05/24/2004  May 24, 2004 - IBM and Singapore foundry Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing have announced new design supports of their cross-foundry design enablement program.

05/21/2004  May 21, 2004 -- A strong influx of orders from Applied Materials helped boost North American demand for semiconductor manufacturing equipment in April, a sign that the market isn't quite ready to apply the brakes, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).

05/20/2004  May 19, 2004 -- Harald Eggers, the CEO of Infineon AG's memory products business group, will step down "of his own request" effective June 1, the company said. Thomas Seifert, head of the company's wireline communications business group, will assume the role.

05/19/2004  U.S. officials are developing "best practices" that businesses may want to follow when handling nanomaterials. Given a shortage of research on the health effects of new engineered nanomaterials, officials from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) are developing the guidelines and hope to release them within a year.

05/17/2004  May 14, 2004 -- Taking aim at 65nm and 45nm processes, SCP Global Technologies Inc., Boise, ID, entered the fast-growing market for single-wafer wet cleaning tools on May 12 with its Emersion 300 system, reportedly the industry's first immersion-based surface preparation system that processes wafers one at a time.

05/17/2004  May 17, 2004 -- The X Initiative today welcomed Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC) as the latest member of the semiconductor design-chain consortium. Having verified the 0.13 micron X Architecture design rules with test chips, TSMC is now working with select customers on their circuits.

05/14/2004  May 14, 2004 - Scientists from Japan have succeeded in running magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) with one-hundredth of the amount of current needed for current prototype MRAMS, seen as a key step toward commercializing the technology.

05/14/2004  May 14, 2004 - Sony Corp. plans to absorb some chipmaking capabilities of its game business subsidiary, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE), in order to consolidate its group semiconductor manufacturing operations.

05/13/2004  May 13, 2004 -- DuPont Photomasks Inc. has begun commercial production at its advanced photomask production facility in Dresden, Germany. The new facility will support semiconductor devices with design rules of 65nm and below.

05/12/2004  May 11, 2004 - Capital spending in Taiwan's semiconductor and TFT-LCD industries is expected to top $15.02 billion this year, according to the China Economic News Service. Three domestic sectors -- IC foundries, IC packaging/testing, and large-sized TFT-LCD panels -- are predicted to take the world's no. 1 positions, respectively.

05/12/2004  May 11, 2004 - Royal Philips Electronics has achieved "right-first-time" silicon in its 90nm CMOS production line, both at the Crolles2 wafer fab in France and TSMC's fab in Taiwan. The lead silicon uses an ARM processor core with SRAM, ROM, and analog signal circuitry, designed for wireless applications.

05/12/2004  (May 12, 2004) San Jose, Calif.—Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased 9 percent sequentially in the first quarter 2004 and 29 percent from the first quarter 2003, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.

05/11/2004  (May 11, 2004) Gainesville, Fla.—University of Florida electrical engineers have installed a radio antenna less than one-tenth of an inch long on a computer chip and demonstrated that it can send and receive signals across a room. The achievement is another step in the team's continuing efforts to build an "ultrasmall radio chip" — a transceiver, processor and battery all placed on a chip not much larger than a pinhead.

05/11/2004  May 10, 2004 -- The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded Optical Research Associates, Pasadena, CA, a $1.7 million Advanced Technology Program award for the development of advanced lithography modeling algorithms, reported the company.

05/10/2004  May 7, 2004 -- Leuven, Belgium -- Expanding a 12-year relationship with IMEC, Texas Instruments Inc. is becoming a core member of the sub-45nm CMOS research program, the company reported.

05/07/2004  May 7, 2004 - Taiwanese foundry UMC wants to boost its $850 million capex budget for its Singapore operations, but that depends upon the speed and availability of obtaining new equipment.

05/06/2004  Technology exports were up more than 42% in April to $5.88 billion, but South Korea's electronics industry could be facing "huge challenges" over the next couple of years, according to an analyst.

05/05/2004  May 5, 2004 - A proposed $36 million JV to develop nanoimprint lithography has received approval by the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Advanced Technology Program.

05/05/2004  (May 5, 2004) Santa Clara, Calif.—Best Electronics and Components Co. Inc., a contract test facility for analog and mixed-signal semiconductors, has established a high-volume chip scale package (CSP) production line. The company reports that the new line can electrically sort, laser mark, visually inspect, tape-and-reel multiple wafer-scale devices such as standard or bumped die as small as 0.5-mm square, and QFN packages at production volumes of 2 million devices per week.

05/01/2004  Digital image correlation metrology technology