With DDR4 DRAM set to hit the market in 2013, two manufacturers took the opportunity at this year's ISSCC to demonstrate their DDR4 DRAM.

The US Supreme Court Tuesday refused to consider a Hynix Semiconductor appeal that argued Rambus shouldn't be able to enforce certain patents because it misled an organization that sets industry-wide standards for computer memory chips.

Hynix Semiconductor said Thursday a US court has ruled in its favor in an antitrust claim filed by Rambus against the South Korean chipmaker.

Hynix Semiconductor jumped to an eight-month high in Seoul trading after Hyundai Securities said contract prices for DRAM chips increased and as financing delays at Japan's Elpida Memory raised the prospect of less competition.

SK Telecom won the antitrust regulator's approval to acquire a 21% stake in Hynix Semiconductor, bringing South Korea's biggest mobile-phone carrier one step closer to completing the transaction.

20nm seems to be the new cutting-edge process for memory production, but Intel and Micron might be surprised to find Hynix has just surpassed them. The Korean manufacturer has used the IEDM to announce it has managed to manufacture middle-1Xnm-generation NAND flash.

Hynix Semiconductor has set around KRW4 trillion (US$3.5 billion) for its 2012 capital expenditure, up 18% from the KRW3.4 trillion set for this year, an online news provider Edaily reported Thursday, citing industry sources.

Rambus has announced the jury in its anti-trust case against Hynix Semiconductor and Micron Technology has found in favor of the defendants.

iFixit's teardown shows an abundance of TI silicon, with flash memory storage and system memory from Samsung and Hynix, respectively.

SK Telecom has agreed to pay KRW3.4 trillion (US$3.1 billion) for 21% of Hynix Semiconductor.

SK Telecom has submitted a bid to buy 20% of Hynix Semiconductor amid a criminal investigation into whether the group's founding family misused funds.

"We have a lot of big plans for it and we're working with Hynix Semiconductor to launch a replacement for flash in the summer of 2013 and also to address the solid-state drive market," said Stan Williams, senior fellow at HP Labs.

The South Korean shipbuilding and shipping group dropped out amid global economic uncertainties and concerns over investments needed to keep the chipmaker competitive, STX said in a statement.

While many experts have expressed doubts about the ability of flash memory to scale and indicated the need for an alternative non-volatile memory technology, Hynix has just gone ahead and produced a 15nm NAND flash memory cell which it plans to unveil at this year's International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM).

Korea Exchange Bank said in a statement that STX and SK Telecom, which both submitted their initial interest in a combined 15% stake, began six weeks of due diligence from Monday.

"Demand growth is likely to be weaker than usual in the third quarter, as customers are delaying purchases due to slow global economic growth," Hynix said.

STX Group, owner of the world's third-largest marine-engine maker, said it may team up with a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund to bid for a stake in Hynix Semiconductor.

Hyundai Heavy has announced it was dropping plans for a takeover of Hynix Semiconductor.

Rambus played dirty in the market for PC memory chips and blames its competitors for the consequences of its own failed technology, lawyers for Hynix Semiconductor and Micron Technology said in court.

Kim Jong-kap, the former head of Hynix Semiconductor, has been named as new CEO and chairman of Siemens' Korean affiliate.

A US appeals court found memory chip designer Rambus Inc was wrong to shred hundreds of boxes of documents relevant in two patent infringement lawsuits it filed, sending its shares down sharply.

A trial over Rambus' antitrust lawsuit against Micron Technology and Hynix Semiconductor claiming US$4.3 billion in alleged damages was scheduled for June 7.

South Korea's LG Electronics has diversified chip suppliers for home appliance products to Hynix Semiconductor and Panasonic away from Toshiba after Japan's devastating earthquake last month.

Hynix Semiconductor has developed 2Gb DDR4 DRAM and DDR4 DRAM-based 2GB ECC-SODIMM applying its 30nm-class process technology. Hynix plans to start volume production of this high performance DDR4 product in the second half of 2012.

Its top shareholders have sought to sell their stake worth about US$2.6 billion, but failed to find interested investors for a company that requires heavy capital investment to weather the highly volatile memory chip cycle.

Hynix CEO OC Kwon said that Hynix had around 45 days of wafer inventory and was reassured by quake-hit Japanese raw materials firms that there wouldn't be any major disruptions in wafer supplies.

Hynix Semiconductor will collaborate with engineers in Sematech's 3D Interconnect program at CNSE's Albany NanoTech Complex to address industry infrastructure and technology gaps in materials, equipment, integration and product-related issues for high-volume adoption of through-silicon-vias (TSV).

Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology and Nanya Technology have asked a federal judge in California to delay a patent-infringement trial scheduled for May 2 over claims brought by Rambus.

Hynix Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing that it would spend KRW637 billion (US$567.7 million) by March to expand and upgrade its existing plant and conduct R&D.

Hynix Semiconductor said in a regulatory filing on January 6 that it plans 3.4 trillion won (US$3.03 billion) in facility investment in 2011.

Hynix has completed development of a 30nm-class DRAM chip, with volume production slated for the first quarter of 2011, according to company CEO Kwon Oh-chul.

"Chip prices remained strong until the first half of this year, but they dropped sharply, especially during the fourth quarter," CEO OC Kwon said in a recent interview. "Due to the sharper-than-expected fall, a considerable decline in both our sales and profit is inevitable in the fourth quarter."

Intellectual Ventures has filed patent lawsuits against nine tech companies. The first lawsuit targets software security vendors Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and Check Point. The second lawsuit targets DRAM and flash memory vendors Hynix and Elpida. The third names FPGA vendors Altera, Lattice and Microsemi, which recently acquired Actel and its FPGA business.

Micron and SanDisk are chief competitors of South Korean chip giants Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor in the memory-processor market.

The investment will be spent by the end of December, the company told the stock exchange.

Instead of using China as a production base, Hynix in its early days produced a wide range of high-tech products in South Korea that it then exported to China and other countries.

Rambus saw its results improve in the third quarter of 2010 thanks to a licensing deal signed earlier this year with former legal opponent Samsung Electronics. It is negotiating to renew deals with Toshiba and Renesas Electronics after their patent licenses expired.

"Memory chip prices are expected to continue their downtrend even through the first half of next year, but they will likely bounce back from the middle of the second quarter," said Kwon Oh-hyun, president of Samsung's semiconductor division. Hynix CEO Kwon Oh-chul echoed his view, but said a price rebound may not start until the second half of 2011.

"In the DRAM sector, Hynix, which focuses its production on 44-nano DRAM products, aims to finish its development of 38-nano products within this year for mass production early next year," a company spokesman said.

LG Group said on September 17 it will not buy Hynix Semiconductor, dismissing market speculation that the group will join a bidding race for the purchase of a major stake in the memory chipmaker.