Qualcomm, a chipmaker for cell phones, said Monday it bought back or retired about 29 million shares, or US$1.1 billion, in common stock during July and August.

"...A Sanyo spokesman confirmed Friday that the company is considering various options to turn around its semiconductor operations but said nothing had been decided..."

Marvell is currently porting high-volume products over to TSMC first with many of these currently being qualified with end-users. However, Marvell acknowledged that even some new designs would have to be fabricated by Intel for the foreseeable future. The full porting operation to TSMC is not expected to be completed until the end of 2008.

Intel Capital, Intel's global investment organization, announced it has closed a US$218.5 million investment in VMware.

"...Samsung will cut more than 100 jobs at its semiconductor division, Maeil Business Newspaper reported. The company last month reported its smallest quarterly profit in four years after a glut drove down prices of memory chips..."

Industry sources said TSMC is in intensive talks with Hynix over the purchase of the equipment for around US$500-550 million. The monthly production of the M8 and M9 lines is 300,000 in wafer injection standards and the facilities are estimated to be worth 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion Korean won. Industry sources said a partial sale of the lines is more probable because of the cost burden.

...Rambus engaged in "intentional deceptive conduct" in the context of the standard-setting process by not disclosing the existence of the patents which it later claimed were relevant to the adopted standard, or engaging in a patent ambush. The EC said its preliminary view is that without its patent ambush, Rambus would not have been able to charge the royalty rates it currently does...

"...Can we, with our customers, drive down the cost per watt of photovoltaics? Splinter asks. We've got to...Currently photovoltaics cost $2 to $3 per watt to build, down from $22 in 1980. Splinter thinks he can help drive the cost of solar to under $1 a watt..."

"...some outsiders suspect Samsung failed to identify the cause of the problem despite the passage of three weeks...a Hynix staffer said the company's own simulation of a similar case proved that this kind of power cut was very unusual..."

...in Marlboro, Mass, we have a 15MW Evergreen-only factory producing wafers, cells, and panels. At this factory, we also perform a substantial amount of R&D development. The EverQ JV in Thalheim will have about 100MW of production capacity by the end of 2007. Evergreen will own one-third. We recently announced the start of our second Evergreen-only factory, a 75MW facility located in Devens, Mass. We plan to grow Evergreen-only production to 500MW by 2012 and work with our partners to expand the EverQ JV to its planned 300MW capacity.

...With both 200mm and 300mm capability, we represent a US based source for large IC companies developing wafer level interconnect," said Steve Anderson, Surfect's chief executive officer. "I am pleased to note that we have already received service orders from several IC suppliers..."

The newly built packaging and testing plant of Jiangsu Changdian Technology, with an annual output of five billion ICs, started production Aug. 8 in Jiangyin, Jiangsu. With a total investment of two billion yuan (US$262M), the plant covers 850 acres that will be built in three stages. The initial facility has an annual output of five billion pieces, and is developing beyond dual in-line packages (DIPs), systems-on-a-package (SOPs) and systems-in-a-package (SIPs) to medium- and high-tech packages such as QFN, FCBGA, TCP, COF, COG, DFN and FBP.

NAND flash vendors are not only racing each other in the process-technology arena, but they are also preparing for a new demand and product cycle in the marketplace. A number of emerging applications are on the horizon for NAND, including flash BIOS, solid-state storage and flash-equipped television with digital video recorder functions. To enable those applications, suppliers are moving down the process curve at a breakneck pace.

Researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in Golden, CO, showed that silicon nanocrystals can produce two or three electrons per photon of high-energy sunlight. The effect, they say, could lead to a new type of solar cell that is both cheap and more than twice as efficient as today's typical photovoltaics.

Goldman Sachs forecast Tuesday that Samsung will post an 85% growth rate in its 2H operating profit compared with six months earlier thanks to the sales of flash memory and flat panel products.

"...This groundbreaking is in line with the company's publicly announced plans to complete construction and reach a production capacity of up to 6,000 metric tons of polysilicon by the end of 2008 and 15,000 metric tons by the end of 2009. The Company has also indicated that it plans to commence volume production by the end of 2008..."

According to news agency AFX, Intel is looking at getting into the solar wafer manufacturing game via an acquisition or two, though real details seem very slim. That said, Samsung is also said to be looking at doing the same and that also makes sense. Solar wafer or thin-film panel production would be a great cleanroom filler, which is also what Intel may need to do or close all of its 200mm fabs in the near future.

"...Micron said Litho has been behind NAND for the last couple of years...For example, Micron developed 50nm NAND devices -- even before the scanners were ready...Current 193nm immersion scanners are projected to run out of gas at the 45nm node."

Business is weak for Photronics in both semiconductors and flat panel, but the majority of the short fall can be traced to the flat panel display market.