05/13/2005  May 13, 2005 - Infineon Technologies Asia Pte Ltd. announced it opened its Asia Pacific headquarters building at Kallang Sector yesterday. The two 10-story towers house Infineon's regional headquarters functions in the Asia Pacific, including production, logistics, sales and marketing and R&D.

05/11/2005  SANTA CLARA, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 05/10/2005 -- Silvaco, a leading vendor of commercial circuit simulation and EDA software, received the great news from the Compact Model Council (CMC) that the HiSIM-RF Surface Potential SPICE Model was elected by its members for standardization.

05/09/2005  May 9, 2005 - Simtek Corp. and Cypress Semiconductor Corp. have announced a comprehensive agreement to jointly develop a 0.13-micron silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) nonvolatile memory process. Under the agreement, Cypress will invest $4 million in 6,740,816 shares of Simtek common stock.

05/06/2005  People often ask me how I became an industry analyst specializing in MEMS. The truth is, it was mostly a case of being in the right place at the right time with the right skills to tackle a complex subject like MEMS. Now I find myself in that position again, with the opportunity to research, analyze and write not only about MEMS, but all sorts of emerging technologies for EmTech Research, a new division of Small Times Media.

05/01/2005  Have you read the latest news from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA)?

04/27/2005  April 27, 2005 - Toshiba Corp. plans to lift monthly production of NAND flash memory chips at its plant in Yokkaichi, Mie Prefecture, to the equivalent of 21,500 300mm wafers by the end of 2005, more than double its initial plans, The Nihon Keizai Shimbun learned Tuesday.

04/26/2005  (April 26, 2005) Schärding, Austria — EV Group (EVG) has installed a low-temperature wafer-bonding system at Silicon Microstructures Inc. (SMI), a silicon pressure and inertial sensors provider for automotive, medical, and industrial applications.

04/26/2005  April 26, 2005 - Using a selected set of tools and processes, SEMATECH engineers have achieved twin breakthroughs in channel mobility and reliability of high-k/metal gate transistors, putting high-k technology for CMOS within reach at the 45nm technology node.

04/22/2005  April 22, 2005 - South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor agreed to pay a $185 million fine to settle allegations that it participated in a global price-fixing conspiracy, US Justice Department officials said Thursday, reported the Agence France-Presse.

04/21/2005  April 21, 2005 - Following through on its intentions to invest in high-growth opportunities-at the expense of other promising businesses-Cypress Semiconductor Corp., San Jose, CA, announced it plans to spin off its SunPower silicon solar-cell subsidiary in an initial public offering

04/21/2005  Whether you are a section manager overseeing new technology initiatives in a corporate lab or a project leader shepherding technology development in a startup, chances are you could use more resources. Underfunded projects and overburdened staff make the goal of beating your competition seem a quixotic dream. In my experience, vertical integration of resources, compared to sharing resources, provides the most effective method of quickly getting to market.

04/19/2005  By J. Robert Lineback, Senior Technical Editor

During the past nine years, South Korea's $20 billion-plus chip industry has been hammered and reshaped by a variety of financial and semiconductor market forces. What has emerged is a more diversified semiconductor supplier base in Korea, consisting of four major chipmakers pursuing very different business models, but memory products still dominate the country's output.

04/19/2005  Thirteen years ago, five of the top 10 DRAM producers were in Japan. What a difference a decade - and a punishing downturn - make.

04/19/2005  April 19, 2005 - Sematech has announced its top technical challenges for 2006, continuing to underscore advanced gate stack, 193nm immersion and EUV lithography, mask infrastructure, and low-k dielectrics with process compatibility. Consortium leaders also placed planar bulk transistor scaling on the list for the first time.

04/13/2005  April 13, 2005 - Toshiba Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. will soon start to mass-produce 0.85-inch hard-disk drives, the world's smallest, to replace flash memories as the main storage medium for cellular phones, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported in its Tuesday evening edition.

04/07/2005  April 7, 2005 - The SEZ Group today announced that Elpida Memory Inc. has placed orders for multiple SEZ 323 spin processing tools.

03/29/2005  March 29, 2005 - MagnaChip Semiconductor today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire IC Media Corp., a developer of CMOS image sensors, for an undisclosed amount. The transaction remains subject to certain closing conditions.

03/28/2005  March 28, 2005 - Toshiba Corp. said Friday it will fight a decision by a Silicon Valley jury that found it guilty of stealing trade secrets from Lexar Media Inc. in a suit over flash memory used in digital cameras, music players, and other devices.

03/25/2005  (March 25, 2005) Pocatello, Idaho — AMI Semiconductor (AMIS) now offers 'green,' RoHS-compliant packages, in accordance with the EU's WEEE environmental initiatives to replace lead-based packaging in the manufacturing process.

03/25/2005  March 25, 2005 - DuPont Photomasks Inc. has received a Spotlight Award from flash memory device maker Spansion LLC for helping Spansion's FAB25 in Austin, TX, enhance wafer yield. Spansion's award recognizes DuPont Photomasks' role in a joint-development project aimed at boosting yield by targeting improvement of layer-to-layer registration when chip designs are etched on wafers. Spansion, formerly known as FASL LLC, is the flash memory subsidiary of AMD and Fujitsu Limited.