Hynix Semiconductor has said it would invest 456 billion won (US$373.4 million) to boost and upgrade its production capacity.

Korea Finance, a state-run financing group, plans to provide more than US$80bn in policy loans over the next five years to support Seoul's push into strategic industries such as renewable energy and nuclear power plants.

Altera has announced it is shipping in production the highest density member of its 40nm Stratix IV FPGA family. Featuring 820K logic elements, the device is for a variety of high-end applications including ASIC prototyping and emulation, wireless, wireline, military, computer and storage.

According to Semiconductor Industry Capacity Statistics (SICAS), total industry IC capacity dropped 2.9% in the first quarter of 2010 from the prior quarter.

Samsung Electronics' foundry business, Samsung Foundry, has qualified 32nm low-power (LP) process with high-k metal gate (HKMG) technology. The process has successfully completed reliability testing at Samsung Foundry's 300mm logic fabrication line in Giheung and is now ready for production of customer designs.

The drive is available in 8GB and 16GB capacities, carrying suggested retail prices of US$34.99 and US$69.99, respectively.

An Abu Dhabi state-owned company on Wednesday announced plans for the biggest single solar power plant in the world, as the emirate tries to diversify energy supplies from oil.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington has rescheduled hearings for Oct. 7. Rambus has been involved in long-standing disputes with Hynix and Micron over patent infringement as well as antitrust issues.

"The acquisition of Sound Design Technologies solidifies our position as a leading supplier of ultra-low-power digital signal processing (DSP) technology for hearing aids and audio processing applications," said Robert Tong, VP of ON Semiconductor's Medical Division.

German solar energy company Q-Cells SE (QCE.XE) raised prices for its key products in the second quarter due to higher material costs and can't rule out further price hikes, said Chief Executive Officer Nedim Cen.

Samsung Electronics has said due to projected heavy demand for its advanced logic chips, it will invest US$3.6 billion to expand capacity at its plant in Austin, Texas, and hire 500 more workers there by 2011.

Altera now expects second-quarter revenues to be at the high end of previous guidance, growing 10-12% sequentially.

TI now expects profits of US$0.60-0.64 per share in the current quarter. Revenue should be US$3.45-3.59 billion.

Creditors rescued Hynix after it almost collapsed in 2001 under the weight of its debts. However, they have since struggled to find a local strategic buyer for Hynix, having excluded foreigners from the auction because of worries about sensitive technology information leaking outside of the country.

Anteryon, which makes wafer-based, miniature optical modules for mobile phone cameras and laser projection, has drawn investment from Qualcomm.

At the beginning of this year, it was clear that only a few companies would spend more than US$1 billion each in 2010. This has suddenly changed: some companies have announced record levels of capex plans.

STMicroelectronics will be ready to tape out designs using a 20nm CMOS low power process technology in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to company CTO Jean-Marc Chery.

Providing a rare glimpse inside an IC design and R&D center in China, Freescale Semiconductor revealed that it plans to expand its efforts amid booming demand in the nation.

The company will "definitely go into" China with a Taiwanese chipmaker by as early as 2012 and seek support from the China government, said Elpida's president Yukio Sakamoto in an interview. It is also accelerating plans to add a second manufacturing plant at Rexchip Electronics.

Germany's upper house is unlikely to pass cuts to solar incentives on Friday, so a mediation committee would be needed to resolve the matter, government sources told Reuters on Thursday.

STMicroelectronics could make some analog ICs on 300mm wafers at its Crolles-2 wafer fab near Grenoble, France, according to CEO Carlo Bozotti.

Japan's Sanyo Electricis in talks with several suppliers, including a Taiwanese firm, to procure solar cells

SanDisk's SSD P4 and SSD G4 offer up to 128GB and 256GB of storage, respectively, double the capacities of the company's previous SSD offerings.

The company is making its SolarMagic technology available as a chipset that can be integrated into the junction boxes of solar panels. Until now, the power optimizer hardware, first introduced a year ago, was available as an add-on product.

Trina Solar announced its research agreement with the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore to develop an all-back-contact high-efficiency silicon wafer solar cell using Trina solar's monocrystalline wafers.

"ATIC is not in a position to do this in this stage of our capital deployment," said Ibrahim Ajami, CEO of Advanced Technology.

Hynix Semiconductor said on May 31 it would raise its capital expenditure by a third to 3.05 trillion won (US$2.5 billion) this year to take advantage of a strong recovery in the global technology sector.

Toshiba, Hynix, Micron and Elpida all moved up at least one position in the top 20 list, with Elpida jumping six spots.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) is still in talks with Texas Instruments (TI) about taking over the operation of a 200mm fab in Chengdu, China, according to sources.

Greenliant, a new company headed by SST's former management, will use the acquired product lines to form the core of its solid-state storage product portfolio for the embedded system, data center, and mobile Internet markets.