A spokesperson from TSMC says that from December 2008, employees who work in TSMC's manufacturing departments will take as many as five unpaid days each month and those who work in other departments will take one unpaid day each week staring from January 2009. At the same time, the transport allowance that was previously paid to the company's managing staff will also be canceled.

“In the area of memory, because of the supply overhang, it will be difficult for us to make a profit,” Executive Vice President Chu Woo Sik, head of Samsung’s investor-relations team, said today at an event in San Francisco. “LCD is struggling very hard to make a profit.”

Texas Instruments (TI) has lowered its expected ranges for fourth-quarter revenue and earnings per share (EPS). The company now expects its revenue will range from U$$2.3-2.5 billion, compared with the prior range of US$2.83-3.07 billion; and EPS will be US$0.10–0.16, compared with the prior range of US$0.30–0.36.

Due to the current global economic environment, customers across each of Broadcom's targeted end markets have requested adjustments in their deliveries for the fourth quarter, resulting in significant pushouts and cancellations since the company originally provided guidance for the quarter in October 2008.

Programmable chipmaker Altera has slashed its fourth-quarter outlook, citing weaker-than-expected sales across all market segments. The company said it now expects revenue to fall 9-12% from the third-quarter, implying a range of around US$312-323 million.

Intel researchers have made the next advance in the field of Silicon Photonics by achieving world-record performance using a silicon-based Avalanche Photodetector (APD) that could lower costs and improve performance as compared to commercially available optical devices. The research results were published today in Nature Photonics.

Shares of OmniVision Technologies tumbled Wednesday after the maker of camera image-sensing chips projected a third-quarter loss, disappointing most analysts who expected a profit.

A growing percentage of cell phones, PDAs, and high-speed microprocessors are assembled with flip chip technology today. If the reliability and cost reduction decades can be shortened to 3-5 years each, then high-volume production using TSVs could happen in 6-10 years, i.e., 2015-2020. If not, then high volume production will start after 2020.

The i6-Goal has been created by local phonemaker QIGI and mobile software developer TechFaith Wireless Communication Technology. The latter is likely to have a key input into China Mobile’s plans to create its own take on Android, and this could, in turn, enhance the influence of Qualcomm, which has come out as a major supporter of the Google system.

"The electronics group Hynix was already rescued once by the South Korean state bank and now has emerged as interested in Qimonda." Asked about the comment, a Hynix spokeswoman in South Korea denied any interest in Infineon or Qimonda assets.

"The joint venture is evaluating plans for operations over the holiday season, including a possible stoppage of some production lines," a SanDisk spokesman said Friday. "We constantly consider manufacturing schedules in light of market requirements and this is particularly true during the holiday season," he added. This follows a Bloomberg report that said Toshiba is considering a "partial stoppage" of flash memory production in Japan over the holidays.

Wafer shipments at the world's top two foundries, TSMC and UMC, are set to plunge further than anticipated in 4Q, but the picture for 1Q is even uglier with "historic lows" looming for utilizations, according to an analyst report.

Smart dust is based on microelectromechanical systems, or MEMs. These tiny computer chips can measure temperatures, vibrations or surface pressures. Smart sensors relay signals back to a command computer, which then compiles the data to give feedback to plant managers. Or the results could trigger an automatic response, such as turning down a building's temperature or reducing the flow of oil.

The world's second-biggest maker of memory chips will eliminate 30 percent of its executives and cut labor costs by more than 15 percent because of the global economic slowdown.

Hynix Semiconductor is facing a cash crisis as losses deepened to over 1.4 trillion won in 2008. The Korean Government support via Korean banks mirrors the potential intervention of the Taiwan Government in facilitating further credit instruments for Taiwan’s struggling DRAM manufacturers.

Including Qimonda, Infineon posted a net loss of ？763 million for the period ending Sept. 30 compared with a net loss of ？280 million a year earlier and a net loss of ？592 million in the previous quarter.

"The sector is in a dire situation," said Toshiba Senior Executive Vice President Masashi Muromachi. "Sales prices tumbled 40 percent or so in the first half and they are falling faster than expected in the second half." Muromachi also said that World Semiconductor Trade Statistics's revised forecast for 6.5% growth in global sales of semiconductors in 2010 was still high.

Plummeting demand for computer chips is affecting IT centers around the globe. The eastern German state of Saxony is one of the areas trying to survive a year that experts are already calling a disaster.

Hynix Semiconductor said on Tuesday it would delay the planned sale of a stake in its Chinese joint venture to partner Numonyx by one year. South Korea-based Hynix had planned to sell a stake worth US$100 million to Numonyx as the latter sought to boost its control over the Chinese chip plant. It already sold half the stake and was supposed to sell the rest by the end of this year.

"We will discuss with our controlling shareholders to decide on a loan if necessary," Park Hyun, a spokesman for Ichon, South Korea-based Hynix, said by telephone Monday. Park said details such as the amount, timing and method haven't been determined.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and Intel are teaming up to produce solid-state drives (SSDs) for servers and workstations, the companies said Tuesday. Under terms of the deal, drive maker Hitachi GST will only use NAND flash chips obtained from Intel in its high-end SSDs. The two companies will jointly develop drives that use Serial Attached SCSI and Fibre Channel interfaces, with products expected to hit the market in 2010, they said. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

The ruling is a victory for defendants Qualcomm, Motorola, Spansion, STMicroelectronics NV, Freescale Semiconductor and ATI Technologies, a company purchased in 2006 by Advanced Micro Devices. The commission's administrative law judge found that the two Tessera patents were valid, but weren't infringed by the defendants. "It's a great result," said Alex Rogers, Qualcomm's senior vice president and legal counsel.

German chip maker Qimonda, which is majority-owned by Infineon, needs a helping hand. Its memory chips are struggling in an oversupplied market, and the firm is burning cash at a rate of $250.0 million per quarter. Investors have deserted the company, while Infineon is desperately trying to offload as much of its stake as possible. If current talks with potential investors fail, the company faces a cash crisis in the next few months.

Taiwan stocks opened 0.55 percent lower on Monday, pulling back from a more than two-week closing high, as tech shares fell after a Hon Hai subsidiary said it would cut staff in Hungary and industry sources said TSMC aimed to cut costs by 20 percent.

Qimonda announced today that it is making progress in its discussions with strategic and financial investors on potential partnerships with Qimonda, and that it will delay the release of its financial results for the fourth quarter of its 2008 financial year and its full financial year ended September 30, 2008 until mid-December while these discussions are proceeding.

Japan's Toshiba said it planned to increase its output of flash memory-based solid state drives (SSDs) 15-fold over the next two years, aiming to control half of the global market for the new memory devices.