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Silego Technology today announced shipping two billion units since its introduction of the pioneering Configurable Mixed-signal ICs (CMICs). In just two years since Silego Technology announced shipment of its billionth unit, Silego has more than doubled its total volume shipped.

Silego created not only the world’s first family of Configurable Mixed-signal ICs but also enabled a paradigm shift for designers. Reaching this significant milestone is validation of the Configurable Mixed-signal IC category and a demonstration of how eagerly customers have embraced this new approach to mixed-signal design for volume applications.

Silego’s CMICs use Non-Volatile Memory to configure each device and integrate analog, digital logic, and power functions, which allows design engineers to eliminate traditional standard linear, passive and discrete components from their system. CMICs enable original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, in high-volume applications to cost-effectively deliver their products to market faster and with greater design flexibility.

Since the introduction of the CMIC, Silego has developed five generations of CMIC silicon and design tools. Each generation has added functionality and enhanced the design experience. As a result, over 1300 designs incorporating CMICs by Silego customers have gone into production in almost every end market:

  • Handheld Devices
  • Wearable Electronics
  • Computing & Storage
  • Consumer Electronics
  • Smart Home
  • Networking & Communications
  • Medical & Industrial

Many of these customers have completed multiple designs as they have seen the many benefits of CMICs:

  • Integration of both analog and digital functions (unlike FPGAs)
  • Cost effective product differentiation
  • Smaller footprint by eliminating components and easing routing congestion
  • Lower power consumption
  • Fast time to market with easy-to-use GPAK development hardware and GPAK Designer software

The most recent generation, GPAK 5, has further expanded this industry leading platform with the addition of a new I2C block. The GPAK 5 I2C enables designers to read and change device configuration, such as analog comparator thresholds, on the fly.

John Teegen, Silego’s CEO, remarked, “Reaching the milestone of shipping two billion units is an exciting achievement made possible by the innovative Silego team and our enthusiastic customers. Reaching two billion units is just the beginning.”

“Silego’s strong customer relationships continue to help us grow and shape our CMIC product roadmaps to anticipate the needs of leading edge products,” said John McDonald, VP of Marketing. “Our customers’ success is our success, and our customers are doing very well with Configurable Mixed-signal ICs.”

“Silego’s ability to offer the combination of mixed signal functionality and programmable logic in small footprints and at low cost is a true game-changer in many designs,” said Rich Wawrzyniak, Principal Analyst for ASIC & SoC at Semico Research. “Silego is one of the best kept secrets in Silicon Valley. This is truly a very innovative solution to a very complex problem.”

Mike Noonen, Silego’s VP of WW Sales and Business Development added, “With the clever combination of analog, digital, Non-Volatile memory and software tools, Silego has created a new category of semiconductors and a better way to design, prototype and go to production.”

ON Semiconductor (Nasdaq: ON) announced today that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has accepted a proposed consent order for public comment and has terminated the Hart-Scott-Rodino waiting period applicable to ON Semiconductor’s proposed acquisition of Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. (Nasdaq: FCS).

Under the proposed consent order and in order to satisfy the FTC’s remaining concerns, prior to the closing of the acquisition of Fairchild, the FTC required that ON Semiconductor dispose of its planar insulated gate bipolar transistor business, which business generated less than $25 million in revenue during fiscal year 2015. In satisfaction of this requirement, ON Semiconductor announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement with respect to the divestiture of the Ignition IGBT business to Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ: LFUS) (“Littelfuse”) and has also entered into a separate definitive agreement with Littelfuse to sell its transient voltage suppression (“TVS”) diode and switching thyristor product lines, for a combined $104 million in cash. No manufacturing assets will be transferred by ON Semiconductor in connection with the divestiture of the Ignition IGBT business or the sale of the TVS and thyristor businesses, and both asset sales are expected to close on August 29, 2016.

The completion of ON Semiconductor’s previously announced tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of common stock of Fairchild for $20.00 per share in cash remains subject to certain customary terms and conditions set forth in the Offer to Purchase, dated December 4, 2015, as amended, and other related materials by which the Offer is being made.

The condition to the Offer relating to the termination or expiration of required waiting periods under the HSR Act has been satisfied. The proposed FTC consent order is subject to public comment for 30 days and to final approval by the FTC, although this will not affect the parties’ ability to close the transaction when all other conditions to closing have been satisfied.

Edwards Vacuum has been recognized as one of ten companies receiving a 2016 Supplier Excellence Award from Lam Research Corp. (NASDAQ: LRCX), a major global supplier of innovative wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry. The awards, presented annually, acknowledge their commitment to exceeding performance standards. Edwards Vacuum earned Lam’s Supplier Excellence Award for exemplary Capacity Readiness and Responsiveness

“We take great pride in receiving the Lam Research Supplier Excellence Award for 2016 and see it as great recognition of how a collaborative approach to business can bring success to both companies. We look forward to continuing our work with Lam Research well into the future,” said Scott Balaguer, Vice President – North America Semi-DSL BLM.

