10/12/2004  October 12, 2004 - European research consortium IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, has added a roster of equipment makers to its sub-45nm CMOS research platform.

10/12/2004  (October 12, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—The SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) forecasts year-end wafer shipments for 2004 to be 23% higher than 2003 shipments.

10/12/2004  (October 12, 2004) Austin, Texas—American communities can hold onto high-tech manufacturing, if they become creative in partnering with companies and give employers solid financial reasons to stay in town, a key Texas Instruments (TI) executive will tell the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI) Symposium later this month.

10/08/2004  (October 8, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—MEPTEC, the MicroElectronics Packaging and Test Engineering Council, plans to shake things up a bit with its next technical symposium, titled "Innovations in Equipment and Materials for Microelectronics Packaging: Complexity Drives Collaboration," on November 11, 2004 at the Hyatt San Jose.

10/08/2004  October 8, 2004 - The leading suppliers of silicon wafers forecast year-end wafer shipments for 2004 to be 23% higher than 2003 shipments. According to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) Consensus Forecast, total wafer shipments will increase by about 5% in 2005.

10/08/2004 

10/07/2004  October 7, 2004 - KLA-Tencor Corp., San Jose, CA, and Belgium-based research center IMEC have begun a joint development project to accelerate adoption of optical critical-dimension (CD) metrology technology for sub-65nm semiconductor applications.

10/07/2004  October 6, 2004 - MagnaChip Semiconductor, the former nonmemory semiconductor operations of Hynix purchased earlier this summer by investors, officially has been relaunched in South Korea.

10/06/2004  October 6, 2004 - The Semiconductor Company of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. has joined the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI) effective Oct. 1, becoming the newest member of a global alliance of semiconductor companies focused exclusively on manufacturing effectiveness, officials of SEMATECH announced today.

10/05/2004  (October 5, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—SEMI has published six new technical standards applicable to the semiconductor, flat panel display, and MEMS manufacturing industries. The new standards, developed by technical experts from equipment suppliers, device manufacturers, and other companies participating in the SEMI International Standards Program, are available for purchase in CD-ROM format, or can be downloaded from the SEMI website at www.semi.org.

10/05/2004  (October 5, 2004) Singapore and Fremont, Calif.—STATS ChipPAC announces reaching a milestone in its scale-up of full turnkey wafer-level chip scale package (WLCSP) wafer bumping, probe, and back-end processing services, with production run rates exceeding 4 million packaged units per month.

10/05/2004  October 5, 2004 - MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. has announced it will again co-sponsor the Understanding Silicon Materials Technical Workshop with Solid State Technology magazine on Oct. 19 in Boston, MA, which will detail the latest developments and advances in silicon wafers to all levels of semiconductor fab engineers and management.

10/05/2004  This past July, the chief executive of ZettaCore met with a colleague to give away his job. It’s not that he was unhappy with his job. In fact, he’ll be staying on. Today this transition was made official: Subodh Toprani has replaced ZettaCore’s Randy Levine as CEO, effective Sept. 15.

10/04/2004  October 4, 2004 - Worldwide orders for Japanese semiconductor manufacturing equipment in August fell 22.6% to 118.50 billion yen ($1.08 billion), the lowest level in six months, due to declines in demand from Taiwan and China.

10/04/2004  October 4, 2004 - KLA-Tencor Corp. announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Candela Instruments, Fremont, CA, a supplier of laser-based surface inspection systems optimized for the data storage industry.

10/01/2004  (October 1, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—Worldwide sales of semiconductors grew to $18.2 billion in August, an increase of 1.1% from the $18.0 billion reported in July, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reports. Sales increased by 34.2% from the $13.6 billion reported in August 2003. The SIA notes that chip sales were in line with historical patterns for August.

10/01/2004  October 1, 2004 - Veeco Instruments Inc. and The Dow Chemical Co. have received $6.6 million in funding from the US Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Technology Program for a three-year project to develop a quantitative nano-mechanical measurement instrument.

10/01/2004  A high-speed micro- processor-based controller developed by Laboratory Control Systems claims to provide a pressure and airflow control and response mechanism for contamination control in cleanrooms and other critical environments.

10/01/2004  The financial reports for the major assembly and test subcontractors were quite positive in the first quarter of 2004, but those numbers don't tell the whole story.

10/01/2004  Intel Corp.'s (www.intel.com) recent breakthrough achievement of fully functional 70-Mbit static random access memory (SRAM) chips on a 65-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process makes the contamination control playing surface smaller and more critical than ever.