The latest to be arrested is Winifred Jiau, 43, of Fremont, Calif. Like others charged or arrested on Dec. 16, she has ties to Primary Global Research. She’s accused of providing inside information to Primary Global clients who were portfolio managers at hedge funds of Nvidia and Marvell Technology during a period from 2006 to 2008. Prosecutors say she collected $200,000 during that time. She’s facing charges of conspiracy and securities fraud.

In August of 2008, the complaint says, she provided managers of two hedge funds with detailed numbers for quarterly revenues, per-share earnings and gross margins for the quarter ending that month. The complaint says that in the conversations she made it clear she had obtained the information directly from an employee of Marvell. The funds in question–they were not named in the complaint–allegedly made $820,000 on trades from the information.

On Aug. 8, 2008, the complaint says, Jiau provided the hedge fund managers with an early look at Nvidia’s quarterly revenue and told them it planned to announce a stock buyback, which it did four days later.

I’ve embedded the complaint below.

Jiau, Winifred Complaint

“Our focus is to build our [intellectual property] portfolio,” he said during a meeting with analysts Thursday. “You could see us buying chip companies. Silicon is very important.”

So if Oracle (ORCL) were to acquire a chip company, which would it be? Wall Street seems to think it’s ARM. The chip designer’s shares spiked about six percent following Ellison’s remarks, though it’s not clear that ARM is what he had in mind when he made them. Certainly there are other potential targets: Broadcom, Marvell (MRVL), Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD), of course. Said Gleacher & Co. analyst Doug Freedman, “You’ve got to think it’s focused on enterprise hardware, on the server. AMD jumps off the screen.”

If it’s able to consummate a deal, and sources say that could happen as early as today, Intel (INTC) will with one move become a major player in the smartphone chip market, a component supplier to the likes of RIM (RIMM), Samsung, Nokia (NOK) and Apple (AAPL)–you’ll find Infineon silicon in the iPad and iPhone. And that’s something Intel has openly lusted after for years–or at least since it sold off its own communications and application chip business to Marvell four years ago.

“Overall, we’re getting the sense that lead times in the semi industry have gone up a lot. There may be orders that are ‘phantom,’ or double-orders,” Chanda told me in a phone conversation this morning.

“Second, the PC end markets are probably flat year over year, but look at Intel’s [projected Q4 revenue] growth of 23 percent, Marvell’s 50 percent, Nvidia’s 80 percent–that just seems like there’s some “exuberance” embedded in that,” says Chanda.

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At least in part, the Street is reacting to this morning’s downgrade of Marvell (MRVL) by Barclays Capital, which–as I noted earlier–was in response to indications from Taiwanese component makers of a slowdown PC demand. Barclays chip analyst Romit Shah wrote that “every company that we met with [in Taiwan] indicated that PC order rates are slowing into the back-to-school season.”

Meanwhile, Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar today notes new data on drive production that he thinks raises ominous clouds for Seagate in particular. Kumar says data from Techno Systems Research, a Japan-based market research firm, find that hard-drive unit production was down 18 percent sequentially in the March quarter, comparable to a 15 percent decline in PC shipments.

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Here’s a rundown on Berger’s outlook for production in the next few quarters from key chip companies; what he’s measuring here are wafer starts, or a little more roughly, units:

• Broadcom (BRCM): He sees production down 13 percent in Q4 from Q3, worse than his previous estimate of down eight percent; for Q1 he sees a further 17 percent cut.
• Marvell (MRVL): For Q4, down 18 percent, versus previous estimate of down 13 percent. For Q1, down another 10 percent.
• Texas Instruments (TXN): For Q4, production down 18 percent, no change; with Q1 down another 20 percent.

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“Following checks with industry contacts, we believe Marvell is not likely to see significant upside in the next six months, both due to weakness in Europe and Asia, as well as slower-than-expected product ramps” at Research In Motion (RIMM) and Seagate (STX), he wrote in a research note. “While we recognize that the company detailed some of these issues in their recent conference call, we still believe that it is prudent to move to the sidelines, given estimates could get cut” into fiscal Q4.

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The statement was in response to a post I wrote earlier in the day about a deep slide in Marvell’s stock price. In that post, I wrote that “trading sources say [Marvell CFO Clyde] Hosein told investors in one-on-one presentations at the conference not to model any sequential growth in revenue for the January and April quarters due to the soft economy.”

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In an interview with the Financial Times, Intel CEO Paul Otellini (pictured above) said he’s confident the company’s new Atom processor will expand Intel’s reach into the mobile phone market. “If you accept that the value proposition of the high end of the mobile-phone market is full Internet access that happens to have voice, my view is that it’s easier to add voice to a small computer than vice-versa,” Otellini told the FT, noting that the company’s expertise in PC chips will come in handy in making inroads into markets where devices are becoming increasingly more PC-like. Among them, those for televisions, ultra low-cost PCs, embedded controllers and, of course, smartphones. “We are bringing an element of computing into large markets, many of which are larger than the PC business, certainly in terms of units,” said Otellini. “Each of these four markets is a $10 billion opportunity by 2010 or 2011.”

Message to ARM: We’re coming for you.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Intel CEO Paul Otellini (pictured above) said he’s confident the company’s new Atom processor will expand Intel’s reach into the mobile phone market. “If you accept that the value proposition of the high end of the mobile-phone market is full Internet access that happens to have voice, my view is that it’s easier to add voice to a small computer than vice-versa,” Otellini told the FT, noting that the company’s expertise in PC chips will come in handy in making inroads into markets where devices are becoming increasingly more PC-like. Among them, those for televisions, ultra low-cost PCs, embedded controllers and, of course, smartphones. “We are bringing an element of computing into large markets, many of which are larger than the PC business, certainly in terms of units,” said Otellini. “Each of these four markets is a $10 billion opportunity by 2010 or 2011.”

Message to ARM: We’re coming for you.