Memory chip makers will offer more sophisticated flash drives for smartphones - technology that will be comparable to the solid-state drives (SSD) found in laptops today.

When we asked Jensen about Globalfoundries, the big man from Nvidia said that Nvidia likes to work with companies that are customer centric. Since TSMC has 200 customers its kind of hard to be in center of attention, while such a thing might be possible with some alternative fab companies, such as Globalfoundies.

MEMS packaging may take an evolutionary leap forward into wafer-level packaging, driven by large IDMs and foundries, analysts said. "TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and others are talking about making MEMS parts...and they have the resources to do the package too.

Eli Harari, founder, chairman and chief executive of SanDisk, made the predications during a keynote. He also warned that the NAND industry is at the "crossroads," as there is a "disconnect" between future capacity requirements and demand.

Advanced Inquiry Systems, a developer of wafer-level sensing systems for memory testing, has closed an US$11 million Series B financing round with all its current investors participating.

Nano Solar Technology has ordered Oerlikon Solar's 120MW end-to-end Micromorph production line for making thin film solar modules.

"The cost involved in shrinking features to improve performance is a limiting factor in keeping pace with Moore's Law and a concern across the semiconductor industry," said Spike Narayan, manager, Science & Technology, IBM Research. "The combination of this directed self-assembly with today's fabrication technology eventually could lead to substantial savings in the most expensive and challenging part of the chip-making process."

A Yale University team led by Professor TP Ma has proposed a DRAM that marries a ferroelectric material with a silicon transistor. While the polarization of the ferroelectric decays, the structure, refresh cycle, power consumption and speed of the FeDRAM could offer advantages over conventional DRAMs, Ma said.

"On the DRAM side, there are shortages of DDR3 SDRAM due to surprising demand in the server and other markets...The price and demand picture for NAND are also improving," said Brian Shirley, VP of Micron Technology's memory group.

Although the overall semiconductor market is expected to drop by 46% in 2009, it shows signs of rapid recovery, according to The Information Network market research company.

A run of poor earnings has damped confidence in once-booming solar companies.

Converge has tracked increased demand from module manufacturers for 128x8 DDR2 chips, both in PC667 and PC800 speeds. However, there are mixed opinions on why the market has become so tight for these modules.

"The operation of our 8-inch DRAM line in Austin, Texas, will be stopped from October due to production inefficiencies. We will upgrade the line to a 12-inch facility," company spokesman Kenneth Hong told The Korea Times.

Samsung Group's former chairman Lee Kun Hee was found guilty of breach-of-duty for his role in causing losses at Samsung SDS.

"During the boom, there were significant capacity increases. There were also, by the way, significant announcements of capacity that may or may not have happened..."

Applied Materials said orders for wafer fab equipment spiked in the final month of its third fiscal quarter, ending July 26. Foundries increased spending sharply, and display manufacturers are also looking at better times driven by flat panel TV sales, according to company CEO Mike Splinter.

Inspur, a China-based IT solutions provider and server manufacturer, has agreed to acquire Qimonda's Xi'an R&D center for 30 million yuan (US$4.4 million).

The latest rumor: Japan's Elpida Memory is looking to buy Spansion's wireless chip unit for US$200-300 million. A spokeswoman from Elpida declined to comment. Spansion did not respond to e-mails.

A technologist from Sun Microsystems has commented NAND vendors are going down the wrong path by racing each other in process technology--at the expense of customer needs. He was also critical of SSDs for servers, saying the emerging technology is still too expensive.

China-based foundry Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing has announced the successful development of its 0.13-micron embedded flash process.

Intel said it had issued updated firmware for the Intel X25-M consumer SSDs that resolves the password bug. The firmware is available on Intel's Web site.

Demand for semiconductor equipment is showing signs of a return, but it remains too early to say that a broad-based recovery is at hand, said Applied Materials CEO Mike Splinter.

Back-end production capacity will be reduced at a plant in Mie Prefecture, Toshiba's main NAND flash memory production site, and shifted to a subsidiary in Thailand. Some procedures will also be outsourced to a foundry in Taiwan.

Elpida Memory and Numonyx have delayed their scheduled foundry ramp by six months or so.

Despite a rebound in business, Applied Materials is set for more layoffs and cost-cutting, according to an analyst.