Samsung will start applying pellicles in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) process used in advanced chip production starting in 2023, TheElec has learned.Pellicles, which are used to protect masks from dusts, will be used in mass production starting in late 2023, people familiar with Samsung’s internal

Cirrus Logic’s deal to buy Lion Semiconductor for US$335 million is talk of the town in South Korea’s semiconductor industry.Last week, Cirrus Logic announced that it was acquiring the California-based startup that specializes in power management ICs for wired and wireless charging as well as DC-DC

SK Hynix has begun the production of 10-nanometer (1a) 8Gb LPDDR4 mobile DRAM this month, the company said on Monday.It was also applying the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) process for the memory, SK Hynix aid.It is the first time that SK Hynix has applied EUV in its DRAM production. The new chip will be

Samsung secured half of the global smartphone memory revenue in the first quarter this year, according to Strategy Analytics.The South Korean held a 49% market share in the space.This was followed by SK Hynix’ 23% market share and Micron’s 14%.Smartphone memory revenue for the quarter totaled US$11.

Unitest, a South Korean fab equipment vendor which supplies kits to SK Hynix, is close to completing its new factory at Pyeongtaek.The factory will start operation within the year at the earliest, people familiar with the matter told TheElec.Unitest’s production capacity will triple once the factory

SK Hynix is preparing to end its business relationship with its design house partner ADTechnology, TheElec has learned.The South Korean memory giant had used the design house to have TSMC make its NAND flash controllers.But as ADTechnology recently ended its value chain aggregator (VCA) contract wit

SK Hynix’s acquisition of Intel’s NAND business unit has received the approval from UK’s antitrust watchdog.The Competition and Markets Authority gave its unconditional approval of the deal on Monday.In October last year, the South Korean memory giant announced that it would be acquiring Intel’s NAN

SK Hynix’s acquisition of Intel’s NAND unit has secured the approval from authorities in Brazil.Brazil’s Administrative Council for Economic Defense said it found that the deal didn’t hurt fair market competition.In October last year, SK Hynix announced that it was acquiring Intel’s NAND and SSD bus

SiFive announced two new RISC-V cores called P550 and P270. P550 will be used for the first time in Intel’s 7-nanometer (nm) CPU codenamed Horse Creek, which will launch sometime between 2022 and 2023.In March, Intel had said its 7nm CPU Meteor Lake will enter tape-in stage in the second quarter of

Chip inspection equipment firm Intekplus said on Friday that it will spend 8 billion won to build a new factory at Daejeon.This will double its production capacity and allow to meet the current high demand from the semiconductor industry, the company said.Once the new factory goes live next year, In

Chip testing firm APACT said on Monday that it plans to start a new system semiconductor backend business for new growth.The company will open a new sales office in Pangyo to start the business in full-scale, it said.APACT will place sales personnel and engineers at the new office to aggressively wi

SK Hynix’s plan to buy Intel’s NAND business unit was approved by antitrust authorities in Taiwan on Thursday.The approval follows those made in the US, Europe and South Korea.Last year in October, SK Hynix had announced that it plans to buy Intel’s NAND and solid-state drive business units for US$9

Intel was in talks to buy SiFive for US$2 billion, according to reports.The move is seen as Intel’s counter to Nvidia’s planned acquisition of Arm.Both Intel and SiFive declined to comment on the matter, according to Reuters.SiFive offers its own open source RISC-V chip core, an alternative to Arm’s

SK Hynix on Tuesday denied online rumors that alleged the company suffered billions of dollars in losses due to defective DRAMs.An online post claiming the Korean memory giant suffered 2 trillion won in losses due to 240,000 DRAM wafers turning up defective recently during production spread in vario

Semiconductor packaging firm Hana Micron was in talks to buy semiconductor testing company APACT.Hana was seeking to acquire APACT to win a large, long-term order to handle semiconductor backend process work from South Korean memory giant SK Hynix, people familiar with the matter told TheElec.Those

Fab equipment sales from South Korea reached US$7.31 billion in the first quarter of 2021, according to SEMI.This was an 118% increase from the US$3.36 billion of the year prior.It was also an increase of 82% from the previous quarter’s US$4.02 billion.The surge is likely due to the increased spendi

South Korean memory packaging and testing companies saw their earnings drop in the first quarter of 2021 as SK Hynix continues to internalize more of its own packaging and testing.In contrast, packaging and testing companies that services logic chips saw their earnings improve in the same time perio

SK Hynix’s acquisition of Intel’s NAND business unit has been approved by South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday.The approval follows that of those made in the US and Europe earlier. South Korea’s FTC said it approved the deal quickly as it considered there to be little anti-competiti

The world’s top 15 semiconductor companies saw their combined sales grow 21% in the first quarter of 2021, according to market research firm IC Insights.Fourteen out of the 15 firms all recorded at least US$3 billion in sales.Intel topped the list with US$18.67 billion, followed by Samsung’s US$17.0

Silicon Works was the sole fabless in South Korea to record high growth in the first quarter of 2021.TheElec looked at the first quarter earnings of the top 20 fabless companies (including design houses and chipless firms) in the country.Silicon Works recorded 405.6 billion won in sales, a jump of 9