Biden hails $22 bln investment by S. Korea's SK Group

WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden hailed progress in the US bid to revamp its 21st century economy after huge South Korean group SK announced a $22 billion investment in US semiconductor and other cutting edge industries.

"This pathbreaking announcement represents clear evidence that the United States, Korea, and its allies are back and winning the technology competition of the 21st century," Biden said in a virtual meeting at the White House with the top executives from SK Group, South Korea's second largest conglomerate.

"America is the key destination for advanced technologies," he added, stressing that the investment signaled success for his broader policy of "working with our allies."

The announcement came just before the meeting where Biden, who is recovering from a Covid infection, appeared on video, while SK Chairman Chey Tae-won joined other executives and senior White House officials in person.

The conglomerate said in a statement it plans to "increase its new investment in the United States by $22 billion in areas including semiconductors, green energy, and bioscience, creating tens of thousands of new high-tech, high-paying American jobs."

"This is in addition to SK's recently announced investment of $7 billion to build two new gigafactories in Tennessee and Kentucky as part of a joint venture with Ford Motor Company," the statement said.

According to a White House spokesman, SK Group's growing commitment reflects a push to rebuild US-based manufacturing and supply chains, which have been severely disrupted by fallout from the global Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns.

"From the beginning of his administration, President Biden has focused on an American industrial strategy to rebuild our infrastructure and our supply chains here at home, drawing good-paying manufacturing jobs back to America," the spokesman said.

"This announcement by SK Group is also another proof point of the success of the administration's efforts to create more resilient and secure supply chains and outcompete the rest of the world in the technologies of the future," he added.

The Department of Commerce says that foreign investment reached nearly $334 billion in 2021, the peak since 2016. Manufacturing accounted for the biggest share of any industry, at $121 billion.

The Biden administration is pushing Congress to quickly pass a proposed $52 billion subsidy package for boosting domestic semiconductor manufacturers, warning that reliance on foreign producers amounts to a national security risk.

Speaking Monday to senior economic and national security staff, as well as representatives from manufacturers and a trade union, Biden said government backing for domestic producers means the United States will "be able to stay in the game."

Congress must pass this bill as soon as possible," he said, citing both the economic and national security "imperative" of securing production of the tiny components needed for everything from smart phones to cars and weapons.

Agence France-Presse

Sony posts record Q1 profit on pandemic demand for devices and content

TOKYO - Sony Corp raised its earnings outlook on Wednesday after a record first-quarter operating profit helped by pandemic stay-at-home demand for PlayStation 5 consoles, TVs, music and movies.

Operating profit for the quarter ended June 30 rose to 280.1 billion yen ($2.57 billion) from 221.7 billion yen a year earlier, topping the 207.96 billion expected by 10 analysts, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

It raised its profit forecast for the year through March 2022 to 980 billion yen from 930 billion, bringing it closer to the 1 billion yen average estimate from 25 analysts.

Sony had expected growing pandemic demand for its devices and content to wane as coronavirus lockdowns eased, but with fresh waves of COVID-19 infections sweeping the world, restrictions are still common.

A shortage of semiconductors, however, which is also affecting the likes of Apple, means it cannot produce enough PlayStation games consoles to meet demand.

Those supply-chain constraints could also affect the production of other consumer electronic devices, Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki told a news briefing after Sony's results.

"We use a lot of semiconductors and it is a source of concern," Totoki said. "We can't become complacent," he added.

Sony in May said it expected to sell 14.8 million PS5 units this fiscal year. Launched in core markets in November 2020, the console, which sells for as much as $500, quickly sold out.

Sony has secured enough chips to achieve that production target, Totoki said.

Sony sees the game console as a way to connect its traditional consumer electronics with its growing content business by encouraging online game downloads and sign-ups for subscription services.

As it streamlines its consumer electronics business, Sony is beefing up its entertainment content and distribution business. In December it agreed to buy AT&T Inc's T.N animation business Crunchyroll with 3 million subscribers worldwide.