The Lam Research Supplier Excellence Awards were announced on August 22 at the company’s Supplier Day, during which Lam Research focuses on enhancing collaboration and renewing opportunities for mutual success with its customers and suppliers. Executives from suppliers around the world attended the event, and Edwards Vacuum was among the companies honored for its achievements.

“We applaud the contributions of Edwards Vacuum as one of Lam’s preferred suppliers, and appreciate the important role they play in delivering industry-leading products and services to our customers,” said Tim Archer, chief operating officer, Lam Research. “We are pleased to present Edwards Vacuum with a Lam Research Supplier Excellence Award for Capacity Readiness and Responsiveness and we look forward to continuing our success together.”

Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) today reported results for its third quarter ended July 31, 2016.

New orders were $3.66 billion, up 6 percent sequentially and up 26 percent year over year. Backlog of $4.95 billion was up 19 percent sequentially and up 60 percent year over year. Net sales of $2.82 billion were up 15 percent sequentially and up 13 percent year over year.

The company recorded gross margin of 42.3 percent, operating margin of 21.1 percent, and net income of $505 million or $0.46 per diluted share. On a non-GAAP adjusted basis, the company reported third quarter gross margin of 43.7 percent, operating margin of 22.8 percent, and net income of $550 million or $0.50 per diluted share.

The company generated $981 million in cash from operations, paid dividends of $108 million and used $196 million to repurchase 9 million shares of common stock at an average price of $21.88.

“With earnings and orders at an all-time high, Applied is performing better than ever and in a great position to sustainably outperform our markets,” said Gary Dickerson, president and CEO. “We are in the early stages of large, multi-year industry inflections that are driving our business today and creating new opportunities for future growth.”

In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016, Applied expects net sales to be up 15 percent to 19 percent sequentially. Non-GAAP adjusted diluted EPS is expected to be in the range of $0.61 to $0.69.

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) today announced that Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) has joined SRC’s Nanomanufacturing Materials and Processes (NMP) initiative.

TEL’s addition contributes to a 33 percent increase in core SRC membership over the last 18 months and is the second non-US headquartered company to join within the same period. It is further indication of how important pre-competitive research is to overcome the current obstacles that impede future semiconductor technology progress.

“SRC is pleased TEL has made the decision to invest research dollars into the NMP program,” said Ken Hansen, President & CEO, SRC. “TEL’s addition strengthens research throughout the entire semiconductor supply chain that has consistently provided SRC members end-to-end solutions to the challenges facing the industry.”

As one of twelve different research areas, the NMP initiative focuses on developing revolutionary and high-impact materials and processes to enable future generations of semiconductor manufacturing technologies, while training well-educated students for innovation-driven careers in integrated circuit manufacturing. Key NMP research topics include Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV), Directed Self-Assembly (DSA), Atomic Layer Deposition and Etch (ALD/ALE) processes, interconnect scaling and optimization, and new semiconductor device materials.

“TEL sees the value of collaborating as a member of the SRC NMP program to find solutions for important semiconductor technology issues,” said Gishi Chung, Corporate Director & SVP, TEL.

Cypress CEO and President Hassane El-Khoury

Cypress CEO and President Hassane El-Khoury

Cypress Semiconductor Corporation (NASDAQ:  CY) today announced that Hassane El-Khoury has been named its president, chief executive officer, and a member of its board of directors, and that Ray Bingham’s current role as chairman of the board has been expanded to executive chairman, providing him with a day-to-day role in support of the CEO focused externally on customers and investment opportunities.

“The goal of our comprehensive internal and external executive search was to identify a CEO who would drive the transformation of Cypress, expand our leadership position in embedded systems and enhance our focus on revenue and earnings growth and long-term shareholder value,” said Bingham, a 30-year veteran of the semiconductor industry who sits on numerous high-tech boards of directors in addition to Cypress. “Among the many interested and qualified candidates we interviewed, El-Khoury emerged as the clear executive leader to deliver on Cypress’s enormous potential and unlock its value for customers and investors. He has demonstrated strong leadership and judgment over the past nine years as a senior executive at Cypress, heading up some of the company’s most innovative and successful businesses. He is an agent of change who brings to this position an extensive knowledge of our target markets and a mindset focused on customer value and profitable growth.”

