01/11/2008  ; With the increasing popularity of DVB (digital video broadcasting) triggering huge demand for chips, Sigma Designs, the US-based, large-sized supplier of IC (integrated circuit) design, has already placed a sizable order for FC-CSP (flip-chip chip-scale-package) substrates with Taiwan`s Kinsus Interconnect Technology Corp in 2008, according to industry sources, said Taiwan Economic News.

01/09/2008  Jan. 9, 2008 - Chartered Semiconductor may be poised to take away business with Japanese foundry customers from top Taiwan foundries TSMC and UMC, thanks to its ties to the IBM Common Platform alliance and Toshiba, a key partner in the group's next-gen chip development, speculates a report by the Taiwan Economic News.

01/07/2008  While several papers at the recent International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) explored high-k/metal gate dielectric concepts to cut leakage currents, there was also some discussion of performance enhancement by using metal for the source and drain. Also, IBM showed a novel implant technique enabling very low leakage SOI CMOS for 65nm and below, and UC-Berkeley researchers have a new concept for optoelectronic tweezers that can trap and move objects down to the nanoscale.

01/04/2008  Jan. 4, 2008 - Thanks to an ongoing harsh pricing environment, major DRAM manufacturers Winbond and Nanya have begun to push out equipment orders, according to a pair of reports.

01/04/2008  Jan. 4, 2008 - Days after sending out its monthly global semiconductor sales update, the SIA has revised the figures going back to September, to reflect an extra $1.35B in DRAM sales.

01/04/2008  Toshiba and SanDisk aim to increase their share of the NAND flash market by bringing down costs, as they accelerate the ramp of their new Yokkaichi Fab 4 next year, introducing 43nm geometries, high-k/metal gates, second generation 1.3NA immersion lithography, and 3 bits per cell. Executives from both companies detailed their current production plans and future roadmap for flash memory technology to SST partner Nikkei Microdevices.

01/04/2008  From deciding on HK+MG first or last (or both), to dreams and realities of semiconductor manufacturing expansion in foreign markets, and the continued winding march of technology development and industry consolidation -- 2007 was an interesting year for the semiconductor industry, especially for those of us trying to keep track of it all.

01/03/2008  Jan. 3, 2008 - Germany's Qimonda and Taiwan's Macronix International have signed a deal to jointly develop nonvolatile memory technologies over a five-year period, sharing development costs and pooling engineering resources. Financial terms were not disclosed.

01/02/2008  Jan. 2, 2008 - Worldwide chip sales slowed in November to just a fraction of a percent vs. October, and are on pace for roughly 3% growth for all of 2007, below the Semiconductor Industry Association's (SIA) projections of 3.8% barely a month ago.

01/02/2008  Jan. 2, 2008 - Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp. has officially acquired 200mm chipmaking lines from Winbond Electronics Corp., under a deal announced in March.

12/21/2007  December 21, 2007 - IBM has agreed to license Infineon Technologies' 130nm embedded flash technologies, expanding IBM's custom foundry services capabilities and giving Infineon an extra manufacturing source.

12/21/2007  December 20, 2007 - Semiconductor equipment spending will slip 9.9% in 2008 in large part due to measures taken to absorb memory oversupplies, though the second half of the year should pick up strength and set the stage for a return to growth in 2009, according to the latest figures from Gartner.

12/20/2007  ; Electro Scientific Industries Inc. has announced that ProMOS Technologies has placed a multiple-system order for its model 9830HDE link processing tool. The tool features a high-throughput, 100-kHz laser and high-velocity stage, and is compatible with ProMOS' existing installed base of ESI 9830 laser systems.

12/19/2007  December 19, 2007 - Keeping with its "flexible manufacturing" (i.e. fab-lite) initiative, Cypress Semiconductor says it will "exit" its Fab 2 chip factory in Round Rock, TX by late 2008, transitioning the production work to its newer 200mm Fab 4 in Bloomington, MN, and to external foundry partners.

12/18/2007  December 18, 2007 - Toshiba has extended its two-year collaboration with IBM on 32nm-and below node technologies to now include 32nm bulk CMOS process technology, joining five other participants in the work.

12/18/2007  December 17, 2007 - Worldwide semiconductor revenue will increase just 2.9% to $270.3B this year, with mixed performances among the top vendors, notes Gartner in its newest preliminary figures.

12/17/2007  December 17, 2007 - Researchers at Taiwan's National Chung Hsing U., working with the Industrial Technology Research Institute, say they have created a nonvolatile organic memory device (16b), made stable by using gold nanoparticles mixed with a polymer.

12/17/2007  December 17, 2007 - A pair of financial analysts are taking the low road on a pair of big memory firms, citing continued concerns about inventory and soft pricing, though one of them sees light at the end of the tunnel for investors.

12/17/2007  WaferNEWS gets the scoop about Axcelis' new Optima XE high-energy single-wafer ion implanter, and why its broad energy range and even broader range of device applications addresses a particular need for fab managers working with high product mixes.

12/17/2007  December 16, 2007 - At this year's IEDM, NEC and NEC Electronics unveiled new design technology to optimize ultrashallow-junction channel structures in 32nm-and beyond LSIs, as well as a new composite film to enable a "full low-k" Cu interconnect structure with k reduced nearly a third compared to conventional barrier dielectrics.