Samsung has begun mass producing what it claims is the industry's first 2Gb DDR3 memory using 30nm-class process technology. The chip was introduced on February 1.

China mapped out investment of 5 trillion yuan ($738 billion) into alternative energy over the next decade, an official with the National Energy Administration (NEA) said Tuesday.

Programmable logic vendor Altera set a new all-time high in quarterly sales in the second quarter of 2010. It also beat consensus analyst expectations for sales and net income during the quarter.

"We'll seek opportunities including acquisitions and partnerships," executive officer Takehiro Fukuda, who oversees finance and accounting at Elpida, said in a recent interview. "We need to further expand the range of our business in areas such as mobile phone and television chips, and we plan to cut our debt-to-equity ratio to 1 from 1.3 by year-end and eventually to 0.3."

Samsung in June announced plans to expand the capacity of its 12-inch chip plant in Austin with a US$3.6 billion investment, and hire 500 more workers there by 2011.

Google Energy has signed a deal to purchase 114 megawatts of energy from a wind farm in Iowa, marking the first deal done by Google's energy subsidiary.

Now, many or all the famous (Nvidia, Qualcomm, Marvel...) TSMC customers already use ARM designs with TSMC, but this deal might make things easier for smaller ones. In short: expect to see ARM continue to proliferate on the mobile computing market.

Texas Instruments has said weaker-than-expected orders from one mobile phone customer, identified as Nokia by some analysts, caused second-quarter revenues to miss Wall Street forecasts.

Brian Toohey has taken office as president of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), succeeding George Scalise who had led the association since 1997.

China has passed the U.S. to become the world's biggest energy consumer, according to new data from the International Energy Agency, a milestone that reflects both China's decades-long burst of economic growth and its rapidly expanding clout as an industrial giant.

Applied Materials "has not made a dent in the mask shop," said Brian Trafas, chief marketing officer at KLA-Tencor. "They have a few systems in the fab, but it's a small share."

Analysts expect that it recovered to pre-recession levels in the just-ended quarter, as manufacturers ramp up production of electronics that use TI chips and build inventories.

GSI Technology is growing fast by selling specialty memory chips, but the small company wants to grow to the next level.

Japan's Sanyo Electric is to sell its loss-making chip unit to ON Semiconductor for about 33 billion yen (US$373 million), turning its focus to environmentally friendly technology.

Germany's move comes as Italy plans a 30% cut in its FIT for next year. That could force Italian developers to build as fast as possible in the 2H10, much like German developers did in 1H. The lower drop in FIT gives manufacturers time to make a transition to markets such as the United States and Canada, which have the possibility of being larger than Europe, based on combined electricity demand and land available for development.

The most important announcement from SEMICON West was a subtle statement from Globalfoundries about tools. Putting some bits together, it is pretty clear that the company is going to use EUV lithography at the 15nm node.

Hitachi's delay in supplying electronic controls to Nissan was caused by STMicroelectronics' failure to meet a microchip order.

General Motors said on Wednesday that it would guarantee the battery on its forthcoming Chevy Volt for eight years or 100,000 miles - better than the typical five-year or 100,000-mile warranty it typically offers for the powertrain on its conventional cars.

First-half gross domestic product rose 11.1%, implying that second-quarter growth slowed from the first quarter's 11.9% pace.

The state of California is suing federal mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for blocking implementation of a program that helps property owners to install solar energy systems, it was announced today at a San Diego news conference

Toshiba has started construction of Fab 5 at Yokkaichi Operations, its memory production facility in Mie Prefecture, according to the company. The chip vendor also announced it has signed primary agreements with SanDisk for a new joint venture to operate the new facility.

Applied Materials said demand for semiconductor and solar-panel manufacturing equipment in Europe is growing rapidly, a sign the region's debt crisis isn't crimping spending.

KLA-Tencor has increased its regular quarterly dividend to US$0.25 a share from US$0.15. "KLA-Tencor's strong cash flows and solid balance sheet provide us the financial flexibility to return significant cash to our shareholders while also providing the capacity to fuel our growth initiatives," said CEO Rick Wallace.

South Korea, Asia's fourth-biggest crude oil importer, is considering expanding the list of alternative-energy equipment eligible for a tax benefit to cut reliance on fossil fuels.

At an analyst briefing at the Semicon West trade show, Applied Materials indicated that it now expects 140% on-year revenue growth for its semiconductor equipment business for the October 2010 fiscal year, an increase from the company's previous forecast of 120% growth.

Engine control units made by Hitachi couldn't be delivered on time to Nissan because ICs needed to make them were not available from a supplier, Hitachi said.

Altera has enhanced its Arria II GX FPGA variant with 6.375Gbps transceivers and up to 1.25Gbps LVDS support, while broadening the reach of the family with the addition of the new Arria II GZ FPGA variant. The company claimed its 40nm Arria II family provides the lowest power 6Gbps transceiver solutions shipping today, featuring up to 50% lower static power over competitive devices.

Novellus Systems posted quarterly results above expectations, helped by a surge in bookings and shipments. The chip-gear maker has reported net profits of US$63.3 million for the second quarter compared with losses of US$50 million a year ago.

The SYA1022 controller offers increased functionality, improved power efficiency and lower production cost in a smaller form factor, ideal for embedding into mobile and handheld devices such as handsets and notebooks. Engineering samples are immediately available with production quantities available in September 2010.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) said in a statement it plans to sell up to 1.5 billion new shares at HK$0.52 each to its largest shareholder, state-owned Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Holdings, whose stake in the chip foundry will rise to up to 19.06%.

Bryan Li, the company's CFO, says Yingli decided to become a World Cup sponsor because of the increasingly competitive market for solar companies. Yingli felt it could "not just compete with our global competition by cost. We also need to compete with them by the brand."

SoloPower claims that its modules boast a 10.5% to 11% efficiency (compared to ECD at somewhere in the 6.5 percent range) and the flexible units can be affixed to the roof with an adhesive or mounted on a lightweight non-penetrating rack.