08/19/2004  August 19, 2004 - ASM International, Bilthoven, The Netherlands, plans to invest more than $29 million to set up Singapore's first wafer processing facility.

08/19/2004  August 19, 2004 - The unusually strong post-holiday performance earlier this year is being felt all the way through midsummer, and the semiconductor equipment industry may end up holding off a downturn for at least another year, according to the latest data from VLSI Research.

08/18/2004  August 18, 2004 - Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., San Diego, CA, has made its 0.25-micron UltraCMOS silicon-on-sapphire process available for foundry services, following its 0.5-micron multiproject-run foundry program.

08/18/2004  August 18, 2004 - Taiwanese foundry United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) has made available its 0.18-micron embedded high-voltage technology process, used with portable LCD products to power transistors for applications such as cell phone displays.

08/18/2004  August 18, 2004 - Applied Materials posted a profit of $440.6 million in its fiscal 3Q04 ended August 1. Revenues more than doubled from $1.09 billion a year ago to $2.24 billion. Applied officials noted that more than 50% of revenues were coming from 90nm and below, and two-thirds of total system orders were for 300mm tools.

08/17/2004  August 17, 2004 - Continuing its expansion into the services arena, Applied Materials Inc. has agreed to acquire the operating subsidiaries and businesses of Metron Technology N.V., for approximately $85 million.

08/17/2004 

08/16/2004  August 16--BERKELEY, Ca.--Ion Systems, a leading supplier of electrostatics management solutions for high technology and industrial applications, has announced the appointment of Conor O'Mahony as vice president of sales and services. Mr. O'Mahony will be responsible for worldwide sales and support of Ion technology products.

08/16/2004  (August 16, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—LogicVision, Inc., a provider of embedded yield enhancement solutions for integrated circuits, announced today that it has aligned with UMC to provide the foundry's customers with access to its wafer yield solution. This LogicVision product aims to develop increasingly higher wafer yields at 90 nm and below process geometries.

08/16/2004  August 16, 2004 - Mykrolis Corp. (MYK) acquired assets of Bentec Scientific LLC, which makes components used in semiconductor manufacturing. Financial terms were not dislcosed, according to Dow Jones News.

08/13/2004  (August 13, 2004) Berkeley, Calif.— Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have made a significant advance in the development of gallium nitride. They have been able control the direction in which a gallium nitride nanowire grows. Growth direction is critical to determining the wire's electrical and thermal conductivity and other important properties.

08/12/2004  August 12, 2004 - Researchers at UCLA and Los Alamos National Labs claim they are now able to detect the spin of a single electron in a standard silicon transistor, another step toward being able to monitor and even manipulate them for use in quantum-computing devices.

08/09/2004  August 9, 2004 - Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) and European research organization CEA Leti have agreed to jointly research and develop front-end-of-line CMOS process technology, focusing on new materials for CMOS gate stacks.

08/06/2004  August 6, 2004 - Infineon Technologies AG and Taiwan's Winbond Electronics Corp. have expanded their collaboration on DRAM memory manufacturing to include 90nm DRAM trench technology for 300mm production.

08/05/2004  The Palo Alto, Calif.-developer of inorganic semiconductor nanocrystal technology cited 'adverse market conditions' and said simply that it had determined "it is not advisable at this time to proceed with the proposed offering."

08/03/2004  (August 3, 2004) Nashua, N.H.—Calling all industry experts! Every year, Advanced Packaging has a few new things to add to the editorial calendar of upcoming features. In January 2005, we will feature a forecast of the year to come. Though 2004 has been a wonderful year of recovery in electronics, everyone seems to wonder if 2005 and 2006 will flatten a bit or stay the current course.

08/02/2004  (August 2, 2004) Atlanta, Ga.—In electronics assembly, 60 to 70% of final defects occur during the stencil printing process (SPP), a stage of surface-mount technology for printed circuit board assembly. Researchers at Georgia Tech's Center for Board Assembly Research (CBAR) have developed a new data-driven, closed-loop control technology that adjusts electronics assembly equipment parameters in real-time, resulting in fewer defects and higher yields.

08/02/2004  August 2, 2004 - Solid but slowing global demand is in store for the semiconductor industry in 2H04, with the outlook very much dependent upon a continued rise in capacity utilization and chip inventories, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

08/02/2004  August 3, 2004 - 3Plus1Technology Inc., Saratoga, CA, has unveiled details about itself and its work on multiprocessor architecture for running next-generation handheld systems.

08/02/2004  (August 2, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—Tessera Technologies, Inc., a services provider for semiconductor chip-scale and multi-chip packages, announced today that it has signed an agreement that expands the license terms of its existing agreement with Sharp Corporation, a leading consumer electronics company.