Low levels of fab spending this year could lead to significant shortages in chip capacity, according SEMI. Fab spending should rise over 60% next year, according to SEMI. However it's coming from the very low base of 2009. US$4.6bn was spent on fab construction last year, but only US$1.6bn will be spent this year.

Fresco Solar says it will build solar photovoltaic ground arrays of 1MW or more anywhere in the United States for US$2.95 per watt or US$2.95 million per megawatt system. The package includes delivery, installation, and testing of the racking, panels, and inverters as well as associated foundations and wiring. The price does not include sales and use taxes, local permits and fees, and any land development costs.

Apple has touted new HTTP Live Streaming features of the iPhone OS 3.0 and the upcoming Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X—and it has submitted the spec to the IETF. Will it be enough to supplant Flash as the de facto standard for delivering live or on-demand streaming online?

The meetings have rarely produced anything of consequence, so this summit in Italy should be the last. Much worse, it doesn't include the real economic powers of tomorrow: China, India and Brazil.

Last year, T. Boone Pickens signed a deal for 667 wind turbines for an enormous 4,000-megawatt wind farm to be built in the Texas Panhandle. Now that plan is in shambles. Bad credit markets and a lack of transmission lines for the wind turbines have led him to scrap the panhandle project, at least for now, he confirmed today. But he still has to do something with all of those turbines he's ordered. "I'm committed to 667 wind turbines and I am going to find projects for them," he said in a statement.

Nokia's strategic relationship with Intel, announced last month, may be very forward-looking and not about to worry any incumbent wireless chipset suppliers, but it is nonetheless threatening to Europe's local hero, ARM Holdings.

Dubbed single mode level cell (SMLC) technology, Fusion-io says products using the enterprise class flash offer a cost-effective MLC-based solid-state solution with the endurance and performance of SLC at a much lower cost-per-gigabyte.

Google names Acer, Adobe, Asustek, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments as initial partners on Chrome OS.

OKI Data is increasing LED production to meet target sales by 2011. ODI, the OKI Data subsidiary that develops and manufactures print heads for LED printers, currently operates in Hachioji. These operations will be transferred to the facility now acquired from Renesas, and the facility is scheduled to go on-line in April 2010.

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has announced it has developed two new industrial use color TFT-LCD modules with protective glass covering the whole display surface. These modules offer excellent visibility in outdoor applications, due to not only their high luminance but also to their low reflectivity in bright environments, enabling TFT-LCD users to easily develop outdoor-use products, the copmpany said. Shipments begin on August 1, 2009.

Photronics, a worldwide leader in supplying innovative imaging technology solutions for the global electronics industry, has announced that it is closing its integrated circuit photomask manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China. The closure is consistent with Photronics strategy to reduce costs and lower its operational breakeven point, it said.

The Milan trade fair has said it is commissioning the world's biggest rooftop photovoltaic power installation covering some 270,000 square meters.

"Contents and services drive sales of devices ... Our No. 1 mission is to raise the software value of our devices," Lee of Samsung's Media Solution Center, said at a conference in Seoul.

The semiconductor memory industry is about to experience major technological changes as three-dimensional multi-gate structures push transistors and memory architectures forward, according to a one-day memory workshop held last month in Grenoble, France, by leading researchers from around the world.