04/23/2007  April 23, 2007 - Toshiba Corp. is planning to ramp production of NAND flash memory using 43nm process technologies in its current fiscal year, in an attempt to offset current memory price declines with projected 40% production cost reductions, according to Japanese daily newspapers. The new products are to be built at Toshiba's fourth domestic memory fab in Mie Prefecture that will come online later this year.

04/23/2007  Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., has developed an all-DRAM stacked-memory package using through-silicon vias (TSVs) housed in aluminum pads to avoid performance slow-downs caused by the redistribution layer. The company applied a proprietary wafer-thinning technique to eliminate warped die in the low-profile package.

04/20/2007  April 20, 2007 - austriamicrosystems has signed a deal to add its high-voltage module to IBM's 0.18-micron RF CMOS process technology, a migration from austriamicrosystems' 0.35-micron HV CMOS process. Production is slated to start in 2009 at IBM's 200mm facility in Essex Junction, VT, and transferred back to austriamicrosystems' facilities at a later time.

04/20/2007  April 20, 2007 - Acknowledging "considerable downside risk" in the semiconductor market due to memory oversupplies and pricing declines, Gartner Dataquest has lowered its forecast for chip tool sales for the next two years.

04/19/2007  April 19, 2007 - NOR flash memory maker Spansion Inc. says it will slash up to $100 million in costs and pull back capex everywhere but its SP1 300mm facility, after plummeting ASPs caused the firm to slip to a $75.5 million that was more than twice what Wall Street expected.

04/17/2007  April 17, 2007 - A quick scan of earnings outlooks in Japan shows optimism, despite some bumpy roads in the past couple of months ending the fiscal year, according to several local papers.

04/17/2007  April 17, 2007 - Inventory adjustments and severe pricing pressures in flash and DRAM memory as well as MPUs have bogged down the market, and IC Insights sees enough historical comparisons in the data to cut its outlook for 2007 semiconductor IC sales growth from 7% to just 2%.

04/17/2007  April 17, 2007 - Elpida Memory's offer of equipment to SMIC is seen as an attempt to acquire a stake in SMIC's new 300mm wafer fab and its older 200mm fab, in an attempt to secure more capacity for DRAM and raise the stakes in its battle with rival Samsung, according to the Taiwan Economic News.

04/17/2007  April 17, 2007 - Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has licensed its 0.13-micron SONOS embedded nonvolatile memory technology to China's Hua Hong NEC Electronics Co. Ltd. Hua Hong already makes embedded EEPROM and OTP (0.35-micron) as well as embedded flash (0.25-micron) at mass production levels.

04/17/2007  April 17, 2007 - Malaysian foundry Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. has appointed two new top execs, both with backgrounds at China's Hua Hong and SMIC -- Tzu Yin Chiu is Silterra's new president/COO , while Charles Chan has been named president of subsidiary Silterra USA.

04/17/2007  BASF Future Business GmbH is collaborating with Polyera Corporation to develop and commercialize new organic semiconductors and dielectrics for use in CMOS-analog printed circuits. The partners intend to develop these materials as well as a printed prototype CMOS circuit within the next three years.

04/13/2007  April 13, 2007 - IBM says it has developed a way to incorporate through-silicon vias (TSV) into its chipmaking process that shortens data-travel distances by up to 1000x and allows for 100x more pathways than 2D chips. Samples of 65nm chips using the 3D stacking technique will be shipped by year's end, with production ramping in 2008.

04/13/2007  FormFactor, Inc. has released its PH150XP wafer probe card, a new product in the company's line of DRAM wafer testing products. The PH150XP probe card promises several yield and throughput enhancements to enable DRAM manufacturers to achieve additional reductions in their overall cost of test.

04/11/2007  April 11, 2007 - A federal judge has tossed out an antitrust lawsuit filed against seven memory chipmakers, saying that the lawsuit did not precisely detail and separate out allegations of damages that occurred inside the US vs outside the US, and has given them until May 4th to refile.

04/10/2007  April 10, 2007 - Fujitsu Limited has developed and released a new large-scaled integrated (LSI) chip for in-car automotive systems, such as navigation and digital dashboards. The new system-on-chip integrates various functions on a single chip, such as ARM core, 2D and 3D graphic capabilities, in-car networking features, and support for various media interfaces.

04/09/2007  April 9, 2007 - After nearly a year working with 45nm technology partners NEC and Toshiba, Sony says it will pursue future development outside the partnership, seen as a blow to efforts to group Japan's chipmakers together to compete against international rivals, according to a Reuters report.

04/09/2007  A new ABI Research report on the timing devices market and MEMS developers' efforts to unseat decades-old quartz technology says the upstarts face an uphill battle. But Discera, one of the startups looking to win big in this application area, indicates that uneven market acceptance is no surprise—and no problem.

04/05/2007  April 5, 2007 - Strong sales of DRAM memory and wireless communications devices boosted several vendors in the final tally of 2006 worldwide semiconductor sales, according to new figures from Gartner Dataquest. Best growth was at Hynix and Infineon, and Intel is starting to regain ground lost during the year.

04/05/2007  April 5, 2007 - Chip test tool supplier Advantest Corp. says revenues and group operating profits slipped about 7% in its just-closed year as DRAM manufacturers worried about plunging ASPs postponed orders for test equipment, according to local Japanese press reports.

04/05/2007  April 5, 2007 - Ziptronix Inc. and Raytheon Vision Systems (RVS) say they have demonstrated compatibility of Ziptronix's "direct bond interconnect" (DBI) interconnect technology with multilayer CMOS IC processes, involving 3D integration of five-layer metal 0.5-micron CMOS devices with silicon PIN detector devices.