02/13/2007 The industry is a-changin', but there's both good and bad news as a result, suggested a panel of top Wall Street analysts (with an occasional bit of prodding from the moderator) at the recent Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) at Half Moon Bay, CA. There was agreement that fast-rising consumer markets, especially in Asia, are indeed putting growth back on a somewhat faster track, though some participants are still proceeding with caution.
02/13/2007 February 13, 2007 - Wafer demand surged in 2006 after moderate single-digit growth in 2005, with both revenues and shipments up >20% due in large part to memory investments and growing adoption of 300mm processing, according to new data from SEMI.
02/13/2007 The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has notified NVE Corporation that it will issue today a patent relating to NVE's magnetothermal Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM).
02/13/2007 Purdue University scientists use a complex nanomolecule and snake venom to research a more reliable method of diagnosing human diseases and developing new drugs. In future research, the scientists will investigate how the nanomolecules enter and operate within cells.
02/12/2007 EoPlex Technologies closed Series C financing with $8 million in investments, led by ATA Ventures. The company plans to expand design and manufacturing capacities, and increase its customer base, with the funding.
02/12/2007 February 12, 2007 - As a teaser for announcements it's making at this week's Integrated Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), Intel Corp. says it's developed a futuristic programmable processor with a single 80-core chip that achieves "teraflops performance" (trillions of calculations/sec), and consumes just 62W of power, less than that of some of today's single-core processors.
02/12/2007 In a drive to ramp up development of revolutionary materials, Ford has invested $2 million in Imago's Local Electrode Atom Probe tomograph (LEAP), which Ford anticipates will lead to new materials being incorporated into vehicle design faster than previously imagined.
02/12/2007 Innos, a U.K.-based research and development company for innovations in nanoscale technology, is part of a consortium that has won funding from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to research the medical applications of a MEMs microgenerator.
02/09/2007 February 9, 2007 - Significant overcapacity problems for flat-panels contributed to a double-digit decline in sales of manufacturing equipment for TFT-LCDs in 2006 -- and the situation will only get worse this year, according to data from The Information Network.
02/09/2007 BPA Consulting Ltd. released its market predictions for coreless and thin-core substrates for IC packages. BPA defines coreless and thin-core as emerging technologies, which reached a $1 million market in 2005. BPA expects the market to burst open to $2B by 2011.
02/09/2007 Micralyne's facility renovation will substantially increase its manufacturing capacity to accommodate a growing customer base. The addition includes 10,000 sq ft of new manufacturing space with Class 10 and Class 1000 clean rooms for silicon MEMS fabrication, testing, and assembly.
02/09/2007 February 9, 2007 - Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. has appointed financial advisors and legal counsel to help evaluate the buyout offer proposed late last year by a consortium of investors, suggesting negotiations have taken a significant step forward, according to media reports.
02/09/2007 Nanotechnology was a major focus of a press briefing by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) director William Jeffrey this week. Jeffrey noted that President Bush's 2007 and 2008 budget requests include $26 million for nano initiatives. This includes funding for the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, a partnership that combines a nanofabrication and nanometrology facility with research.
02/09/2007 Nextreme Thermal Solutions appointed Seri Lee, Ph.D., as chief technology officer. Bringing Lee to Nextreme is part of a corporate plan to focus on electronic and optoelectronic packaging, and thermal management, said Jesko von Windheim, CEO, adding that Lee will also advance the company's efforts in thermoelectric power generation.
02/08/2007 February 8, 2007 - Silicon Laboratories Inc. has agreed to sell its cellular communications business to NXP Semiconductors (nee Philips' chip business) for $285 million in cash, in what NXP's top exec deemed a first step in the upcoming wireless industry consolidation."
02/08/2007 February 8, 2007 - Foundry TSMC and Power Analog Microelectronics say they have jointly developed a bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) technology based on a 0.25-micron high-voltage process, built for high-performance power analog ICs used in audio and video displays and devices.
02/08/2007 February 8, 2007 - Taiwan foundries Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) both posted 4Q06 results that showed dents from an inventory correction, but both firms expect that to ease out by 2Q, and both are inching up their spending plans for 2007.
02/08/2007 February 8, 2007 - Japan's Nikon Corp. has invested about 2.3 billion yen (US $19 million) to start producing glass substrates for liquid-crystal display (LCD) photomasks, according to a Reuters report.
02/08/2007 February 8, 2007 - Corning Inc. says its board has approved spending $160 million to expand manufacturing capacity for large-size glass substrates for active matrix liquid-crystal displays (LCD) at its facility in Shizuoka, Japan.
Purdue University scientists use a complex nanomolecule and snake venom to research a more reliable method of diagnosing human diseases and developing new drugs. In future research, the scientists will investigate how the nanomolecules enter and operate within cells.
In a drive to ramp up development of revolutionary materials, Ford has invested $2 million in Imago's Local Electrode Atom Probe tomograph (LEAP), which Ford anticipates will lead to new materials being incorporated into vehicle design faster than previously imagined.