World News
04/01/2001
· WORLDWIDE HIGHLIGHTS
Semiconductor sales hit record $204 billion in 2000
As Internet infrastructure and communications markets drove the industry, worldwide semiconductor sales reached $204 billion for 2000, representing a 37% growth rate over 1999, an all-time high for the industry, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), San Jose, CA.
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For the month of December, though, semiconductor sales totaled $17.9 billion, a decrease of 2.1% from November's figures (see illustration below) but an increase of 21.6% over the $14.7 billion logged a year earlier. This decrease is in line with normal year-end patterns, said the SIA.
Geographically, the Americas led in revenue, bringing in $5.5 billion in December. That figure is a hike of 22.8% year-over-year. Asia Pacific was second in sales, raking in $4.3 billion, an increase of 13.2% over the same period last year. Japan was even with Asia Pacific, also logging $4.3 billion, up 31.5% over December 1999's figure. Europe brought up the rear for the month, totaling sales of $3.7 billion, an increase of 19.8% year-over-year.
Industry downturn prompts layoffs
Declining profit margins within the semiconductor industry have led to recent layoffs at ON Semiconductor, Motorola, Credence, and Kulicke & Soffa — ranging from 33 to 4000 jobs — and sparked rumors that other companies may soon announce similar cutbacks.
ON Semiconductor was the first to report layoffs, announcing in early February that it had cut 33 jobs in East Greenwich in response to product revenue declines of 10% during the first quarter of this year. Motorola followed with an announcement of 4000 job cuts within its semiconductor unit, citing the slowing semiconductor market as the cause.
Credence is cutting 200 jobs to reduce its cost structure, in line with previously announced lower anticipated revenues for the first quarter of 2001, and has adopted a policy requiring all employees to take one week of time off/quarter until further notice.
Kulicke & Soffa is reducing its workforce by 300, or 7% of its total, primarily eliminating positions in the equipment segment, which has experienced weakened business conditions.
If this is any indication of what's in store for the industry through the downturn, more job cuts are likely.
· USA
Asyst Technologies, Fremont, CA, has completed its acquisition of Semifab Inc., Hollister, CA. Semifab is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Asyst.
Separately, Asyst has received initial multiple orders valued at approximately $5 million for its 300mm front-opening unified pods (FOUPs) from semiconductor and foundry firms in Europe and Taiwan. The orders reflect multiyear contracts for high-volume production quantities on both pilot and production 300mm fab lines. Shipments began in February, and will continue through 1H01.
Newport Corp., Irvine, CA, has completed its merger with robotic and motion control equipment manufacturer Kensington Laboratories, Richmond, CA. Separately, Newport has acquired Design Technology Corp., Billerica, MA, a robotics and flexible automations solutions provider. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Unitive Inc., a Research Triangle Park, NC-based provider of outsourced advanced semiconductor packaging technologies plans to build and acquire state-of-the-art wafer-level bumping and flip chip fabrication facilities throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. During 2001, Unitive plans to build a facility in the western US capable of bumping up to 400,000 wafers/year. None of the three sites being considered are in California, due to the state's energy problems.
Cymer, San Diego, CA, completed an all-stock acquisition of Active Control eXperts (ACX), Cambridge, MA, for approximately 1 million shares of Cymer common stock. ACX, now a wholly owned subsidiary of Cymer, develops, manufactures, and markets software, hardware, and firmware solutions for vibration and nanomotion control.
Mattson Technology Inc., Fremont, CA, will divest its single-wafer RT-CVD business unit, previously known as STEAG CVD Systems. The unit, which was acquired as part of the Mattson's merger with STEAG, includes lamp-based RT-CVD tools that are not a fit with Mattson's roadmap for thermal and CVD products. Mattson's decision to sell the business is a result of the company's strategy to focus on its core thermal, plasma, and wet semiconductor-processing equipment technologies.
Numerical Technologies, San Jose, CA, has entered into a joint development program with UMC, Sunnyvale, CA, in order to qualify and deploy Numerical's Virtual Stepper system in a high-volume production environment. The agreement states that in order to qualify Virtual Stepper's capabilities for advanced photomasks that contain both OPC and phase-shifting structures, Numerical will work closely with the UMC photomask shop and the wafer fab group.
