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| Apple to prepay $1.2 billion for flash supply |
11/21/2005 |
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Apple Computer on Monday said it would prepay $1.25 billion to secure its supply of flash memory used in its market-dominating iPod music players amid an expected surge in demand for the chips.
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| Intel, Micron in NAND flash venture |
11/21/2005 |
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Intel and Micron Technology on Monday said they would form a venture to make NAND flash memory for consumer electronics, removable data storage and handheld communications devices.
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| Intel ships new multi-level NOR flash |
11/18/2005 |
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The new StrataFlash cellular memory (M18) is meant to deliver faster performance, higher density and lower power consumption than the previous 130nm version, Intel said.
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| TI employees filed suit on suite-up time pay deduction |
11/18/2005 |
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According to the suit, filed Tuesday (Nov. 15) in a U.S. District Court in Texas, TI does not pay fab workers for approximately 32 to 42 minutes per day spent smocking, un-smocking, changing shoes, participating in "pass down" briefings and other required activities.
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| Break through in nanotube LED |
11/18/2005 |
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IBM said its technique achieves 1000-fold brighter emissions by electrically stimulating a carbon nanotube suspended over a doped silicon wafer. The resulting excitons are electrically neutral, yet emit infrared light when recombined.
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| Infineon going to Chartered for capacity |
11/18/2005 |
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Under the plan, Infineon will have Chartered manufacture select 65-nm chip designs. More specifically, Chartered will make Infineon’s low-power, cellular-phone chip products
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| Japanese are going joint Mega Fab concept |
11/18/2005 |
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Five Japanese semiconductor manufacturers have reportedly reached a basic agreement to establish a joint fab at a cost of about ¥200 billion ($1.67 trillion).
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| Consumer IC to take center stage |
11/17/2005 |
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Worldwide sales of microchips are expected to reach $309 billion in 2008, an increase of 45 percent from $213 billion in 2004.
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| President Bush leads to eleminate MCP tarriff |
11/17/2005 |
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Earlier this month, representatives from the U.S., Korea, Japan, Chinese Taipei and the E.U. finalized the draft agreement on duty-free treatment of multi-chip package ICs during a Governments/Authorities Meeting on Semiconductors in Seoul, Korea.
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| Micron Nand Flash taking hold on market |
11/17/2005 |
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Micron increased its NAND revenue by 400 percent, causing its ranking to rise to fifth place, up from seventh in the second quarter. Micron climbed at the expense of STMicroelectronics which slipped from fifth to seventh place.
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| Analyst predicts continue DRAM price errosion |
11/17/2005 |
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In 2007 the market will go through a major pricing correction and decline by 20 percent to $19.5 billion with component pricing dropping by 50 percent, Gartner asserted. This will come after a year of weak DRAM market conditions in 2006 during which revenues are set to decline 5.0 percent to $24.4 billion and pricing to decline 37.1 percent.
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| Infineon to focus smart card business on German national system |
11/17/2005 |
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Infineon is pinning its hopes on the personal identification market. The German government is scheduled to introduce electronic passport systems soon. Last June, Infineon was awarded a government contract to supply half of Germany's ePass chips and antennas.
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| Nanoelectronics market expected to grow |
11/16/2005 |
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The markets for nanomaterials, tools and equipment for nanoelectronics totaled $1.8 billion in 2005 and are forecast to reach $4.2 billion by the year 2010, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).
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| ProMos move ahead on second 300-mm fab |
11/16/2005 |
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ProMOS, a supplier of DRAMs, held the ceremony for its 300-mm Fab 3 plant in the Central Science Park in Taichung. The company’s first 300-mm fab is located in Hsinchu. “The newly inaugurated 300-mm fab is Taiwan’s first 300-mm DRAM fab to deploy 90-nanometer technology in mass production of 512-Mbits DDR1 and DDR2,”
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| AMD puts quad-core on roadmap |
11/16/2005 |
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AMD had said previously it expected to release a quad-core part by 2008. Intel, on the other hand, recently released a roadmap that called for quad-core in 2007.
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| Latest DRAM producer statistic |
11/16/2005 |
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The top eight ranked vendors of DRAM retained the same positions in the third quarter, according to market research company iSuppli Corp., although market leader Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. displayed relatively low sequential growth of 5.8 percent.
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| Intel see untapped opportunities in Middle East |
11/16/2005 |
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Intel will focus on investments in innovative companies that complement Intel's technology and platform initiatives in areas such as wireless broadband (especially WiMax), and in local content developers/providers, digital health solutions, IT service providers and software solutions.
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| M-Systems to get Mobile business though $40M acquisition |
11/15/2005 |
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M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers Ltd. said today it would acquire Microelectronica Espanola, a Madrid, Spain-based smart card and smart card operating systems company for $40 million in cash. “We now expect to offer a unique portfolio of storage solutions for mobile handsets - DiskOnChip Embedded Flash Drives, memory cards, MegaSIM products and SIM cards,”
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| Infineon departs its fiber optics business |
11/15/2005 |
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Automotive supplier Siemens VDO has agreed to take over the Trutnov plant beginning July 1, 2006. Until then, the companies will work in parallel at the site to allow Siemens VDO to ramp production of electric motor drives while Infineon fulfilling remaining customers requirements.
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| Huawei selects Agere network processor |
11/15/2005 |
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The two companies announced at this week’s 3G World Congress in Hong Kong that the processors will be used in switching systems that integrate Asynchronous Transfer Mode and Internet Protocol traffic.
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| Cray goes with AMD processor on next Super computer |
11/15/2005 |
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“After an extensive review of marketplace alternatives, we selected the AMD64 platform as the microarchitecture for our next-generation supercomputer products," said Cray President and CEO Peter Ungaro, in a statement. "In the near-term, the AMD Opteron processor roadmap provides our customers a smooth upgrade path to multi-core systems.”
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| Infineon to look into IPO option for Infineon |
11/15/2005 |
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One possibility is that Infineon (Munich, Germany) would sell off its share in the Inotera Memories Inc. joint venture to Nanya, sell of its U.S. operations to Micron and try to gain value for its European DRAM business, in the absence of any obvious buyer, through an IPO.
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| Elpida starts sampling of DDR3 modules |
11/14/2005 |
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Elpida Memory Inc., Japan's only dedicated DRAM manufacturer, has started sampling 512-Mbit DDR3 SDRAM chips and dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) built with the DDR3 chips
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| Sun launches Niagara four-core processor |
11/14/2005 |
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HP, IBM, and Sun Microsystems take a two-pronged approach to the server market: Low-end x86-based systems and high-end machines based on powerful processors
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