Around the web
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China is showing the United States that it will make good on its trade threats.
CNNMoney
The CEO of Huawei's consumer business tells CNET that it's maintaining its US operations despite the government's national security concern.
CNET
It comes down to two problems: Underestimating Android's business model, and building on an older technical platform that wasn't quite ready for the job.
CNBC
Samsung plans to adopt 2.5D and fan-out packaging technologies at the new complex. Taiwan's TSMC was the first to commercialize the fan-out packaging, adopting it to Apple's A Series processors.
The Investor
Google could owe Oracle Corp. billions of dollars for using Oracle-owned Java programming code in its Android operating system on mobile devices.
Bloomberg
Tesla said it doesn't yet know what caused the crash involving its Model X car in California on Friday, an accident that killed the driver and added to the pressures mounting on Elon Musk's company. Tesla didn't disclose whether the driver had engaged Tesla's partially autonomous driving system, known as Autopilot, when the crash occurred.
Bloomberg
NVIDIA today unveiled a series of important advances to its world-leading deep learning computing platform, which delivers a 10x performance boost on deep learning workloads compared with the previous generation six months ago.
Company release
You may recall that Susquehanna chip analyst Christopher Rolland yesterday downgraded shares of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) to "Negative" from Neutral, after concluding the stock is at risk from its reliance on blockchain and crypto-currencies for some large portion of its revenue. AMD today is refuting that contention.
Barron's
Security researchers at several American universities have collectively discovered another attack that can expose sensitive system data by exploiting modern CPUs. The attack, known as BranchScope, uses some of the same predictive execution vulnerabilities that Spectre did and shows just how problematic they can be.
The Tech Spot
NXP Semiconductors, the target of a $44 billion takeover by Qualcomm that is awaiting approval by Chinese anti-monopoly regulators, has sold its stake in a Chinese chip-design joint venture.
Reuters
Samsung Electronics will hold a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday for its second memory fabrication line in Xian, China, according to industry sources. A total of KRW8 trillion (US$7.47 billion) will be invested in the construction.
Pulse
Several packaging houses are developing the next wave of high-density fan-out packages for premium smartphones, but perhaps a bigger battle is brewing in the lower density fan-out arena.
Semiconductor Engineering
Renesas Electronics will outsource all of its automotive microcontroller production to TSMC as it seeks to cut costly outlays on chipmaking machinery and concentrate on the development of software and semiconductors.
Nikkei Asian Review
In the deepening trade negotiations between China and the US, the bargaining chips are quite literally chips.
TechCrunch
After a self-driving Uber crashed and killed a woman walking her bike across a Tempe, Arizona, road last week, the technology behind autonomous vehicles has been questioned and scrutinized. Intel, the company behind the driver-assistance software Mobileye - which is used in certain autonomous cars, like Waymo, but not in Uber - took the footage Tempe police released from the crash and ran their software through the fatal incident.
Mashable
The governor of Arizona on Monday suspended Uber's ability to test self-driving cars on public roads in the state following a fatal crash last week that killed a 49-year-old pedestrian.
CNBC
Uber's mission was to bring reliable transportation for everyone, to everywhere. But after it sold its businesses in Russia, China and Southeast Asia to local competitors, "everywhere" has shrunk to the US, Europe, parts of Latin America, India and the Middle East.
Recode
Losses in Chinese tech stocks outpaced their US counterparts on Thursday, with those losses holding into the close after President Donald Trump announced tariffs on tens of billions of dollars' worth of goods from China.
Marketwatch.com (Dow Jones)
More analysts raised their price targets on shares following better-than-expected earnings though shares were down 8.2% at last check in Friday trading, their worst one-day percentage decline since late November.
Marketwatch.com (Dow Jones)
Engineers see many options to create 5nm, 3nm and even 2nm semiconductor process technologies, but some are not sure that they will be able to squeeze commercial advantages from them even at 5nm.
