A plant of Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) was ordered to shut down Friday by the Kaohsiung Environmental Protection Bureau for multiple violations of regulations governing the discharge of industrial wastewater.

Just as its predecessors did, the LPDDR4 specification is aiming to double its data rates while slashing power consumption in half, but first publication of the spec by JEDEC won't be until 2014.

SK Hynix plans to build a new factory in South Korea to meet the growing demand for mobile devices, according to two people familiar with the matter.

MagnaChip Semiconductor has completed qualification of 0.18-micron EEPROM IP developed in partnership with eMemory Technology, a Taiwan-based non-volatile memory (NVM) IP provider.

Earlier this year, after Apple released the first 64-bit chip for smartphones, a Qualcomm spokesperson claimed the A7 processor was a "marketing gimmick" and that there is "zero benefit" to the consumer from the chip. Those comments were later walked back before the executive who made them was reassigned.

The acquisition expands ARM's position at the forefront of the visual computing and graphics industries. Additionally, the agreement enables Geomerics to build on their existing partnerships as well as accelerate their development in mobile.

Chip companies serving the automotive industry know exactly where the next-generation MCU battle will be played out: high-performance MCUs with fast-access flash memory at 40-nanometer process.

CSR, the Cambridge-based microchip maker, has announced a retreat from the digital camera market as sales decline and amateur photographers increasingly rely on smartphones.

Imagination Technologies yesterday saw its shares crash 16% to a three-year low, amid slowing smartphone growth and a slide in profits.

Qualcomm will take a wait and see approach before turning to Intel's expanding foundry operation to manufacture its chips, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs said Wednesday.

The new Snapdragon 410 chipsets are manufactured using 28nm process technology. They feature processors that are 64-bit capable along with superior graphics performance with the Adreno 306 GPU, 1080p video playback and up to a 13-megapixel camera.

Rambus and Micron Technology have signed a broad patent cross-license agreement, giving Micron the right to use any Rambus patent for the manufacture of specified integrated circuit products, including memories.

"Our latest checks for the 20nm technology production levels at TSMC are weaker than expectations and are projected to reach only 5,000 wpm by year-end," say BlueFin Research Partners anaylsts.

Electronics firm Sony is considering the purchase of a Japanese chip plant from Renesas Electronics so that it can enhance production of smartphone image sensors, reports said.

Xilinx has made its first customer shipment of a 20-nm UltraScale device, which is implemented in TSMC's 20nm process technology.

The IMEC research center has demonstrated a new FinFET using III-V compound semiconductor material produced on 300mm wafers. This is the first time that such transistors have been produced.

South Korea's largest family-owned conglomerate, Samsung Group, on Monday promoted the group owner's daughter to president of its de-facto holding firm.

David Einhorn's hedge fund Greenlight Capital reported a stake of about 23.02 million shares in US memory chipmaker Micron Technology, according to a filing on Monday.

Qualcomm Life, launched two years ago as a division of the San Diego-based telecommunications giant Qualcomm, is building software and protocols that could bring some order to the chaos of health data. Its first product, called the 2Net Platform, is a system for getting wireless data off those devices and onto the Internet servers of clients, like health device makers or hospitals.

A software engineer formally involved in the development of the Siri voice assistant at Apple has joined Samsung's new talking internet of things initiative.

Japan's Panasonic will sell three domestic semiconductor factories to Israel's TowerJazz as early as the current business year ending March, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, bringing the embattled electronics giant closer to completing the overhaul of its loss-making businesses.

The dynamics of the solid-state state drive market are shifting, and for Abhi Talwalkar it's been a disappointing shift in 2013.

Apple has agreed to acquire PrimeSense, the maker of motion-tracking chip technology that was used in Microsoft's Kinect game console.

Qualcomm said the probe involved China's anti-monopoly law, but added that regulators told it the "substance of the investigation is confidential."

Rumors have buzzed surrounding ARM' possible release of 128-bit chip designs to power various new smartphones. Most recently, via PCPro UK, the company was cited by the Korea Herald to promise 128-bit architecture "within the next two years."

More than 20 Japanese and US semiconductor-related companies are teaming up to develop a mass production method for next-generation memory chips.

For years, technologies like Apple's Siri and Google's Google Now have been flying blind, awoken by the spoken command of their users. If Apple acquires PrimeSense, perceptual computing may finally open its eyes.

Apple came in at No. 46 on the European Union's R&D spending report released this week, which ranked the top 2,000 global companies.

"If we can use our silicon to provide the best computing, we'll do it," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said. "You will see us focusing on a much broader set of customers."

Kionix has announced that the KMX61G Micro-Amp Magnetic Gyro has met Microsoft's stringent sensor fusion requirements and received Windows 8.1 certification.

Since Imagination's acquisition of MIPS Technologies in February 2013, the company has closed 22 MIPS related deals.

ARM predicts a shift in demand toward lower-priced smartphones will help boost royalty revenues.

Dongbu Group will sell off its core unit Dongbu HiTek, a silicon foundry that makes integrated circuits for other companies under contract, as a way to quell market concerns about the group's financial future.

Spansion has announced a complete family of microcontrollers addressing high performance and low power needs for industrial applications such as factory automation, building management, inverter drives, smart meters, home appliances and medical devices.

German semiconductor maker Infineon Technologies has reported higher revenues in the fourth fiscal quarter and forecast an increase in revenues for fiscal 2014.

Applied Materials is benefiting from an increase in demand from companies such as TSMC that build semiconductors for other chipmakers, as they upgrade plants for new production processes.

Sources close to the situation said the deal that appears to be taking shape looks more like this: Samsung will use Globalfoundries for what is known as "flex capacity." This is a long-standing industry practice under which a chip manufacturer pays to occasionally use another company's factories when demand on their own factory is running higher than they would like, and they need a little help.

Apple is developing new iPhone designs including bigger screens with curved glass and enhanced sensors that can detect different levels of pressure, said a person familiar with the plans.