WaferNet, San Jose, CA opened its first international subsidiary in February, WaferNet GmbH, located in Munich, Germany. New site operations will focus on supporting a European customer base. Product shipments are scheduled to begin this month.
TestChip Technologies, Dallas, TX, has opened new headquarters in Plano, TX. The facility houses an expanded TestLab, flexible work spaces, an extensive library, cafeteria, and an indoor basketball court. The headquarters were built to accommodate the company's growth for the next five years. TestChip provides consulting, testchip design, analysis, and test services to the semiconductor industry.
Teradyne, Boston, MA, has bought a 2300m2 tract in Kumamoto Central Industrial Complex from Sanyu Switch, according to Japanese sources. The tract, located in Kumamoto Prefecture on Kyushu Island, is adjacent to Teradyne's existing LSI tester development, manufacturing, and services facility. Teradyne reportedly plans to use Sanyu's building on the tract as a warehouse, although insiders predict that the company will expand its LSI/image sensor manufacturing in the future, since Sony is constructing a 300mm fab nearby.
Tegal Corp., Petaluma, CA, has been granted two US Patents, No. 6,170,431 and 6,173,674, for reactor components that enable the etching of materials associated with the production of devices such as MRAM, DRAM, FeRAM, and system-on-a-chip (SOC) products. The reactor components are used on sub-0.13µm devices with materials such as copper, platinum, cobalt, manganese, iridium, ruthenium, and high dielectric constant materials such as PZT, SBT, and BST.
National Semiconductor (NSC), Santa Clara, CA, has licensed the wafer-bumping technology of Flip Chip Technologies (FCT), a joint venture of Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Phoenix, AZ. NSC will use FCT's Flex-on-Cap wafer-bumping and redistribution (RDL) technologies to make wafer-level chip-scale packages and other products. FCT's process has been in production at the company's Phoenix facility since 1997.
Entegris, Inc., Chaska, MN, has signed a letter of intent with Nisson Engineering Co. (NSE), to acquire the NSE fluid handling product line. NSE, Tokyo, Japan, is a semiconductor OEM and fluid-handling component manufacturer. Entegris intends to purchase the complete interest of NSE's pumps, valves, and fittings, and level sensors distribution rights and other related IP rights under the agreement's terms.
Ibis Technology Corp., Danvers, MA, has entered an alliance with MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., St. Peters, MO. Under the terms of the alliance, MEMC has become a global sales representative for Ibis' SIMOX-SOI wafer product line, can license Ibis' SIMOX-SOI wafer technology, and can purchase oxygen implanters manufactured by Ibis, allowing MEMC the option of producing and selling SIMOX-SOI wafers in the future. Both companies also have the right to expand the alliance to include joint research and development work or other forms of technical collaboration.
Motorola and AMD have both ordered Applied Materials' Producer CVD systems for depositing Black Diamond and BLOk barrier low-k dielectric films for their 0.13µm logic chips, after working together to develop the process for several years. Motorola engineers noted the advantages of sticking with fairly familiar CVD systems and chemistries, especially with FSG (fluorinated silicate glass), integrated at k<3.7 already in volume production.
Semi is soliciting original papers for its program "A Partnership for PFC Emissions Reduction" to be held in conjunction with Semicon Southwest in October 2001. Topics will include new manufacturing processes based on alternative gases; optimization of current processes; recovering and recycling PFCs from exhaust streams; abatement of exhaust by PFC destruction; gas sampling systems and test methods for monitoring PFC exhaust; regional and global regulatory and implementation issues; and economic analysis of recovering and recycling/destroying PFCs. Prospective authors are requested to submit an abstract of 200-250 words and a biography of 100 words by May 7. Manuscripts are due September 10. For more information, contact Kate Dettenrieder at ph 408/943-6957, fax 408/943-7925, or e-mail [email protected].
· JAPAN
NEC Corp. has started production in its new LCD driver IC plant in Otsu, with an initial capacity of 4000 200mm wafers/month, which was to increase to 6000/month in March. The company says it got the plant up and running in only about six months instead of the usual year by revamping an existing building. Separately, NEC has joined Cypress Semiconductor Corp., San Jose, CA, and Micron Technology Inc. in a co-development team to design and manufacture Quad Data Rate static RAMs. QDR RAM is the standard for high-performance memories in switches, routers and other applications needing to operate above 200MHz.
