General Motors has announced plans to temporarily idle its pick-up truck plant in Louisiana due to a parts shortage stemming from the crisis in Japan.

Analysts at Barclays and UBS had speculated that shutdowns at Mitsubishi Gas would deprive some chipmakers of a chemical resin used to package their products, causing supply disruptions.

Rambus has renewed its patent license agreement with Toshiba. This five year agreement covers Toshiba's products with DRAM memory controllers for SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, and other DRAM devices. Rambus will receive royalty payments based on the shipment of these memory controllers.

A spike in radiation levels at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has forced workers to suspend their operation, a government spokesman says.

Rumors circulated that Apple may have chosen to TSMC as their new fab in response to new competition from Samsung in the handset and tablet space. Based on analysis performed by UBM TechInsights Lab and Process Analysis personnel, we can say that the A5 in our possession is definitely manufactured by Samsung using their 45nm process.

March quarter sales are expected to be flat to up 5% sequentially, consistent with the company's previous guidance. Xilinx said the guidance assumes that its shipments to customers in Japan are not affected by the recent events there.

Toshiba said it will cooperate with Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) request to cut electricity consumption by operating only those of its businesses related to provision of essential services required for social and economic activities.

Shares and other risky assets from the Australian dollar to commodities such as copper and oil slumped on Tuesday while safe-haven assets like US Treasuries rallied as Japan's nuclear crisis worsened.

The amount of loss and effects on profits as a result of the earthquake are currently unknown. Fujitsu will promptly make an announcement should these effects be significant.

Renesas Electronics has confirmed that seven out of 22 of its factories in Japan has temporarily shut down production. Among these factories, Renesas Yamagata Semiconductor Tsuruoka Factory is currently beginning its startup procedures to restart its manufacturing.

Brent crude fell by almost US$3, reaching a two-week low near US$111 on investor pessimism that economic growth will slow in the wake of Japan's earthquake and tsunami, while easing unrest in the Middle East threw the focus back onto ample oil supplies.

The devastation in Japan is set to worsen the negative short-term sentiment gripping a vulnerable US stock market, with companies exposed to Japan and the nuclear energy sector likely to take the biggest hits.

A second explosion has hit the nuclear plant in Japan which was damaged in Friday's earthquake, but officials said it had resisted the blast.

Apple's next-generation iPad contains chips made by Toshiba, Broadcom and Texas Instruments, according to an initial tear-down report by gadget-repair site iFixit. Toshiba supplied the device's storage chips, iFixit said, while Broadcom made the chips used for wireless Internet access. TI chips were used to control the iPad's touchscreen.

The two Toshiba-SanDisk JV semiconductor manufacturing plants, Fab 3 and Fab 4, were down for a short period of time due to the earthquake and were back up and operational as of Friday morning, Pacific Time. SanDisk's current assessment is that there has been minimal immediate impact on wafer output due to the earthquake.

Japan's biggest-ever earthquake halted production briefly at Toshiba's chip plants on Friday and could delay crucial shipments. Toshiba and SanDisk share cutting-edge facilities in Yokkaichi, where they make NAND chips increasingly in demand by Apple and other mobile device makers.

Fusion-io, a maker of NAND flash memory cards that enhance the performance of data center servers, has announced that it plans an initial public offering it hopes can raise US$150 million.

Korea-based chipmaker MagnaChip Semiconductor is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 11 under the symbol "MX."

Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average plunged 1.7% in Tokyo, extending declines after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck northeast of the capital.

The tech sector is well represented on this year's list, which overall includes 1,210 people who together control US$4.5 trillion in wealth. The highest-ranked Taiwanese tech execs are the husband-and-wife team of Cher Wang and Wenchi Chen.

"Hard disk drives will serve the bulk of the laptop market for many years to come as makers of solid state drives remain overstretched to meet ever-growing demand for laptop storage..."

Hynix Semiconductor will collaborate with engineers in Sematech's 3D Interconnect program at CNSE's Albany NanoTech Complex to address industry infrastructure and technology gaps in materials, equipment, integration and product-related issues for high-volume adoption of through-silicon-vias (TSV).

A gauge of manufacturing in the euro region rose to 59 last month from 57.3 in January, London-based Markit Economics said in an e-mailed report. That's the highest since June 2000. A reading above 50 indicates expansion.

OCZ Technology Group, a provider of high-performance solid-state drives, has said that it expects to report record revenue of about US$64 million in its fiscal fourth quarter, nearly double the level of a year ago.

Qualcomm expects to see a decline in its operating margins for its chipset business in the coming year as smartphone growth drives more competitive pricing.

Nova Measuring Instruments has announced that three major foundries recently placed US$12 million orders for its integrated and standalone metrology tools. The tools will support manufacturing and development for both the 4x and 3x technology nodes, and are expected to ship within the first and second quarters of 2011.

Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology and Nanya Technology have asked a federal judge in California to delay a patent-infringement trial scheduled for May 2 over claims brought by Rambus.

The shock Italy gave us this week is another reason to stick with manufacturers that have project development divisions. First Solar and SunPower lead that group and should be cushioned if the second half of the year is tougher than expected. Most Chinese manufacturers are still trying to integrate and grow their upstream operations and don't have nearly the downstream capability of these two powerhouses.

Samsung Electronics won a US trade ruling in its efforts to block imports of flash-memory chips made by Spansion. Shares of Spansion fell after the close of regular-hours trading.