Overall U.S. high-tech employment increased in 2008 for the fourth consecutive year, as net job gains in software services and engineering and tech services offset declines in high-tech manufacturing, particularly within the semiconductor industry, according to a study released last week.

A panel of executives at ESC Silicon Valley talked about the clash of cultures between hardware and software engineers as chipmakers take on the responsibility of developing more embedded software and agreed that a system-level approach has become mandatory.

Texas Instruments has sued Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Bank of New York Mellon, accusing the banks of misleading the chipmaker into buying $524 million of auction-rate securities that have become "illiquid" and cannot be easily converted to cash.

Digi International plans to give more than $20,000 in total prize money to winners in a green design contest to promote the development of sustainable applications announced at ESC Silicon Valley. In this video from the show floor, Joel Young, Digi's chief technology officer and senior vice president of R&D, talks about the contest.

During an event at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) here, Brian Harrison, president and chief executive of flash-memory specialist Numonyx Inc. (Geneva), said memory makers have made four major mistakes during the current and bad cycle.

Amid ongoing losses and a lowered forecast, Micron Technology Inc. has cut its capital spending and said it has no plans to join the new DRAM venture in Taiwan--for now.

The "Beemer" is still driving automotive electronics.

South Korean financial services firm KTB Securities is in negotiations to invest in MagnaChip Semiconductor, the logic spin-off of Hynix Semiconductor, according to a report out of South Korea that was confirmed by a MagnaChip executive.

Huge amounts of money being poured into the economy through stimulus packages by governments worldwide will provide a big opportunity for electronics and particularly embedded systems, according to Lisa Su, Freescale Semiconductor's chief technology officer and senior vice president/general manager for networking and multimedia.

As expected, Electro Scientific Industries Inc. and Zygo Corp. announced that they have terminated their merger agreement.

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. plans to cut more costs.

MKS Instruments Inc. has reduced its headcount by 600 jobs, or approximately 23 percent of its worldwide headcount.

Printing memory onto flexible plastic substrates has been demonstrated by partners Thin Film Electronics and InkTec Co. Ltd.

The three-month moving average of sales of semiconductors in Europe for February was $2.11 billion, down 36.1 percent on the same period a year before and the biggest fall among the four geographic areas tracked by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization.

The three-month average of worldwide sales of semiconductors declined by 30.4 percent to $14.17 billion in February, compared to $20.3 billion in February 2008, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), which referenced World Semiconductor Trade Statistics as its source.

Silicon wafer supplier MEMC Electronic Materials cut about 200 manufacturing employees last week as a cost-cutting move, according to a regulatory filing made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

IBM cut its offer for Sun Microsystems Inc. to $9.55 a share after a thorough vetting and may soon unveil details of its largest-ever takeover, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

An institutional shareholder fund has filed suit in Delaware's Chancery Court against fab tool maker Axcelis Technologies Inc.