02/05/2013 

Spending on research and development by semiconductor companies grew 7% in 2012 to a record-high $53.0 billion, even though the semiconductor market declined 1% to $317.6 billion.

01/30/2013 

IPC recently released the C revision of IPC-7095, Design and Assembly Process Implementation for BGAs.

01/30/2013 

STATS ChipPAC and UMC announced the world's first demonstration of TSV-enabled 3D IC chip stacking technology developed under an open ecosystem collaboration.

01/30/2013 

Renesas and J-Devices signed a memorandum of understanding regarding the transfer of the semiconductor back-end production business of three facilities operated by Renesas’ wholly owned manufacturing subsidiaries

01/24/2013 

Imec and PVA Tepla say they have achieved void detection in through-silicon vias at wafer level, after TSV copper plating, thanks to a nondestructive high-frequency scanning acoustic microscopy (SAM) technique.

01/24/2013  Looking at 2014, we see challenges and innovations in both the front-end semiconductor and 3D TSV markets.

01/11/2013 

GlobalFoundries says it plans to build a $2 billion "Technology Development Center" R&D facility at its Fab 8 campus in Saratoga County, NY, for semiconductor technology development and manufacturing:  EUV lithography photomasks to new interconnect and packaging technologies enabling 3D chip stacking, "and everything in between."

01/03/2013 

The multibillion-dollar secondary or used semiconductor equipment market has gone through significant changes over the past five years and has become increasingly sophisticated in its approach.

01/03/2013 

80 percent of the devices used for portable and mobile applications are currently manufactured on 200mm or smaller wafers. How this plays out going forward could change who the dominant players will be.

01/02/2013 

Advanced packaging requirements are driving the evolution of back end manufacturing to become more similar to the front end.

01/02/2013 

The development of innovative technologies that solve the critical issues for the transition and adoption of 450-mm manufacturing will be the defining factor for whether a company merely survives or thrives.

01/02/2013 

The SEMI Consensus Forecast and the SEMI World Fab Forecast, with data collected from two different methodologies, point to the same conclusion: 0% growth for 2013.

12/28/2012 

Industry watchers have been lowering their outlooks for 2013 over the past few weeks, but there's one set of opinions that still see optimism for an industry rebound in 2013 -- chip industry executives themselves.

12/24/2012 

Are we closer than we think to our needed mass production costs for silicon interposers? Phil Garrou gleans some insights from the year-ending RTI Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging conference.

12/20/2012 

Global spending on wafer fab equipment (WFE) is now on pace to finish 2012 with a -17% annual decline, and 2013 now looks like it'll only be slightly better at a -10% dropoff, before the next cyclical spending upturn begins in 2014, according to an updated forecast from Gartner.

12/19/2012 

Singapore's Institute of Microelectronics (IME) has launched a new multiproject wafer service for 2.5D through-silicon interposers, to provide a cost-effective platform for R&D prototyping and proof-of-concept in the technology.

12/17/2012 

Samsung's reaffirmation of its planned $4B investments in its Austin, TX facilities don't offer much extra info, but do serve as a message to the market about its future plans -- with or without Apple.

12/17/2012 

Tezzaron Semiconductor has licensed patents regarding Ziptronix's direct bonding technologies, "direct bond interconnect" (DBI) and "direct oxide bonding (ZiBond), for use in 3D memory.

12/13/2012 

Rudolph Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: RTEC) has entered the back-end advanced packaging lithography market, with the acquisition of Azores Corp., and the introduction of a new 2X reduction stepper called the JetStep.

12/11/2012 

In the seventh installment in a series called Process Watch, the authors discuss cycle time and the impact of inspection. Authored by experts at KLA-Tencor, Process Watch articles focus on novel process control solutions.