News

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) has filed an application regarding plans for a fab investment project in Mainland China. The application was filed with the Investment Committee of Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs. After obtaining government approval, the company plans to establish a 100% wholly-owned subsidiary in Mainland China, for the purpose of building a 200mm fab in the Songjiang Science Park in Shanghai and to provide foundry services in Mainland China.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Advanced Photonix' board of directors has unanimously rejected an unsolicited and conditional takeover offer from OSI Systems. OSIS is a direct competitor of API. The board is reviewing appropriate steps designed to insure that the company can maintain its independence. Advanced Photonix supplies silicon-based electro-optical products and designs to OEMs. Products include patented Large Area Avalanche Photodiode (LAAPD) and FILTRODE detectors, as well as PIN photodiodes.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

AMD and UMC plan to jointly develop advanced process control (APC) technology for 300mm semiconductor manufacturing. APC aims at minimising costs, maximising productivity, ensuring consistent high quality and facilitating real-time adjustments to the manufacturing process for improved yields. APC techniques include run-to-run control (RtR) and fault detection and classification (FDC). RtR minimises process drift and variation by providing real-time, automated feed-forward and feedback adjustments to process tools. FDC reduces wafer losses by monitoring and proactively shutting down complex tools before machine drift can adversely affect device yields.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

STMicroelectronics has made a multi-year, multi-generation license agreement with embedded memory developer Virage Logic. ST has licensed Virage Logic's entire portfolio of embedded memory technology and embedded software tools for its future 90nm and 65nm and current 0.13micron logic processes. Virage Logic is to expand its embedded SRAMs, ROMs and non-volatile memory platforms for both 90nm and future 65nm products targeted for ST's 300mm Crolles II fab in France. STMicroelectronics has already successfully taped out 90nm memory products from Virage Logic.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Compound annual growth rates for microcontroller unit shipments is expected to be 11.32% in the period 2001-2006, according to In-Stat/MDR. Revenue CAGRs is expected to be 1% as a result of price erosion. The devices are expected to meet increasing competition from system on chip products.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

The Taiwan foundries reported net sales figures for August. TSMC achieved 50% growth on 2001 with TWD13.544bn. UMC's sales were at TWD6.413bn, up 64% year-on-year.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Fairchild is pushing a

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Corning has received a patent for a photoblank substrate material specific to the 248nm and 193nm microlithography technology nodes.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Parthus Technologies has licensed its phase lock loop (PLL) intellectual property (IP) to the 1st Silicon (Malaysia) foundry. As the first phase of the agreement, 1st Silicon will verify the Parthus PLL IP in silicon using a test chip containing multiple PLL instantiations designed to exercise the extremes of the design range. Further verification will be completed through simulations using an automated test bench designed to test all valid PLL configurations in 1st Silicon's 0.25micron and 0.18micron CMOS process technologies. PLLs are used in clock synthesis cores. Software will be available to 1st Silicon customers through the Parthus website in October 2002.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Tokyo Electron's Arizona subsidiary (TAZ) has settled its claims of misappropriation of trade secrets and other claims against Hummel Machine and Tool Company and certain affiliated parties in the US courts. Hummel manufactured machine parts from TAZ designs for the Eclipse machine under a non-disclosure agreement for many years. In the lawsuit, TAZ alleges that Discreet Industries stole TAZ's designs for replacement parts used in TAZ' Eclipse single wafer PVD tools and corrupted TAZ's confidential supplier network. In the settlement, Hummel admits liability and agrees to pay a substantial royalty on the parts to TAZ. Further, Hummel admits breaching the non-disclosure agreement and using confidential information to make parts for Discreet Industries. The court has accepted the settlement. Hummel will continue to make Eclipse machine parts based on TAZ designs only for TAZ.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Infineon Technologies has a five year plan (Agenda 5-to-1) to be among the top four IC manufacturers by 2007. In its five business groups, the company has set the target of being among the top three - and top two in terms of profitability. The company wants to be number one

