10/15/2007  October 15, 2007 - Pureplay foundry Silterra Malaysia says it has completed a first $100 million phase of expansion at its existing fab, bringing capacity up to between 35,000-40,000 wafers/month, mainly targeting 0.13-micron and also some 90nm capabilities.

10/15/2007  October 15, 2007 - The Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) coalition of memory suppliers, formed in mid-2006 to develop a chip-level standard interface for NAND flash memory, has added another specification -- a block abstraction to simplify host controller design.

10/15/2007  October 15, 2007 - Toshiba Corp. and Kaga Toshiba Electronics Corp. have opened a new 200mm semiconductor production fab in Ishikawa Prefecture targeting devices that control current flow and voltage conversion in end-use products such as TVs, mobile electronic products, and even hybrid vehicles.

10/15/2007  The 300-mm Multiple Film Frame Shipper is designed to help high-volume device manufacturers increase wafer protection in the test, assembly, and packaging process. An alternative to cassettes, it is reportedly ideal for high-volume shipping between back-end assembly operations.

10/15/2007  Companies spanning the spectrum of the back-end semiconductor manufacturing industry announced strategic promotions, appointments and new hires in the past week. Among them are STATS ChipPAC, Henkel Corporation, J.P. Sercel Associates, Cobar Europe BV, and Hesse & Knipps, Inc.

10/15/2007  At the Fab Manager's Forum, held at SEMICON Europa, representatives of Europe's semiconductor fabs gathered to discuss relevant topics to operating primarily mature fabs. On the agenda were the importance of yield improvements in mature fabs, and the benefits derived from fault detection besides yield improvement; how to manage APC in worldwide DRAM fabs; and the dynamics of the used equipment market.

10/12/2007  October 12, 2007 - Recent PV news in China finds a pair of supply deals for LDK Solar and another for China Sunergy, which also is getting ready to ramp production for new high-efficiency selective emitter cells thanks to a new tool acquisition.

10/12/2007  October 12, 2007 - Cookson Electronics is finalizing a three-year expansion of its India Research Center, moving to a 32,000-sq.ft. facility in Bangalore where it will focus on semiconductor manufacturing and packaging technologies as well as solar technologies.

10/12/2007  A group of 19 leading companies from throughout the electronics industry have launched the SOI Industry Consortium to help accelerate adoption into broad markets by promoting the benefits of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology and reducing the barriers to adoption.

10/11/2007  October 11, 2007 - Lam Research posted mixed results for its fiscal 4Q07, with sales flat and shipments and margins down sequentially. But some of the more interesting numbers came from CEO Steve Newberry's comments in the conference call Q&A, where he expressed optimism for flat industry capex in 2008, vs. growing consensus of a negative year.

10/11/2007  Research presented by IMEC at the SEMATECH Immersion Workshop in Colorado shows patterning of through-pitch contact layers without assist features using combined illumination sources and two ASML immersion scanners.

10/11/2007  October 11, 2007 - Taiwan foundry United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) says it has qualified and begun accepting customer design-ins for its 65nm RF-CMOS process, targeting wireless SoC applications such as WiFi, WiMax, wireless USB and cellular.

10/11/2007  October 11, 2007 - New forecasts from SEMI's Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) project 9% growth in silicon wafer shipments this year following a 20% surge in 2006 -- which suggests slowing shipments through the rest of this year.

10/11/2007  ; EV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology, and semiconductor markets, announced the installation of its fourth IQ Aligner System for packaging applications at a major semiconductor manufacturing facility in Austria. This purchase reportedly strengthens the customer's capacity for wafer-level packaging of MEMS and display devices.

10/11/2007  Discera Inc., a developer of CMOS MEMS oscillators and resonators, and provider of next-generation timing solutions, is one of four semiconductor companies singled out for the Technology Innovation Awards by The Wall Street Journal.

10/10/2007  October 10, 2007 - The 2007 Nobel Prizes for Physics and Chemistry both find direct applications close to our industry -- the discovery of giant magnetoresistance (GMR), the science behind MRAM, spintronics, and other current technologies; and better understanding of surface chemistries starting with processes used in semiconductor manufacturing.

10/10/2007  October 10, 2007 - SEZ Group, Villach, Austria, says 3Q orders came up about 26% shorter than expected to 28 million Swiss francs (about US $40.5M), mainly due to slow business from the DRAM segment.

10/09/2007  WaferNEWS talks with Oxford Instruments about why it's following the money with its inductively coupled plasma tool into nanoimprint lithography applications, to fill NIL's particularly critical needs in stamp etch, descum, and etching of the polymer mask.

10/09/2007  October 9, 2007 - Jazz Semiconductor is releasing a silicon radio platform that it claims allows complete integration of higher-frequency radio components in a wireless device on a single piece of silicon -- transceiver, antennae, power amplifier, and controllers -- without the need for discrete GaAs devices. Target applications include cell phones, wireless LANs, and WiMAX systems.

10/09/2007  October 9, 2007 - While much of the industry chews over downgraded equipment sales and capex outlooks and anxiously waits the 4Q selling season, now's the time to start locking in profits on some big-name equipment supplier stocks, according to a financial analyst.