“Cypress is at an inflection point,” said El-Khoury, who played a key role in Cypress’s successful integration with Spansion over the last year and a half and its more recent acquisition of Broadcom’s Internet of Things (IoT) business. “We’ve architected our company to become more valuable to our embedded-systems customers, significantly expanding our portfolio of high-value solutions in growth markets such as automotive, industrial, consumer electronics and the IoT. I am thrilled and humbled to lead Cypress into the future as we expand upon our position as the supplier of choice for the world’s most innovative embedded-systems customers and partners.”

Before joining Cypress in 2007, El-Khoury served in various roles with Continental Automotive Systems in the U.S., Germany and Japan. Prior to Continental, he earned his bachelor’s of science degree in electrical engineering (BSEE) from Lawrence Technological University in Michigan and his master’s degree in engineering management from Michigan’s Oakland University.

Bingham served as the non-executive chairman of Cypress’s Board of Directors from its merger with Spansion in March 2015 to the present. He serves on the boards of high-tech companies including Oracle Corporation, he is the chairman of the board of Flex (formerly Flextronics), and he has served as the managing director of General Atlantic LLC, a technology-focused global private investment firm with offices in Silicon Valley. From 1993-2005, Bingham served in leadership positions with Cadence Design Systems, Inc., including president and chief executive officer and executive chairman. His executive experience provides Cypress with the critical perspective of someone familiar with all facets of an international enterprise.

Concurrent with these changes, as planned, former Cypress CEO T.J. Rodgers has resigned from Cypress and the Cypress board. “T.J. created a company with the resiliency to stand up to more than 34 years of change in the semiconductor industry, and one that is positioned for considerable future success,” El-Khoury said. “On behalf of all of our employees around the world, we would like to thank T.J. for his contributions and dedication to Cypress.”

In addition to the monthly Updates, IC Insights’ subscription to The McClean Report includes three “subscriber only” webcasts.  The first of these webcasts was presented on August 3, 2016 and discussed semiconductor industry capital spending trends, the worldwide economic outlook, the semiconductor industry forecast through 2020, as well as China’s failures and successes on its path to increasing its presence in the IC industry.

In total, IC Insights forecasts that semiconductor industry capital spending will increase by only 3% this year after declining by 2% in 2015.  However, driven by the top three spenders—Samsung, TSMC, and Intel—capital spending in 2016 is expected to be heavily skewed toward the second half of this year. Figure 1 shows that the combined 2016 outlays for the top three semiconductor industry spenders are forecast to be 90% higher in the second half of this year as compared to the first half.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Combined, the “Big 3” spenders are forecast to represent 45% of the total semiconductor industry outlays this year.  An overview of each company’s actual 1H16 spending and their 2H16 spending outlook is shown below.

Samsung — The company spent only about $3.4 billion in capital expenditures in 1H16, just 31% of its forecasted $11.0 billion full-year 2016 budget.

TSMC — Its outlays in the first half of 2016 were only $3.4 billion, leaving $6.6 billion to be spent in the second half of this year in order to reach its full-year $10.0 billion budget.  This would represent a 2H16/1H16 spending increase of 92%.

Intel — Spent just $3.6 billion in 1H16.  The company needs to spend $5.9 billion in the second half of this year to reach its current $9.5 billion spending budget, which would be a 2H16/1H16 increase of 61%.

In contrast to the “Big 3” spenders, capital outlays by the rest of the semiconductor suppliers are forecast to shrink by 16% in the second half of this year as compared to the first half.  In total, 2H16 semiconductor industry capital spending is expected to be up 20% over 1H16 outlays, setting up a busy period for the semiconductor equipment suppliers through the end of this year.

Further trends and analysis relating to semiconductor capital spending through 2020 are covered in the 250-plus-page Mid-Year Update to the 2016 edition of The McClean Report.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES announced that Wallace Pai has been appointed as vice president and general manager of China. Pai will be responsible for driving the company’s strategic direction in China as it expands its presence and customer base in the region.

Pai has more than two decades of experience in the semiconductor industry, with expertise in strategic planning, corporate development, marketing and ecosystem growth. Throughout his career as a senior executive at Motorola, Qualcomm, Samsung and Synaptics, he has shaped strategy and led numerous strategic initiatives and investments in China. He is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, and has extensive access to business networks throughout the Greater China region. Pai will be based primarily in Shanghai and will report to Mike Cadigan, senior vice president of global sales and business development.

“Greater China represents a multi-billion dollar market opportunity, with significant growth potential for GLOBALFOUNDRIES,” Cadigan said. “Wallace has the ideal background and expertise to help drive our strategy, working closely with our extensive sales and design resources in the region. As we build on this base with a planned manufacturing presence, we will be well positioned to serve customers in Greater China and beyond.”