In June it bought Housemarque, a Finnish game software maker. I

Sony also increasing movie offerings on streaming services offered by Walt Disney Co and Netflix as the pandemic delays movie theatre releases.

Higher production costs, however, dented profitability, the company said.

In May, the company indicated that it would continue to expand its content business through acquisition when it said it would spend 2 trillion yen over the next three years on strategic investments, including a push to expand subscribers to its gaming and entertainment services.

In its financial division, Sony posted a 16.8 billion yen one-time loss resulting from an unauthorized fund transfer at a Bermuda subsidiary, SA Reinsurance, in May.

The company said it reported the payment to local authorities and was trying to recover the money.

-reuters-

Samsung Galaxy Fold available again in Korea, soon in Japan, China

SEOUL — Samsung was to begin taking orders for the foldable gadget on its homepage as well as some e-commerce platforms like 11st, eBay and Coupang at midnight on Sunday, according to the tech giant.

The exact volume of the third batch has not been revealed, but industry officials estimate around 10,000 units would be rolled out.

According to market forecasts, Samsung has released around 20,000 Galaxy Folds so far for the Korean market alone through the first and second rounds of preorder-based sales in September.

Despite the high price tag of 2.39 million won ($2,020), the available units sold out in just a few minutes for the two previous batches.

Now the third session is drawing public attention to the strictly controlled volume of limited-edition phones.

“It seems like Samsung is exploiting the value of rarity,” said an industry official. “Because of the limited volume, the phone’s value has been raised incredibly.”


The official predicted that Samsung Display has prepared a total of 100,000 foldable AMOLED display panels for the Fold, including a portion set aside for potential replacements for defective ones.

After being sold out not only in Korea but also in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore and France, Samsung plans to debut the foldable device in challenging markets like Japan, Poland, Mexico and Switzerland later this month.

For the Japanese market, the Galaxy Fold will not have the Samsung logo on the hinge of the in-folding device, a strategy Samsung is employing in the market dominated by American rival Apple. The Fold’s Japan launch is slated for Oct. 25.

Samsung will also venture into the Chinese market again with the Fold on Nov. 1, which will see it compete against Huawei’s foldable Mate X.

The Korean company has suffered slumps in China sales in recent years, accounting for less than 1 percent in market share.

source: technology.inquirer.net

WD delivers world’s most power efficient high-capacity 3.5-inch HDD

Manila, Philippines – Mar. 12, 2015 – WD^®, a Western Digital (NASDAQ: WDC) company and world leader in storage today introduced new datacenter hard drives that deliver to today’s modern datacenter architects the lowest power consumption of any high-capacity 3.5-inch hard drive available today. The WD Re+™ hard drive family is the newest component of WD’s full, tiered portfolio of high-capacity datacenter storage devices. Further expanding that portfolio will be 6 terabyte (TB) capacities for WD’s popular WD Re™ and WD Se™ datacenter product lines, providing customers a spectrum of capabilities, tiered to their varied demands of application intensity, power optimization and cost efficiency.

In the modern datacenter, the total cost of ownership (TCO) formula is comprised of capacity, price, power consumption and the relationships between these variables. The WD Re+ drive provides the most power efficient and high-intensity high-capacity platform available today.

With power consumption a primary consideration in today’s large web-scale cloud infrastructures, and the WD Re+ drive consuming only 6 watts for 6 TB, customers’ TCOs increase and savings for large deployments could be millions of dollars per year.

“Dollars and watts are the finite currencies in the modern datacenter,” said Matt Rutledge, senior vice president of storage technology at WD. “With a leading watt-per-gigabyte ratio and the long-trusted reliability of the WD Re hard drive platform, WD Re+ offers our customers having limited power budgets a WD Re-class choice for tier-2, high-intensity storage applications. Massive, scale-out deployments must deliver tremendous value to customers across a range of applications, while providing a healthy return to the infrastructure owner. WD is focused on offering that value across its portfolio.”

