05/31/2007  Inapac Technology, Inc. (Hsin-chu), partnered with DRAM manufacturer ProMOS Technologies (San Jose) to develop a low-power, 256 Mb DDR SDRAM based on Inapac's SiPFLOW platform. ProMOS will manufacture the bare-die product in known good die (KGD) from system-in-package (SiP) and multi-chip package (MCP) devices.

05/31/2007  May 31, 2007 - Eying severe DRAM pricing declines and continued MPU price wars, analyst Gartner Inc. has once again lowered its outlook for chip sales, now projecting just 2.5% growth in 2007, down from 6.4% expectations in early March and 9.2% in January.

05/31/2007  Small Times' Tom Cheyney reports on a particularly compelling discussion among panelists from industry and academia at the recent NSTI Nanotech 2007 conference. The panel examined technical barriers to -- and recent advancements in -- nanomanufacturing.

05/30/2007  May 30, 2007 - The Fab Owners Association (FOA), a collection of an association of mainly second-tier semiconductor manufacturers, has expanded its roster with the addition of three chipmakers: Austriamicrosystems AG (analog), Avago Technologies (analog+mixed-signal, opto), and X-Fab (mixed-signal foundry).

05/30/2007  Process development foundry SVTC Technologies has unveiled a technology incubation program with TSMC, the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry. The deal aims to streamline the transfer of designs to high-volume manufacturing. Small Times' Barbara Goode puts the announcement in context.

05/30/2007  Cascade Microtech says its new Tesla power-device characterization system is unlike any other in that it "solves the on-wafer probing challenges for engineers and test technicians" and thus speeds development.

05/29/2007  May 29, 2007 - Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with help from the U. of Maryland and Howard U., have devised a fabrication method that creates tiny ultraviolet light-emitting diodes from nanowires, and NIST says the technique is "well-suited" for scaling to commercial production.

05/29/2007  May 29, 2007 - Samsung, Hynix, and other South Korean DRAM memory suppliers have been riding atop the memory wave, but slumping prices (partly of those firms' own doing) could topple Korea as the memory manufacturing hub by the end of this decade, according to new data from iSuppli Corp.

05/29/2007  May 8, 2007 -- /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- COLLEGE PARK, MD -- Influenza virus H5N1, which caused the recent outbreak of avian flu, may have a new enemy.

05/25/2007  May 25, 2007 - WJ Communications Inc., a designer and supplier of radio frequency (RF) technology for wireless and RFID markets says it has sold its entire wafer manufacturing equipment for $1.8 million in cash to AmpTech Inc., to whom the company will lease its company's Milpitas, CA facility and sign a technology license and foundry deal.

05/25/2007  May 24, 2007 - NEC's LCD display unit has created a LCD module that incorporates all chip components, including LSI and memory, on the glass substrate.

05/25/2007  May 24, 2007 - Korean memory chipmaker Hynix Semiconductor Inc. has joined IMEC's 32nm memory R&D program, which now boasts participation from the top five global memory chipmakers (Samsung, Elpida, Micron, and Qimonda).

05/25/2007  May 24, 2007 - Fujitsu Ltd. has signed a deal with Jazz Technologies Inc. to jointly provide systems-on-chip (SoC) products for RF CMOS devices, combining Jazz's RF and mixed-signal technology with Fujitsu's 90-65nm LSI manufacturing processes. Devices will be manufactured at Fujitsu's 300mm fab in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture (Japan), and marketed and sold jointly by both companies.

05/25/2007  May 24, 2007 - After seeing 300mm fab capacity utilization rates decay to barely 60% in 1Q07, UMC chairman Jackson Hu is confident that rates will climb back up to 75% in 2Q, and then "sharply" rise in 3Q, according to a report in the Taiwan Economic News.

05/24/2007  IBM, its Common Platform partners Charted Semiconductor Manufacturing (Singapore) and Samsung Electronics (Seoul, South Korea), and joint development alliance (JDA) partners Infineon Technologies (Munich, Germany) and Freescale Semiconductor (Austin, TX) signed a series of JDAs for 32-nm semiconductor process development and manufacturing. This is the fourth development node on which the partners have collaborated.

05/24/2007  May 23, 2007 - Heavier capex in 1Q from several large IDMs helped push up sales as well as orders for semiconductor manufacturing equipment from North America-based suppliers, according to the latest monthly data from SEMI.

05/24/2007  May 23, 2006 - Five of the "Common Platform Alliance" partners -- IBM, Chartered, Samsung, Infineon, and Freescale -- say they will extend their current technology development agreements through 2010 and beyond, incorporating 32nm bulk CMOS process technologies and joint development of process design kits.

05/23/2007  A ConFab session on "Capital Equipment: Alternative Financing Models" was kicked off by Craig Ignaszewski, director of capital equipment procurement, IBM, with discussion of the rationale for leasing vs. buying equipment. Meanwhile, Zvi Lando, VP at Applied Materials' Israel operation, suggested that upgrades might be capable of carrying leased metrology and inspection equipment through an extra process node.

05/23/2007  Hyphenated Systems has announced a new advanced confocal/atomic force microscope (ACM/AFM), developed jointly with KARMA Technology, that is geared for 3D metrology applications in semiconductor manufacturing and lab environments.

05/23/2007  Anyone trying to follow the topic of design for manufacturing (DFM) the last few years would be hard-pressed to accurately dissect the nuanced boundary lines that identify what each company that plays in the DFM space actually does and how users of DFM/EDA should evaluate their return on investment for the tools. ConFab panelist Joe Sawicki, VP & GM at Mentor Graphics, thinks we should look at the "DFM" label in a new way.