05/10/2011 

Longtime semiconductor exec Takeshi Hattori continues his reporting on the aftermath of the massive Japanese earthquake and tsunami: Japan's reviewing its energy policy to deemphasize nuclear power, and updates on recovery efforts at Renesas, Toshiba, and Tohoku U.

05/10/2011 

Novellus Systems (NASDAQ: NVLS) subsidiary Peter Wolters GmbH introduced innovative gap measurement technology for double-side silicon prime wafer polishing. New high-resolution sensors and software algorithms increase control of wafer quality, as well as throughput for the AC2000-P³ system.

05/10/2011 

RFaxis released its patent-pending On-Die Coexistence Filter technology, designed to replace "bulky and expensive" stand-alone coexistence filters for cellular, mobile, and other devices.

05/09/2011 

Peter Singer recently toured the Center for Advanced Materials Processing (CAMP) at Clarkson University. The following video interviews with researchers and professors cover particle transport, chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP), cleanroom technologies, and bright nano particles, among other topics.

05/09/2011 

John Iacoponi, IITC 2011 co-chair, reviews presentations and discussions on the first day of the event: three important aspects driving today's semiconductor business, and technical papers on packaging, photonics, low-k, and characterization.

05/06/2011 

Total wafer demand will increase 11.2% to 185.3M wafers (200mm equivalent), with a number of factors driving growth above average rates, according to a recent Semico Research report.

05/05/2011 

As a follow-up Intel's announcement of a new 22nm trigate transistor structure, we polled and tracked multiple industry watchers for their thoughts on the technology. Their key takeaways: Intel reasserts its manufacturing prowess, and could be setting up for plays in mobile and foundry.

05/05/2011 

 IXYS Corporation (NASDAQ:IXYS) and General Motors Components Holdings (GMCH) entered into an agreement for the fabrication of power semiconductor wafers at the Kokomo, IN plant.

05/05/2011 

Semiconductor Research Corporation is leading an effort to address key roadblocks for wide-scale adoption of the emerging 3D ICs and systems. These new initiatives will address critical reliability and design tool issues and leverage partnership between researchers from universities and the semiconductor industry.

05/05/2011 

NXP named Tektronix Service Solutions to provide calibration and repair services for all test and measurement instruments at NXP's production and development sites in the Netherlands.

05/05/2011 

Intel has taken the wraps off its next chip technology, a 22nm process utilizing a new 3D trigate architecture that promises faster speeds or big power savings, which will ramp to volume manufacturing later this year.

05/04/2011 

Three chairs of IITC-MAM, opening next week in Germany, share details on papers attendees won't want to miss. Among the hot-button technologies are through silicon via (TSV) integration, RC performance, carbon interconnects, and pushing traditional technologies farther (think lithography).

05/03/2011 

Camtek received a follow-on order for its new Gannet automatic optical inspection (AOI) system from a leading Asian integrated device manufacturer (IDM) for the application of CMOS image sensor inspection.

05/02/2011 

"28nm is not a node for all," says Mahesh Tirupattur, EVP at Analog Bits and moderator of the 28nm challenges panel at this week's Semico Summit. Panelists will share what it takes to integrate 28nm right the first time, with examples like Apple's iPad hardware.

05/02/2011 

Brookhaven National Laboratory researchers used molecular beam epitaxy to fabricate FET-like devices that yield insights into superconductivity at a relatively high temperature. Findings, such as paired electrons in the insulating state, could lead to resistance-free electronics.

05/02/2011 

Solid state drives (SSDs) are electrically, mechanically, and software compatible with their conventional electro-mechanical counterparts -- hard disk drives (HDD) -- but instead of using rotating magnetic media to retain data, SSDs use semiconductor memory, mainly NAND flash. Radovan Faltus, AVX, considers write speed improvements when cache memory is used (in particular synchronous dynamic RAM), focusing specifically on the problematic issue of cache memory power backup.

05/01/2011  New approaches to patterning, low-k and metallization are reviewed for 20nm hp interconnects. Gerald Beyer, Zsolt Tokei, imec, Leuven, Belgium

05/01/2011  It is expected that from the 15nm node on, the industry will need to adopt new transister architectures; among the contenders: FinFETs and TunnelFETs. Thomas Hoffmann, imec, Leuven, Belguim

05/01/2011  Copper barrier solutions exist that ensure electrical and reliability performance even as device scaling continues. Harry Whitesell, Eric Hollar, Kang Sub Yim, Li-Qun Xia, Thamos Nowak, Applied Materials, Santa Clara, CA USA

05/01/2011  RDL technology has been instrumental in the development of many advanced packaging technologies such as fan-in and fan-out WLP, and TSV applications. Philip Garrou, MCNC, Research Triangle Park, NC; Alan Huffman, RTI Int., Research Triangle Park, NC