Microchip Technology is the semiconductor manufacturer which made the $3.8 billion unsolicited offer for peer Atmel that was disclosed last week, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Toshiba is looking to cut up to 7,000 jobs, as it looks to streamline operations in the wake of an accounting scandal, the Nikkei business daily reported.

TSMC said it has started work on a 5nm process to push ahead its most advanced technology, yet the company remains undecided on the adoption of extreme ultraviolet lithography at that node.

A group led by China Resources Holdings' semiconductor arm and Hua Capital Management has made an offer for Fairchild Semiconductor. That bid followed a November agreement with ON Semiconductor to buy Fairchild for $2.4 billion.

Apple just paid $18.2 million for a small 70,000 square foot silicon chip fab, formerly owned by Samsung, located in North San Jose, California, about a 20 minute drive from its current Infinite Loop headquarters in Cupertino.

Europe's competition regulator has accused Qualcomm of predatory pricing and paying a major handset maker to use its 4G baseband chips exclusively.

Semiconductor industry business leaders predict that the number of mergers and acquisitions in 2016 will match or exceed 2015, according to an annual survey of semiconductor industry business leaders conducted by business consultancy and auditor KPMG LLP.

The news that Apple is making its own GPU makes sense as the outfit has more money than it knows what to do with and it has some experience with inhouse chip design.

Samsung has established new organizations that target and pursue new business initiatives to prepare for future growth. The company has formed an automotive components team, which will initially focus on building its competencies in infotainment and autonomous driving vehicles.

Intel and TSMC have both started trial production for LG's own processor called Nuclun 2 using different methods.

Qualcomm said Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission has launched an investigation into whether the chipmaker's patent licensing arrangements violate the Taiwan Fair Trade Act.

Marvell Technology said two government agencies are investigating its accounting and other issues, adding to pressures facing the chip maker since its board launched an internal probe in September.

South Korean financial regulators on Friday said they were investigating whether nine executives from Samsung, the country's largest conglomerate, used insider trading to profit illegally from a merger of two subsidiaries.

China's unabashed interest in foreign chipmakers in an already record year of deals has been quickly read by rivals as a sign that mergers and acquisitions (M&As) will get more competitive and target companies will get more expensive.

Altera has disclosed the industry's first heterogeneous System-in-Package (SiP) devices that integrate stacked High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) from SK Hynix with high-performance Stratix 10 FPGAs and SoCs.

Abu Dhabi's investment arm is considering a sale of all or part of chipmaker Globalfoundries as the emirate explores asset disposals amid a slump in crude oil, people familiar with the matter said.

Integrated Device Technology (IDT) has announced an agreement to acquire privately held ZMDI (Zentrum Mikroelektronik Dresden) for total consideration of US$310 million in cash. The acquisition provides IDT with a highly regarded Automotive & Industrial business, and extends their technology leadership in high performance programmable power devices and timing & signal conditioning.

Toshiba on Friday said it is considering selling a minority stake in its semiconductor business to raise funds in the wake of a drawn-out accounting scandal.

European antitrust regulators cleared on Monday Avago Technologies planned US$37 billion takeover of rival chipmaker Broadcom without conditions.

SK said late Monday that it has decided to purchase OCI Materials, the world's top supplier of the specialty gas, nitrogen trifluoride (NF3), to strengthen its memory chip business.

If Tsinghua Unigroup is unable to acquire the necessary IP to build 3D NAND, I believe the Chinese company will scrap its plan to build the new fab.

Tsinghua's ambitions in the memory chip business are well known. It is reportedly targeting an investment in Renesas as a vehicle for China to gain a foothold in the logic business - especially in the automotive and MCU segments.

Flash DIMM technology developer Netlist has signed a five-year joint development deal with global memory leader Samsung to produce non-volatile DIMMs, giving it a lifeline from years of litigation hell against Diablo Technologies over memory channel storage IP.

Texas Instruments, the biggest maker of analog chips, is in talks to acquire Maxim Integrated Products, people with knowledge of the matter said.

I know Intel partnered up with Tsinghua Unigroup last year to buy a 20% stake in Chinese fabless chipmakers RDA Microlectronics and Spreadtrum. However, I do not think Intel would be a major partner in Tsinghua Unigroup's $47 billion plan to become the world's third-largest chipmaker. I believe troubled AMD is more likely to be desperate enough to welcome Tsinghua's money.

German chip maker Infineon Technologies has expressed interest in investing in Japanese semiconductor firm Renesas Electronics, and Renesas is examining that idea along with other strategic options, according to people familiar with the situation.

Qualcomm faces new antitrust charges in South Korea that focus on a foundation of the chipmaker's lucrative patent-licensing business.

US chipmakers are cutting back "sharply" on spending, according to fresh analysis from Citigroup. Spending by semiconductor companies is expected to fall 19.8% this year from 2014, when it dropped a modest 0.9%.

Taiwan's police have busted a group of seven suspects who plotted to steal business secrets from GaAs wafer fab Win Semiconductors and sell them to China.

Goldman estimates TSMC's Apple InFO business would take away only 2% of ASE's sales.

UK-based chip vendor Dialog Semiconductor announced its proposed $4.6 billion acquisition of Atmel has cleared regulatory review in the US in Germany-even as an activist hedge fund opposed to the deal boosted its stake in Dialog in hopes of blocking the transaction.

Chairman Zhao Weiguo also told Reuters in an interview that Tsinghua Unigroup was in talks with a US-based company involved in the chip industry. A deal could be finalised as early as the end of this month.

Applied Materials, the largest maker of machinery used to produce computer chips, rose the most since August after giving a first-quarter forecast that may meet analysts' estimates as orders from chipmakers showed signs of improvement.

Artificial intelligence is the next big frontier in technology.

Four Qualcomm VPs and execs absolutely denied that its new Snapdragon 820 was suffering from any thermal issues.

Samsung Electronics plans to mass-produce a new processor that will be used in the company's next mobile devices, according to industry officials.

So far this year, chip companies have announced $100.6 billion in mergers and acquisitions, according to Dealogic, exceeding the $37.7 billion total for all of 2014.

One of the greatest risks to Apple's iPhone and iPad sales is its ability to secure enough DRAM (at a reasonable cost) when the inevitable shortage occurs in the future.

In May, at a San Francisco talk to mark the 50th anniversary of Moore's Law, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore said he was surprised chipmakers have kept it going for so long. Two months later, Intel Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich said on an earnings call that the pace is indeed slowing-doubling chip density now takes closer to two and a half years, rather than two.