ARM, which designs the technology at the heart of all the top smartphones and tablets, has dismissed its American rival Intel as a "niche" player in the future of computing.

The strong yen has had an impact on several Japanese companies including Toshiba, Honda Motor and Panasonic, which have reported lower second-quarter profits.

Flush from better-than-expected third quarter revenues, flash memory supplier SanDisk is buying back up to US$500 million of its stock over the next five years, joining a growing list of companies putting their cash to use to help build investor confidence.

The peremptory cut in subsidies for solar energy announced by the Government this week has stunned an industry that employs 25,000 people and that now faces ruin.

An open-source hardware group on Monday announced a US$89 credit-card sized motherboard based on an ARM processor that could be used for robotics, gaming and medical devices.

LSI will not limit the distribution of SandForce's flash chip controller technology, even to competitors, after its buyout of the company is completed. LSI's planned acquisition of SandForce was announced on October 26.

GT Advanced Technologies and Saudi Arabia-based Polysilicon Technology (PTC) have signed a US$47.7 million deal, which will see GT supply its SDR 400 reactors to PTC.

The UK government has launched a consultation paper, which is proposing further, significant photovoltaic feed-in tariff (FIT) cuts for systems registered on or after December 12, 2011.

This SoC, in production at the S1-Line at Samsung's Giheung facility, was built using 32nm gate-first High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) process technology from Samsung and a complete Cadence digital design flow.

Infineon has announced another reshuffle of its structure and management that it hopes will make it less vulnerable to economic downturns and help it tap into growth in China.

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.

For third-quarter 2011, deposition equipment maker Aixtron SE of Herzogenrath, Germany has reported revenue of ??9.8m (down 49% on ??75.6m last quarter and 58% on ??12.7m a year ago).

Shares of flash memory chip maker Spansion are taking a beating Friday after the company disclosed weaker-than-expected 3Q11 results and highly disappointing guidance for the fourth quarter.

Samsung Electronics' president expects Thailand floods to further hit the computer memory chip market by hurting PC production until the first quarter of 2012.

Renewable energy is generating a lot of political heat. The bankruptcy of solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra, after a half billion dollar loan from the Federal government, has set off a hot debate on Capitol Hill.

A massive new Westford solar-power plant heavily subsidized by state and federal aid is using the same kind of cut-rate Chinese solar panels that drove publicly backed Evergreen Solar and Solyndra out of business, drawing the ire of Massachusetts labor and business groups.

Greece will use future revenue from the country's ?嚙瘡elios' solar energy project to cut debt by as much as 15 billion euros ($21 billion), euro-area leaders said.

While solar's ascent in 2010 was stunning, it would play an even bigger role in our energy mix and have achieved grid parity across many more markets already if fossil fuel subsidies were removed.

Broadcom was down more than 4% at last check as Chief Executive Scott McMcGregor said in a statement that the company's outlook "reflects potential industry softness."

Qualcomm has announced that its Snapdragon mobile processors power the first Nokia Lumia smartphones, the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 710.

Rubicon Technology says that it has shipped over 200,000 six-inch sapphire wafers to LED manufacturers worldwide.

Apple is planning to build a huge solar farm to augment the power supply of one of its dirtiest datacenter clusters.