02/08/2012 

The SIA shows 2011 worldwide semiconductor sales hit $299.5 billion, a 0.4% year-on-year increase and new record. Semico Research's forecast for 2012 shows a 10.11% growth in semiconductors revenues over 2011. Barclays Capital and Strategy Analytics also weigh in.

02/06/2012 

Micron Technology Inc. (Nasdaq:MU) long-time CEO and chairman Steve Appleton passed away. MU named Mark Durcan, Micron president and COO, to fill the vacant CEO post, and serve on the Board.

02/03/2012 

X-FAB Silicon Foundries, a More-than-Moore semiconductor foundry, has used SFT's R3D (Resistive 3D) software for its 0.18

02/03/2012 

AMD's (NYSE:AMD) new president and CEO Rory P. Read detailed what he called an "ambidextrous" strategy for the company, building on its x86 and graphics IP while incorporating other technologies and IP for differentiation in the electronics marketplace.

02/02/2012 

Consumer electronics devices are shifting from specific functions to multiple functions and Internet connectivity, creating an overlap of features and functions between product categories not only in the mobile segment, but also in other CE devices like digital TVs and set top boxes. This entire category is morphing into a larger "smart devices" grouping.

02/02/2012 

Propelled by the appeal of Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad, the wireless communications sphere surpassed computers to lead all segments in semiconductor-related spending among top OEMs in 2011.

01/31/2012 

North American companies made a minor gain in semiconductor marketshare in 2011, keeping the them in the majority worldwide. South Korean companies have gained more than two points of marketshare since 2009, says IC Insights.

01/30/2012 

Luxtera is teaming up with the new foundry service for Optoelectronic Systems Integration in Silicon (OpSIS), making Luxtera’s Silicon CMOS Photonics device library and process open to the OpSIS community, which shares the cost of fabricating complex chip-scale systems across many projects.

01/30/2012 

Tilera launched its 36 and 16-core TILE-Gx 64-bit processors with low power consumption and high performance. The chips increase the number of cores on one die, without complicated redesigns, and are Tilera's first 40nm design.

01/27/2012 

Texas Instruments (TI, NASDAQ:TXN) will close 2 older semiconductor manufacturing facilities in Hiji, Japan and Houston, TX over the course of the next 18 months. Production from these analog chip sites will be moved to more advanced TI facilities.

01/27/2012 

President Barack Obama visited the Intel Ocotillo campus in Chandler, AZ. The President spoke about Intel's technological innovation, and manufacturing jobs in America.

01/27/2012 

While Apple's release of the iPhone 4S in Q4 2011 "unleashed tremendous pent-up demand" from consumers, Samsung used its broad range of smartphones to take the top spot, reports IHS.

01/26/2012 

Soitec joined SEMATECH's Front End Processes and Advanced Metrology Programs, bringing SOI wafers and other advanced engineered wafers into the group to work on new processes and technologies enabling high-performance, low-power IC applications.

01/25/2012 

The late-2011 flooding in Thailand caused major disruptions in the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing communities, most acutely felt in hard disk drive (HDD) manufacturing. FBR Capital Markets provides this update on Thai HDD production.

01/25/2012 

UC Riverside researchers identified the "Higgs boson" property of bilayer graphene: when the electrons come close to 0, BLG becomes insulating. This spontaneous symmetry breaking is the same principle that endows mass for particles in high energy physics.

01/24/2012 

The USPTO is looking to increase the diversity of honorees for its annual National Medal of Technology and Innovation (NMTI), honoring "this nation's creative geniuses."

01/24/2012 

Leading electronic equipment manufacturers accounted for $105.6 billion of semiconductors on a design TAM basis in 2011, 35% of semiconductor vendors' worldwide chip revenue, according to Gartner. Apple bought the most, spending $17,257 million.

01/23/2012 

Silex Microsystems joined Energy-efficient Piezo-MEMS Tunable RF Front-End Antenna Systems for Mobile Devices to develop TSVs, PZT thin films, and other technologies for high-performance RF systems targeting mobile devices.

01/20/2012 

2011 was a big year for M&A in the mobile device semiconductor market, from Intel’s acquisition of Infineon Technologies AG Wireless Solutions, Qualcomm's Atheros buy, to NVIDIA’s purchase of Icera. Despite all the M&A activity, however, the market is still projected to remain relatively flat.

01/19/2012 

Samsung Electronics began producing embedded multi-chip package (eMCP) memory for use in entry- to mid-level smartphones. The products use low power double-data-rate 2 (LPDDR2) 30nm DRAM and 20nm NAND flash memory.