12/05/2000  Livermore, California--FormFactor, Inc., a provider of complete wafer-level semiconductor test and packaging solutions, recently licensed its wafer-level packaging and test processes to Germany's Infineon Technologies AG.

12/05/2000  Hitachinaka City, Japan--Trecenti Technologies, Inc., a joint-venture foundry established by Hitachi and UMC, has produced its first ICs using 300mm wafers. The 4M and 8M static random access memory (SRAM) chips were fabricated using 0.18-micron technology and demonstrated reasonable first-silicon yields, reports the company.

11/29/2000  Irvine, California--Broadcom Corp., a provider of ICs enabling high-speed broadband communications, today introduced its Blutonium family of Bluetooth radio and baseband chips. Designed in digital complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS), the company believes that the new product line provides a clear integration path to a single-chip Bluetooth solution incorporating both RF and baseband sections.

11/29/2000  East Fishkill, New York--IBM, Infineon, and UMC recently announced that they have begun building chips with the most advanced 0.13-micron foundry process technology currently available.

11/29/2000  San Jose, California--Ultratech Stepper, Inc., a supplier of photolithography systems used to manufacture semiconductors, micromachined devices and thin film heads (TFH) for disk drives, today announced the introduction of the Prisma-ghi, a low-cost research and development (R&D) and pre-production flip-chip (bump) stepper.

11/28/2000  Santa Clara, California--Siliconix Inc., an 80.4%-owned subsidiary of Vishay Intertechnology Inc., has unveiled a proprietary chip-scale power MOSFET packaging technology that will greatly reduce the size of the devices required to manage and convert power in cell phones and handheld internet appliances.

11/28/2000  Tokyo, Japan--Elpida Memory, Inc. is planning to construct a 300mm wafer fab, its first, on the grounds of NEC Hiroshima, Ltd. Construction will begin in January 2001, with volume production of 256 Mb dynamic random access memory (DRAM) devices in a 0.13-micron process expected to begin during the first half of 2002.

11/28/2000  Phoenix, Arizona--Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector has completed qualification of its true enhancement-mode heterostructure field effect transistor wafer process.

11/28/2000  Santa Clara, California--Applied Materials, Inc. is expanding its ion implant operations with the addition of laboratories and manufacturing sites to enhance the company's capability to provide advanced implant systems and technologies for building next-generation, high-speed transistors in sub-0.13 micron devices.

11/27/2000  Santa Clara, California--Sequence Design Inc. is collaborating with the Semiconductor Technology Academic Research Center of Japan (STARC) to produce highly accurate interconnect models for a standardized 130-nanometer (0.13-micron) silicon process.

11/22/2000  Nov. 22, 2000--Applied Materials, Santa Clara, CA, said sales in its fourth quarter, ending October 29, hit an all-time record $2.92 billion, with orders rising 10% to $3.60 billion.

11/21/2000  Fremont, California--Nov. 21, 2000--Pentagon Technologies, Inc. is opening a fifth semiconductor parts cleaning and reconditioning facility in Portland, Oregon to meet the demands of advanced wafer fabrication equipment requirements--focusing on cleaning and reconditioning parts and assemblies used for 200mm and 300mm wafers, sub-180nm fabrication techniques, and copper interconnect processing.

11/20/2000  Homebush, Australia--Nov. 20, 2000--Peregrine Semiconductor Corp., a developer of integrated circuits (ICs) for the optical and wireless communications markets, is developing the first wafer fabrication capability for 0.25-micron ICs in its Homebush, Australia fab.

11/17/2000  Austin, Texas--Nov. 17, 2000--To encourage research into environmental, health, and safety issues within the semiconductor industry, a $5,000 award is being offered to university researchers worldwide jointly by the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC), Semiconductor Safety Association (SSA) and International SEMATECH.

11/16/2000  Hsinchu, Taiwan--Nov. 16, 2000--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has begun processing 300mm wafers on its Fab 6 pilot line.

11/15/2000  Hsinchu, Taiwan--Nov. 15, 2000--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has developed what is believed to be the industry's first comprehensive 0.13-micron, mixed-signal/radio frequency (RF) test chip. The new chip is expected to help TSMC create characterization reports and other elements of the 0.13-micron, mixed-signal/RF design kit.

11/14/2000  San Diego, California--Nov. 14, 2000--JMAR Technologies, Inc. recently reported that a series of technological advances in its Picosecond X-ray Light Source (PXS) program now qualify the company's semiconductor lithography product as the enabling technology for a faster, most cost-effective alternative to the direct-write, electron beam sources currently used to produce advanced, sub 0.13-micron gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductor ICs.

11/13/2000  Princeton Junction, New Jersey--Nov. 13, 2000--Discovery Semiconductors, Inc., has been awarded U.S. Patent No. 6,137,171, entitled 'Lightweight miniaturized integrated micro-satellite employing advanced semiconductor processing and packaging technology.'

11/13/2000  San Jose, California--Nov. 10, 2000--Xilinx, Inc., a supplier of programmable logic solutions, has completed the acquisition of RocketChips, a privately held, fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Minnesota, with design centers in Texas and Iowa.

11/09/2000  Gaithersburg, Maryland--Nov. 9, 2000--The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Advanced Technology Program (ATP) has awarded $13.7 million in funding for a project to develop advanced wafer inspection technology for next-generation lithography (NGL) applications at the 50-nm and 70-nm nodes.