TSMC recently held a job fair in upstate New York, helping to drive up expectations that the chipmaker is planning to open a chip fabrication plant in the area to build mobile processors for Apple.

Micron Technology anticipates the closing of its acquisition of 100% of Elpida's equity to occur on July 31, 2013, Tokyo time. Micron also anticipates concurrently closing its acquisition of a 24% share of Rexchip Electronics from Powerchip Technology and certain of its affiliates.

Qualcomm is to acquire a stake in Alcatel-Lucent as part of a far-reaching partnership agreement to develop the next generation of smaller mobile cell transmitters capable of coping with the rapid increase in mobile data.

When he founded Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in 1987, Morris Chang recalls, "Nobody thought we were going anywhere."

KLA-Tencor forecast current-quarter revenue below expectations as slumping personal computer sales hurt demand for new chip-manufacturing gear, sending its shares lower.

Mali graphics IP core shipments are on course to be more than 300 million units in 2013, more than doubling the 150 million units shipped in 2012, according to Simon Segars, CEO of processor IP licensor ARM.

Struggling chip-maker Renesas Electronics Corp. is looking to close or shrink its major production base for system LSI chips in Tohoku after failing to sell it to a Taiwanese firm, company sources said Saturday.

Qualcomm rose 3% in after-hours trading Wednesday after the company booked US$6.2 billion in its third quarter, its twelfth straight quarter of double-digit gains, and raised its outlook for the full year.

Spansion has expanded its serial peripheral interface (SPI) portfolio with the introduction of FL-1K family.

Texas Instruments gave a third-quarter revenue forecast that was stronger than some analysts expected and said customers seem more confident about placing orders for chips.

Aptina has announced a new 13-megapixel sensor for smartphones, the AR1331CP.

Avago Technologies has announced that its 28nm Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) core has achieved 32Gbps performance while withstanding up to 40dB of channel loss.

Wolfson's WM5102 HD audio hub has been adopted by Sharp for its new range of AQUOS smartphone and tablet devices.

Nova Measuring Instruments, the Israeli maker of equipment for semiconductor manufacturing, rebounded in New York after the chief executive officer said he's confident its largest customer won't pare back orders.

The only thing that counts against Globalfoundries is that, being a newcomer with a new US fab, it has yet to build up a long track record of consistent, successful execution. This is one reason Apple would not wish to have all its processor eggs in one foundry, as it does now with Samsung.

Samsung Electronics will supply 14nm A9 chips that will be used for Apple's iPhone 7.

There's now a rumor that the fruity iPhone maker will make its own chips, thus entering the fab industry thanks to a purchase of an unnamed chip fabricator. There's speculation that Taiwan-based chipmaker UMC was Apple's purchase of choice.

If Apple owned capacity at a fab, it would give the company the kind of control over both design and chip manufacturing that Intel has.

Consumer demand for sophisticated mobile devices creates profitable growth opportunities for Applied's semiconductor and display equipment businesses.

Amazon, Sony and Nvidia are emerging as potential customers who will replace Apple as key buyers of Samsung Electronics' semiconductors, sources said Tuesday.

ARM chipmakers TSMC and Globalfoundries plan to release ARM processor chips capable of running at 3GHz sometime in 2014.

Xilinx has worked with TSMC to infuse high-end FPGA requirements into the TSMC 20SoC development process, just as it had done in the development of 28HPL.

Samsung is putting down roots in Silicon Valley.

The original goal was two fabs and after the latest chip initiative was formed two years ago, it managed to finally shortlist two consortia to set up chip fabrication units in the country.

The two companies have reached an agreement to share patents for chipmaking technologies.

With Toshiba's existing chip facilities now running at full capacity, the company may spend some of a 38% hike in its capex budget this year on extending a factory, the company's incoming president, Hisao Tanaka, said in a recent interview.

Toshiba also may be among the initial customers since the three companies partner with SK Hynix on the development of resistive random access memory, or ReRam.

The July order for Galaxy S4 parts is for 6.5 million handsets, which is only about a half of the same order placed for May.

Chipmaker Qualcomm is now Sharp's third-largest shareholder following the completion of a US$120 million investment in the ailing electronics firm.

The cost of designing system-on-chip silicon at 28nm went up by 78% over the previous node, but the software cost was larger and more than doubled.

Qualcomm has expanded its entry-level offerings with the addition of six new processors to its Snapdragon 200 class, featuring dual- and quad-core CPUs. The new Snapdragon 200 processors are manufactured on a 28nm process technology and feature key modem technologies that are important in China and emerging regions, including support for HSPA+ (up to 21Mbps) and TD-SCDMA.

A lack of new licensing agreements triggered a 7% fall in adjusted pre-tax profits last financial year, and analysts have suggested that the company, whose designs are used to make graphics-processing chips used in mobile devices, could be volnerable to increased competition from US rivals Qualcomm and Nvidia.

"Our checks indicated that Samsung planned to increase the 28nm node starts to a target level of 40,000-50,000 wpm in September, from 6,000 to 7,000 in May. But our recent checks are indicating that the semi material suppliers have been recently caught off guard with a sudden change of production plans at this site."

Nvidia on Tuesday said it would begin licensing its GPU cores and "visual computing" patent portfolio to device manufacturers - a new business model for the company. The technology could appear in a full range of products from phones to supercomputers, with products likely emerging in 2015.

Both Toshiba and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have developed mask read-only memories (MROMs) that can offer greater data density by storing multiple bits per cell.