06/11/2007  June 11, 2007 - Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), George Mason U., and Korea's Kwangwoon U. have fabricated a hybrid memory device incorporating both silicon nanowires and nonvolatile semiconductor-oxide-nitride-oxide-semiconductor (SONOS) technology, which they suggest is more reliable than other nanowire-based memory devices.

06/11/2007  June 11, 2007 - Mentor Graphics has acquired Sierra Design Automation for $90 million in a half-and-half cash/stock deal, bolstering its design offerings. Mentor says the deal will be "slightly accretive" for FY07 (ending Jan.31 2008), and shave about $0.02 off of its anticipated FY08 earnings.

06/11/2007  Nanocoating and ultra thin film deposition technology is expanding from industrial applications to semiconductors, photovoltaic cells, magnetic memory, and space exploration. Small Times' Hugh Willett reports.

06/08/2007  June 8, 2007 - Intel Corp. appears to be pushing out all orders and shipments for equipment relating to the upgrade of its fab in New Mexico from 200mm to 300mm-compatible, just three months after announcing it would make that facility into its fourth 45nm production site, according to an analyst report.

06/08/2007  June 8, 2007 - New orders for more of TSMC's 65nm capacity from Qualcomm Inc. and Broadcom Corp., which are eyeing increased demand from the mobile phone market, puts TSMC even further ahead of rivals seeking to add customers for their leading-edge offerings, according to the Taiwan Economic News.

06/08/2007  June 8, 2007 - Yet another move in a busy spring has left Nanometrics Inc. feeling better about its positioning in the market with a core group of metrology technologies, after the recent sale of two tangential product lines, the company says.

06/07/2007  June 7, 2007 - Integrated Dynamics Engineering Inc. (IDE), headquartered in the US and Germany, says it has sold its line of wafer packers and wafer sorters to Austrian firm Ricmar Technology GmbH for an unidentified amount.

06/07/2007  June 7, 2007 - The market for lithography photomasks continued to slow in 2006, reaching $2.2 billion (5.4% growth), but should pick up again in 2007 thanks to increased demand from the logic segment which uses more and higher-priced masks, according to a report from The Information Market.

06/06/2007  June 6, 2007 - Identifying image sensors as a key focus area for its semiconductor business, Sony Corp. says it will invest approximately 60 billion yen (US $493.3 million) to expand its Kumamoto Technology Center (TEC) in Kyushu over the next three years.

06/06/2007  June 6, 2007 - Spot prices for DRAM memory have risen for a second straight week according to data from DRAMeXchange and Gartner, suggesting that prices may have finally fallen below costs and could be poised for a rebound.

06/06/2007  The nascent nano supply-chain and production infrastructure shows signs of moving beyond R&D, says Small Times' Tom Cheyney, in our third report of findings from NSTI Nanotech 2007. He quotes keynoter John Hofmeister of Shell Oil (right).

06/05/2007  Since carbon nanotubes (CNTs) tend to grow with erratic kinks and bends in the tube structure, a group of engineers from Stanford University has devised circuit-simulation algorithms that eliminate bad connections caused by errant CNTs. The work, which involves fine grids rather that direct interconnects, is being presented at the Design Automation Conference (DAC), June 4–8 in San Diego.

06/05/2007  Developed at the University of Hiroshima (Japan) with professor Mitiko Miura-Mattausch, the HiSIM SPICE modeling solution targets modeling and simulation based on the physics of 90-nm CMOS geometries and below. It incorporates the surface potential-based model.

06/05/2007  Flash memory will become a large factor in the portable media player (PMP) market by 2011, reports analyst firm iSuppli. Flash is expected to grow 25× in this sector by 2011, bringing the quantity of flash-equipped PMPs to 150.2 million units. In 2007, shipments of PMPs with flash components will reach 54.8 million units. iSuppli predicts NAND packages will replace HDDs, based on storage capacity requirements for video as well as audio output.

06/05/2007  It's been said that the first casualty of war is the truth -- and an interview appearing on a popular electronics industry Web site is the most recent battlefield in this ongoing hype-war between the world's semiconductor manufacturing heavyweights. As tradeoffs in fab technology become more fundamental at 45nm nodes and beyond, companies choose to deploy similar technologies in different ways. The truth is inherently complex and complex to describe, and can die under the assault of hype.

06/05/2007  "Food for thought" served up during a SEMI breakfast panel near Boston suggested memory firms' wild overspending and capacity increases may in fact be shrewd strategic moves to shore up leading-edge 300mm capacity before an oncoming technology "brick wall" makes their existing 200mm fabs obsolete.

06/05/2007  As the industry watches memory firms push out orders as prices and profits evaporate, those waiting for foundry spending to mount a late-year comeback to pick up the slack might want to avert their eyes from the scoreboard. Warning signs in the memory sector -- and the dawning realization of how much of the industry's capex is tied up in the most price-sensitive segment -- were major topics discussed at a recent SEMI breakfast panel of analysts near Boston.

06/05/2007  After scolding memory firms during a SEMI breakfast panel near Boston for overspending and India for irrational chest-thumping and "real-men-own-fabs" nationalism in the face of economic realities, McClean also suggested there aren't enough people in the industry who think about risks -- not typical risks like yield-killing defects, but larger scale risks such as usage of volatile chemicals, natural disasters, and geopolitical uncertainty.

06/05/2007  Another point reiterated at the SEMI breakfast was that the industry cycles are shrinking, to the point where we're practically seeing "minicycles" in a single year, noted Bill McClean. He has updated IC Insights' ubiquitous "IC Industry cycle" eight-stage wheel to list one year/stage instead of 2-3 years or more, and noted that it's starting to feel like the industry is racing through the cycles on a quarterly basis.

06/05/2007  June 5, 2007 - IBM is rolling out four new products, including a Cu-45nm ASIC custom chip using silicon-on-insulator technology, which is also the first commercial use of embedded DRAM also implemented in SOI.