The Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) has announced it is extending its university research partnership to serve the needs of technology ecosystem in Abu Dhabi. Under the agreement SRC member companies will conduct research sponsored by the Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), the parent of Globalfoundries.

China, the world's largest producer of rare-earth metals, will speed up exports of the minerals after delays disrupted supply, according to Japan's Trade Minister Akihiro Ohata.

Instead of using China as a production base, Hynix in its early days produced a wide range of high-tech products in South Korea that it then exported to China and other countries.

Citigroup analyst Timothy Arcuri asserted in a research note that Samsung is pushing out US$750 million to US$1 billion of equipment orders targeted at DRAM capacity expansion. Lam is the company most exposed to the move, Arcuri said.

The sale of new tablet PCs and smartphones with solid-state storage technology is compensating for weak demand for memory cards and USB flash drives, and has led to a 17% quarter-to-quarter increase in NAND flash shipments and an average price drop of about 9%.

New suggested pricing for the Intel X25-M Mainstream SATA SSD is now US$199 for an 80GB drive. Users can double the storage capacity with a 160GB X25-M drive for US$415. The company has also added a new 120GB version of the Intel X25-M for US$249.

Trina Solar said it is interested in teaming with or investing in developers in Europe, where solar-panel makers have extra capacity.

Kingston Technology has appointed Ingram Micro as one of its national distributors for its DRAM business in India.

"The company has a small foundry business, which operates under the radar and is 'always looking' for customers," according to one source. "The company has been doing this for sometime, but not saying anything about it or at least not publicizing it."

Analysts expect Qualcomm to benefit from new drivers in the market, including the launch of the revamped Windows Phone platform and the expected expansion of Apple's iPhone to new carriers in 2011.

"Overall, the SIA forecast for 2012 looks like the "death" of the semiconductor industry, and we couldn't disagree more!" said Bill McClean, president of IC Insights. In IC Insights opinion, 2012 has tremendous upside potential for the semiconductor industry.

Solyndra said it has scuttled its factory expansion in Fremont, a move that will stop the company's plans to hire 1,000 workers.

Elpida will slash production at its Hiroshima site and at the plant of Taiwanese subsidiary Rexchip Electronics and will consider postponing the construction of a plant in Taiwan, the Nikkei reported.

Chipmaker Qualcomm wants to expand in Europe via both organic and acquisition-fueled growth, its top man in the region told a German daily in an interview published on Wednesday.

While Intel is almost certain to do other foundry deals like the one announced today, we don't see the chipmaker actually pursuing a real foundry model. Rather, Achronix and deals like it will enable Intel to develop new markets with less downside risk, and will ultimately grow the company's IDM business through acquisitions.

Canesta makes chips that, when coupled with a digital camera, give all manner of devices a sense of depth perception for the world around them, letting them "see" in three dimensions.

Intel, Toshiba and Samsung Electronics will join hands to develop technologies that could more than halve semiconductor line widths to nearly 10 nanometers by 2016, the Nikkei daily reported.

Another source familiar with the situation said the money would likely be used to expand capacity at the company's Beijing plant, specifically to quickly ramp-up production of chips using 65nm technology.

Achronix Semiconductor has announced strategic access to Intel's 22nm process technology, and plans to develop the most advanced FPGAs.

Intel has announced the opening of a massive US$1 billion chip testing and assembly facility in Vietnam. The factory has a total area of 46,000 square meters.

Sharp cut its annual profit forecast by 40%, citing the stronger yen and falling prices of panels. Net income will probably total 30 billion yen (US$367 million) in the year to March 2011, down from its previous forecast of 50 billion yen.

Singapore-based chip packager STATS ChipPAC has posted revenues of US$432.2 million in the third quarter of 2010, down by marginal 0.7% sequentially but up 10.9% on year. "We expect net revenues in the fourth quarter of 2010 to decline by single-digit level from prior quarter..."

ZTE, one of China's largest network equipment and phone suppliers, is set to buy US$3 billion worth of semiconductor components from five US technology vendors. It has signed the purchase agreements with Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, Altera and Broadcom.

TriQuint Semiconductor has announced record quarterly revenues for the quarter ended October 2, 2010. Net profits for the quarter soared to US$110.9 million from NT$22.5 million in the second quarter and NT$10.5 million in third-quarter 2009.

European chipmaker STMicroelectronics has reported higher-than-expected net profits for the third quarter, and said sales would expand in the final three months of the year. STM's results follow recent upbeat earnings reports from Intel and ASML.

The first solar energy project on federal land has broken ground in California's Mojave Desert.

The US$2.5 billion chip factory is producing chips on 12-inch silicon wafers, mainly chipsets to be used in desktop computers, laptops and servers. The factory is already fully operational.

ARM shares, up 120% since the start of 2010, fell to their lowest in nearly two months after a statement overnight from Texas Instruments that end-demand for chips could be weakening.

But net sales for its third fiscal quarter ended September 26, 2010 grew to US$307.6 million, from US$255.7 million in the prior quarter and US$327.6 million a year ago.

There may be 14 foreign firms approved to set up R&D centers in Taiwan this year, including those to be publicized by Elpida and Corning soon, according to the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

Toshiba made 48% of its products in Japan in the period from April to September 2009 and bought 45% of its components from Japan-based suppliers. By the same period this year, the ratios were down to 44% and 42%, respectively. The change added 4.2 billion yen to Toshiba's operating profits in the half to September, or 700 million yen for each one-yen increase in the Japanese currency's value against the dollar.

The company's US subsidiaries, Qimonda North America and Qimonda Richmond, have acknowledged the parent's ownership of over 800 patents and patent applications and abandoned claims of over US$2.1 billion against Qimonda. "We will now put all our efforts into continuing to exploit the patent portfolio by licensing and selling individual packages," said Qimonda insolvency administrator Michael Jaffe.

Applied Materials announced that Hareon Solar has selected its SmartFactory manufacturing automation software to improve productivity across Hareon's solar photovoltaic (PV) cell manufacturing operations in China.