The power outage this week at TSMC’s P7 plant is expected to affect customers Renesas, NXP and Sony to varying degrees, according to market research firm TrendForce.The plant suffered a power outage due to accidental severing of a power cable during construction on Wednesday. Power was restored on t

DB HiTek is planning to expand its image sensor foundry business.The company said on Friday that it has developed global shutter and single-photon avalanche diode (SPAD) processes based on its 110-nanometer (nm) platform.The South Korean foundry will begin multi-wafer project program for fabless cus

TSMC said on Wednesday that it suffered a power outage at its P14 plant which was recovered on the same day, according to Reuters.Some of the machines still worked during the outage thanks to backup systems, the Taiwanese chip giant said.The company will investigate the damages caused by the outage.

SK Hynix has formed a new group that will focus on development of fab equipment technologies, TheElec has learned.The South Korean memory maker had hired an outside expert and named them an executive vice president to lead the fab equipment development group.The group will be under direction supervi

Analog Devices said on Tuesday launched reference design for a 16-channel mixed-signal front-end (MxFE) digitizer.The digitizers are for aerospace and defense applications such as phased array radars and ground-based satellite communications.They include four AD9081 or four AD9082 software-defined d

Samsung Electronics is planning to sell around 400 units of fab equipment to UMC to be used in the latter’s factory in Taiwan, according Taiwan Economic Daily.The pair has recently signed a contract for UMC to manufacture Samsung’s image sensors.The equipment will be used in UMC’s P6 plant at Nanke.

The Korea Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA) has asked the South Korean government to enact new laws that provide support for the industry.The association said in an open letter that the US was planning to offer up to 40% tax reduction for semiconductor equipment spending, while the European

Samsung Electronics said on Friday that it will encourage open source innovation with its own storage platform called Project Poseidon.Project Poseidon is the company’s disaggregated storage platform designed to meet the needs of hyperscale server manufacturers and the data center market.Earlier in

South Korean fabless firm Pixelplus will begin selling its facial recognition image sensor in China this year, TheElec has learned.The company is attempting to diversify its revenue steram and reduce its reliance on biometric recognition solution for CCTVs and automobiles.Facial recognition systems

SK Hynix has settled its patent lawsuit with Netlist.The South Korean memory maker will pay royalties to the latter under their patent cross-licensing agreement, the company said.SK Hynix will be paying around US$40 million for use of Netlist’ patents.In 2016, Netlist filed a patent infringement law

South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy on Wednesday said it has chosen ten categories of semiconductors used in cars to develop.These are car storage, power management chips, driver video record system chips, and others.Though microcontroller unit, which is experiencing the worst short

Intel on Wednesday launched its third-generation Xeon Scalable processor ‘Ice Lake’ in South Korea.The new chip supports edge, hybrid cloud and high performance computing.Intel said Ice Lake has 46% increased performance for data center workload.Each processor can support up to 40 cores, which allow

South Korean semiconductor deposition equipment maker Eugune Technology has won a large order for atomic layer deposition (ALD) equipment from Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor division, TheElec has learned.Eugune beat Japan’s Kokusai Electric to win the large order. Samsung had relied on Kokusai f

Tesna recorded an operating margin rate of 23.09% in 2020, the highest among semiconductor packaging and testing companies in South Korea.The top ten companies for packaging and testing (back-end process) combined recorded average operating margin rates of 5.66%.Tesna’s operating margin rate beat ot

SK Hynix is in talks to supply its memory chips for cars with German auto-component giant Bosch, TheElec has learned.SK Hynix has completed the development of the memory chip that meets specifications requested by Bosch, people familar with the matter said.DRAMs used in cars have increased reliabili

TSMC said on Thursday that it will invest US$100 billion in the next three years to expand its production capacity, according to Reuters.The Taiwanese chip giant also said it will work with its customers to overcome the current global chip shortage.Last year, Intel announced that it is planning to s

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