"...The Bluetooth SIG anticipates silicon vendors such as Broadcom, CSR, Infineon and Texas Instruments will have Bluetooth v2.1+ EDR chips available immediately and that the first products will follow by the end of the year...."

"...HSSL, the joint venture between Hynix and STMicroelectronics, and Hynix Semiconductor Manufacturing China have signed a memorandum of understanding to sell the equipment of the C1 line of the Wuxi plant to CSMC...CSMC is in an expanding phase and our purchasing department is continuously looking for and sourcing additional equipment ..."

"...Samsung said on Friday 1/3 of its lines at a chip plant near Seoul were down after a transformer malfunctioned on August 3 afternoon...ome of the six chip production lines that were affected were halted..."

The US chipmaker last month announced plans to shed 1,100, or 5% of its global work force as part of a restructuring program. But now Micron's president and CEO Mark Durcan said his company aims to reduce its global work force by another 5% within the next 12 to 18 months.

United Test and Assembly Center (UTAC) has reported a 12%fall in first half profit to US$32 million. This is despite a 61% increase in sales to US$359 million. For the second quarter alone, earnings fell 10% on year to US$13.8 million.

Certainly, plenty of people in the industry are not convinced that EUV lithography is the right way to go. They are latching on to double patterning as a way to get them to 32 nm (since there's little doubt that EUV won't be the answer at that node, anyway). EUV has become an Intel-led political battle, with many employees jumping ship because of it — whether immersing themselves in Sematech activities or full-out quitting their current companies, they are finding ways to get away from the EUV development work.

MotionDSP announced this week that the CIA's investment arm, In-Q-Tel, had provided MotionDSP with its first bit of outside funding - an investment of less than a million dollars. The CIA also committed to more than a million dollars in contracts for the firm's technology, which can take grainy or blurry video footage and make it clearer. The company is hoping the CIA deal will help his firm cash in on a burgeoning area: the sharing of images and video over cell phones.

"...detailed plans on the non-memory chip business will be disclosed after October. But company confirmed that Hynix does not consider any other business apart from semiconductor with possibility of M&A with companies with high manufacturing capacity or venture firms with excellent technological prowess..."

Toshiba and NEC recently extended their cooperation on development of the current generation of 45nm chips, so a move to 32nm development would appear to be a natural progression. An NEC spokeswoman said the company is considering its options and there are a variety of choices.

"...PG&E said it has agreed to buy solar power that would come from a Solel-built facility planned for the Mojave Desert. Solel, the U.S. unit of Israel-based Solel Solar Systems, plans to build the solar site that would provide about 553MW of solar power for PG&E....the plant is slated to begin operation in 2011, covering a solar site of r 6,000 acres of desert..."

The joint venture, expected to begin operations later this year, is to provide integrated circuit packaging and testing services, the spokesman said.

"...executive vp of sales at Novellus said in 2008, 17 new fab buildings will start accepting equipment, and 55 total fabs will be adding capacity. The outlook is for an additional 700,000 300mm wafers starts next year, which is a 30% increase in the number of 300 mm wafer starts next year..." At the same time, memory manufacturers are retiring 200 mm fabs, taking 600,000 wafer starts per month offline this year, he said.