Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASM International will eliminate 106 jobs as it shutters its manufacturing facility in Phoenix and shifts those operations to Singapore.

Cloud computing and flash-based storage, two fast-emerging IT technologies, are driving each other forward as users of Internet-based services like social networks demand near-real-time access to ever-growing amounts of data.

Texas Instruments has placed a bid of US$172.5 million on used 300mm equipment from the now-shuttered Qimonda fab near Richmond, Va. The Dallas-based company plans to use the equipment for 300mm analog production.

"IC-packaging will almost certainly happen in Vietnam, but it has been delayed by one or two years..."

A fortnight after Typhoon Morakot first struck Taiwan on August 6 the storm continued to wreak havoc on the island. Morakot is also doing political damage.

Pure Wafer, a provider of silicon wafers and wafer services based on reclaimed wafers, has announced plans to raise £2.3 million (US$3.8 million) and restructure its debt, along with its delayed interim financial results to Dec. 30, 2008.

Texas Instruments (TI) could be interested in taking over Qimonda's US-based assets, writes news service swissinfo.ch.

Hynix is expected to swing to an operating profit in the July to September period, ending its seventh consecutive quarterly loss. Samsung may also see profits rise further in its semiconductor unit in the third quarter.

The Flash Memory Summit brought a range of opinions on the state of the NAND industry, scaling, 3-bit-per-cell and solid-state drives (SSDs).

Indonesia has proved to be less exposed to the global recession than many of its neighbours, and its economy expanded by 4.2% on year in the first half of 2009.

Verigy, a semiconductor testing company, has posted a net loss of US$21 million in its third quarter ended July 31, 2009, compared to net income of US$18 million in the prior year period.

Samsung Electronics and Toshiba said they have received notices from the US Justice Department informing them that an antitrust investigation into the flash-memory chip market had ended.

Memory chip makers will offer more sophisticated flash drives for smartphones - technology that will be comparable to the solid-state drives (SSD) found in laptops today.

Taiwan's leaders have approved a three billion US dollar Typhoon Morakot relief budget as public outrage grew over their response to the floods and mudslides that left up to 500 feared dead. "The cabinet lacks credibility in the typhoon victims' and the general public's eyes. A cabinet that cannot command the people's trust and respect should of course be replaced..."

When we asked Jensen about Globalfoundries, the big man from Nvidia said that Nvidia likes to work with companies that are customer centric. Since TSMC has 200 customers its kind of hard to be in center of attention, while such a thing might be possible with some alternative fab companies, such as Globalfoundies.

MEMS packaging may take an evolutionary leap forward into wafer-level packaging, driven by large IDMs and foundries, analysts said. "TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) and others are talking about making MEMS parts...and they have the resources to do the package too.