The goal of the park&#8212called “Silicon Border”&#8212is to provide the infrastructure and support for semiconductor companies to manufacture in North America and cost-effectively compete with the majority of the industry’s operations currently located in Asia.

(PRNewswire, July 12, 2004) Villach, Austria and Zurich, Switzerland&#8212The SEZ Group, a provider of single-wafer, wet-processing solutions for the semiconductor industry, announced today that it has entered the back-end under-bump metallization (UBM) etch market. SEZ’s pioneer UBM etch customer is a Taiwan-based semiconductor packaging and test company, as well as a provider of solder bumping and BGA and flip-chip packaging. The company will soon take delivery of multiple SEZ tools for UBM etch process qualification.

The overall market for bumping and advanced packaging equipment is growing at a rapid pace. An SEZ market survey estimates that these tools, having accounted for 8 percent of total IC equipment sales in 2003, will represent 16 to 18 percent (or $4.5 billion) of the overall equipment industry by the year 2010.