03/14/2013 

Nanoplas, a global supplier of plasma processing equipment to the semiconductor industry, today announced a new dry-etch process offering virtually unlimited etch selectivity for removing dielectric films on microprocessors and memories at high throughput.

03/14/2013 

The U.S. Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium (PVMC), an industry-led collaboration headquartered in New York at the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to improve manufacturing processes for thin film CIGS photovoltaic (PV)  cells and modules, including products, metrology and reliability that will support the U.S. solar industry in the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of next-generation solar PV systems.

03/13/2013 

After reaching a worrisome high in the third quarter of 2012, global semiconductor inventories held by chip suppliers fell at a surprisingly fast rate in the fourth quarter, led by dramatic reductions for market leader Intel Corp.

03/13/2013 

System Plus Consulting analyzed a BAW MEMS Filter manufactured by Avago Technologies, assessing its manufacturing process, costing results and breakdown. With more than 1 billion units produced per year and a market share of 65%, System Plus Consulting found that Avago Technologies clearly dominates the BAW filter market. Avago BAW filters are all-silicon MEMS devices manufactured with Avago's FBAR and Microcap technologies.

03/12/2013 

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. today announced plans to aquire Tensilica, Inc. for approximately $380 million in cash. Tensilica had approximately $30 million of cash as of December 31, 2012.

03/12/2013 

PC capabilities and market are undergoing a historical deceleration, in another sign of shifting technology markets.

03/12/2013 

Tokyo-based Asahi Glass Co., Ltd. and nMode Solutions Inc. of Tucson, Arizona, have invested $2.1 million to co-found a subsidiary business, Triton Micro Technologies , to develop via-fill technology for interposers, enabling next-generation semiconductor packaging solutions using ultra-thin glass.

03/11/2013 

According to the latest analysis by Semicast Research, Renesas Electronics was again the leading vendor of semiconductors to the OE automotive sector in 2012, ahead of Infineon Technologies. STMicroelectronics retained its position as third largest supplier, with Freescale fourth and NXP fifth. Semicast calculates that revenues for OE automotive semiconductors grew by 12% to USD $25.5 billion in 2012, while the total semiconductor industry is judged to have declined by almost three percent to USD $292 billion.

03/11/2013 

Lattice Semiconductor Corporation today announced the iCE40 LP384 FPGA, the smallest member of its iCE40 family of ultra-low density FPGAs. Enabling designers to rapidly add new features and differentiate cost-sensitive, space-constrained, low-power products, the new small footprint FPGA is ideal for applications such as portable medical monitors, smartphones, digital cameras, eReaders, and compact embedded systems.

03/08/2013 

Everyone wants faster access to stored data, and the issue is becoming critical with Big Data and cloud initiatives. With the speed of DRAM and the non-volatility of storage, Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (MRAM) encourages a new way of thinking about storage applications. Storage is associated with longer latencies, but with MRAM storage can have similar latencies to memory. These capabilities and others make MRAM a catalyst for new thinking about how we design storage applications.

03/08/2013 

Broadcom has been ranked number one vendor in three recent competitive assessments released by ABI Research on wireless connectivity IC markets. One was for overall wireless connectivity ICs, another on Bluetooth ICs, and a final on Wi-Fi ICs.

03/08/2013 

ABI Research finds that Mediatek has delivered the world’s smallest multimode transceiver. Coming just a week after Qualcomm announced its intentions to produce RF front ends for high tier LTE smartphones, Mediatek releases the world’s smallest RF transceiver which is also the world’s first 40nm transceiver.

03/07/2013 

More than 100 representatives from government and the photonics industry convened in Washington, D.C., on February 28 to identify focus areas for a national photonics initiative (NPI), engaging academia, industry, and government in a collaboration to address barriers to continued U.S. leadership in photonics.

03/07/2013 

Over 2,000 industry professionals attended last week’s SPIE Advanced Lithography, where important progress reports were revealed on extreme ultraviolet (EUV), lithography, directed self-assembly (DSA), metrology, and related topics. The event ran February 24-28 in San Jose, California.

03/07/2013 

Semiconductor technology leaders ST and CMP help universities, research labs and companies prototype next generation of Systems-on-Chip.

03/07/2013 

LFoundry to manufacture wafers for Aptina following LFoundry’s purchase of Micron’s Avezzano, Italy semiconductor fabrication facility.

03/06/2013 

Industry consolidation to just three big DRAM suppliers and a reduction in capital expenditures among these manufacturers helped propel DRAM average selling prices (ASPs) up 13% year over year in January, which contributed to a 19.9% jump in the total memory market and a 6.2% increase for the total IC market in January 2013. 

03/06/2013 

Following a healthy expansion in 2012, the growth of the global automotive semiconductor market will decelerate slightly this year because of a slowdown in the aftermarket and portable navigation device (PND) segments.

03/06/2013 

Diodes Incorporated today announced that it has completed its acquisition of BCD Semiconductor Manufacturing Limited in an all cash deal, valued at approximately $151 million.

03/05/2013 

Korean foundry Dongbu HiTek and French IP provider Cortus are to develop a design platform combining Dongbu HiTek’s embedded flash technology and Cortus processor and peripheral IP.