11/14/2001  November 14, 2001 -- Oakland, CA -- Rumsey Engineers, Inc., a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) design engineering firm has opened its first satellite office in Phoenix, Arizona.

11/14/2001  Modelers at Sandia National Laboratories are helping micromachine designers choose the device they want fully fabricated through new nano-modeling programs.

11/14/2001  November 14, 2001 - San Jose, CA - KLA-Tencor Corp. announced that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has successfully completed its beta evaluation of KLA-Tencor's TeraStar SLF27 reticle inspection system on advanced sub-wavelength reticles used in manufacturing devices with design rules as small as 130 nm.

11/13/2001  November 13, 2001 - Baltimore, MD - Fairchild Semiconductor International plans to widen its worldwide presence by identifying and providing solutions for untapped markets, products and applications that need power regulation and management, according to VP and Treasurer, Matthew Towse.

11/12/2001  Who would have thought it only a few months ago? China seems to be growing an entrepreneurial semiconductor foundry industry - thanks to the success of an aggressive drive to recruit industry talent from Taiwan.

11/09/2001  November 9, 2001 - Taipei, Taiwan - Winbond Electronics Corp. said it would gradually move out of IC production and shift to IC design.

11/09/2001  It's only one customer's opinion, but Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) says so far Hitachi Kokusai and Sony are doing the best job on 300mm automation, meeting 90% of TSMC specifications.

11/08/2001  Traditional yield enhancement techniques focus on analyzing the causes of killer defects - those due to sources of contamination on the wafer and in the factory. However, feature-limited yield is becoming a dominant driver of overall yield as the industry goes further and further into the deep sub-micron (DSM) region.

11/08/2001  Scientists at NASA's Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH, and their colleagues believe they have found ways to make more reliable wide-band-gap semiconductor devices with two recent breakthroughs.

11/08/2001  November 8, 2001 - Burlingame, CA - Metron Technology N.V. has been chosen as the exclusive distributor for microelectronics products from Carl Zeiss Microelectronic Systems GmbH, a subsidiary of Carl Zeiss Semiconductor Manufacturing Technologies AG, in Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

11/08/2001  November 8, 2001 - Singapore - Chartered Semiconductor Europe, a subsidiary of Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing has opened an office in Stockholm, Sweden, to cover the Nordic market area.

11/08/2001  November 8, 2001 - Willow Grove, PA & Chandler, AZ - Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc. and Amkor Technology have expanded the 10-year technology transfer agreement between Amkor and Flip Chip Technologies, L.L.C. (FCT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kulicke & Soffa.

11/07/2001  November 7, 2001 -- NOGALES, AZ -- Alpha Pro Tech, a developer, manufacturer and marketer of disposable protective apparel for the medical, dental, industrial safety, clean room and food service markets, says that demand for its N-95 Particulate Respirator face mask, which is NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) approved, has required the company to add additional shifts. The company is also anticipating building additional equipment.

11/07/2001  November 7, 2001 - Tokyo, Japan - Toshiba said it would idle 12,000 workers in its semiconductor division for two to four days in November and December in a bid to cut costs.

11/07/2001  November 7, 2001 - Hsinchu, Taiwan - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. announced at a Tokyo press conference its plans for investments, a new plant, and new technology to be used, according to Asia Biz Tech.

11/07/2001  Despite those dismal fab utilization totals, there's one sector of the industry that's still running at surprisingly close to full capacity - Taiwan's DRAM makers.

11/07/2001  November 7, 2001 - Austin, TX - GSI Technology has formed a relationship with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) for volume production of GSI's latest line of high speed 18Mb Burst and NBT synchronous SRAMs.

11/07/2001  November 7, 2001 - San Jose, CA - Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments declined 17% during 3Q01 compared to the previous quarter, according to what Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) reported in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.

11/06/2001  One of the biggest trends in wafer cleaning today is single wafer wet cleans at the critical pre-gate level. Strictly speaking, PVA brushes (scrubbers) used in post-CMP cleans can be considered a single wafer cleaning process, and some fabs use single wafer etching for backside thinning and layer removal.

11/06/2001  November 6, 2001 - San Jose, CA - Electroglas Inc. has formed a new software division, EG Soft, that is entering the market with an integrated portfolio of software products to help semiconductor manufacturers improve throughput and yield.