world news
03/01/2008
BUSINESS TREND
SSEMI: Wafer shipments rose 8% in 2007
Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments came in around revised projections in 2007, squeaking back into positive growth territory by year’s end, according to the latest data from SEMI’s Silicon Manufacturers Group. Total area shipments rose 8.3% for all of 2007 to 8661 millions of sq. in. (MSI). Revenues maintained >20% Y-Y growth for a second consecutive year to $12.1B, though slightly slower growth than in 2006. Robust demand and the ongoing ramp of 300mm chip manufacturing are expected to remain drivers in 2008.
 Slowing growth in silicon wafer shipments. (Source: SEMI) |
The 8% growth in 2007 was a revision from initial forecasts of 9% growth. After year-on-year growth of 12% in both 1Q and 2Q, the sector saw a -1.2% sequential decline in 3Q wafer shipments, and ultimately flat shipments through 4Q. SEMI also sees moderate single-digit growth in each of the next few years.
WORLDWIDE HIGHLIGHTS
Global sales of semiconductors took their typical seasonal dip in December ($22.28B, -3.6% Q-Q, +2.5% Y-Y) but managed 3.2% growth for the full year (a record $255.6B), according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Minus the slumping memory segment, industry sales would have risen 4.5% Y-Y. Familiar major demand drivers in the year were PCs, mobile handsets, and general consumer electronics, noted SIA president George Scalise in a statement.
European R&D consortium IMEC and the U. of Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CSNE) are joining efforts in EUV lithography development in order to demonstrate “practical feasibility” and “build confidence” in the technology for the 32nm half-pitch device node and below. First experiments will be done in Albany, focusing mainly on the system’s imaging capabilities, and on new materials and equipment technology. Future studies will be carried out at either location depending on throughput and tool availability.
SEMI has announced further details of its initiatives in photovoltaics (PV), an area that involves 20% of its membership. Beyond colocation of future SEMICON West tradeshows with a global solar trade fair, SEMI’s new “PV Group” aims to find ways to reduce costs, efficiently transfer technologies, and offer market development, industry standards and market statistics, while working with other industry associations in the US, Europe, and Japan.
Hitachi Kokusai Electric has agreed to license ASM International’s patents for batch atomic layer deposition technology, to bolster its own work in the technology.
EV Group and Brewer Science say they have demonstrated temporary wafer bonding capabilities for a wide range of backside processes, including through-silicon vias and backside metallization, using an approach optimized for high-temperature advanced packaging applications.
USA
Intel and Micron say they have jointly developed (through their “IM Flash” JV) a 50nm-process based, 8Gb single-level cell NAND flash chip with data read/write speeds of 200MB/s and up to 100MB/s, 5× faster than conventional SLC NAND flash chips. Mass production is slated for 2H08.
Rudolph Technologies has acquired all IP and selected assets from privately held RVSI Inspection to add the firm’s flagship 3D wafer inspection technology to its own 2D macrodefect inspection portfolio, and strengthen its presence in advanced packaging applications. A technology center for RVSI’s wafer scanner products will remain in Hauppauge, NY, but manufacturing will move to Rudolph’s inspection business unit in Bloomington, MN.
FormFactor is trimming its workforce by 14% and pushing back its expansion into Singapore by six months, with manufacturing expected to start “no sooner than late 2009.” Customers’ reduced test equipment investments in a tough DRAM pricing environment, as well as delays with the company’s Harmony product line, were cited by CEO Igor Khandros.
ZMD AG has sold its complete SRAM product line (including manufacturing rights, mask sets, IP and inventory) to San Carlos, CA-based Alliance Memory.
ASIAFOCUS
SMIC says it will set up a new independent unit in Shenzhen, China, to run new 200mm and 300mm lines, the latter utilizing 45nm process technology recently licensed from IBM, and both drawing on significant support from the municipal government. The 200mm portion of the Shenzhen site will use refurbished equipment for work using 0.35µm-0.13µm process technologies (and derivatives down to ~100µm), according to SMIC president/CEO Richard Ru Gin Chang. Initial monthly capacity is pegged at 20,000 wafers, with the ability to meet demand expected to exceed 40,000 or even 50,000 wafers/month. Deliveries are planned to start in 2009.
Fujitsu is spinning off its LSI business divisions into a new subsidiary in order to spur growth in its ASSP and ASIC businesses and accelerate ≤45nm development. The plan involves moving ≤90nm chip development and mass production prototyping from the Akiruno Technology Center in western Tokyo to the company’s 300mm facilities in Mie, central Japan, which already houses 90nm-65nm LSI work.