The SATA 6 Gb/s WD Re+ hard drive family features a dense five-platter platform, which renders an optimal mix of low power consumption, high capacity, 24 x 7 x 365-reliability and affordability. Vibration tolerance and Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) are also key considerations in these applications. WD Re+ hard drives deliver 1.2m hours MTTF, enhanced RAFF technology to increase vibration tolerance and a high-intensity workload and reliability rating of 550 TB-per-year workload, the highest workload capabilities of any WD 3.5-inch hard drive. The new WD Re+ and stalwart WD Re share a platform to simplify large-scale deployments and provide the reliability and performance customers have come to expect from WD’s datacenter products.

WD’s award-winning WD Re platform now offers up to 6 TB for demanding datacenter and cloud storage needs. WD Re hard drives also are designed to handle up to 550 TB per year in high-intensity datacenter applications. They offer SATA interface with up to 6 Gb/s transfer rates and sustained sequential data rates of up to 225 MB/s, delivering performance and reliability needed in any datacenter.

Other datacenter-class features with the WD Re and WD Re+ products include:

Vibration protection – Enhanced RAFF™ technology monitors the drive and corrects both linear and rotational vibration in real time. The result is a significant performance improvement in high-vibration environments over the previous generation of drives.

Dual actuator technology – A head-positioning system with two actuators improves positional accuracy over the data track(s). The primary actuator provides coarse displacement using conventional electromagnetic actuator principles. The secondary actuator uses piezoelectric motion to fine tune the head positioning to a higher degree of accuracy.

StableTrac™ – The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking during read and write operations.

Multi-axis shock sensor – Automatically detects the subtlest shock events and compensates to protect the data.

RAID-specific, time-limited error recovery (TLER) – Prevents drive fallout caused by the extended hard drive error-recovery processes common to desktop drives.

NoTouch™ ramp load technology – The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

Thermal extended burn-in test – Each drive is put through extended burn-in testing with thermal cycling to ensure reliable operation.

Dynamic fly height technology – Each read-write head’s fly height is adjusted in real time for optimum reliability.

Dual processor – Twice the processing power to maximize performance.

3D Active Balance™ Plus – Our enhanced dual-plane balance control technology significantly improves the overall drive performance and reliability. Hard drives that are not properly balanced may cause excessive vibration and noise in a multi-drive system, reduce the hard drive life span, and degrade the performance over time.

The WD Se line of datacenter hard drives provide a blend of performance, reliability and capacity specifically designed for SMB to high-end NAS and large-scale datacenter replication environments running 24x7x365. Capacities range up to 6 TB.

Availability

 

Shipping immediately to customers for qualification WD Re+ drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty. WD Re and WD Se 6 TB hard drives will be available for qualification next quarter. More information about WD’s datacenter hard drives can be found on the company website at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/enterprise/ .

About WD

  WD, a Western Digital company, is a long-time innovator and storage industry leader. As a storage technology pacesetter, the company produces reliable, high-performance hard disk drives and solid state drives. These drives are deployed by OEMs and integrators in desktop and mobile computers, enterprise computing systems, embedded systems and consumer electronics applications, as well as by the company in providing its own storage products. WD’s leading storage devices and systems, networking products, media players and software solutions empower people around the world to easily save, store, protect, share and experience their content on multiple devices. WD was established in 1970 and is headquartered in Irvine, California. For more information, please visit the company’s website at www.wd.com.

Western Digital Corp. (NASDAQ: WDC), Irvine, Calif., is a global provider of products and services that empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its companies design and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home entertainment products under the WD, HGST and G-Technology brands. Visit the Investor section of the company’s website (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of financial and investor information. Advt

Western Digital, WD, and the WD logo are registered trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. WD Re+, WD Re and WD Se are trademarks of Western Digital Technologies, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other marks may be mentioned herein that belong to other companies. Pictures shown may vary from actual products. Not all products may be available in all regions of the world.

