06/09/2003 

06/02/2003  May 30, 2003 - San Jose, CA - Worldwide sales of semiconductors totaled $12.1 billion in April, 2003, sequentially unchanged from the $12.1 billion in revenue reported in March of 2003, and a 9.7% increase from April 2002 revenue of $11.3 billion, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported today.

06/02/2003  June 2, 2003 - Anaheim, CA - The X Initiative, a semiconductor supply-chain consortium, has announced that Applied Materials Inc. has produced the industry's first 90nm test chip for X Architecture interconnect designs at its Maydan Technology Center in Sunnyvale, CA.

06/01/2003  A chip scale package (CSP) is defined as any IC package with an area less than 1.5x in die area, a package width less than 1.2x in die width, or any fine-pitch (0.5 mm or less) area-array package.

05/29/2003  May 29, 2003 - Munich, Germany - Wacker-Chemie GmbH will buy Nippon Steel's stake in their chip joint venture, which has silicon wafer production plants in Yamaguchi Prefecture, southern Japan, and Malaysia, reported Dow Jones.

05/17/2003  Cool Chips wants to start a revolution in refrigeration. The company claims that its devices could chill everything from electronic equipment to your whole house. If the firm can leap some commercial hurdles, its chips could be on the market in a year.

05/16/2003  May 16, 2003 - Nice, France - The World Semiconductor Council (WSC) has met for its seventh annual meeting and issued strong recommendations on a broad range of policy objectives of importance to the global semiconductor industry. The WSC is an organization that represents the worldwide semiconductor industry addressing trade, environment, and other public policy issues.

05/15/2003  The Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA), a semiconductor trade association, has released its 1Q03 Wafer Supply & Demand and Packaging Survey Report which noted a 5% decrease in actual wafers shipped in 1Q03 over 4Q02. Compared to the previous forecast, however, 1Q03 actual wafer demand shipments were 97% of the previous forecast.

05/15/2003  Without nanotechnology, Moore's Law – computing power doubling every 18 months – will expire in 10 to 15 years. Even if it doesn’t, the cost of building a new chip fabrication plant could reach $50 billion by 2010. So, HP, IBM and others are hard at work building nanotransistors to keep the law in effect.

05/14/2003  On-demand digital video and Internet delivered rapidly and cheaply to your home or business could be made possible by a new technology from Xerox. The company has developed a MEMS switch that controls the flow of light on a single silicon chip. Xerox says the technology allows it to shrink what normally would require racks of equipment into a 1-inch-square package.

05/13/2003  MAY 13--NOGALES, Ariz.--Alpha Pro Tech, a developer, manufacturer and marketer of disposable protective apparel for the medical, dental, industrial safety, cleanroom and food service markets, has seen a $2 million increase in orders for its N-95 respirator mask and eye shields.

05/10/2003  Ken Gabriel, co-founder of the MEMS Industry Group, is taking at least a year off from his job as a Carnegie Mellon University professor to focus on Akustica, a MEMS-based startup specializing in acoustic technology he helped develop in CMU's lab. "There's only so much you can do within a university environment."

05/09/2003  Phil E. Tuma, 3M Electronics Markets Materials Div., and Scott Knoll, Lydall Industrial Thermal Solutions

Many recirculating chiller applications require electrically nonconductive or "dielectric" heat transfer fluids. A dielectric fluid may be required to maintain electrical isolation of components maintained at MORE

05/08/2003  MAY 8--EUGENE, Ore.--Hynix Semiconductor Manufacturing America (HSMA), the U.S. subsidiary of Hynix Semiconductor Inc., has reaffirmed its plans to invest $100 million to upgrade its DRAM wafer fab here.

05/08/2003  May 8, 2003 - Taipei, Taiwan - ProMOS Technologies Inc. has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a technology transfer with Japan's chipmaker Elpida Memory Inc.

05/07/2003 

05/05/2003  May 5, 2003 - Santa Cruz, CA - New data from The Quarterly Spot Report on Semiconductor Fab Projects, from Strategic Marketing Associates (SMA), indicates some 36 new fab projects will likely get underway by 2Q04. Fab projects include expansions, upgrades, additional fab lines, and new construction. Another 24 fabs will begin production during that time.

05/05/2003  Applied MEMS Inc. of Houston will manufacture its MEMS Si-Flex accelerometer for Refraction Technology Inc., a maker of seismic recording systems for earthquake monitoring, according to a news release.

05/01/2003  There's a buzz surrounding the topic of advanced process controls (APC) in the semiconductor manufacturing community; and like many freshly evolving, technologically-based concepts, the terms and applications are almost constantly being re-engineered.

05/01/2003  Being the first to market with new integrated circuit (IC) designs is essential to the survival of a fabless company, and it is significant to the growth of established semiconductor manufacturers.