ST to show key applications for energy efficiency at IIC-China 2009, including green air-conditioning, eBike, and Solar-LED street lights in Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center - Booth 2G01

The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) workgroup was created in May of 2006 to standardize the low-level interface to NAND flash chips from different manufacturers. However, the two largest NAND flash manufacturers are not members of ONFI. Samsung and Toshiba together account for approximately 70% of global NAND flash production, although their market share has been dropping by around 10% annually since ONFI was first standardized. SanDisk is also notably absent from the list of members.

Home prices in top US cities fell a record 18.5% in December amid an unending home mortgage crisis at the epicenter of financial turmoil, fresh data showed Tuesday.

Micron Technology's decision to cut as many as 2,000 jobs and scale back memory chip production is a "prudent" move, a Deutsche Bank analyst said.

Asian stocks fell sharply amid renewed fears over the health of the global financial sector and after US stocks hit a near 12-year low.

China reaffirmed on Monday that it will ramp up public spending and try to simulate domestic demand to ensure stable growth as the global financial crisis weighs on the economy.

US Consumer prices rose in January for the first time in six months as energy costs rebounded, government data showed on Friday, easing fears of deflation amid a severe economic downturn.

Japan's chip industry, awash in red ink, plans to consolidate older fabs. Fujitsu, NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology all detailed scheduled closings of older facilities. Also, executives at NEC and Toshiba, which have been discussing a merger of their system-on-chip (SoC) operations, appeared reluctant to go ahead with a merger until internal restructuring efforts take effect.

With the global recession hanging over economies in Asia, market researchers at IDC expect overall IT services growth in the region to slow down, forcing organizations to move back to basics with an increased focus on cost management and less so on business transformation projects.

Most valley companies still view the United States, the world's largest tech market, as the center of their business plans. Nonetheless, startups creating technology primarily marketed in other countries are "increasing pretty rapidly," said William Miller, a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.

At Nikon's annual LithoVision symposium yesterday on the eve of the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference in San Jose, representatives from throughout the lithography community, as well as Nikon representatives, gave updates on progress being made in immersion lithography, double patterning and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Although they had much to tell on the technology advances, a common theme was the consternation at not yet having what appears to be a workable solution beyond 20nm.

The Kindle 2 electronic reader that Amazon is now shipping has a new read-aloud feature. And for authors and publishers, that's a potentially troublesome development. "It's a contractual minefield," says Paul Aiken, executive director of The Authors Guild. "Authors often give audio rights to one entity and e-books rights to another."

Hynix is gratified that the court rejected Rambus' request for an injunction, but is disappointed by the district court's damages ruling and will file an appeal when the final judgment is entered. Hynix believes that Rambus's patents, as has been recently confirmed by certain rulings of the US Patent & Trademark Office, are invalid. In addition, Hynix maintains that Rambus' conduct in destroying evidence relevant to the litigation between Hynix and Rambus, and Rambus and the rest of the DRAM industry, bars Rambus from enforcing its patents.

Micron Technology will cut 2,000 jobs as it phases out 200- millimeter DRAM chip manufacturing operations in Boise, Idaho, by the end of its fiscal year in August. These layoffs are in addition to a 15% reduction, affecting about 2,850 employees, announced last fall as the company stopped production of some NAND flash-memory chips.