06/18/2012 

The management committee of Samsung Electronics authorized the KRW2.25 trillion investment for construction of a new production line serving Samsung’s System LSI business.

06/15/2012 

Cache SSDs will remain the mainstream ultrabook storage solution, says IHS, even as hybrid HDDs offer some consolidated storage advantage. Hybrid HDDs use a built-in layer of NAND flash memory.

06/13/2012 

Toshiba Corp achieved double-digit growth that defied an industry-wide contraction in revenue in the Q1 2012 NAND Flash sector. Overall, Q1 NAND flash sales amounted to $4.99 billion, down 1% sequentially.

06/11/2012 

In the second installment in a series called Process Watch, the author provides tips on how to make sure you’re reviewing the yield killing defects and not wasting time reviewing nuisance events. Authored by experts at KLA-Tencor, Process Watch articles focus on novel process control solutions for chip manufacturing at the leading edge.

06/11/2012 

STMicroelectronics announced that GLOBALFOUNDRIES has agreed to manufacture devices for ST using ST’s proprietary Fully Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (FD-SOI) technology in both the 28nm and 20nm nodes.

06/11/2012 

Tohoku University of Sendai, Japan and imec signed a collaboration agreement during the Belgian economic mission to Japan, expanding their R&D into areas such as MRAM and 3D semiconductor packaging.

06/08/2012 

Freescale Semiconductor (FSL) named Gregg A. Lowe president and CEO, replacing Rich Bayer. Lowe joins Freescale from Texas Instruments (TI, TXN), where he was SVP and manager of the Analog business.

06/07/2012 

Semiconductor stockpiles held by chip suppliers increased during Q1 2012, but the rise in inventory for a second straight quarter was driven by the anticipation of higher demand from customers, according to IHS.

06/07/2012 

Day 3 of the 15th IITC (International Interconnect Technology Conference) opened in San Jose, CA under clear sunny skies and a pleasant breeze. The herd thinned a bit, down to ~150 hearty souls from the original 230 the prior two days.

06/06/2012 

Speaking at The ConFab 2012, Sanjay Rajguru, director of ISMI, pointed out that more than half the current fab capacity today comes from facilities that are more than ten years old, which is creating a problem with equipment obsolescence.

06/06/2012 

Worldwide sales of semiconductors hit $24.1 billion in April 2012, a 3.4% increase from March and the largest month-over-month growth for the industry since May 2010, reports the SIA.

06/06/2012 

Ali Sebt, CEO of Renesas Electronics America, keynoted Day 2 of Solid State Technology’s The ConFab 2012. Here, he discusses the role of inexpensive sensors and microcontrollers in energy savings, in a video interview.

06/06/2012 

Mike Fury reports on Day 2 of the 15^th IITC (International Interconnect Technology Conference), from San Jose, CA.

06/05/2012 

At The ConFab 2012, fabless companies and foundries have a common goal: reduce power, increase performance and reduce price (not necessarily in that order).

06/05/2012 

Day 2 of The ConFab opened in Las Vegas with Ali Sebt, CEO of Renesas Electronics America, delivering “Smart Society, the Sensing Era and Signal Chain.”

06/05/2012 

Chip scaling will go on for the foreseeable future, enabling new product with more compute power, more memory, faster on-chip communication. That was one of the conclusions put forth by imec’s An Steegen, speaking on technology trends at The ConFab 2012.

06/05/2012 

The 15^th IITC (International Interconnect Technology Conference) opened Monday, June 4 at the Doubletree Hotel in San Jose, CA. Recurring themes this year were variations on 3D and TSV, novel systems and packaging, and back end memory. Mike Fury reports.

06/05/2012 

Jim Feldhan of Semico speaks with Solid State Technology editor-in-chief Pete Singer about expectations for the semiconductor industry and solid-state drives.

06/05/2012 

John Chen of Nvidia gave the opening keynote address of The ConFab 2012, presenting the concept of a “virtual IDM” comprising fabless companies, semiconductor foundries, and packaging houses working seamlessly together. After his speech, Chen caught up with Pete Singer.

06/04/2012 

At The ConFab’s opening session, “The Economic Outlook for the Semiconductor Industry,” capex was a major point of interest. Jackie Sturm of Intel, Dan Hutcheson of VLSIresearch, and Jim Feldhan of Semico all touched on it, with Hutcheson expanding on the idea of capex trends to present an entire ecosystem of semiconductor business management.