01/20/2006  January 20, 2006 - The Japanese government reportedly plans to initiate a 27.2% countervailing tariff on DRAM memory chips from South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor Inc. as soon as Jan. 27, following similar moves from the US and Europe.

01/19/2006  January 19, 2006 - STMicroelectronics said it has completed the transition of its 128Mbit, 256Mbit, and 512Mbit NAND flash devices to 90nm process technology, which it claims will lower the memory chips' cost and power consumption.

01/19/2006  January 19, 2006 - Spansion Inc. and Elpida Memory Inc. are collaborating to combine Spansion's MirrorBit NOR and ORNAND flash memory and Elpida's DRAM in a single memory subsystem for use in consumer wireless applications.

01/19/2006  January 19, 2006 - Macronix International Co. Ltd. has agreed to sell its idle 300mm facility Fab 3, along with cleanroom and adjunctive equipment, to PowerChip Semiconductor Corp., a deal reportedly worth $166 million.

01/12/2006  January 12, 2006 - Fujitsu Ltd. said it will spend 120-130 billion yen (roughly US $1 billion) to build a new semiconductor plant at its 300mm facilities in Mie Prefecture, to produce 90nm and 65nm CMOS logic.

01/10/2006  January 10, 2006 - A group of 14 chipmakers, universities, and research institutes aims to find ways to control leakage currents in CMOS designs below 65nm, cited as a "showstopper" for future generations of nanoelectronic circuits.

01/10/2006  January 10, 2006 - Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) and Infineon Technologies AG have agreed to extend their DRAM contract manufacturing partnership beyond 300mm/90nm to include flexibility for 70nm technology transfers in the future.

01/03/2006  San Jose, CA — Worldwide semiconductor sales reached a record $20.4 billion in November, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). These sales increased 7.2% from the $19.0 billion reported for November 2004, and were up 1.7% sequentially from the $20.1 billion reported in October.

01/03/2006 

01/01/2006  One of the most nagging questions asked by young children on a long trip is, “Are we there yet?”

01/01/2006  Freescale Semiconductor Inc., the Austin, Texas-based Motorola spinoff, announced it has proven a 24-Mbit memory array based on silicon nanocrystals - a milestone toward developing a nanocrystal memory that could compete with embedded Flash memory in years ahead.

12/19/2005  December 19, 2005 - Hitachi Ltd. and Renesas Technology Corp. say they have successfully prototyped low-power phase-change memory cells programmed at a power supply voltage of 1.5V and current of 100mA, consuming about 50% less power consumption/cell than the companies' previous technology.

12/13/2005  By Ed Korczynski, Senior Technical Editor

The ISMI Symposium on Manufacturing Effectiveness in Austin, TX, in October provided insights into the near future of high-volume semiconductor manufacturing. With fabs ramping 90nm and 65nm node processes, new mindsets and techniques are needed to manage the inherent complexity of manufacturing nanometer-scale IC structures.

12/12/2005  Hsinchu, Taiwan, and Sunnyvale, CA — ChipMOS Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of ChipMOS, has entered into an assembly and testing agreement with Spansion LLC, the Flash memory venture of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. and Fujitsu Limited. ChipMOS Taiwan will become an outsource provider of assembly and testing services for Spansion under the terms of the agreement.

12/09/2005  December 8, 2005 - NEC Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp. said they have developed a new device technology for low-power, high-performance systel LSI capable of enhancing functionality of sub-10nm transistors.

12/08/2005  December 8, 2005 - Intel and STMicroelectronics have developed a common flash memory subsystem aimed at creating a "second source" for 90nm and beyond NOR flash products and subsystems, in order to lower long-term development costs for handsets and mobile phones.

12/08/2005  December 8, 2005 - At IEDM 2005, IMEC presented breakthroughs demonstrating FUSI as a leading candidate for integration of Hf-based dielectrics with metal gates for (sub)-45nm.

12/06/2005  December 6, 2005 - At the International Electron Devices meeting this week in Washington, DC, news includes: 1) Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. have developed carbon nanotube-based heatsinks for semiconductor chips. 2) Freescale Semiconductor has demonstrated a transistor that overcomes many of the challenges associated with vertical multigate devices. 3) STMicrolectronics unveiled a 65nm NOR Flash technology with a small cell size of 0.042 sq microns.

12/02/2005  December 2, 2005 - Researchers at the U. of Tokyo have created a flexible Braille display utilizing organic semiconductor devices -- plastic actuators driven by an organic field-effect transistor active matrix.

12/02/2005  December 2, 2005 - Researchers at Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT) have developed a way to fabricate functional resistance random-access memory (RRAM) using existing electronic materials, possibly opening a pathway to low-cost mass production of the technology touted as faster, low-power alternative to flash memory.