04/20/2006  April 20, 2006 - Cymer Inc., San Diego, CA, posted a profit of $20.6 million in 1Q06, a whopping 283% increase over a year ago, on 50% higher sales of $127.1 million.

04/19/2006  April 19, 2006 - Demand for semiconductor manufacturing equipment continued to steam ahead in March with single-digit sequential gains, according to new data from SEMI.

04/19/2006  April 19, 2006 - The first quarter of the calendar usually means a seasonal slowdown in demand for semiconductor manufacturing equipment. But this year demand remains high, and so VLSI Research Inc. has hiked its projections for the full year to double-digit growth.

04/19/2006  April 6, 2006 -- /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- MILPITAS, Calif. -- LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE:LSI) today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Gresham, Oregon semiconductor manufacturing facility to ON Semiconductor Corporation's (NASDAQ:ONNN) primary operating subsidiary, Semiconductor Components Industries, LLC, for approximately $105 million in cash.

04/18/2006  April 18, 2006 - Soitec, a French manufacturer of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers, said its sales in both fiscal 4Q and FY06 topped new records, thanks to heavy demand for 300mm wafers.

04/18/2006  April 18, 2006 - Three of Taiwan's top DRAM memory producers have raised substantial amounts of cash this year -- about $4.6 billion collectively -- to support immediate capacity expansions, according to the Taiwan Economic News.

04/18/2006  April 18, 2006 - SEMI is expanding its High Tech U program, which introduces high school students to the semiconductor manufacturing industry, to the greater Phoenix, AZ area.

04/18/2006  April 18, 2006 - PSI-Tec Corp. says it has successfully tested an engineered organic material with better electro-optic properties to convert electronic signals into optical signals for telecom and navigational systems, and possibly eventually optical interconnects and all-optical transistors.

04/17/2006  Preliminary C4NP manufacturing and reliability test results of both tin-lead and lead-free solders verify that there are no inherent failure mechanisms attributable to the C4NP process, according to a report presented by IBM and SUSS MicroTec at the IMAPS International Conference and Exhibition on Device Packaging, held March 21, 2006, in Scottsdale, AZ.
By George Riley, Ph.D., contributing editor

04/17/2006  April 17, 2006 - Startup Key ASIC, a Santa Clara, CA-based fabless provider of ASIC and system-on-chip (SoC) design-for-manufacturing services, has officially launched with a menu of SoC platforms for various consumer and communications applications.

04/14/2006  April 14, 2006 - South Korean semiconductor-equipment vendor Integrated Process Systems Ltd. (IPS) has filed a lawsuit against Aviza Technology Inc., Scotts Valley, CA alleging that Aviza used confidential information to develop its single-wafer atomic-layer deposition (ALD) system.

04/13/2006  April 13, 2006 - ChipMOS Technologies Inc., Oracle Corp., and Taiwan's Institute for Information Industry are partnering to develop an information system for semiconductor supply chains based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.

04/13/2006  April 13, 2006 - Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said it has developed a wafer-level processed stack package (WSP) of high-density memory chips using "through silicon via" interconnections, resulting in a 15% smaller and 30% thinner device than an equivalent wire-bonded multichip package.

04/13/2006  April 13, 2006 - Cadence Design Systems Inc., San Jose, CA, and Chinese foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) have jointly developed an analog mixed-signal (AMS) reference flow, based on SMIC's 0.18-micron process technology.

04/12/2006  April 12, 2006 - The European Union reportedly will cut back its countervailing tariff on memory chips from South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor Inc. to 32.9% from 34.8%, following a recommendation from the World Trade Organization (WTO).

04/12/2006  April 12, 2006 - Lexar Media Inc., Fremont, CA, has filed a complaint with the International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that Japan's Toshiba Corp. and its US subsidiaries are infringing upon its patented NAND flash technologies.

04/12/2006  April 12, 2006 - Nantero Inc. says it has successfully demonstrated scalability of its nonvolatile random access memory (NRAM) technology, with fabrication and testing of a 22nm NRAM memory switch.

04/12/2006  April 12, 2006 - Average embedded memory density in mobile phones will increase by a factor of more than 40x from 2005-2010 as new utility and entertainment features demand more storage, according to iSuppli Corp.

04/12/2006  Imago Scientific Instruments Corp., a Madison, Wis., maker of atom probe tomography tools, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired Oxford nanoScience Ltd., a UK-based competitor, from Polaron plc. The deal, which was for a total of $4.35 million, includes $2.25 million in cash and the issue of $2.1 million in preferred stock.

04/11/2006  April 11, 2006 - Silicon Valley startup SiTime Corp. is readying engineering samples of its first MEMS-based oscillator product lines, based on 200mm standard CMOS manufacturing processes.