World News
01/01/2005
BUSINESS TRENDS
Semi: Wafer shipments to slow in 2005, 2006
Preliminary estimates from silicon wafer suppliers indicate wafer shipments increased 23% in 2004, but that rapid pace of growth will significantly peter out in the coming years, according to the Semi Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG).
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A survey of the group’s members shows shipments reaching 6313 millions of sq. in. (MSI) this year, but slowing growth means wafer shipments won’t crack 6800 MSI until 2007. On the flip side, a more moderate growth rate “will result in cautious expansion and a tight supply scenario that should lead to an improved financial outlook for the silicon industry,” noted John Kauffmann, SMG chairman and VP of marketing for MEMC.
Kauffmann also echoed a report from the Japan Society of Newer Metals that suggested silicon manufacturers and chipmakers “should further strengthen ties of partnership and cooperate on technology, cost, etc., to settle the existing issues.”
WORLDWIDE HIGHLIGHTS
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), Sunnyvale, CA, has signed Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing as an additional manufacturing source for its 64bit processors starting in 2006, to augment capacity from its Dresden, Germany, facility. Chartered also will license portions of AMD’s automated precision manufacturing software, which will be integrated into its Fab 7 300mm fab.
European research consortium IMEC (the Interuniversity MicroElectronics Center) plans to launch a new industrial affiliation program exploring issues with extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for the 32nm node and beyond in early 2006. Topics will include optical path stability and monitoring; reticle handling and cleaning; assessments of resists, process optimization, and line-edge roughness; 32nm-node critical layer patterning; and printable defects of EUV masks. An ASML EUV preproduction tool will be installed in IMEC’s 300mm research facility to support early project work.
USA
DuPont Photomasks Inc. is spending more than $30 million to install an advanced photomask production line at its facility in Round Rock, TX, to support volume production of 90nm semiconductor devices as well as prototyping and early production of 65nm devices. The new line is expected to ramp to volume production by early 2005.
KLA-Tencor Corp., San Jose, CA, has acquired the defunct wafer-inspection business of Inspex Inc., a US subsidiary of Japan’s Hamamatsu Photonics KK that filed for bankruptcy in November 2003. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. It was the second acquisition by KLA-Tencor within a month, following a deal for Candela Instruments, a developer of laser-based surface-inspection systems.
ASIAFOCUS
China
Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. reportedly is in the final stages of talks with an unnamed US chipmaker to transfer development of 0.13µm process technologies, with test production already in process and volume runs by 2H05. The company has been using 0.15-0.5µm technologies through Japanese partners.
India
More than two dozen semiconductor firms in India have formed a group to boost the local industry’s profile. The 31-member India Semiconductor Association aims to represent the approximately 125 firms in India involved in semiconductor work. Participation from the government, universities, and venture capitalists reportedly is being solicited.
Japan
On Dec. 6, Sanyo began trial semiconductor production on one of its lines at its quake-hit factory in Niigata Prefecture, northern Japan. Based on the results, the company will decide whether it can restart operations. In November, Sanyo began alternate production at two other semiconductor plants to compensate for the shutdown of this facility, damaged by earthquakes and aftershocks beginning Oct. 23, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
Taiwan
The Semiconductor Equipment Consortium for Advanced Packaging (SECAP), Amkor Technology Inc., and its Unitive subsidiaries have achieved volume production with the first high-volume 300mm electroplated solder-bumping line installed at a wafer-level packaging service provider. The line, announced in July 2002 and set up in 2003 at Unitive’s facility in Taiwan, includes a coat/develop cluster, 1× full-field mask aligner, and probe stations; an electroplating system and UBM etch and resist strip tools; and integrated flux coater and reflow ovens.
EUROFOCUS
Wacker-Chemie GmbH has unveiled a plan to reorganize its businesses into five divisions, effective this month. Newly separated operations will target polysilicones, silicones, polymers, and fine chemicals. The fifth unit is Siltronic AG, which had been scheduled for spinoff before postponing its €1 billion ($1.3 billion) IPO in March last year.