Micron Technology fiscal fourth-quarter net loss widened on a US$205 million write-down on memory chips as their prices continued to decline. As the company posted its seventh straight quarterly loss, it announced a 20% cut in salaries of senior executives. "The global memory market continues to experience severe oversupply and price degradation," said CEO Steve Appleton.

TSMC has pushed out or delayed its initial high-k/metal-gate offering until 28-nm. In contrast, IBM and its partners plan to offer what they claim is a better gate-stack solution at 32nm. As previously reported, IBM, Chartered and Samsung plan to offer a high-k and metal-gate solution for 32nm. The companies in IBM's fab club will not offer a SiON option at 32nm and beyond.

The incorporation documents of Tejas Silicon Holdings (UK) Ltd. show that two of the executives of the company that has just bought the Germany fab operation of Atmel, are based in the United States. And apparently one of them, at least, has experience of running a mature fab operation.

A 36% stake in Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second biggest dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chipmaker, is going up for sale but there are few bidders on the horizon because of a down market. Samsung Electronics is currently the No. 1 contender.

Telecoms Korea confirms that LG and Samsung are researching Android, but it also says that the soonest we'll see Android handsets from either is the second half of 2009. That puts them nine months behind HTC.

Tejas Silicon Holdings has agreed to acquire the Heilbronn, Germany fab operation, including equipment, but will lease the facility and license fab process technology from Atmel. About 300 Atmel employees associated with fab operations and other support functions will become a part of Tejas Silicon, Atmel said. Atmel and Tejas Silicon will also enter into a supply agreement whereby Atmel will continue to procure products from the Heilbronn fab over a three-year period, Atmel said.

Taiwanese shares fell sharply Tuesday after US lawmakers turned down President George Bush's request for US$700 billion to rescue the American financial system. The weighted price index of the Taiwan Stock market dropped 210.35 points, or 3.55%, to close at 5,719.28. Earlier, it had fallen more than 6%. Before the market opened, Taiwanese vice premier Paul Chiu urged investors to have confidence in Taiwan's export-driven economy and its financial markets.

The semiconductor IP industry has been the virtual and ongoing punching bag in the IC business. Lack of standards, quality metrics and business models have hurt the IP industry for years. Profitability remains elusive for many IP vendors. And most, if not all of those problems continue to haunt the industry as a whole. In total, there are 300 to 400 semiconductor IP vendors of all shapes and sizes. ARM, Cadence, MIPS, Rambus, Virage and Synopsys are among the bigger players, but most IP vendors are small-sized shops.

This is a bubble, Maeda told Reuters in an interview, referring to the estimated 200 solar power firms now in the sector and their plans to ramp up capacity. The prices of solar panels need to fall to less than half of what they are now (for their use to spread without subsidies), and current technology doesn't make that commercially viable. The industry is in for large price falls, he said, adding that it was dangerous to invest prematurely in inefficient technologies. "Eighty percent of solar sector makers will fail."

Buffett, often mentioned in the past as the world's wealthiest man behind former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, is reportedly looking to buy 10% of shares in China's BYD, a major electronics and auto-parts manufacturer.

Since ATMI last updated its 2008 guidance on July 14, 2008, market conditions have significantly deteriorated. The Company's reduced revenue outlook is the result of a marked slowdown in demand across all of ATMI's semiconductor and flat panel display end markets, a trend that accelerated in the past month.

The handset appeared to be using a touch sensitive screen with haptic feedback and a screen display which does resemble the iPhone interface, if only superficially. The company also added touch screen capabilities to its smartphone OS - the Series 60 platform - at around the same time.

The world's biggest flash memory chipmaker said it has recently begun shipping 16-gigabit multi-level cell (MLC) flash chips to clients using the 42nm level. Samsung's bigger Japanese rival Toshiba and Hynix Semiconductor are still using 43-nanometer and 48-nanometer technology, respectively.

The iPhone may be the only game in town for serious mobile Web developers right now, but that won't last long. Next year, the iPhone will see some serious competition from Google's Android platform. Of course, T-Mobile will start selling the first Android phone, the G1 made by HTC, on October 22. But other cell phone manufacturers are gearing up for a major Android push.

Intel fell to a new 2 year low. Yahoo fell US$2.04, or 10.8%, to US$16.88. That's a new 5 year low. Dell fell US$1.59, or 9.4%, to US$15.41. That's a new 10 year low. Sun fell 89 cents, or 11.7%, to US$6.75. That's a new 13 year low. AMD fell 87 cents, or 16.9%, to US$4.29. That’s a new 17 year low. Qimonda fell 48 cents, or 32.4%, to $1. That’s a new all-time low, but it still could go lower; there are growing concerns that the memory chip maker is headed for nsolvency.

...the problem boils down to the solder bump material, in Nvidia's case high-lead that was used in all of the firm's GPUs that were produced until late July. According to sources, Nvidia has switched to eutectic solder bumps in recent weeks and there is now a new, apparently independent research report, that claims that eutectic solder bumps, which are used for example by AMD’s ATI unit, may live much longer than high-lead versions.

Spain's Cabinet has ratified proposals to set a new limit on subsidised solar power at a capacity level of 500 megawatts, Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said on Friday. The approval ends weeks of wrangling over the new subsidy cap, which is far below the 1,200MW fixed in a current subsidy scheme expiring on Monday that helped make Spain the world's third-largest solar market after Germany and the United States.

Typhoon Jangmi is expected to lash Taiwan with massive amounts of rain and strong winds for a second day today after leaving a trail of destruction behind.

..it will be discontinuing the operations of its GO Networks business unit, a supplier of wide-area Wi-Fi network equipment. Accordingly, NextWave today filed a request in Israel to seek bankruptcy protection for its GO Networks subsidiary located in Tel Aviv.