09/29/2008  This year's annual fall gathering of a SEMI-hosted industry panel discussion with Wall Street watchers didn't quite follow script. The end result was a more open and energetic back-and-forth dialog about the tense relationships between the semiconductor industry, the investment community, and the government.

09/24/2008  A full-day symposium at this year's Diskcon USA explored the lithography implications of sub-ITRS roadmap feature sizes on disk drives, with the challenge that HDD lithography must cost 10× less than NAND flash lithography, the lowest-cost semiconductor process.

09/23/2008  By Meredith Courtemanche, managing editor, SMT Magazine
"In a perfect world." This is a phrase uttered by many a project leader or product designer compiling a bill of materials (BOM) for a new product, new run of an existing assembly, or modified design. In a perfect world, market trends, materials changes, and technology advances would have no effect on the availability of components. No component would ever be obsolesced.

09/19/2008  September 19, 2008: Micromem recently announced that its foundry tests have demonstrated a number of valuable benefits for a magnetic-based sensor and memory device including high sensitivity, thermal stability, and low-cost manufacturing.

09/16/2008  In response to market needs for 300mm process equipment capabilities to demonstrate 3D processes, SUSS MicroTec has introduced The XBC300. The XBC300 is designed for 3D integration and 3D packaging with through silicon vias (TSVs) and is ideal for the CMOS image sensor (CIS) early adopter market.

09/12/2008  By Peter Salmon, Salmon Technologies
A particularly versatile form of wafer bumping is stud bumping, using either gold or copper wire. The equipment required is an adaptation of a traditional wire bonder. A ball bond is made at a first contact pad using heat and ultrasonic energy. The wire is extended in a precise direction and a flying lead is created by terminating the wire, for example using electronic flame-off (EFO).

09/12/2008  Instead of providing an economic boost for China, the Beijing Olympic games actually caused a trough in demand for memory chips due to restrictive import rules and overshadowed regional purchasing trends, according to iSuppli. But with the Games now over and the holiday season approaching, the firm expects a sharp uptick in DRAM demand through year's end.

09/11/2008  Following a third straight quarter of losses, Elpida Memory says it will reduce its DRAM output at its plant in Hiroshima, western Japan, by about 10% to 10,000 300mm wafers by mid-September.

09/08/2008  2 years ago, the EMC3D Consortium, open consortia of equipment and materials manufacturers, established itself and set out to develop a process flow and cost model for 3D integration. Focusing on via-first TSVs as the method of interconnect, the intention was to find a solution to achieving this for $200/wafer cost of ownership (CoO) on a 3-year timeline. It appears, however, that they've beaten their own goal ahead of schedule.

09/08/2008  With rumors swirling that top memory firm Samsung Electronics is sniffing around SanDisk, the game is on to determine just how high are the stakes for the memory industry, particularly the one company who would be hurt most.

09/05/2008  Tegal Corporation announced an agreement with Alcatel Micro Machining Systems (AMMS) and Alcatel-Lucent to acquire their deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) products, and the related intellectual property. The addition of these capabilities to Tegal's plasma-etch and deposition systems will reportedly enable Tegal to further expand into MEMS and 3D wafer level packaging applications.

09/03/2008  September 3, 2008: X-FAB Silicon Foundries' 200mm facility in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, now is fully qualified for volume production and second sourcing of the company's 0.35μm high-voltage process technology.

09/02/2008  Elpida's recently unveiled plan to create a $5B DRAM JV in China's Jiangsu Province is the final stage in an industry "turf war" with the ultimate prize being simply survival, according to CEO Yukio Sakamoto, in an interview with Japan's Nikkei daily paper.

08/26/2008  August 26, 2008: IBM says it has integrated and controlled an electrically driven light emitter based on a single carbon nanotube, which it says is a first step in developing nanotube-based integrated electronic and nanophotonic devices.

08/22/2008  The relative merits of solid-state drives (SSD) vs. hard-disk drives (HDD) have been discussed for some time -- and now Intel is joining the debate, outlining plans for the SATA SSD product family at its annual Developer Forum (8/19-8/21). Troy Winslow, marketing manager of the NAND products groups at Intel, told SST what SSDs offer in terms of enhanced mobility and energy cost savings.

08/19/2008  Applied Materials' fiscal 3Q08 results were generally in line with expectations, with sales and profits dropping sharply during what CEO Mike Splinter called the "trough" of the industry's current downcycle. Here's a quick bullet-point summary of highlights from the company's quarterly conference call.

08/18/2008  Taiwan foundry TSMC says its board of directors has approved new capex expenditures for 200mm and 300mm capacity, and a new stock buyback program.

08/14/2008  August 13, 2008 -- Shocking Technologies, Inc. is preparing to ramp up commercial scale production by moving to a new 51,000 square foot facility in San Jose, California. The facility will house Shocking's nanotechnology research and development labs as well as manufacturing for its XStatic voltage switchable dielectric material.

08/14/2008  August 14, 2008 -- Oxantium Ventures closed a B Series funding round with RF Nano Corporation, a developer of radio frequency devices from carbon nanotubes. Dr. Richard Wirt, a managing director at Oxantium, joins RF Nano's Board.

08/07/2008  Japan's Elpida Memory is moving ahead with a 300mm DRAM joint venture in China with a local venture capital group, a move that one analyst and Japanese paper seem to admire.