820A processor, this concept system is based on the latest version of the Android OS (7.0 Nougat), which is designed to provide automakers with a superior, high-performing platform to quickly develop cloud-connected infotainment systems.