Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China's biggest chipmaker, said recently that the country's demand for its products is recovering with orders in the third quarter expected to be better than in the second.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that politicians needed to consider whether to aid struggling chipmaker Qimonda and its peers in Germany.

Toshiba has said it will shoulder US$307 million in restructuring costs from shutting down its old system chip and discrete chip lines as it seeks to unload losses.

Yahoo has named Altera's CFO as its finance chief, the latest move by the Internet company to rebuild itself in the image of its new chief executive. Analyst said the hiring of Morse suggested that Bartz wanted someone to focus on "no-frills financial management."

"We are in discussions with some local and foreign companies for possible cooperation. There might be some different business styles," ProMOS Vice-President Ben Tseng told Reuters.

Samsung may ask its key PC-related clients to pay more. Hynix was looking for a chance to raise its contract-based chip prices for the second straight month.

Intel is interested in building another chip manufacturing plant in southern Israel by 2012 at a cost of US$2.5 billion, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Monday.

SanDisk and Samsung Electronics on May 27 announced they have reached an agreement to renew the cross license of their semiconductor patent portfolios. The companies have also signed a flash memory supply agreement under which Samsung will continue to make available to SanDisk a guaranteed portion of its flash memory production output.

Japan's Toshiba plans to raise its chip production in July to levels not seen since it implemented output cuts in January, national broadcaster NHK has reported, in a move that would reflect an improvement in nationwide output levels.

Europe's depleted semiconductor sector needs a strong leader to unite the continent's chipmakers around common goals if chip manufacturing in the region is to survive, the European head of industry association SEMI said.

China's contract chipmakers, battered by a sharp downturn in demand for semiconductors, will survive the recession and become increasingly competitive over time, according to an Accenture executive.

In my opinion, it's time for Taiwan's DRAM makers to merge, consolidate--or give up. The time is now. Not next quarter or next year. Now! There is a plan to consolidate Taiwan's DRAM makers, but so far, no one has budged.

Apple is building a significant capability to design its own computer chips, a strategy shift that the company hopes will create exclusive features for its gadgets and shield Apple's work from rivals.

NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology have agreed to enter into negotiations to integrate business operations. The two chipmakers plan to sign an agreement at the end of July, 2009 to form Japan's largest semiconductor maker.

Chip-making companies Renesas Technology and NEC Electronics have agreed to integrate their operations by April next year, in a move that will form an entity surpassing Toshiba as Japan's largest chip maker, according to reports Friday.

Hynix Semiconductor Wednesday said it will sell 70 million shares via a rights offering. The Korean chipmaker's main creditor Korea Exchange Bank said earlier this month that the creditors have reached agreement to allow the chipmaker to raise around 700 billion won (US$519 million) through a rights offering.

Toshiba has denied a newspaper report that it will increase capital by 500 billion yen (US$5 billion) this year to strengthen its semiconductor business.

Memory IP specialist Mosaid Technologies and NXP Semiconductors BV have extended their patent license deal. However, troubled and insolvent memory maker Qimonda has terminated the six-year patent licensing agreement between the two companies that came into effect July 1, 2006.

German chipmaker Infineon is in negotiations with the government over state guarantees worth several hundred million euros (dollars), the Welt am Sonntag paper reported Sunday.

Shares of Toshiba opened down 6.9% on Monday after weekend reports that it plans to raise about US$5 billion in capital to bolster its finances, weakened by its loss-making chip operations and tax costs.

Fairchild Semiconductor International recently announced it will close a wafer fabrication plant and eliminate some manufacturing at a second site to save up to US$25 million annually, as part of the power-chip maker's ongoing cost-reduction in response to slumping demand.

"I expect that the number of DRAM makers will be reduced by three or four from the current 10 this year," said Hynix Semiconductor CEO Kim Jong-kap.

IBM will cut about 5,000 jobs in the US, adding to similarly large cuts in the past few months, sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday.

An end-of-March deadline for Qimonda AG to find investors has been extended, and liquidation of the memory-chip maker is still a possibility, according to court officials in Munich.

International Business Machines is in talks to buy Sun Microsystems in a combination that would bolster IBM's heft on the Internet, in data storage and in government and telecommunications areas, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mario Morales, an analyst with market researcher IDC, is in the unenviable position of following one of the most bedraggled sectors in technology right now: semiconductors. "The biggest question I am getting is, when is the bottom?" Morales said last week. He doesn't see any growth coming to the semiconductor business until at least mid-2010.

Faced with a steep decline in sales, chipmaker National Semiconductor said Wednesday it will eliminate more than one-quarter of its work force, or 1,725 jobs.

TI narrowed the range of its first-quarter forecast, with the midpoint of its revenue guidance rising 2.7%.

It seems that more and more power will consolidate into the hands of fewer and fewer players.

Programmable chipmaker Altera said on Monday first-quarter sales would decline by a more moderate percentage than it previously expected thanks to demand for next-generation wireless equipment in China.

The new management of The Foundry Company, which includes former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz, is expected to announce the official name of the company soon. When AMD does split in two, Meyer said he will not have any management role in the new company. However, AMD does stand to be The Foundry Company's largest customer, which will continue to tie the two companies together. Meyer also suggested that AMD might switch some of its ATI graphics chip production to The Foundry Company as well.

On Monday morning, there will be a chip industry summit of sorts: the world's largest chipmaker and the world's largest chip foundry will make a strategic announcement at Intel headquarters in Santa Clara. Whatever the deal is, it's probably something TSMC needs more desperately than Intel does. With its smaller chip customers swooning, one has to imagine Tsai might cut Intel a pretty sweet deal to get any business the chip giant would like to send his way.

As co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel — as well as Intel's former chief executive and chairman — Gordon Moore has monitored the evolution of the computer-chip industry for more than half a century. "I don't have any crystal ball on that. Its seems like it's still going down. It's probably going to be 2010, more or less. I don't think we're falling off the edge of the Earth. But it's been a terrible shock to the whole system".

Freescale Semiconductor cut more jobs in Austin and elsewhere Wednesday as part of a yearlong campaign to reduce costs in the face of weak market demand. Through the end of January, Freescale had disclosed 228 job cuts in Austin. The company employed about 5,000 people in Austin and 23,000 worldwide before this week's job actions.

The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) workgroup was created in May of 2006 to standardize the low-level interface to NAND flash chips from different manufacturers. However, the two largest NAND flash manufacturers are not members of ONFI. Samsung and Toshiba together account for approximately 70% of global NAND flash production, although their market share has been dropping by around 10% annually since ONFI was first standardized. SanDisk is also notably absent from the list of members.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced today that its stockholders overwhelmingly approved a spinoff proposal to create The Foundry Company. The shareholder approval allows AMD to issue common stock and warrants to an affiliate of the Mubadala Development Co., paving the way for AMD and the Advanced Technology Investment Co. of Abu Dhabi to create the new foundry.

Spansion is in the midst of a crisis. Asked if Spansion would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US as some have speculated, a spokeswoman for the company said: "Legally, this filing (in Japan) does not automatically require a filing in the US Management is committed to working diligently with outside advisors to help guide the company through the restructuring process. We can't comment on speculation beyond (the Japan) announcement."

ARM, the company that has designed most of the processors in mobile phones, on Monday announced a new, low-cost processor called "Sparrow" at the Mobile World Congress trade show. The company said it is aiming to conquer the netbook market with its multi-core Cortex A9 architecture.