Wallace joins GLOBALFOUNDRIES from Synaptics, where he was vice president and general manager for the touch and display business where he spent most of the time in Greater China, Korea and Japan. Prior to Synaptics, Pai served as vice president of corporate business development at Samsung, where he led strategic initiatives and investments for the mobile and semiconductor business. He came to Samsung from Motorola Mobility, where as corporate vice president he led corporate development and managed Motorola’s corporate venture fund, driving a number of strategic acquisitions and divestitures key to establishing the foundation and trajectory for the company. Before Motorola, Pai worked at Qualcomm in a number of leadership roles in global business development, product management and strategic planning.

Pai holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MSEE from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Early in his career, Wallace was a consultant for McKinsey & Company and a microprocessor design engineer at Intel.

Ultratech, Inc. (Nasdaq: UTEK), a supplier of lithography, laser­ processing and inspection systems used to manufacture semiconductor devices and high-brightness LEDs (HBLEDs), as well as atomic layer deposition (ALD) systems, today announced that it has received an ‘Outstanding Supplier Award’ from SJ Semiconductor Corp. Based in China, SJ Semiconductor is a pure play Middle-End-Of-Line (MEOL) semiconductor foundry house specializing in advanced wafer-level packaging. The award was presented to Ultratech by SJ Semiconductor CEO Cui Dong on July 27, at the company’s ‘Phase-I Mass Production, Outstanding Supplier Event’ at their facility in China. This award is further validation of Ultratech’s market leadership position in the advanced packaging lithography segment.

Rezwan Lateef, Ultratech’s General Manager and Vice President of Lithography Products, stated, “Ultratech has maintained its market leadership in the advanced packaging lithography segment by offering superior on-wafer results with industry leading cost-of-ownership and reliability in high-volume manufacturing environments. In recent years, Ultratech has expanded its presence in China, both in personnel and infrastructure, to support the burgeoning Chinese OSAT market. Ultratech believes that the SJ Semiconductor ‘Outstanding Supplier Award’ is a validation of our efforts in this region. We look forward to our continued partnership and to working closely with this valued customer to meet their future production and technology requirements.”

Ultratech is a supplier of lithography steppers for advanced packaging applications that include traditional copper pillar and wafer-level packaging (WLP), as well as the more advanced fan-out WLP and 3D ICs. The AP300 family of lithography systems is built on Ultratech’s customizable Unity Platform, delivering superior overlay, resolution and side wall profile performance while enabling cost-effective manufacturing. These systems are particularly well suited for copper pillar, fan-out, through-silicon via (TSV) and silicon interposer applications. In addition, the platform has numerous application-specific product features to enable next-generation packaging techniques, such as Ultratech’s award winning dual-side alignment (DSA) system, utilized around the world in volume production.

Silicon manufacturing appears to have diminished in its luster and seems to be on the verge of extinction in Silicon Valley. The buzz today in the high tech capital of the world seems to be driven primarily by software companies; the likes of Facebook, Google, Intuit, Oracle, and LinkedIn. The traditional silicon chips seem to have stepped aside to give way for Big Data, Data Security, Mobile Apps, and Cloud Storage. The Valley which was traditionally recognized largely for its dominance in Semiconductors still boasts the highest concentration of companies involved in the design and development of silicon Integrated Circuits (ICs). However, much of the silicon wafer fabrication facilities have moved offshore, primarily to the Asia Pacific region. This has led to a score of serious risks such as loss of IP (intellectual property), lack of control over the production process, and the danger of finding these components in the gray market.

There are literally just a hand full of companies that have found a way to continue both innovating as well as “manufacturing” silicon products in Silicon Valley.  OnChip Devices, Inc. is one such company that has successfully found a way to produce a wide range of silicon components in Santa Clara, CA. The company has announced that it is now offering wafer foundry services to fabless semiconductor companies.

OnChip’s wafer foundry offers Thin Film, CMOS, and BiPolar processes and has produced more than 250 different high-volume products under the OnChip brand as well as for other companies globally. With installed capacity of over 10,000 wafers per month and current utilization of less than 30%, this fab offers high quality wafers with competitive pricing and very short turnaround time. The fab produces 4”, 5”, and 6” wafers at 2µ to 5µ BiCMOS process technology focusing primarily on Analog products.

OnChip’s wafer manufacturing facility has been granted the ISO 9001:2008 certification and strives to continuously improve its quality as well as the cycle time. The processing time for raw wafers is typically 6 to 8 weeks. With a workforce led by a very successful and long-tenured management team, the facility conducts frequent on-site trained maintenance for increased equipment uptime. In addition to silicon wafer fabrication, OnChip also offers various other services such as testing, dicing, and IC packaging.

OnChip Devices is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and develops Integrated Passive Devices. With its own silicon fabrication facility and strong partnerships with full turn-keys assembly and test houses in Asia, OnChip is offering silicon and ceramic solutions for High-brightness LED, Computing, and Consumer Electronics.