06/21/2006  Nanosolar Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif., company developing photovoltaic technology using nanoparticle ink and roll-to-roll printing technology, announced Wednesday morning that it has raised a Series C funding round of more than $75 million. The company, a finalist for company of the year in Small Times' 2005 Best of Small Tech awards, said it will use the financing, as well as $25 million in previously-raised funds, to move into volume production.

06/19/2006  by Fran

06/19/2006  The Harmony OneTouch solution is engineered to address challenges associated with one-touchdown 300-mm flash wafer probing. FormFactor released the probe card intended for 300-mm flash memory production, stating that the solution utilizes a Harmony architecture to maximize test-cell uptime, ease-of-use, and throughput. Reducing the number of touchdowns that a probe card makes to test all devices on a wafer improves test throughput and lowers test cost.

06/19/2006  June 19, 2006 - NEC Electronics and Mosys Inc., are touting a win for Nintendo's new Wii video game console, which uses embedded memory technologies from the two firms.

06/19/2006  June 19, 2006 - Entrepix Inc., Tempe, AZ, a provider of chemical mechanical polishing services for foundries and equipment providers, has launched a new suite of services and technologies targeting the "fab-light" manufacturing model.

06/19/2006  June 19, 2006 - FormFactor Inc., Livermore, CA, says the South Korean Patent Court has upheld the validity of its patent relating to MEMS-based wafer probe cards, which had been disputed by domestic firm Phicom Corp.

06/19/2006  June 19, 2006 - Therma-Wave Inc., Fremont, CA, a provider of process control metrology systems, says its independent accounting firm has cited the company as a "going concern" in its recent financial reports for the fiscal year ended in March, due to recurring net losses and negative cash flows. The company received a similar "going concern" warning a year ago.

06/19/2006  June 19, 2006 - Elpida Memory Inc. says its 512bit DDR SDRAM utilizing 90nm process technologies has successfully been qualified at Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.'s (SMIC) 300mm facility in Beijing.

06/16/2006  June 16, 2006 - Balazs Analytical Services, a division of Air Liquide Electronics US, has introduced a new analytical technique that can provide trace analysis of metal concentrations in water and process chemicals down to parts-per-quadrillion (ppq) -- 1ppq equivalent to one in a million billions.

06/16/2006  June 16, 2006 - Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC) and parent company Toshiba Corp. have developed a multichip package (MCP) memory that incorporates a GB-class NAND flash memory and an SD card interface controller along with standard MCP memories.

06/16/2006  June 16, 2006 - Cabot Microelectronics Corp. Aurora, IL, a developer of chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) polishing slurries, has agreed to purchase all the assets of QED Technologies Inc., a developer of polishing and metrology systems for high precision optics, in an effort to expand its "engineered surface finishes" lines outside the semiconductor market.

06/16/2006  June 16, 2006 - Mosaid Technologies, Ottawa, Canada, and Infineon Technologies and memory spinoff Qimonda AG, have settled a patent dispute involving two sets of litigation in the US.

06/16/2006  June 16, 2006 - At this recent Symposium on VLSI Technology, SEMATECH engineers reviewed technical details on metal electrode materials that can be used to build low-threshold-voltage (Vt) nMOS transistors with high-k dielectric, and discussed a new approach for creating advanced, low-standby-power transistors for the 45nm technology generation.

06/16/2006  June 16, 2006 - Spansion Inc., the former flash JV of AMD and Fujitsu, reportedly will invest $1.2 billion over the next three years to build a new 300mm production line at its plant in northern Japan's Fukushima Prefecture.

06/16/2006  Camtek Ltd. announced they have received an order from Toshiba Corp. for multiple Falcon 830 bumped-wafer metrology systems. Toshiba will use the systems in their Oita, Japan, manufacturing plant for in-line bump inspection of 300-mm wafers.

06/16/2006 

06/15/2006  June 15, 2006 - European research consortium IMEC says it has achieved "several breakthroughs" on Ni-based fully silicided (FUSI) gates, achieving "excellent" low-power and high-performance specifications that meet ITRS requirements for use in 45nm-process manufacturing. Results of IMEC's work with FUSI were presented at the 2006 VLSI Symposium.

06/14/2006  June 14, 2006 - In a move to join forces to move up the chain in the $8.3 billion silicon wafer market, Sumitomo Mitsubishi Silicon Corp. (SUMCO) has agreed to acquire a 51% ownership in rival Japanese wafer maker Komatsu Electronic Metals Co. Ltd. (KEM), for approximately 36.9 billion yen (US $321.8 million).

06/14/2006  Innovasic Semiconductor announced that they are actively developing a roadmap to address Intel's end-of-life notice (EOL) on products 8051, 251, 8096/196, 188/186, i960, and all versions of the 386 and 486.

06/14/2006  June 13, 2006 - Qimonda, the carved-out memory chip arm of Infineon Technologies, said it has won the business to supply graphics RAM for Microsoft's Xbox 360 game console.