USA

01/01/1998

USA

Intel has agreed to purchase a Digital Equipment Corp. wafer fab for $700 million, delayed startup of its Fab 16 in Fort Worth, TX, and decided to switch the output of its forthcoming Fab 18 in Israel to logic from flash memory as a result of softness in the flash market. The Digital purchase is part of a settlement of a patent dispute between the two firms. Intel intends to bring a new set of Intel-approved equipment into the Hudson, MA, facility. The $1.3 billion Fort Worth facility, originally scheduled for startup in 3Q99, will now begin work in late 2000. Construction will continue at its current pace, but equipment purchase and installation will be deferred, as will hiring of about 1000 workers.

PRI Automation, Billerica, MA, has agreed to acquire Equipe Technologies, a Sunnyvale, CA, maker of wafer-handling robots. PRI will issue 4.4 million shares under a stock swap deal valued at about $172 million. The deal will allow PRI to develop a chamber-to-chamber automation capability by combining its intra- and inter-bay automation offerings with Equipe`s line of atmospheric and vacuum robots. PRI plans to retain the seven-year old Equipe`s headquarters in Sunnyvale.

ADE Corp., Westwood, MA, a supplier of metrology and inspection systems, has finalized its acquisition of the Semiconductor Solutions Division of LPA Software, Burlington, VT. The division is now a wholly-owned ADE subsidiary. ADE`s new semiconductor software division, ADE Yield Enhancement Solutions, will assume its operation in Burlington. ADE has also entered into a long-term exclusive technology and supply agreement with On-Line Technologies, East Hartford, CT. On-Line will provide a sensor analysis module that will allow wafer handling flexibility by ADE`s equipment.

Cognex Corp., Natick, MA, has withdrawn a $105 million proposal to acquire Applied Intelligent Systems (AISI), Ann Arbor, MI, but Electro Scientific Industries (ESI) is continuing with its estimated $75 million effort to acquire the machine vision systems OEM supplier. Cognex announced its bid for AISI in early October, not long after ESI announced its own plans to acquire AISI in September. Cognex now believes that AISI`s future revenue and profits will likely be lower than it had earlier estimated because AISI`s principal customer, Kulicke & Soffa Industries, was developing an alternative to AISI`s products. ESI will issue 1.4 million shares in exchange for all the outstanding shares and options of AISI. Upon closing, about 1.2 million additional ESI shares will be outstanding. The remainder will be reserved for outstanding options. The ESI-AISI deal has reportedly received clearance from the Federal Trade Commission.

Scott Semiconductor Gases, Fremont, CA, and DuPont have entered into an agreement for the distribution of selected fluorocarbon gases. DuPont will purify fluorocarbon gases, and Scott will package gases in a variety of cylinder sizes. The agreement is intended to aid in the development of these gases in etch and CVD tools by reducing lead time and expanding the package selections.

A group of market researchers from Integrated Circuit Engineering Corp. (ICE), Scottsdale, AZ, have left that company and founded a new firm, IC Insights, also based in Scottsdale, that will seek to provide database and market statistic services similar to those that have been generated by ICE. ICE has hired and re-assigned a number of staff members, and will continue to publish its reports, with some alterations in focus. The group is building up databases, and expects to begin shipping products this month.

GAM and Associates, Orlando, FL, may be a new entrant in the 193-nm excimer laser market. The firm, which has specialized in building medical lasers, is performing a market analysis and expects to have a breadboard prototype of a lithographic laser ready in the next couple of months.

The BOC Group, Murray Hill, NJ, is forming an organization that combines parts of its BOC Gases and Edwards High Vacuum businesses. The semiconductor operations of these two businesses will form the core of the new organization, to be called BOC Edwards, that will have combined sales of around $800 million.

The Micromanipulator Co. Inc., Carson City, NV, has agreed to sell its WM series of mask inspection products to Probing Solutions Inc. The products feature a combination of incident and transmitted bright field and dark field lighting that allow the detection of submicron defects at low magnification. Included in the sale is the WM 42 and 62 manual models and a new programmable model.

