The big news at Xilinx' annual analyst day on February 22: A new partner for foundry services at the 28nm node.

In addition to the ability to upload and sell books in English, French and German languages, authors and publishers now have more options when offering their books to Kindle customers.

Google has announced that it has completed its acquisition of On2 Technologies, valued at approximately US$124.6 million, after On2's shareholders voted to approve the transaction.

Their system-on-a-chip (SoC) platform is based on ARM's Cortex-A9 processor and Globalfoundries' 28nm manufacturing process, and will be used in smartphones, tablets and smartbooks.

The share of exports of the Big Five of 1999 fell to 34% in 2009. That loss of nine percentage points was matched by a similar gain for China, India and South Korea, with most of the gain going to China.

The emergence of the world economy from the worst slump since World War II spurred businesses in Taiwan, where exports equal half of GDP, to boost production and hire more workers.

"40nm is constrained around the world," according to representatives from Nvidia. "Supply will be constrained for the first half of this year."

The strong start prompted Applied Materials to brighten its outlook for the fiscal 2010. The company expects its sales to increase by more than 50%, up from its previous forecast of a 30% gain.

First Solar has posted a higher-than-expected profit, but its shares fell as its outlook disappointed and profit margins narrowed.

Emily Gin Kilpatrick, director of corporate communications for Qualcomm, issued a statement offering condolences to the man's family, friends and colleagues. She declined to say what position the man held, saying that "we don't provide information about our employees."

Snowstorms shut 30 highways across China, disrupting travel on a day when more than 66 million people were expected to take to the roads for the nation's biggest festival of the year.

Researchers from Toshiba and the Keio University in Tokyo have jointly created a 1TB SSD prototype the size of a small postage stamp, consisting of 128 NAND flash memory chips and one controller chip.

German exports in 2009 were equivalent to US$1,121.3 billion which compared with the US$1,201.7 billion exported by China. China's goods exports also suffered badly last year, falling by 16% over the course of the year, the first time they had declined since 1978.

Leading shareholders of Hynix Semiconductor have attracted no bid for the memory chipmaker's controlling stake by the extended deadline and will likely have to unload a large chunk of their US$3.1 billion stake into the market.

Creditors of memory-chip maker Hynix Semiconductor plan to name a new chief executive to replace Kim Jong-Kap, whose three-year term ends in March 2010.