11/12/2007  Advanced technology design was a major topic at this year's Common Platform Tech Forum (Nov. 6, Santa Clara, CA). The good news/bad news is that there are no new major design concerns at 45nm, but the hurdles the industry faced at 65nm are even more challenging at 45nm, and EDA tools need to be improved to overcome them.

11/09/2007  ; Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) has become the first semiconductor supplier company to join SEMATECH's 3D Interconnect Program, teaming with several chipmakers who are the program's founding members. TEL's agreement with SEMATECH adds significant resources to the consortium's effort aimed at evolving the traditional copper/low-k interconnect technology to 3D chip stacking, including through-silicon vias as interconnects.

11/09/2007  November 8, 2007 - Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) has joined SEMATECH's 3D Interconnect Program, the first supplier in the group launched in 2005 to evolve traditional copper/low-k interconnect technology to 3D chip stacking, including through-

11/08/2007  Texas Instruments Inc. (TI) has introduced three new audio codecs featuring low power consumption and noise filtering capabilities to maximize battery life and enhance performance in portable consumer applications such as wireless handsets. According to TI, these are the industry's first I2S codecs capable of interfacing directly to digital or analog microphones.

11/06/2007  By Raj Jammy, Director of Front End Processes, SEMATECH, and SST Editorial Advisory Board member

The success of semiconductor technology has been due to our choice of semiconductor material

11/06/2007  By Bill Tobey, Consultant and SST Editorial Review Board member

Over the past 50 years in the semiconductor industry, applications have been continuously added and extended, ultimately driving necessary changes in our technology base

11/06/2007  November 6, 2007 - A pair of industry firms have each secured at least $20M in continued VC funding, to support their respective development of memory and system-on-chip design technology.

11/06/2007  After forecasting good to "lackluster" 4Q sales forecasts, the top pure-play foundries (TSMC, UMC, SMIC, and Chartered) say they will reduce spending in 2008, (10%-25% declines or more). Their stated reasons -- improve productivity in current production, migrate more mature processes down to 90nm and 65nm, and get ASPs back up and improve profitability -- send a great message to the investor community. But the real reason could be a much bigger shift in the leading-edge foundry business model.

11/05/2007  November 5, 2007 - Notebook unit sales are on track for a better-than-expected 40% growth this year, and that growth will more than likely keep going through 2008 -- which would be great news for several chipmakers, according to an industry analyst.

11/05/2007  November 5, 2007 - STMicroelectronics has begun construction at a new packaging/text facility in Longgang, Guangdong Province, China. Plans call for 20,000 sq. m of manufacturing space to be ready by Sept. 2008, followed by equipment move-in during 4Q08; eventually that size will double to 40,000 sq. m.

11/01/2007  November 1, 2007 - Qimonda AG says it has begun sending customers of what it calls the industry's first samples of 512Mb DDR5 graphics processors.

10/31/2007  October 31, 2007 - Samsung Electronics Co. reportedly has acquired TransChip Israel Ltd., an Israel-based CMOS image sensor firm, the first time in a decade the Korean company has acquired a foreign company.

10/30/2007  October 30, 2007 - A new public/private R&D initiative is being laid out to replace the MEDEA+ program for cooperative R&D in microelectronics that is set to expire in 2008, which over the past seven years has watched over three generations of CMOS technology, and spearheaded work on fields ranging from smart cards, image sensors, and automotive electronics.

10/30/2007  October 30, 2007 - Demand for NAND flash memory, battles in the MPU space, and pains of big customers' change in strategies have shuffled the rankings of top chip suppliers in 3Q07, just as predicted, according to data from IC Insights.

10/30/2007  October 30, 2007 - Air Products and its Taiwan subsidiary Air Products San Fu Co Ltd. have agreed to supply nitrogen and bulk gases for Taiwan DRAM producer Rexchip Semiconductor Corp., the Powerchip-Elpida memory JV. Financial details were not disclosed.

10/29/2007  October 29, 2007 - Worldwide semiconductor sales rose ~5% for the second consecutive month to a record $22.60 billion in Sept. 2007, riding demand for PCs and cell phones as seasonal patterns build to a head, according to data from the SIA.

10/29/2007  While the industry struggles to continue on the Moore's Law track, 3D approaches superior to those of systems-on-chip may provide an interim solution if the shrink slows down. A SEMATECH-organized workshop in Albany, NY earlier this month (Oct. 11-12) addressed fundamental issues about 3D, including four reasons why every chipmaker has 3D/TSVapproaches on its roadmap, and what needs to be solved before 3D can be effective beyond simple memory.

10/25/2007  October 25, 2007 - After touching a trough in 3Q07, semiconductor equipment sales should head back up with small positive growth over the next several quarters, according to market analysis firm The Information Network.

10/25/2007  WiSpry Inc. has introduced its product family of MEMS tunable digital capacitors for cellular applications. These products integrate low power CMOS control and voltage generation logic with an array of tunable RF-MEMS digital capacitors. Samples of these capacitors will be available in 2Q08.

10/24/2007  October 24, 2007 - Spansion Inc. and Chinese foundry SMIC are partnering to delve further into NOR flash, in a deal that utilizes SMIC's 65nm foundry work for Spansion's MirrorBit technologies, and extend into "selected segments" of flash memory to sell 90nm and 65nm and beyond MirrorBit Quad products in China.