03/20/2001  March 20, 2001 -- ANAHEIM, CA -- CODEON Corporation, a leading designer and manufacturer of state-of-the-art optical components for the fiber optic telecommunications industry, has begun shipping its high-speed, lithium-niobate optical modulators.

03/20/2001  Things got worse fast in Taiwan in last month. Sales at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd, dropped 28% in February from January?s level, while those of United Microelectronics Corp. fell 21%, according to Daiwa Securities Senior Analyst Yasuo Nakane, in his regular report for Nikkei Microdevices.

03/19/2001  March 19, 2001 - At the 26th SPIE Microlithography Symposium, held in Santa Clara, CA in February, the BACUS working group held its traditional panel discussion of reticle-related issues on Monday evening.

03/19/2001  AMD announced that it ranked fifth among US based companies receiving patents by the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2000. Additionally, AMD ranked 12th in the world.

03/16/2001  March 16, 2001 -- A week after laying off 5,000 people company wide, Intel Corp. has put its multimillion dollar expansion project for its Hudson, MA, facility on indefinite hold.

03/15/2001  MArch 15, 2001 -- WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA -- Diodes Inc.said that net income for the first quarter of 2001 will be lower than previously expected due to continuing softness in demand, particularly in the computing and communications sectors.

03/14/2001  March 14, 2001--Jasper, Indiana--Kimball International, Inc. today announced the opening of its new 40,000-sq.-ft. microelectronics facility in Valencia, CA. As Kimball Electronics Group's (KEG) Microelectronics Center of Excellence, the facility will support wafer and die processing, design and manufacturing of standard and custom monolithic devices, multi-chip modules (MCM's), chip-on-board (COB), and surface mount (SMT) assemblies.

03/14/2001  March 14, 2001--Washington, DC--The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced that it is doubling the size of its Focus Center Research Program, a collaborative research and development effort involving a number of the nation's top universities.

03/14/2001  March 14, 2001--Milpitas, California--NuTool, Inc. has been granted a U.S. patent covering a process for depositing interconnect material in submicron structures of an IC, creating a planar film while preventing unwanted accumulation of the film on the wafer's surface. The first application is for copper interconnect, the new material in use for the most advanced ICs.

03/14/2001  March 14, 2001--Sunnyvale, California--Thomas West Inc. (TWI) today announced a major capital expansion and upgrade of its applications lab and manufacturing facilities as part of an ongoing investment to provide its customers with the most advanced CMP materials and technology for semiconductor manufacturing. The increased capacity and expansion is in direct response to increased customer demand for the company's advanced CMP pads.

03/14/2001  March 14, 2001--Sunnyvale, California--Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. (SST), a leader in flash memory technology, is entering into a multifaceted technology licensing and deep submicron foundry agreement with Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd., a worldwide supplier of semiconductor products.

03/14/2001  March 14, 2001--Santa Ana, California--Microsemi Corp. has received a patent for its breakthrough Monolithic Microwave Surface Mount semiconductor packaging technology that eliminates costly ceramic and metal packages commonly used for components operating at frequencies up to 12 GHz in high-speed microwave applications.

03/12/2001  March 12, 2001--Santa Clara, California--IBM Corp. has joined the Extreme Ultra Violet (EUV) LLC industry consortium to support the development of EUV lithography technology. EUV lithography technology is being developed to allow semiconductor manufacturers to etch circuit lines smaller than 0.1-micron, creating future generations of more powerful microprocessors and higher density memory chips.

03/12/2001  March 12, 2001--Santa Clara, California--Alliance Semiconductor Corp. has reduced its revenue guidance for the fiscal fourth quarter ending March 31, 2001, and now expects that fourth quarter revenues will be approximately 45% to 50% below the $63.8 million reported during the fiscal third quarter ended December 31, 2000.

03/12/2001  March 12, 2001--Sunnyvale, California--Silicon Storage Technology, Inc. (SST) announced today that revenue, product gross margin,and earnings per share for the first quarter of 2001 will be significantly lower than previously expected, due to the deteriorating economy and inventory corrections that are continuing to constrain demand for technology products.

03/12/2001  March 12, 2001--Westlake Village, Callifornia--Diodes Inc. reports that net income for the first quarter of 2001 will be lower than previously expected, and that the company intends to reduce its worldwide workforce by 26%--primarily at the FabTech and Diodes-China manufacturing facilities.

03/12/2001  March 12, 2001--Hsinchu, Taiwan--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) recently announced that net sales for February 2001 totaled NT$11,614 million, representing an increase of approximately 28.8% over February 2000 sales and a decrease of 28.0% from January 2001 sales. The company's sales revenue for January and February 2001 totaled NT$27,771 million, representing an increase of 51.4% over the corresponding period of 2000.

03/12/2001  March 12, 2001--Tokyo, Japan--Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI), IBM Corp., and Toshiba Corp. today announced plans to collectively invest more than $400 million over the next 5 years to research and develop an advanced chip architecture for a new wave of devices in the emerging broadband era.

03/09/2001  March 9, 2001--Hsinchu, Taiwan--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) today announced plans to decommission its Fab 1 on the Chung Hsing Compound at Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute on March 31, 2002, following a phased decommissioning plan.

03/08/2001  March 8, 2001--Santa Clara, California--Intel Corp. today announced that its researchers have developed and delivered the first industry-standard format photomasks for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. This marks a significant milestone in the demonstration of EUV as the next generation lithography standard for the semiconductor industry.