03/19/2004  March 19, 2004 - Winbond Electronics Corp. and Etron Technology Inc. reportedly have received "lucrative" orders from Intel and Sharp to bundle their memory chips with multichip package products in next-generation handsets.

03/16/2004  March 16, 2004 - The European Union has approved government aid from France and Portugal to be used to support Infineon Technologies AG and Altis Semiconductor, its JV with IBM.

03/12/2004  March 12, 2004 - Sharp reportedly plans to invest ¥27 billion ($199.3 million) in its fiscal year 2005, targeting production upgrades for flash memory and image sensors.

03/11/2004  March 11, 2004 - Strong demand for semiconductors drove Korean exports of IT goods to $5.72 billion in February, an increase of more than 50% year-on-year, according to data from the Ministry of Information and Communication.

03/11/2004  March 11, 2004 - Aixtron AG, a German supplier of equipment for semiconductor epitaxy, has entered into a three-year deal with IMEC to jointly develop atomic-vapor deposition materials for high-k and metal gate stacks.

03/09/2004  March 9, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics of The Netherlands and Japan's Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. have joined IMEC's sub-45nm CMOS research program.

03/08/2004  March 8, 2004 - Flash memory developer Silicon Storage Technology (SST), Sunnyvale, CA, said it contributed $33 million to the recent Series B round of financing in Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the holding company for foundry Shanghai Grace Semiconductor.

03/08/2004  March 8, 2004 - The European Commission has announced plans to create a consortium to demonstrate the feasibility of 45nm-and-below CMOS logic technologies.

03/08/2004  Armed with new investment, Nanochip Inc. expects to make a memorable impact on the removable storage market. The Oakland, Calif., firm today received $20 million from a syndicate of institutional and industry investors, including Microsoft Corp. That is about $5 million more than the company sought during its second funding round.

03/05/2004  March 5, 2004 - Samsung Electronics has joined IBM, Chartered, and Infineon in efforts focus on 65nm CMOS logic processes, eventually including 45nm process development.

03/03/2004  March 3, 2004 - Former Toshiba Corp. engineer Fujio Masuoka has filed a suit in the Tokyo District Court seeking 1 billion yen ($9.2 million) from his former employer for his contributions toward the creation of flash memory.

03/01/2004  March 1, 2004 - Renesas Technology Corp. has filed a complaint in Tokyo District Court against Nanya Technology Corp.'s Japan subsidiary, alleging "willful" misuse of two memory-related patents.

02/26/2004  February 26, 2004 - The European Union has opened a probe into allegations of collusion over chip prices and output among the world's memory chip producers.

02/24/2004  February 24, 2004 - Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA, said its revenue growth in 2004 will be about 15%, in the middle of earlier forecasts and the same as the projected growth for the entire chip industry.

02/23/2004  February 23, 2004 - Synopsys Inc., Mountain View, CA, has made a pair of acquisitions to bolster its IP portfolio with embedded memory and CMOS transceiver technologies.

02/23/2004  February 23, 2004 - Now in the final stages of factory site selection, Hynix Semiconductor's China affiliate reportedly could begin commercial production of memory chips by 2H05.

02/19/2004  February 19, 2004 - UK-based AML said it is abandoning the foundry model for fabricating MEMS devices, calling it a "flawed concept" and "not flexible enough" to meet its demands, and is reverting back to in-house fabrication.

02/19/2004  Silicon-germanium BiCMOS has been relegated to the status of a niche technology at Texas Instruments Inc., now that the Dallas-based company has demonstrated a single-chip CMOS concept for next-generation radio circuits used in cellular phones and other portable wireless applications.

02/13/2004  February 13, 2004 - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. said it is planning for 15% revenue growth in its semiconductor business over the next three years, by focusing efforts on system LSIs and image sensors for consumer devices.

02/11/2004  February 11, 2004 - Winbond Electronics Corp. said it is planning to start the $1.3 billion first stage of construction on its 300mm facilitiy in the Central Taiwan Science Park by 3Q04.