There's a lot that's not being said about the deal announced by ARM and Xilinx. What is known is that Xilinx has licensed ARM's Cortex processor IP, and that the two companies are developing next-generation AMBA interconnect technology.

Silicon wafer supplier MEMC Electronic Materials will acquire SunEdison, described as North America's largest solar energy services provider, for at least $200 million in cash and stock, the company said.

Hoping to accelerate the possible migration to 450-mm prototype fabs by 2012, International Sematech has aggressively moved on several fronts.

Freescale Semiconductor Inc. said its losses fell in the recently ended quarter although sales dropped sharply from the year-ago quarter even as incremental improvements to operations boosted margins at the automotive IC vendor.

The DRAM industry is likely to continue its rebound in 2010, according to market research firm iSuppli, which said sequential growth in DRAM revenue and pricing during the second and third quarters was the strongest the industry has seen in

Allvia Inc., a through-silicon via (TSV) foundry, has purchased a manufacturing facility in Hillsboro, Ore.

Propelled by the early signs of a recovery, Semico Research Corp. has raised its IC forecast for 2010.

Seeking to differentiate itself in a competitive market, SP AusNet, a utility company in Australia, has agreed to install by December 2013 more than 680,000 smart meters riding a WiMax network as part of a government plan to deploy more

Japan's Tokyo Electron Ltd., the world's second-largest fab tool maker, has raised its forecast.

It is most definitely not "business as usual"; it is "better than usual," proclaims Ken Klein, president of Wind River.

Notebook computer maker Quanta Computer Inc. (Taoyuan, Taiwan) has made a $10 million investment in Tilera Corp. (San Jose, Calif.), a startup developer of multicore processors and compilers.

Energy Micro AS (Oslo, Norway), the startup that has brought the Gecko family of 32-bit microcontrollers to market, is planning to raise about $10 million in venture capital in the first half of 2010.

Sequans Communications SA (La Défense, France) announced its Mobile WiMAX technology powers Alvarion's BreezeMAX Extreme solution, aimed at accelerating the deployment of broadband wireless services in rural, residential and business broadband, as well as video surveillance, public safety, government and

In the course of its expanding production activities, Globalfoundries has rearranged the responsibilities in that segment. Jim Doran and Udo Nothelfer have both been promoted.

Without fresh innovations, designers could find themselves by 2020 in an era of "dark silicon," able to build dense devices they cannot afford to power, according to the chief technology officer of ARM Ltd. at the company's annual tech conference

Despite some resistance among many fab tool makers, International Sematech claims that it continues to make progress in 450-mm fab technology, saying that it is in the ''test wafer generation'' stage in the arena.

Japan-based semiconductor manufacturing equipment suppliers posted a book-to-bill ratio of 1.28 for September, down from 1.44 in August, according to the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan.

R&D foundry SVTC Technologies Inc. is mulling over plans to build a small-volume, specialty fab in the United States.