Mitsubishi Electric has agreed to reacquire Renesas Technology’s Kumamoto Prefecture power chip plant, which was handed over to the JV with Hitachi in 2003, to increase its capabilities for power devices and upgrade to 200mm production. Renesas had struggled to fully utilize the site’s capacity since it quit the flash memory business in 2005.
Sharp Manufacturing Systems has created a wafer cleaning system that uses higher-concentrated ozone water to more effectively dissolve and remove photoresist and other organic contaminants, according to the Nikkei Business Daily. Typical ozone-water removal methods, used as a gentler and less expensive cleaner than sulfuric acid, offer ozone concentration of 75ppm in 80°C water, but the concentration declines during heating. But the company says it can vary the pressure to prevent this effect, and improve the ozone concentration by nearly 50% to 110ppm. The technology is being combined with other equipment into a cleaning system, to sell for around ¥50M (US ~$460K), with goals to sell 10 units in the next year and 70 by 2010, the paper noted.
IMEC has opened an office in Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park, initially as just as a representative office but expected to grow into an R&D center within six months, in order to facilitate work on semiconductor process, design, prototyping, and integration with local companies, foundries, and academia.
Panasonic (née Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.) says it will build a second building at the site of discrete device operation in Suzhou, China, to make advanced ICs as well as general-purpose discrete devices (LEDs) and camera modules for cell phones. Initial investment is set at ~¥10B (US ~$94.2M), with production slated to start in October, ramping to annual output of 4.4B semiconductors and 13.4B camera modules.
Sachem and Japan’s Nagase have formed a JV to market Sachem’s “Mobius System” tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) recycle technology in Asia, which regenerates spent TMAH developer used in photolithography into reusable ultrapure TMAH. Target customers are LCD firms in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and China, to help them minimize chemical waste and water consumption.
Samsung and Hynix reportedly are working together in a state-sponsored partnership to develop and acquire next-generation (post-40nm) semiconductor technologies, including spin-torque-transfer magnetic-random-access-memory (STT-MRAM) and various nonvolatile memory devices, according to the Korea Times. The three-stage plan, the first Samsung-Hynix partnership since work on 64Mb DRAM in the 1990s, started in 2004 and runs through mid-2011, with total investments of 52.58B won (US ~$55.4M).
Fujifilm says its electronics materials subsidiary has purchased an advanced argon fluoride (ArF) immersion scanner to help ramp its new ArF immersion photoresists into high-volume production.
Panasonic Factory Solutions says it has developed a new wafer dicer that is 30× faster and wastes 2/3 less material than a typical diamond cutter, targeting a market niche in thinner (<100μm) wafers with smaller chips such as those used in portable digital products, notes the Nikkei Business Daily. Processing time is 15 wafers/hr for a 300mm/50μm thick wafer, vs. one wafer/2hrs with a conventional diamond cutter, according to the paper. Parent group firm Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. hopes to start marketing the system in the spring.
The Formosa Plastics Group is spending about $4.6M on R&D of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) film, a packaging material for solar cell modules, in a bid to become a key domestic supplier for a prospective $312M market-Taiwan’s solar cell industry currently imports all of the 20% of global EVA supply it uses, notes the Taiwan Economic News. The company plans to ramp to volume production next year (hoping for 40% gross margins), already has the EVA production equipment, and says it can push to volume production by just improving the process and technology-something the Formosa group has done in other traditional product areas, the paper notes.
EUROFOCUS
National Semiconductor says it will close certain chipmaking toolsets, including its 150mm wafer fabrication facility in Greenock, Scotland, and cut its workforce by approximately 200 in an effort to “modernize facilities and rationalize capacity.” The company also is shuttering its 150mm/200mm site in Arlington, TX.
STMicroelectronics has made its 45nm CMOS process available via French brokerage service CMP for prototyping to academia, R&D labs, and companies for multiproject wafer services, and has added its 65nm CMOS SOI process for academia. More than 100 universities (mostly in Europe) already have received design rules and kits for ST’s 65nm CMOS process, the company claims.
Infineon Technologies says it is shipping in volume RF switches manufactured in a CMOS-based process on silicon wafers, with performance equivalent to RF switches manufactured in gallium arsenide (GaAs), without requiring sapphire wafers and taking up ~60% less space on a printed circuit board than current smallest packaged GaAs RF switches. Target markets are low- and medium-power applications (up to 3GHz).