EE Times
Japan's Toshiba said on Monday it had yet to receive clearance from all regulators for the sale of its prized $18 billion memory-chip business by its self-imposed end-March deadline, but added it aimed to sell it as early as possible.
Reuters
Bank of America Merrill Lynch said the smartphone maker is working with its Asian partners on a foldable phone.
CNBC
Leaders of Apple Inc., Google and other U.S. technology giants head to China this weekend to pursue a familiar goal: To do more business in the world's most populous nation. The effort has had mixed results, at best, in the past.
Bloomberg
iOS 11.3 is the Big One. It is the most important update yet for iOS 11 and vital to Apple's recovery from what is undoubtedly the iPhone's biggest scandal to date. As such its release is hotly anticipated, but users should already brace themselves for a nasty surprise...
Forbes
China has said it is considering imposing tariffs on US$3 billion worth of US products in retaliation to new tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump. The list of products under consideration by China includes pork, wine, fruit and nuts and stainless steel pipes, among others.
BBC News
With this acquisition, KLA-Tencor will significantly diversify its revenue base and add $2.5 billion of addressable market opportunity in the high-growth PCB, FPD, packaging, and semiconductor manufacturing areas.
Company release
Tesla shareholders have approved a huge pay deal for its chief executive, Elon Musk, worth an estimated US$2.6 billion. It is believed to be the biggest share-based pay deal in US corporate history.
BBC News
Google is working on blockchain-related technology to support its cloud business and head off competition from emerging startups that use the heavily-hyped technology to operate online in new ways, according to people familiar with the situation.
Bloomberg
Looks like Intel is finally addressing AMD's Ryzen mainstream desktop processor threat with eight-core processors of its own later this year. The upcoming "Coffee Lake-S" chips will be based on 14nm process technology, and part of Intel's eighth-generation design refresh slated for the second half of 2018. The chips are now starting to appear in benchmarks although the speeds are merely preliminary, given they won't be finalized until the summer at the earliest.
Digital Trends
In the latest complication for Qualcomm, China's regulators are seeking more protections for local companies before approving the US chipmaker's proposed purchase of NXP Semiconductors, according to people familiar with the matter. That could jeopardize Qualcomm's bid to survive as an independent company.
Bloomberg
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the social network "made mistakes" that led to millions of Facebook users having their data exploited by a political consultancy. In a statement, Zuckerberg said a "breach of trust" had occurred.
BBC News
Apple and IBM revealed an enhancement to their existing collaboration at the Think 2018 conference with Watson Services for Core ML and the newly designed IBM Cloud Developer Console for Apple. The offering marries Apple's Core ML tools for developers with IBM's Watson to make it easier for companies to add artificial intelligence into mobile applications.
Forbes
In a move to combat the epidemic of false and unreliable information on the internet, Google is pledging to spend $300 million over the next three years to support authoritative journalism.
New York Times
Just last week, Google unveiled an experiment with light fields to realistically capture reflections and depth. There is possibly more behind this virtual reality project as Google is now reportedly acquiring Lytro - a company whose long running speciality is light field technology.
9to5Google
For argument's sake, let's believe that Google believes its newest efforts to boost publishers - by promoting subscriptions, news literacy and other things publishers like - will help publishers. Let's also believe that Facebook believed it was helping publishers when it announced its own effort to boost publishers a year ago, and multiple times since then.
Recode
Advanced Micro Devices, Intel's main rival in computer microprocessors, said a report earlier this month alleging that its chips have widespread, fundamental vulnerabilities greatly exaggerated the severity of the threat.
Bloomberg
The US Federal Trade Commission is reported to be investigating Facebook after allegations that 50 million users' private information was misused by a political consultancy firm.
BBC News
SoftBank could relist Arm Holdings, the UK chip designer bought two years ago by the Japanese internet-to-telecoms conglomerate, according to its senior executive.
The Financial Times
MediaTek, Cirrus Logic, and Xilinx could all be on Broadcom's shopping list.
Motley Fool
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