As used for storage capacity, one terabyte = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment.


EDITOR’S NOTES:

WD product photos: http://www.wdbrand.com
Product information: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/enterprise/

source: technology.inquirer.net

 

Samsung sells 110-inch ultra-HD TV for $150,000

SEOUL, South Korea—Samsung said a 110-inch television that has four times the resolution of standard high-definition TVs is going on sale for about $150,000 in South Korea.

The launch Monday of the giant television set reflects global TV makers’ move toward ultra HD TVs, as manufacturing bigger TVs using OLED proves too costly.

Last year, Samsung and rival LG Electronics, the world’s top two TV makers, touted OLED as the future of TV. OLED screens are ultrathin and can display images with enhanced clarity and deeper color saturation.

But Samsung and LG failed to make OLED TVs a mainstream that would replace the LCD television sets and still struggling to mass produce larger and affordable TVs with OLED. Meanwhile, Japanese media reported last week that Sony Corporation and Panasonic Corporation decided to end their OLED partnership.

Demand for U-HD TVs is expected to rise despite dearth of content while its price will likely come down faster than that of the OLED TVs. Much of the growth is forecast to come from China, a major market for the South Korean TV makers. Chinese TV makers have been making a push into the U-HD TV market as well.

According to NPD DisplaySearch, global sales of ultra-HD TV sets will surge from 1.3 million this year to 23 million in 2017. More than half of the shipments will be taken by Chinese companies between 2013 and 2017, according to NPD.

While Chinese TV makers have been seeking to boost sales of U-HD TVs with a lower price and a smaller size, Samsung’s strategy is to go bigger with a higher price tag. Samsung’s 110-inch U-HD TV measures 2.6 meters by 1.8 meters. It will be available in China, the Middle East and Europe. In South Korea, the TV is priced at 160 million won ($152,000) while prices in other countries vary.

Samsung said it received 10 orders for the latest premium TVs from the Middle East. Previously, the largest U-HD TV made by Samsung was 85-inch measured diagonally.

The ultra-HD TVs are also known as “4K” because they contain four times more pixels than an HD TV.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Chipmaker TSMC gets tablet, smartphone boost in 1Q

TAIPEI, Taiwan— Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chip manufacturer, reported an 18 percent jump in first quarter profit as increased global sales of smartphones and tablet computers boosted demand for sophisticated processors.

The company said in a statement Thursday that January-March profit totaled NT$39.6 billion ($1.3 billion) on revenue of NT$132 billion.

It said more than half of its shipments were application processors and other chips for use in mobile devices. Growth in this area more than made up for stagnant sales of chips used in computers and other consumer electronics.

TSMC said it expects revenue to grow to between NT$154-156 billion in the second quarter.

Chairman and CEO Morris Chang said revenue growth for 2013 could exceed 10 percent, up from 7 percent growth predicted earlier, partly because wafer production using new cutting-edge technology is set to grow.

He said trial production using the advanced 20 nanometer technology began in the first quarter, while the company plans to advance further with 16 nanometer technology in a year from now.

The company’s move into the 20 and 16 nanometer technologies, which allow for production of smaller chips that run faster at lower power, is being propelled by more intense competition in the industry.

TSMC is planning a record $9 billion of capital investment in 2013 to fend off competition, mainly from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. as well as Intel Corp., which has been speeding up its expansion into contract manufacturing following slow PC chip sales.

News reports say TSMC has been working with Apple Inc. to supply the Cupertino, Calif.-based company with the new processor to power the next generation of iPhones and iPads. Apple currently gets such processors from Samsung.

Samsung is Apple’s main competitor in smartphones and tablet computers, as well as its principal supplier of processors. This has fueled speculation that Apple is looking for a new processor source.

source: technology.inquirer.net