05/04/2006  May 4, 2006 - Despite some losses caused by price wars, Japan's top seven semiconductor manufacturers are set to spend a record combined 1.01 trillion yen (US $8.91 billion) on facilities and equipment in fiscal 2006, a 7% increase from last year, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

05/04/2006  May 4, 2006 - SEMATECH has appointed Michael Lercel as director of its lithography division, replacing former director Kevin Kemp who is returning to Freescale Semiconductor.

05/04/2006  San Jose, CA — SEMICON West, to take place July 11–13, 2006, in San Francisco, CA, will feature a Test, Assembly, and Packaging TechXPOT exhibit area, located in the Moscone Center's West Hall, Level 2. The Test, Assembly, and Packaging TechXPOT will focus on strides in test, assembly, and packaging, with exhibits, displays, and exhibitor presentations.

05/04/2006 

05/03/2006  May 3, 2006 - Formosa Komatsu Silicon Corp., a silicon-wafer making venture between Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Group and Japan's Komatsu Electronic Materials Co. Ltd., reportedly will start pilot production at its first 300mm wafer fab in November.

05/02/2006  May 2, 2006 - Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc. will utilize Taiwan specialty foundry Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp. to produce its 0.35-micron multivoltage mixed-signal ModularBCD process technology on 200mm wafers.

05/02/2006 

05/01/2006  May 1, 2006 - Japanese manufacturers of semiconductor production equipment suffered their first slowdown in three years during fiscal 2H05 (ended in March 2006), but a surge in demand in the second half of the year kept the losses to a minimum, according to new data from the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ).

05/01/2006  May 1, 2006 - Alliance Semiconductor Corp. is selling its analog and mixed-signal business unit to a group of investors for $9.25 million in cash, in an effort to end "years of losses" from its semiconductor operations.

05/01/2006  May 1, 2006 - Semiconductor Research Corp., a consortium of semiconductor industry and academic institutions based in Research Triangle Park, NC, has appointed Steven Hillenius as VP to head up the consortium, taking over for Ralph Cavin, who is retiring at year's end.

05/01/2006  Package-on-package (PoP) has emerged asthe preferred 3-D packaging solution for integration of logic and high-performance memory devices in mobile multimedia products.

05/01/2006  Total expected to be second highest on record

05/01/2006  Defects in fabrication and errors during operation will become a fact of life for electronic circuits at the nanoscale.

05/01/2006  The AKU2000 surface-mountable complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) microphone integrates an acoustic transducer, output amplifier, and 4th-order sigma-delta modulator in a single chip.

05/01/2006  Wafer-level solutions for optical and sensor applications

05/01/2006  To those charged with establishing and maintaining the appropriate controlled environments for leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing, airborne molecular contam-ination (AMC) can appear to be a moving target.

04/28/2006  April 28, 2006 - China's flagship foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) said it cut its net losses nearly in half to $8.7 million in 1Q06 from the previous quarter, on 5% higher revenues of $351.1 million.

04/28/2006  Taiwan has announced it is removing restrictions on export of low-end semiconductor packaging and testing technology to mainland China, according to an Associated Press report. The news suggests significant progress in revision of Taiwan policies regarding semiconductor manufacturing technology transfers between the island and mainland China, which expired at the end of 2005.
By James Montgomery, News Editor, Solid State Technology Magazine

04/28/2006  April 28, 2006 - A "blistering" 49% surge in revenues to $1.16 billion propelled Infineon Technologies AG to the No. 2 spot among DRAM manufacturers in 1Q06, the highest position ever for the German chipmaker, according to new data from iSuppli Corp.

04/26/2006  April 26, 2006 - Sidense Corp., a fabless provider of one-time-programmable (OTP) memory IP, said its 1T-Fuse family of embedded OTP cores is slated to be silicon-verified in UMC's 90nm and 65nm process technologies