Nippon Foundry Inc., a Tokyo-based manufacturer of microchips on consignment, plans to invest 40 billion yen to boost capacity 80% to 50,000 200mm silicon wafers/month by March 2002. The company is transforming its office building in Tateyama, Chiba Prefecture, into a 300m2 plant. When the facility is fully operational in June, it will be one of the largest capacity fabs in the world, equipped with a state-of-the-art production line capable of producing chips with a line width of 0.18µm. The advanced production line is expected to turn out 16,000 wafers/month, including flash memories for Sharp Corp. and system LSIs for other makers. Other production lines at the plant will turn out 24,000 chips/month, with a line width of 0.25µm.
Showa Denko, Tokyo, Japan, will invest $76.6 million to increase the output capacity of its indium phosphate semiconductor epitaxial wafers and mirror wafers. The company is installing additional equipment at its facility in Saitama Prefecture to increase the production of mirror-polished wafers five times by October of this year. Showa Denko is also building a new facility to open in November to increase epitaxial wafer production by six times its current output.
 Orders for equipment from Japan's suppliers increased 1% from November's total to 171.6 billion yen in December. |
Nikon Corp. units handling inspection systems and wafer steppers plan to start collaborating to market their products together. The products have been made and sold by different divisions. By working more closely with the stepper group, Nikon hopes its inspection equipment unit can increase sales of NRM-1000A CD measurement equipment and AMI-2000 automatic wafer macroinspection systems.
Toshiba America Electronic Components, Irvine, CA, and its parent company Toshiba Corp., will launch a white light-emitting diode (LED) jointly developed with Toyoda Gosei. Both companies will market and commercialize the product independently and under separate brand names. The new LED achieves a short peak wavelength of approximately 380nm. Samples were to be available this month with mass production beginning in November.
Meanwhile, Toshiba Corp., Tokyo, Japan, has introduced the first one-channel interface driver (IFD) ICs, and is expected to provide samples of its new IFD by the middle of February. The IFD reduces the chip-mounting area, lowers component counts, and disperses heat from complex circuits. Mass production was scheduled to begin in March, and to ramp up to 1 million pieces/month in 2002.
Thine Electronics, Tokyo, Japan, a fabless LSI venture, has reached an agreement with NEC and Hitachi, both in Tokyo, whereby they will collaborate to develop driver LSIs for LCD FPDs. Thine will design a wide variety of LCD FPD driver ICs for notebook PCs, LCD TVs, cellular phones, and PDA terminals for these semiconductor giants in Japan.
Sanyo Electric, Tokyo, recently opened an LSI design center in Shibuya, nicknamed "Bit Valley," in Tokyo. The Semiconductor Solutions Development Center will collaborate with small ventures in the area for LSI applications, and also outsource design work to them.
· EUROPE
TePla AG, Tomerdingen, Germany, and Boin GmbH, Feldkirchen, Germany, have signed an OEM agreement stating that TePla will use Boin's WAFERMAP metrology software on its TWIN SC measurement tool. This software will support the interpretation and visualization of measurement results. WAFERMAP is used to collect, edit, analyze, and visualize measured physical parameters on semiconductor wafers.
Philips Semiconductors, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, has added a new line for assembling smart card chip module packages to its Bangkok plant. The chip card module line is part of one of Philips' largest assembly centers, and will provide a production volume of 100 million modules/year embedded with Philips' smart card microcontroller chips, including advanced security and crypto-controller ICs, as well as modules for MIFARE dual interface controller ICs. The line will be ramped up sometime this spring.
Israeli Finance Minister Abraham Shohat signed an agreement to grant Intel Corp. a nearly $440 million subsidy for a new $3.5 billion chip plant. This is the largest investment in Israel's history, according to Shohat. Intel has not yet decided if it will build the new plant in Israel.
Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, has moved its Electronic Chemicals division headquarters from Darmstadt to Tokyo, Japan. Walter Bardorff, regional manager in Asia, will head the division in its new location. He has been with the company since 1978. Bardorff replaces Jurgen Eichler who will serve as an independent consultant to Merck's Specialty Chemicals division.
San Jose-based Atmel Corp. has opened a new facility in East Kilbride, Scotland, for the production of smart card chips. Located in the Scottish Enterprise Technology Park, the operation includes a new 345m2 cleanroom designed for wafer-level testing, and can also accommodate backend processing.
· ASIA PACIFIC
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Hsinchu, Taiwan, recently lost two days of output capacity and more than $3.1 million in damages when a worker inadvertently disconnected a power supply cable. The plant was forced to shut down, but resumed operation after seven hours. TSMC said it took two days for the plant to ramp up to full capacity.
Winbond Electronics Corp., Taiwan, will begin construction of a 300mm foundry plant in 2H01. Winbond plans to spend $3.7 billion. The company has rented a 12-acre piece of land in Tainan Science Park, but is considering changing locations due to the site's close proximity to a prospective high-speed railway that may affect the production of precision products. The company is also considering Tainan Technology Industrial Zone and Luzhu Science Park as potential sites for the plant. Winbond plans to make a decision on the site shortly.
The number six factory of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Hsinchu, Taiwan, has produced 300mm wafers using 0.18µm process technology. The company expects its 300mm wafer factory to begin production in 2H01. In other news, TSMC plans to reduce investment for 2001 by 29% to $27 billion in response to declining chip demand. Despite this, the company intends to continue expanding its 300mm production lines.
Silicon Integrated Systems Corp., Taiwan, has adopted 0.15µm technology, which was expected to account for 50% of the company's sales in 1Q01. SIS plans to produce 250,000 wafers this year, an increase of 400% compared to 2000, and expects to set a monthly chipset capacity of more than 3m for the middle of the year. Additionally, the company plans to open an office in Beijing, China, in July to work more closely with its Hong Kong-based subsidiary to penetrate China's market.
 1st Silicon |
1st Silicon, Malaysia, and a wholly owned facility of ASE Test Limited, ASE Electronics, Malaysia, will work together to provide semiconductor fabrication and test services. ASE Test will provide personnel to perform on-site wafer probe services at 1st Silicon's facility in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Hsinchu, Taiwan, and Conexant Systems Inc., Newport Beach, CA, have entered into an agreement in which TSMC will license advanced specialty radio frequency process technology intellectual property from Conexant for silicon germanium BiCMOS. TSMC will supply Conexant with foundry capacity for these technologies. Initial production is expected in 2H01.
Samsung Electronics Co., Seoul, Korea, says it has developed a new Rambus DRAM chip that is 20% cheaper to produce than current chips. The company says it reduced the cost by changing the internal configuration of the chip, organizing it in four banks and using 0.17µm production technology. Samsung reports that it has reduced the chip size by approximately 5%. The company plans to begin mass production of the new chips in 2H01.
Hyundai Electronics Industries, Ichon, Korea, has settled various patent lawsuits in the US and Germany between the company and Infineon AG, Munich, Germany. Both companies have exchanged licenses on their respective global patent portfolios and have entered into a long-term business agreement. Details of the agreement were not disclosed.
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Will suppliers be able to meet 300mm wafer demand?
Wafermakers may soon be in trouble. Demand for 300mm wafers is projected to jump from 0.9% in 1999 to 17% by 2005, according to Gartner Dataquest. This rapid spike in demand — estimated at an 82.9% CAGR — may lead to difficulties for suppliers if the six 300mm fabs planned for 2001 and the 14 expected in 2002 come on-line as scheduled. If 300mm comes quickly, there simply may not be enough wafers. Wafermakers, challenged by extremely tough economic times, may have trouble meeting this fast-growing demand. — S.C.C.
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DUV step-and-scan system for high-volume processing
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ASM Lithography's PAS 5500/800 deep-UV step-and-scan system achieves 120nm resolution by means of a 0.80 numerical aperture. With throughput of 115 wafers/hour (200mm), this new tool is designed for high-volume processing of the most advanced ICs currently in production, as well as R&ammp;D applications for next-generation devices. For more information, see Product News on page 131.