04/02/2007  April 2, 2007 - Elpida Memory Inc. has amassed about 110 billion yen (~US $933 million) in syndicated loans and another 50 billion yen ($424 million) in credit line commitments, all to support planned capacity expansions in Taiwan and Japan, notes the Nikkei News wires.

04/02/2007  Wafer-bumping service provider IC Interconnect (ICI) and Jiangyin Changdian Advanced Packaging (JCAP), which produces solder, gold, and pillar bumps, formed an international alliance to transfer ICI technologies to Asia and JCAP bumping services to North America.

04/01/2007  Nearly a year after the presentation of “A Case for Socket Reuse,” by Paul Gaschke of IBM, at the 2006 Burn-in and Test Socket (BiTS) Workshop, I wondered whether compression-mount sockets (which enabled the socket reuse he described) were seeing more widespread acceptance and application by users, and being added to suppliers’ product portfolios.

04/01/2007  Conductive paste screening on green sheet through a mask is a common technique to delineate desired circuitry for ceramic modules.

03/30/2007  March 30, 2007 - Winbond Electronics Corp. says it will sell its 200mm DRAM fab in Taiwan's Hsinchu Science Park to Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp. (VIS) for about $251 million, including the facility and equipment parts, according to local media reports.

03/30/2007  RVSI Inspection LLC is relocating and expanding its Singapore offices for package and wafer inspection. The site will include a demonstration, applications, and training facility.

03/30/2007  Fab Owners Association attracts new device-maker members

03/30/2007  Korean companies Dongbu Electronics and Dongbu Hannong Chemicals have agreed to merge to form a bio-semiconductor enterprise, Dongbu HiTek Co., Ltd. The new company will launch May 1 to provide wafer foundry services and advanced chemicals and materials for agriculture, bioengineering, nanotechnology, and semiconductor processing.

03/29/2007  March 29, 2007 - An investment company held by Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Group, which owns stakes in memory makers Nanya Technology Corp. and Inotera Memories, has purchased 78 hectares of land in a high-tech park in Taoyuan County for about $233 million, where it will expand semiconductor related businesses including silicon wafer prduction and chip assembly, according to the Taiwan Economic News.

03/29/2007  March 29, 2007 - ARC International says it has signed licensing agreements with four Asia-based semiconductor companies for its configurable technologies to create system-on-chips (SoC).

03/29/2007  March 29, 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 Microchip Technology Inc., a provider of microcontroller and analog semiconductors, and analog/mixed-signal firm Skyworks Solutions Inc.

03/29/2007  March 29, 2007 - X-Fab Semiconductor Foundries is taking over ZMD AG's ZFoundry wafer production facilities (ZMD Analog Mixed Signal Services GmbH & Co.), a move that gives X-Fab access to another possible 200mm source for production demand, and helps ZMD transition to the fabless model.

03/28/2007  March 27, 2007 - A 6.9-magnitude earthquake that struck offshore northwestern Japan on March 25 likely has had negligible impact on Japan's semiconductor production, with no reports of problems from the only major chipmaker with a presence in the immediate area, according to analyst firm Objective Analyis.

03/28/2007  The new James Watt Nanofabrication Centre at Glasgow University, Scotland, nestled over and into one of Lord Kelvin's original laboratories, boasts an impressive array of equipment and capabilities. This month, coinciding with the facility's official opening, the Ultrafast Systems Group was awarded £4m research funding.

03/27/2007  As thoroughly reported by WaferNEWS, SST, and Microlithography World, the 2007 SPIE lithography meeting detailed that 193nm wavelength lithographic reduction steppers may be the last mainstream lithographic technology for the semiconductor manufacturing industry. We must now look for ways to create ever smaller device features using 193nm litho with clever combinations of other known unit-process steps: thin-film depositions, etches, and plasma surface treatments.

03/27/2007  March 27, 2007 - Days after consolidating some of its manufacturing operations in Korea, Nanometrics Inc. has undergone another shift -- this time in the CEO's office. John Heaton has left the company (no details were provided by the company), with chief strategy officer Bruce Rhine taking the reins on an interim basis while a search is conducted for a permanent CEO.

03/27/2007  March 27, 2007 - After nearly half a year of slumping prices amid circumstances that have been "the worst in the history of the market," suppliers of NAND flash memory may finally see a break in the clouds as supplies start to meter out, according to a new analysis by iSuppli Corp.

03/26/2007  March 26, 2007 - IBM says it has developed a prototype optical transceiver chipset for supercomputing applications that incorporates optical and CMOS components in one system-in-package (SiP).

03/26/2007  March 26, 2007 - Following a week of rumors and leaked info, Intel has confirmed that it wants to build a new 300mm fab in northeast China, its first wafer fab in Asia and first greenfield new fab location in 15 years.

03/26/2007  Based on the concept of reducing costs through packaging integration, IBM researchers will introduce an optical chipset prototype for supercomputing applications that incorporates optical and CMOS components in one system-in-package (SiP), or optical module, at the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference, March 25–29 in Anaheim.