Intel, the semiconductor manufacturer, recently released its 2011 sustainability report and the news, in terms of water, wasn’t good. They’ve failed to meet their water reduction goal: While water use per chip is down 6% from 2010, it’s up 12% from 2007, the baseline year. The new goal is to achieve 2010 per chip water use by 2020; they’ve given themselves a higher bar and double the time to reach it.

Further, total water use in 2011 was up 11% from 2007, from 7.5 to 8.3b gallons, a trend attributed to the ‘increasing complexity of manufacturing processes.’ And this is despite the fact that the company has spent over $100m since 1998 on water efficiency efforts.

Intel isn’t the only big company in the water intensive semiconductor industry to show disappointing water reduction results. IBM, renown for their impressive water efficiency work at their Burlington, VT plant, where advanced analytics and infrastructure upgrades reduced water use 27%, and their foray into the smart water business, reported that their total water use in 2010 was up 3% over 2009.

Read More

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and design, today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $24.1 billion for the month of April 2012, a 3.4 percent increase from the prior month when sales were $23.3 billion. This marks the largest month-over-month growth for the industry since May 2010. However, sales from April 2012 were 2.9 percent below the April 2011 total of $24.8 billion. Further, 2012 year-to-date sales totaled $93.7 billion, a decrease of 5.9 percent from the year-to-date figures at the same time last year ($99.5 billion). All monthly sales numbers represent a three-month moving average.   

“The outlook for the global semiconductor industry continues to be one of cautious optimism,” said Brian Toohey, president & CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “We are beginning to see an encouraging trend of modest, sequential growth and we anticipate this trend will continue during the rest of this year, with stronger growth predicted for 2013 and beyond. But that optimism continues to be tempered by macroeconomic factors.”

Read more

Product Was Developed to Meet Growing Requirements of Altair’s OEM/ODM Customers Transitioning into Mass Production

Altair Semiconductor ( http://www.altair-semi.com ), the world’s leading developer of ultra-low power, small footprint and high performance 4G LTE chipsets, and Rohde & Schwarz, announced today the release of a production line tool that enables effective testing of LTE terminals built on Altair’s FourGee chipsets.

The introduction of the production tool comes in response to Altair’s growing number of OEM and ODM customers currently transitioning into mass production. As LTE gains momentum around the world, demand for production tools that can quickly and effectively test LTE terminals is greatly increasing.

“The functional interaction of the Altair 4G LTE chipset and the R&S test equipment provides high value to the cost sensitive production market,” said Terje Schröder, Managing Director of Global Customer Management at Rohde & Schwarz. “We are looking forward to expanding our relationship with Altair to meet the demand of the increasing numbers of their terminal vendors, introducing LTE products to the market.”

Read More

Triquint Semiconductor (Nasdaq:TQNT) hit a new 52-week low Friday as it is currently trading at $4.64, below its previous 52-week low of $4.66 with 790,259 shares traded as of 10:17 a.m. ET. Average volume has been 6.7 million shares over the past 30 days. 

Triquint Semiconductor has a market cap of $832.8 million and is part of the technology sector and electronics industry. Shares are down 59.3% year to date as of the close of trading on Thursday.

TriQuint Semiconductor, Inc. provides radio frequency (RF) solutions and technology for communications, defense, and aerospace companies worldwide. The company has a P/E ratio of 9.8, equal to the average electronics industry P/E ratio and below the S&P 500 P/E ratio of 17.7.

Read More

Motion processing semiconductor firm InvenSense Inc. (INVN) made modest gains in early trading during its first day of trading as a public company Wednesday.

The company’s shares opened at $8.30 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, up 10.7% from its initial public offering price of $7.50. It sold 10 million shares at the lower end of its expected $7 to $8.50 range.

Based in Sunnyvale, Calif., InvenSense makes motion sensing and processing chips for use in consumer electronic devices such as Nintendo Co.’s (7974.OK, NTDOY) Wii, portable video games, smartphones and computer tablets.

The company’s products combine motion sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes with mixed-signal integrated circuits to detect complex motion across multiple axes.

One risk facing InvenSense is its dependence on Nintendo for about 73% of its net revenue in fiscal 2011, which ended in March, and on the Wii, which is declining in sales.

Read More