Nikon to supply Powerchip with latest chip stepper
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Nikon Corp., the world's No. 2 chip  stepper maker, said on Thursday it has won a contract to supply  Taiwan's Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. with equipment used to  make NAND flash memory chips.
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It looks like a partnership between AMD, IBM, Sony and Toshiba has produced a new technology which allows faster transistor speeds with the same energy consumption.
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(InfoWorld) - The investment arm of chip maker Intel said Thursday it agreed to invest $65 million in Powertech Technology, a Taiwanese chip assembler that specializes in flash memory and DRAM (dynamic RAM). Intel Capital said the funds, along with capital from other investors Powertech expects to bring on board, will be used as working capital to support the continued growth of its operations. Intel is an active customer of Powertech, it said in a statement, and led the round of financing for Powertech. The announcement came as no surprise in Taiwan, where Chinese-language media had been reporting such a deal between Intel and Powertech was in the works. The investment is one indication of how competitive the NAND flash memory chip business has become, and the importance of Powertech's services. Intel entered the NAND flash memory fray byÂ partnering with Micron Technology, a deal the two companies announced in late 2005, and started early last year under the name IM Flash Technologies. They entered an already competitive industry that included South Korean heavyweights Samsung ElectronicsÂ and Hynix Semiconductor, as well as NAND flash developer SanDisk. NAND flash chips have become popular thanks to widespread use for song storage in digital music players, including Apple's iPod Shuffle and iPod nano. One bottleneck in NAND flash production is in chip assembly, where companies seal the chips inside protective coverings, the final step in the making of a chip. Powertech specializes in memory chip assembly, including NAND flash memory as well as DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) DRAM chips. The NAND business has hit a few speed bumps recently. The popularity of the chips caused companies to build too many new NAND production lines, causing a glut of chips on the market and sending prices tumbling. SanDisk announced a few weeks ago that it planned to lay off 10 percent of its work force in a bid to remain profitable despite steep price cuts on its chips. The Milpitas, California company said NAND flash memory chip prices have dropped 50 percent in the last two months.
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Micron Technology, trying to take on widely used CCD image sensors, pushes its CMOS technology to 8 megapixels.
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Foundry partner gears up for second-generation 90nm Efficeons
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Working with the basic material of computer chips, Intel Corp. researchers have constructed an all-silicon laser that could lead to computers one day harnessing light waves rather than electrical currents to shuttle data swiftly.
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Ziff Davis - IBM next month will start powering its blade servers with Intel Corp.'s low-voltage version of its "Nocona" processor.
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Chip maker likely is making way for new products.
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Prototype 90-nanometer radio chip promises more power than current CMOS technology.
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IBM announced yesterday it has officially begun production of the 65nm version of the revolutionary successor to the Power CPU, which now powers some BladeCenter servers and, of course, Sony's PlayStation 3. To lower power consumption while at the same time reducing current leakage, IBM found itself adopting a novel approach, as the company itself shamelessly admitted.
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Breaking the speed barrier of traditional flash memory, Intel and Micron Thursday announced a new flash memory architecture that increases the data transfer rates in consumer electronics by cutting the bottlenecks affecting conventional NAND flash memory.
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In photo land, a new gizmo extreme white balancing than the traditional white paper. David Becker's PMA coverage continues in Gadget Lab.
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Korean semiconductor company Mtekvision's MV8722 chip has received DivX certification, meaning future handsets, possibly from Samsung and LG, will offer native DivX support.
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MIT researchers have developed a new ultralow-voltage chip that could improve the energy efficiency of low-power electronics tenfold.
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Blog: Adobe's latest raw-image converter, due this week, will support newer SLRs and improve sharpening, but only for Photoshop CS3 users.
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Advanced Micro Devices plans to demonstrate its version of a new approach to processor design on Tuesday, with a chip that is expected to offer faster computing and relatively less power consumption.
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Technical details of the new low-power mobile CPU, expected to ship this year, are being released at a chip conference this week.