SIA tweaks down chip sales forecast
01/01/2007
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has slightly tweaked its outlook for chip sales for the next several years, with growth through 2008 slightly less than what was projected in June: $248.8 billion in chip sales in 2006, a 9.4% increase from 2005, followed by a 10% increase to $273.8 billion in 2007, 10.8% growth in 2008 to $303.4 billion, and 5.8% growth in 2009 to about $321 billion.
 Chip sales keep climbing, memory segment smoothes out. |
Breaking down sales projections by individual product category, the SIA has hiked its annual growth and CAGR outlooks for a number of smaller-market devices, but those are more than offset by a downward revision in the largest categories of microprocessors and MOS logic devices.
DRAM sales are projected to see the best compound annual growth rate from 2006-2009 at 14%, with particular strength over the next few quarters as PC makers prepare for the Windows Vista operating system. NAND flash sales are projected to grow at 11% CAGR, driven by use as replacements for hard drives in MP3 players and portable storage media such as digital photography. Digital signal processors (13%) and analog products (11%) are also expected to see double-digit CAGR through 2009.
WORLDWIDE HIGHLIGHTS
Wafer shipments surged in 3Q06 to surpass 2000 million sq. in., a 5.5% sequential increase and more than 18% ahead of the same period in 2005, according to new data from SEMI’s Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG).
NXP Semiconductors (née Philips Semiconductors) and partner TSMC have raised their ownership stakes in Singapore joint venture Systems on Silicon Manufacturing Co. Pte. Ltd. (SSMC), a 0.25-0.14µm CMOS foundry offering derivatives and embedded flash memory process.
BOC Edwards and Aviza Technology Inc. have agreed to jointly develop atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology, combining BOC’s chemical precursor formulation with Aviza’s hardware to optimize deposition processes for high-k materials and metals.
USA
Applied Materials Inc. has bought the Brooks Software division of Brooks Automation Inc. for $125 million in cash. AMAT also has invested $3.0 million in Solaicx, a privately held manufacturer of single-crystal silicon wafers for the solar photovoltaic industry.
Magma Design Automation has purchased FEI Co.’s Knights Technology subsidiary, which makes yield management and failure analysis software that collects and graphically analyzes fab data.
Intel Corp. says it has ramped to volume shipments of 65nm-based NOR flash multilevel cell memory products, including a 1Gb monolithic part for cell phones. Smaller-density versions (512, 256, and 128Mb) are expected to be released in 2007.
ASIAFOCUS
UMC says it has produced functional 45nm SRAM chips at its Fab 12A, using immersion lithography for 12 critical layers, as well as ultrashallow junctions, mobility enhancement techniques, and a k=2.5 ultralow-k dielectric.
TSMC expects to start work on a new 300mm fab in the Hsinchu Science Park by next spring, according to several media reports. The foundry’s board has already approved an extra $1.13 billion in capital expenditures to expand 65nm and 90nm process capacity.
SMIC will slash its 2007 capital expenditures by 30% vs. this year’s $1.0 billion, according to the Taiwan Economic News. SMIC also expects to quadruple its portion of revenues from 90nm process technologies to 16% this year, though partly because of declining demand for its other process capacities.
European R&D consortium IMEC has signed memorandums of understanding with SemIndia and the Indian Institute of Science, moves hoped to help solidify India’s plans to develop domestic semiconductor fabrication capabilities.
Intel is tripling the size and cost of its planned assembly/test facility in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City to a $1 billion, 500,000 sq. ft. site, after determining a bigger and more expensive facility would be more efficient.
Honeywell Specialty Materials is spending $3.2 million to triple lab space at its Shanghai-based Asia Technology Center, part of a greater $13.5 million expansion at the facility.
EUROFOCUS
Sofradir, a developer of infrared detectors, has received the green light to build a new €9.0 million factory near Grenoble, France, to enable production of 3G infrared detectors. The new facility, to be operational by the end of 2007, will incorporate molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) for 4-in. MCT wafers, making Sofradir the first firm worldwide to make IR detectors using MBE on an industrial scale.