China's Hony Capital plans to sell or outsource the operations at Elpida Memory's Hiroshima DRAM plant to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) if its bid for the bankrupt Japanese chipmaker is successful, the Nikkei business daily said on Tuesday.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will offer only one process at the 20nm node, a change from the multiple processes that the foundry giant has offered customers for the past several nodes, said Shang-yi Chiang, company executive VP and co-COO.

Barclays Capital is raising its total lithography units forecast by more than 10 systems, from 234 to 251 in 2012. As many as 260 litho tools could be purchased for semiconductor manufacturing, as foundries are seeing high demand for 28nm chips.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has unveiled a new plant in the mountains of central Taiwan - not to make computer chips, but tea.

Barclays Capital finds that light-emitting diode (LED) manufacturing and materials patents will soon run out, potentially draining value from material/chip/package suppliers and turning LEDs into commodities.

What's surprising are Nvidia's remarks concerning TSMC's current cost curves and manufacturing ramps. This is normally the sort of information discussed quietly between a foundry and its customers or by the press with help from various anonymous sources. Discussing the problems publicly is a sign of just how frustrated the company has become.

Globalfoundres announced that its Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany has shipped a quarter of a million semiconductor wafers based on 32nm High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) technology. The milestone represents a significant lead over other foundries in HKMG manufacturing, it claimed.

It seems as if Nvidia is having difficulty manufacturing its upcoming Kepler GPU lineup due to a supply shortage at TSMC that has been linked to internal (TSMC) 28nm issues.

Rumors surfaced online today that claim TSMC has pulled the plug on their 28nm manufacturing lines and that the company started to test and tune the machines to improve yields.

Brite Semiconductor, Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) and ARM have jointly announced the first tape out of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore test chip using SMIC's 40nm low leakage process technology.

Nokia will cut about 4,000 jobs at its smartphone manufacturing bases in Europe and the Americas after announcing plans to shift production to Asia.

Sean Chen, the new premier, said on Monday that Taiwan needed to move beyond export manufacturing to design, research and development - products should not only be made in Taiwan, but also designed by Taiwan.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to announce 3D IC assembly service as a general offering at the beginning of 2013, according to Maria Marced, president of TSMC Europe.

Advanced Micro Devices has disclosed at an analyst event that it had begun manufacturing of its chips at IBM's facilities. The partnership is believed to ensure AMD's ability to supply its next-generation A-series Fusion chips code-named "Trinity" to PC makers and be in position to compete against Intel's Core i-series future products.

Foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has hit back at analysts who have said it has yield problems with its 28nm CMOS manufacturing processes.

After several years of rapid capacity expansion driven by high-brightness LED used in TV backlighting applications, a 40% decline in world metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) purchases in 2012 will reduce overall LED equipment spending for the first time in over five years.

US Congressman Bill Owens will arrive in Taipei Wednesday to visit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to discuss a possible investment plan, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA).

ASM International (ASMI) has announced the successful demonstration of a new 14nm high-k gate dielectric process that achieved less than six angstroms equivalent oxide thickness (EOT) at a customer's 14nm R&D line, an improvement of about 40% from the current advanced nodes.

Microprocessor vendor Advanced Micro Devices has decided to cancel APUs that Globalfoundries was set to make for it on 28nm process technology, according to online reports. Instead AMD will start afresh using the 28nm gate-last HKMG manufacturing process technology from alternative foundry TSMC, the reports said.

China's manufacturing activity dropped to a 32-month low in November, renewing fears the Asian powerhouse is losing steam amid global economic woes.

Maria Marced, European president of TSMC, has pushed back against claims by market researchers at Gartner that foundries are having problems with yield on 28nm process technologies. For TSMC the roll out of the 28nm chip manufacturing node is "on plan," Marced told EE Times.

Spansion plans to consolidate its two test and assembly manufacturing operations which will result in the closing of its Kuala Lumpur facility, according to the company.

"TSMC has ceased to participate in the program," said Ebun Caldeira, director of finance and market research at SIA. Caldeira declined to say why TSMC has pulled out. "We do have some efforts underway to get TSMC to rejoin," she said.

One reason for the delay in both Q1 and Q2 could have been uncertainty on how to record the loss of manufacturing capacity, and capacity utilization, at Japanese companies affected by the aftermath of the great earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan on March 11. This will have had a small but significant effect in the first quarter but is likely to have had a much bigger effect in the second quarter.

The latest monthly readings released Thursday on manufacturing in the eurozone, the UK and China all were weaker than they had been, as was a report on the service sector in Europe.

A former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. manager who pleaded guilty to being part of an insider-trading scheme involving Primary Global Research deserves a prison term of as long as three years and 10 months, the US said.

China's Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) rose to 50.9 in August from 50.7 the previous month, up for the first time in four months.

New data on the US economy, including a huge drop in a regional manufacturing survey, has heightened market fears of a new recession.

China is putting a competitive squeeze on some of its partners that still use the mainland as a source of low-cost design and manufacturing. Good Will Instrument, a 700-person test and measurement company in Taiwan, is just one of the companies feeling the pinch.

TSMC has begun trial manufacturing of next generation chips for Apple's mobile devices, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

David Wang has resigned as CEO of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), according to the China-based foundry, which named Wenyi Zhang chairman of the board of directors and acting CEO.

Toshiba has announced that it will establish two new technology development centers for hard disk drives (HDD). The "HDD Advanced Technology Center" will seek to accelerate development of higher density technology and the "HDD Manufacturing Technology Center" will develop enhanced manufacturing capabilities. Both will open on July 16th.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) has announced that its chairman died. But shareholders rejected CEO David Wang's reappointment as a board director, and the company requested its shares be suspended from trading in Hong Kong pending the release of "price- sensitive" information.

Chip manufacturing firm Globalfoundries will begin construction of a new manufacturing plant in Abu Dhabi next year, the majority stakeholder of the company said on Friday.

Manosha Karunatilaka, a former account manager at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), pleaded guilty to charges that he participated in an insider trading scheme tied to Primary Global Research, an expert network firm.

A Chinese manufacturing index declined in April from March, indicating that growth may moderate in the world's second-biggest economy after the government raised interest rates and allowed faster gains in the yuan.