The top 40 semiconductor and display equipment companies in South Korea saw their operating income and sales increase substantially in 2020.The companies combined recorded 12.72 trillion won in sales and 1.22 trillion won in operating income, an increase of 25.8% and 66.5%, respectively, from 2019,

Global semiconductor IP giant Arm has unveiled its new Armv9 architecture on Wednesday. It is first new architecture in 10 years since the launch of Armv8.New chips designed with Armv9 will be launched later this year.Arm said it strengthened digial signal processing (DSP) and machine learning (ML)

A former president of Samsung Electronics told an industry seminar on Tuesday that South Korea needs a national strategy so that the local semiconductor industry can leap forward again.Skylake Investment CEO Daeje Chin, who formerly headed Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business and was a Minist

Prices of DRAM and NAND flash in March remained in the same level as they were in January, according to DRAMeXchange.Average fixed prices of PC DRAM (DDR4 8Gb) was US$3 in March, the same as January.DRAM prices dropped throughout at end of 2020, but increased 5.26% from the previous month in January

SK Hynix will focus on improving the profitability of its NAND flash business going forward, the company CEO said on Tuesday at its shareholders’ meeting.The South Korean memory maker invested in Kioxia in 2018. Last year, it announced that it would be acquiring Intel’s NAND business unit.SK Hynix C

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday dropped its antitrust case against Qualcomm instead of taking it to the Supreme Court.The FTC first filed the complaint against the US chip giant in 2017. The commission accused Qualcomm of having a monopoly in baseband chips.It said the company’s prac

Coasia said on Monday at it shareholders’ meeting that it strengthen its camera module business this year.It will also focus on expanding its system semiconductor business, which it started in 2020, the company said.Coasia will take part in the management of Coasia Optics, formerly called Diostech,

System semiconductor startup Qualitas said on Monday that it will develop an 112Gb/s Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) IP aimed at artificial intelligence (AI) and data center applications.Companies such as Cadence, Synopsys, Rambus, Marvell, Credo and Alphawave are competing fiercely in SerDes IP. Q

The top ten fabless chip design companies last year saw their sales grow 26.4% year-on-year, according to market research firm TrendForce.The pandemic, which “seemed at first poised to devastate” the chip design industry, led to spike in notebook computers and networking products, the firm said.Eigh

South Korea fabless firm Ranix is aiming to launch security chips for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) and Internet of Things (IoT).A company spokesperson said Friday that it is aiming to receive certification from the government and security institutes for its V2X chip called RS2522, once development fi

Applied Materials’ plan to acquire Kokusai Electric has effectively collapsed as the company failed to secure approval from the Chinese government by March 19.The US company will now likely have to pay a termination fee to KKR, the owner of Kukusai.Applied Materials had signed the contract to buy Ko

Intel is planning to spend US$20 billion into building two new factories in Arizona, while restarting its foundry business.Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said on Tuesday that the foundry market will grow to be worth US$100 billion in 2025. The US chip giant will secure production facilities in Europe and U

South Korean system semiconductor company Coasia has received the Supplier Quality certification for its LED modules from Hyundai Motor Company.The certification will open Coasia to win more orders from the Korean automobile giant and global customers.Coasia previously received the certification for

Silicon Works has supplied its chips to German car giant Daimler, the company said on Tuesday.The application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) combines a video processor for displays and timing controller (T-Con) into one. It is aimed at dashboards and center information displays (CID).The chip wa

The CEO of SK Hynix said on Sunday the importance of memory will become more important in the era of digital transformation.Company CEO Lee Seok-hee, speaking at the 2021 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), said the company will overcome various material, structure and reliabili

Hanwha Techwin has started development of 8-nanometer (nm) system-on-a-chip (SoC) for CCTVs this year, TheElec has learned.The company is aiming to reduce reliance on China’s HiSilicon, which has previously supplied the CCTV chips.Hanwha is using South Korean design house company for the design. Sam

Renesas Electronics has suffered a fire in its facilities over the weekend that will likely exasperate the ongoing global chip shortage that is affecting automobile production.The company said its N3 building at its Naka plants in Japan suffered fire on Friday. The fire was put down in around five h

Abov Semiconductor said on Thursday that it will supply three new microcontroller units (MCU) aimed at automobiles this year.These will be a lidar MCU (A31Q213), a passenger assistance system MCU (A94Q216) and a mobile device charging MCU (A94Q427).A Abov spokesperson said the company will start pro

Fab equipment spending in 2020 increased 16% compared to 2019, according to SEMI.Spending is expected to increase 15.5% this year to reach over US$70 billion, according to the organization. It will increase 12% in 2022 to over US$80 billion.Fab equipment spending increased substantially for three ye

South Korean fabless semiconductor companies recorded noticeably polarizing earnings in 2020.TheElec collected earnings of the top 17 fabless companies, including design houses and chipless firms, and based on revenue in South Korea.The four top companies, Silicon Works, ADTechnology, Abov Semicondu