United Microelectronics Corp., San Jose, CA, will rebuild its joint venture foundry United Integrated Circuit Corp. (UICC), which was heavily damaged in a fire in October. Capacity plans for the project will be enhanced. Plans call for the production from UICC`s facility to begin by the first half of 1999. At full production, fab capacity will be over 30,000, 200-mm, 0.25- and 0.18-?m wafers/month.

MEGA Systems & Chemicals Inc., Chandler, AZ, will expand its R&D laboratory to test new CMP slurries and chemical blending and distribution systems. The expansion doubles the size and capacity of the previous lab. The company has also increased the staff of its R&D department to seven full-time workers. In addition, MEGA has received an order from Zilog for $1 million worth of its MEGA flow IIIC, MEGAblend, MEGApure, and MEGAview systems.

Air Products and Chemicals Inc., Lehigh Valley, PA, has established its first commercial onsite silane GASGUARD bulk specialty gas system at White Oak Semiconductor`s new fab near Richmond, VA. Air Products will perform total gas and chemical management services at the site. In addition, Air Products has undertaken a multimillion-dollar upgrade of its electronics specialty gas facility in Hometown, PA, improving procedures for manufacturing five ultra-high-purity semiconductor processing gases. The company has also opened a specialty gas facility in Shihwa, South Korea, that will enable Air Products` joint venture partner Korea Industrial Gases Ltd. to expand.

Silicon Valley Group, San Jose, CA, has received a multiple system order for its series 8000 advanced vertical processors from White Oak Semiconductor. The first system has shipped to White Oak`s new Fab 1 facility in Sandston, VA. The company will use the systems in the US introduction of Siemens` 64-Mbit SDRAM devices on 200-mm wafers.

ObjectSpace Inc., Austin, TX, a software technology company, has joined IBM`s Solution Alliance program. ObjectSpace will provide advanced process control application software and support to IBM`s Global and Embedded Production Solutions organization.

SpeedFam International Inc., Chandler, AZ, has received a multimillion-dollar contract for its lapping tools. Dow Chemical will use the tools for alternate substrate disk lapping and for lapping composite materials for thin-film memory disks. The order will be shipped to Dow`s Portland, OR, plant. SpeedFam has also received a multiple system order for its Auriga-C dry-in/dry-out CMP system from Samsung.

Credence Systems Corp., Fremont, CA, a maker of automatic test equipment, has received an order for its ValStar series VS 2000 test system from ISE-DTS, an IC testing laboratory in San Jose.

Electroglas Inc., Santa Clara, CA, has received an order totaling nearly $8 million from Atmel Corp. for multiple Horizon 4090 wafer probing systems. Atmel is upgrading its line of probers at its fabs in Rousset, France, and Colorado Springs, CO.

FSI International Inc., Minneapolis, MN, has received an order worth several million dollars from Texas Instruments (TI). The order includes multiple MERCURY MP surface conditioning systems and EXCALIBUR vapor processing systems, which will be used at the Jack Kilby Center in Dallas, TX. TI will use the MERCURY systems for test wafer reclaim, and the EXCALIBUR system for new, technology-enabling applications.

Plasma-Therm Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, has sold a Shuttlelock inductively coupled plasma mask etch system to Siemens Mask Fabrication in Munich, Germany, for fabrication of advanced chrome masks and reticles for both logic and memory applications.

Veeco Instruments Inc., Plainview, NY, has opened a new 40,000-ft2 facility in Ronkonkoma, NY. The new facility includes the company`s Industrial Measurement Division`s engineering, sales, service, and manufacturing operations previously located at corporate headquarters. The division is responsible for producing leak detection equipment and x-ray fluorescence measurement systems. Also, Veeco has expanded its Japanese operations. Nihon Veeco KK has been restructured to reflect the addition of physical vapor deposition and ion beam deposition production lines.