09/16/2004  September 15, 2004 - Infineon Technologies AG said it has agreed to plead guilty to charges of DRAM memory chip price-fixing from the US Department of Justice, and will pay a $160 million fine, one of the biggest antitrust fines ever levied in the US.

09/10/2004  September 10, 2004 - Samsung Electronics Co. has begun mass-production of chips manufactured with a 90nm design rule, claiming the chips are the first of their type in the world.

09/01/2004 

08/26/2004  August 26, 2004 - Toshiba Corp. plans to expand production capacity at its 200mm facility in Yokkaichi, central Japan, to 107,500 wafers/month by 1H05, a 7.5% increase.

08/25/2004  Automated advanced macro defect inspection solution
(August 25, 2004—Minneapolis, Minn.)
August Technology Corporation launched NSX-115, the latest addition to its NSX series of automated advanced macro defect inspection solutions. The NSX-115 is optimized for 2D gold and solder bump and probe mark inspection.

08/24/2004  August 24, 2004 - National Semiconductor Corp., Santa Clara, CA, has sold its imaging business to Eastman Kodak Co. for an undisclosed amount.

08/18/2004  August 18, 2004 - Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., San Diego, CA, has made its 0.25-micron UltraCMOS silicon-on-sapphire process available for foundry services, following its 0.5-micron multiproject-run foundry program.

08/18/2004  August 18, 2004 - Taiwanese foundry United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) has made available its 0.18-micron embedded high-voltage technology process, used with portable LCD products to power transistors for applications such as cell phone displays.

08/18/2004  August 18, 2004 - Applied Materials posted a profit of $440.6 million in its fiscal 3Q04 ended August 1. Revenues more than doubled from $1.09 billion a year ago to $2.24 billion. Applied officials noted that more than 50% of revenues were coming from 90nm and below, and two-thirds of total system orders were for 300mm tools.

08/12/2004  August 12, 2004 - Researchers at UCLA and Los Alamos National Labs claim they are now able to detect the spin of a single electron in a standard silicon transistor, another step toward being able to monitor and even manipulate them for use in quantum-computing devices.

08/09/2004  August 9, 2004 - Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) and European research organization CEA Leti have agreed to jointly research and develop front-end-of-line CMOS process technology, focusing on new materials for CMOS gate stacks.

08/06/2004  August 6, 2004 - Infineon Technologies AG and Taiwan's Winbond Electronics Corp. have expanded their collaboration on DRAM memory manufacturing to include 90nm DRAM trench technology for 300mm production.

08/02/2004  August 3, 2004 - 3Plus1Technology Inc., Saratoga, CA, has unveiled details about itself and its work on multiprocessor architecture for running next-generation handheld systems.

08/02/2004  August 2, 2004 - Solid but slowing global demand is in store for the semiconductor industry in 2H04, with the outlook very much dependent upon a continued rise in capacity utilization and chip inventories, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

08/02/2004  (August 2, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—Tessera Technologies, Inc., a services provider for semiconductor chip-scale and multi-chip packages, announced today that it has signed an agreement that expands the license terms of its existing agreement with Sharp Corporation, a leading consumer electronics company.

07/30/2004  July 30, 2004 - IBM, East Fishkill, NY, has unveiled a chip-morphing technology to support a new class of semiconductors that can automatically monitor and adjust their performance and power consumption.

07/27/2004  July 26, 2004 - Winbond Electronics Corp. has begun construction of its $2.5 billion 300mm fab in the Central Taiwan Science Park in Taichung.

07/20/2004  July 20, 2004 - Migdal Haemek, Israel - Wafer manufacturer Tower Semiconductor has signed a licensing agreement with Virage Logic Corp., a provider of semiconductor intellectual property (IP) platforms, to make Virage Logic's technology-optimized platforms available on Tower's 0.13-micron CMOS processes.

07/19/2004  Nantero Inc. stretched its nanotube empire even further last week, striking a deal with the giant BAE Systems to explore how nanotubes could improve the performance of electronics in the aerospace and defense industries.The BAE deal is a radical change in direction for Nantero.

07/15/2004  IBM's director of physical sciences, Thomas Theis, discusses nano, disruptive technology and why physical research is a driving force at Big Blue. He met with Small Times' David Forman to discuss everything from next-generation magnetic memory (MRAM) to Millipede, IBM's cutting-edge approach to data storage.