BUSINESS TRENDS
08/01/2007
Joining other industry groups and analysts, the SIA has significantly scaled back its expectations for the semiconductor industry, now projecting just 1.8% growth this year ($252 billion).
The big problem has been plunging prices across the big categories of MPUs and memory (both DRAM and NAND flash). DSPs remain a lonely bright spot, tracking closely to a projected 10% increase in cell phone sales, and the wireless segment in general also continues to see growth.
 Updated chip sales forecast reflects ASP woes. (Source: SIA) |
End demand for micros and memory are still strong, though, according to SIA president George Scalise. He suggested that pricing pressures could eventually recede and pave the way for future sales to increase “more consistently with unit demand.”
WORLDWIDE HIGHLIGHTS
Synova and Disco Hi-Tec Europe GmbH will jointly develop a hybrid high-throughput dicing tool using Synova’s Laser Microjet (LMJ) water-jet-guided laser technology and Disco’s blade-saw dicing systems.
Silterra and European R&D consortium IMEC have extended their partnership to create a foundry-compatible 90nm CMOS process technology, based on IMEC’s process, with intention to scale to 65nm, and will develop a 110nm derivative in parallel.
SVTC Technologies (née the Silicon Valley Technology Center) and TSMC have formed an “incubation program” to encourage development of “novel silicon ideas” in SVTC’s 200mm fab environment and smooth potential transfer of those technologies to TSMC for manufacturing.
USA
Texas Instruments says it will incorporate a hafnium-based (HfSiON) high-k dielectric material in “later versions” of its high-performance 45nm chips. TI’s first 45nm device (a wireless chip) will be sampled later this year for production in mid-2008.
Nanometrics Inc. says it has sold its Yosemite CD-SEM technology, acquired from Soluris Inc. in March 2006, to Korean chip equipment firm SNU Precision Co. Ltd., and its DiVA series of IV instruments (acquired last year from Accent Optical Technologies Inc.) to Auriga Measurement Systems LLC.
Applied Materials has acquired privately held HCT Shaping Systems SA, a supplier of precision wafering systems used principally in manufacturing crystalline silicon (c-Si) substrates.
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has opened its new 300mm NAND flash memory wafer plant in Austin, TX. The $3.5 billion facility will initially focus on 16Gbit flash chips and 50nm process technologies, and ramp to 60,000 wafers/month output by 2008.
ASIAFOCUS
Four Taiwanese test/packaging houses-ASE, Greatek Electronics, SPIL, and Walton Advanced Engineering-have gained approval from the Ministry of Economic Affairs to do lead-frame base packaging in mainland China.
Hynix Semiconductor will migrate its 60nm NAND flash to 57nm production at its 200mm fabs in 3Q07 to cut costs by around 20%, according to Digitimes, and plans to introduce 48nm NAND flash in 1Q08.
Driven by demand for display drivers, Silterra says it will move to mass production using 0.16µm processes in 3Q07, increase high-voltage capacity by 30% in 4Q, and pilot the technology on its aluminum-based 0.13µm process by 1Q08.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. says it has begun the “world[’s] first” mass production of 45nm LSI chips at its factory in Uozu, central Japan, using ArF immersion lithography (NA>1) and multilayer wiring using low-k dielectrics.
STATS ChipPAC Ltd. says it will sell certain assembly and test assets for its discrete power packages to China’s Ningbo Mingxin Microelectronics Co. Ltd.
Tezzaron Semiconductor says it is ramping its 2D “3T-iRAM” line of 72Mbit memory devices on Chartered Semiconductor’s 0.13µm process technology.
EUROFOCUS
Thanks to continued demand from the solar industry, Wacker Chemie AG says it will spend an estimated €400 million (US $531.8 million) to expand polysilicon production at its site in Burghausen, Germany, to 21,500 metric tons/year. First material from the “stage 8” capacity expansion should be available in 4Q09, with full capacity expected in 2010.
Germany’s Elmos Semiconductor, a mixed-signal ASIC provider, has signed a multiyear assembly service agreement with Advanced Interconnect Technologies (AIT), and will transfer its IC assembly and supporting equipment from Holland to an AIT facility in Batam, Indonesia.