04/10/2008  by Debra Vogler, Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology
Apr. 10, 2008 - Spansion exec John Nation tells WaferNEWS about the company's production plans for its 65nm and 45nm MirrorBit Eclipse chips for wireless handsets, including the benefits of built-in self test and why a heavy commitment to immersion lithography benefits the firm's flexible manufacturing strategy.

04/09/2008  Apr. 9, 2008 - Industry analysis firm iSuppli is lowering its outlook for semiconductor sales overall to just 4% growth in 2008 instead of a previously projected 7.5% increase -- a few weeks after it warned it would do so, and a day after slashing its outlook for the NAND flash memory sector.

04/09/2008  Mobius Microsystems, Inc. has introduced what it calls "the world's most accurate, monolithic, all-CMOS frequency generators." Mobius hopes its products will displace quartz crystals, which have been the industry standard for decades, plus newer MEMS-based devices -- as Small Times' Barbara Goode reports.

04/09/2008  MEMS-based oscillators are at last beginning to leave the shelves in quantity, says German technology analyst firm Wicht Technologie Consulting (WTC), which was recently acquired by market-research rival iSuppli.

04/08/2008  Apr. 8, 2008 - Weakened consumer spending -- not just in the US, but now apparently a global trend -- and signs that major buyers are slashing orders have caused analyst firm iSuppli to reduce its outlook for the NAND flash sector in 2008 by a full two-thirds. The firm now projects global NAD flash memory revenues rising 9% this year to $13.9B -- instead of an anticipated 29% rise to $17.9B, essentially removing $4B from the market.

04/08/2008  by Ed Korczynski, Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology
April 8, 2008 - Carbon nanotubes are the only viable (excuse the pun) new materials being developed to replace copper as the electrical interconnects for future ICs -- there are no known room-temperature superconductors, and optical interconnects require slow and expensive lasers and detectors. The theory and practice of growing CNTs was thoroughly reviewed at this spring's Materials Research Society (MRS) meeting.

04/04/2008  Henkel Corp. announced the aquisition of Ablestik and Emerson & Cuming, the adhesives group of National Starch, for approximately $6 billion. The companies will become part of Henkel's adhesives group, bringing in die attach, board-level interconnect, and related materials, along with intellectual property (IP) and a global manufacturing base. FULL STORY.

04/03/2008  by Ed Korczynski, Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology
April 3, 2008 - The annual Materials Research Society spring meeting in San Francisco (Mar. 24-28) showcased over 40 technical sessions running in parallel, with >10 sessions of interest to the semiconductor manufacturing industry at any given time, including theories and results for new IC memory cells, extensions of CMOS logic and doping technologies, and future quantum-dots and nano-rods.

03/28/2008  Mar. 28, 2008 - Hynix plans to produce 54nm-based DRAM chips this year on schedule, saying this will "reduce the technology gap with Samsung," according to the company's CEO, quoted by the Korea Times. Hynix is currently expected to start 54nm-based DRAM production in 3Q08, vs. Samsung's 56nm possibly starting in 2Q08.

03/27/2008  Mar. 27, 2008 - The latest casualty in the memory sector slump appears to be Hynix, which is about to shave more than a quarter off its planned 2008 investments in 2008, with late-year investments now cast in doubt, according to local reports.

03/26/2008  ; SMART Modular Technologies Inc. (SMART) has announced it has added test during burn-in (TDBI) to its enterprise class memory (ECM) testing process. SMART's new TDBI procedure applies functional patterns, temperature, and voltage for screening or eliminating marginal DRAM devices, which can cause time and stress dependent failures. Without this level of burn-in, these flaws could result in early lifetime failures for the memory device.

03/25/2008  Mar. 25, 2008 - Chip test firm King Yuan Electronics Co. (KYEC) is spinning off its memory testing business as an individual company in order to narrow the parent company's focus on logic chip testing operations, according to local reports.

03/25/2008  Mar. 25, 2008 - Hynix Semiconductor and Korean fabless firm Fidelix have signed a deal centering on the firm's mobile DRAM and PSRAM, and Hynix will take a 10% stake in the company, in a deal that helps Hynix diversify its portfolio and better utilize its 200mm facilities, according to reports.

03/25/2008  Mar. 25, 2008 - ATMI and Ovonyx say they have agreed to develop chemical vapor deposition (CVD) precursor materials and processes for use in high-volume manufacturing of phase change memory ("PCM") products based on Ovonyx's PCM technology.

03/20/2008  Mar. 20, 2008 - An unexpectedly soft memory market in 4Q07 has caused analyst firm iSuppli to trim about $2B off its totals for the full year, pushing overall annual growth down to 3.3% vs. a preliminary forecast of 4.1% in November.

03/19/2008  Mar. 19, 2008 - Spansion says it has achieved manufacturing efficiencies in its plants in the US and Japan to the extent that it expects to reduce outsourced work by ~$50M/quarter in 1H08 vs. 2H07.

03/19/2008  Mar. 19, 2008 - Toshiba has slashed its FY08 profits forecast by 30% (to ¥125B/US $1.28B), citing the exit of its HD DVD business -- but also surprising weakness in NAND flash pricing.

03/19/2008  Mar. 19, 2008 - Chinese flagship foundry SMIC is spreading the focus of its wafer fabs across different parts of China, with those in the northeast and northwest to be allocated for solar business, according to comments by CEO Richard Chang, reported by Digitimes.

03/18/2008  Mar. 18, 2008 - Taiwan's Winbond Electronics Corp. says it has finalized the spinoff of its logic IC business, to be a wholly owned subsidiary called Nuvoton Corp., finalizing efforts announced last fall to refocus on the company's main memory biz.

03/18/2008  Mar. 18, 2008 - Regional news reports suggest that Japan's Elpida Memory is working with China's Hejian Technology to build a $2B 300mm/30,000WPM capacity DRAM fab, with half of the funds to be raised by the Suzhou government, much like a similar fab proposal earlier this year with SMIC.