07/14/2008  European R&D consortium IMEC says it has come up with a method to produce ~50μm thin crystalline silicon wafers for use in solar cells, that uses available tools and is potentially kerf-loss free.

07/12/2008  AMD is warning about a few charges to its latest quarterly results, but they'll be partially offset by the sale of some used chipmaking equipment.

07/12/2008  Numonyx BV, the flash memory joint venture between Intel and STMicroelectronics, have agreed to a foundry deal for Elpida to make its NOR flash memory starting in mid-2009 using 300mm/65nm-45nm process technologies.

07/10/2008  Gartner has lowered its capex forecast yet again amid a bursting memory industry bubble, global economic uncertainties, and "little upside potential currently visible for the near term."

07/10/2008  Tiger Optics says its latest analyzer, Tiger-i, targets ambient molecular contaminants (AMCs), in particular HF and HCl, which can contribute to the formation of ammonium chloride and ammonium fluoride microcrystals, the origin of "haze" on wafer surfaces and reticles.

07/09/2008  Semiconductor foundries' recent vows to step up pricing may be stalled due to softer-than-anticipated demand projections for 3Q, according to one analyst firm.

07/09/2008  July 9, 2008 -- Siimpel Corporation, a supplier of optical microsystems solutions, and VistaPoint Technologies a business unit of Flextronics and supplier of mobile camera solutions have introduced the first silicon MEMS-based autofocus camera for the handset market.

07/08/2008  EV Group(EVG)announced the order and successful installation of its 300-mm bonding, alignment, and photoresist fully automatic processing tools at ST Microelectronics'(ST) 300-mm through-silicon-via (TSV) pilot line in Crolles, France. The company says the tools will be used in the manufacture of CMOS imaging sensors (CIS) Using TSV technology.

07/08/2008  By Darren James, Rudolph Technologies, Inc.
With the cost of some advanced packages reaching several times the cost of the die they contain, the value contributed by functional testing, which allows manufacturers to avoid the cost of packaging defective die, has grown dramatically. Of course, testing has its own costs in both money and time.

07/08/2008  July 8, 2008 -- SV Probe (SV), a wholly owned subsidiary of SGX mainboard-listed Ellipsiz Ltd, has introduced two new probe cards: LogicTouch, a MEMS-based fine pitch vertical probe card, and SureTouch, a one touch full wafer probe solution for NAND Flash Memory.

07/07/2008  With SEMICON West 2008 just one week away, July 15-17,at the Moscone Center, San Francisco CA, exhibitors are getting the word out to make sure attendees don't miss a thing. While SEMI has a full-line up of conferences, keynotes, and workshops planned, many exhibitors will be leveraging the venue to announce new processes, technologies, products, and more.

07/07/2008  SST sat down with technical execs from Intel, IBM, and IMEC at this year's VLSI Symposium to go over their various papers presented, much of which involved work on 32nm and SOI (or why they used bulk CMOS instead). Plus, a lively panel discussion offered historical perspective (10 years on) and future plans for SOI.

07/04/2008  New technologies are needed to keep the semiconductor industry on track with Moore's Law. Step and Flash Imprint Lithography (S-FIL) has gained traction in recent years among several leading memory manufacturers.

07/01/2008  July 1, 2008 - A quick scan of news and analyst reports this week indicates DRAM pricing is firming up, but NAND flash is falling fast due to sluggish demand, which for the first time in a while is lacking a familiar driver.

07/01/2008  Overall agreement at this year's VLSI Symposium (June 16-19, Waikiki, Hawaii) was that planar CMOS is extendable to 22nm node but unlikely beyond that. By the 16nm node SRAMs will need FinFETs or a trigate-like design, which can be fabricated in bulk wafers rather than SOI wafers, as first reported by Toshiba in 2006 and now many others.

07/01/2008  I’m not hearing nearly enough about it in the general news, and maybe it’s because the contamination control industry reaches into so many industries that the pattern seems so clear to me.

07/01/2008  Demands to reduce the dimensions of even the most highly miniaturized semiconductor packages are placing pressure on IC vendors and packaging specialists to develop faster and more productive package-assembly processes.

07/01/2008  Contamination monitoring bolsters semiconductor manufacturers’ efforts to keep up with shrinking critical dimensions and cost and energy reductions.

06/30/2008  June 30, 2008 - Worldwide semiconductor sales rose a few percentage points in May -- a historically strong month, as the build-up to prepare for back-to-school and holiday seasons begin -- to $21.83B, up 2.8% from April and 7.5% from May 2007.

06/30/2008  Rudolph Technologies, Inc. has received a follow-on order from Micronas for both NSX Inspection System and Discover in-line defect analysis and data management software. The purchase will reportedly allow Micronas — supplier of integrated circuits (ICs) and sensor system solutions for consumer and automotive electronics — to provide additional inspection capacity demanded by the 100% inspection requirements customers in the automotive market.