02/10/2006  February 10, 2006 - The Korean Patent Court has issued an oral ruling declining to render a decision on a case brought by FormFactor Inc. against Phicom Corp. regarding wafer probe-card technology.

02/09/2006  February 9, 2006 - SEMATECH has launched a new project to explore the feasibility of three-dimensional (3D) interconnect technology for the semiconductor industry.

02/09/2006  February 9, 2006 - Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology have developed a new lithography method that they claim achieves results comparable with extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, and five years before requirements by the International Roadmap for Semiconductors.

02/09/2006  February 9, 2006 - Researchers from TI and MIT, funded by DARPA, say they have developed have developed what they claim is the industry's lowest-voltage 65nm-based SRAM.

02/09/2006  February 9, 2006 - Renesas Technology Corp. has developed a massively parallel processor based on a matrix architecture, designed specifically to handle image and audio multimedia data processing tasks.

02/09/2006  Palo Alto, CA — 1× full-field photomasks supplier Image Technology, a wholly owned subsidiary of SUSS MicroTec, has acquired a Lasertec Large Area Mask (LAM) defect inspection tool to enhance their full production line for advanced 9-in. photomasks.

02/09/2006  February 9, 2006 -- PennWell Corporation has named veteran publisher David Barach to the position of group publisher of Solid State Technology and Advanced Packaging Packaging magazines, effective February 1.

02/08/2006  February 9, 2006 - SanDisk Corp. and Toshiba have accelerated plans to add 50% capacity the Fab 3 300mm wafer fab in Yokkaichi, Japan, to 70,000 wafers/month by March 2007, at a cost of approximately $500 million.

02/08/2006  February 8, 2006 - Invarium Inc., San Jose, CA, has introduced a new product that it claims is superior to current RET and OPC tools for patterning IC layouts of 65nm- and below chipmaking processes, with an eye toward 32nm and EUV lithography.

02/08/2006  By Masataka Tsubo, WaferNews Contributing Editor, Japan

With 65nm production ramping, the focus at SEMICON Japan in December turned to cutting-edge technology for 45nm production and 32nm development, leaving lithography suppliers in the unenviable position of midwifing two new exposure technologies into production at once.

02/07/2006  February 7, 2006 - Underscoring its commitment to seeking high-growth consumer segments outside the PC world, Freescale Semiconductor is teaming up with longtime Crolles2 partner STMicroelectronics to drive IBM's PowerPC architecture further into applications in the automotive market.

02/07/2006  By Paula Doe, Contributing Editor, WaferNews

Big players introduced tools for 45nm production at SEMICON Japan, but much of the activity was in improved materials that could at least be hyped as nanotechnology, and of course in more new types of metrology tools, with wafer-edge inspection a particularly hot niche for new product introductions. The other major theme: diversification into new markets for all sorts of players.

02/07/2006  By James Montgomery, News Editor

Analysts surveyed by WaferNews generally see steadily improving growth for the semiconductor market for the next three years - and more muted cycles than the wild days of the past. Projections for chip sales in 2006 cluster in the mid single digits, although the optimists see as much as 17%-20% growth, thanks to a healthy world economy and plenty of hot consumer products.

02/07/2006  February 7, 2006 - A new analyst report suggests the market for various types of nano-enabled memory will quadruple from $1.4 billion in 2008 to more than $7.0 billion in 2010, as conventional memory technologies fail to scale to address problems in leading-edge chip technologies such as leakage.

02/06/2006  February 6, 2006 - Chinese foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Co. (SMIC) expects to spend $1.1 billion on its own in 2006 as well as explore deals through "strategic alliances" to expand capacity.

02/06/2006  February 6, 2006 - In a paper delivered at this week's International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), STMicroelectronics and Hynix Semiconductor say they have developed a 4Gbit NAND flash memory device with throughput of 36MB/sec, roughly 50% better than available technologies.

02/06/2006  Gajus Worthington knew three years ago that he needed to find a manufacturing site for Fluidigm Corp. The San Francisco Bay-area company had already released its first generation microfluidic biochip for analyzing proteins and was poised to ramp up production.

02/03/2006  February 3, 2006 - KLA-Tencor Corp., San Jose, CA, has introduced a new version of its e-beam inspection platform, touted as a "cornerstone" of the company's efforts to support front-end-of-line and back-end-of-line semiconductor manufacturing at next-generation 65nm-45nm nodes.

02/01/2006  February 1, 2006 - In the first achievement under its new "fab lite" business model, Infineon Technologies AG has produced sample 65nm chips, leveraging technologies developed under an alliance with IBM, Chartered, and Samsung.

02/01/2006  February 1, 2006 - Global sales of Japanese-made semiconductor manufacturing equipment decreased 9.2% in 2005 to 1.47 trillion yen (US $12.51 billion), the first decline in three years, but improving demand late in the year bodes well for a comeback in 2006, according to the Semiconductor Equipment Industry of Japan (SEAJ).