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Singapore's ST Assembly Test Services (STATS) confirms its previous guidance, based on its current outlook, of sequential revenue growth of 5-10%, Q3/Q2. The company also says it has no need nor any plans for additional financing this year.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Alcatel Optronics is expecting a 50% sequential sales decline in Q3. The company expects the effect of this on profits to be offset by the implementation of its cost-cutting programme.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

X-ray metrology tool producer Bede Scientific made its third profit warning this year. It says that interim losses will be worse than expected. Sales to June 30 will be in line with expectations, but this was not sufficient to cover costs and investments in the short term. The company has had difficulties converting customer interest into signed orders. Official figures are due on September 26.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

SEMI's book-to-bill ratio for the North American semiconductor equipment industry was 1.14 in August. Orders came to $1.12bn and billings were $981mn. These figures represent a 57% increase and a 14% decrease on August 2001.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

VLSI Research puts August's book-to-bill for the world semiconductor equipment industry at 0.92. This consists of $2.13bn in bookings and $2.32bn in completed sales. The sales were 10% down and the bookings 25% up on August 2001. For IC production, the August book-to-bill is put at 0.92 - $9.35bn in bookings and $10.19bn in sales. IC capacity utilisation was 86.7% in August, compared with July's 84.8%.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

iSuppli has produced a 2001 league table for ASIC suppliers. Top dog is IBM with revenues at $2.296bn. Fujitsu is number two with $1.209bn. Third place goes to LSI Logic with $1.122bn. The top European company was STMicroelectronics at No.9 with $322mn.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Leica Microsystems Lithography is to deliver an electron beam lithography system to the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems (IMS) in Dresden, Germany. The tool will be able to direct write on silicon wafers and produce photomasks. IMS produces both ICs and microsystems.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Tokyo Electron (TEL) has been appointed sole distributor for Bede Scientific Instruments products in Japan. TEL will market, sell, install and maintain the entire range of Bede products for semiconductor applications and for other markets such as life sciences and pharmaceuticals from October 2002.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

The systems will be delivered before year-end and will be used for advanced inspection of semiconductor packages. The OVHM4 is a dual detector module combining a conventional image intensifier and contrast sensitive image detector. The tool is based on oblique view at highest magnification (ovhm) technology and is capable of generating multiple angle real-time x-ray images of the same sample with both detectors offering an infinitely adjustable penetration angle. This allows the operator to quickly detect failures in interconnects and quantify failures, such as excessive voiding.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Tower Semiconductor has ordered multiple A400 vertical furnace systems from ASM International. The equipment will be used in Tower's new 0.18micron Fab 2 foundry. Delivery of the systems has started and will continue during the next few quarters.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Brooks-PRI Automation has signed a definitive agreement to acquire motion and machine control technology company Berkeley Process Control. The purchase will be in exchange for 614,374 Brooks-PRI shares. These shares are subject to adjustment depending upon the performance of Berkeley in the quarter ended December 31, 2002. The deal is expected to close by calendar year end. IMPORTANT EUROSEMI PLUS TRIALISTS IF YOU HAVE COME FROM THE EUROSEMI + NEWSLETTER AND WISH TO SEARCH THE REST OF OUR ARCHIVE OF BULLETINS PLEASE CLICK ON EUROSEMI PLUS LOGO IN RIGHT HAND CORNER OF THE WEBSITE AND THEN SELECT BULLETIN ARCHIVES PLEASE REMEMBER KEYWORD SEARCH CAN ALSO BE USED TO NAVIGATE ARCHIVES

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Robotic Vision Systems is exploring the sale of its Semiconductor Equipment Group and has started discussions with a number of interested parties. The Semiconductor Equipment Group has businesses covering 3-D inspection of assembled ICs and defects and wafer bump metrology. Discussions have not yet entered into the price negotiation stage.

Wednesday 1st January 2003

Tokyo Electron (TEL) is implementing reorganisation of its software development division on October 1, 2002. The operations of TEL's Advanced Software Engineering department will be transferred to Tokyo Electron Sapporo, a software development subsidiary. Further, the trade name and other corporate profiles of Tokyo Electron Sapporo will become Tokyo Electron Software Technologies.