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Brewer Science, Inc., and Nissan Chemical Industries, Ltd., announced they have formally extended their business relationship through 2028. For nearly 20 years, Brewer Science has licensed its ARC technology to Nissan Chemical, and the agreement was soon to expire.

This new agreement focuses on continuing access to an expanded portfolio of the most advanced ARC and OptiStack materials, and allows access to a dual supply of products from Brewer Science and Nissan Chemical under a new joint label to customers in Asia. Both companies are committed to guaranteeing business and industry continuity by providing an uninterrupted leading-edge product supply for customers in Asia into the future.

“Our customers in Asia will notice a new logo on the products they receive through Nissan Chemical,” said Dr. Terry Brewer, founder and CEO of Brewer Science. “The logo symbolizes the continuing commitment made by Brewer Science and Nissan Chemical to support customers with world-class products and service. We are focused on discovering unique and creative solutions that enable our customers to meet tomorrow’s industry challenges.”

“Brewer Science and Nissan Chemical have been business partners for nearly two decades, and this new agreement will bring us even further. Such an agreement doesn’t happen very often,” said Kojiro Kinoshita, CEO of Nissan Chemical. “We have a shared vision with Brewer Science, and our customers in Asia will continuously receive the best solution with enhanced products and sharpened services from this partnership, which is always our goal.”

The formal relationship between Brewer Science and Nissan Chemical began in 1997 and will continue to build on their commitment of collaboration in providing the global marketplace with an expanding supply of original technology products of superior performance and quality.

Communication and computer systems are forecast to account for the greatest percentage of IC sales in every geographic region—Americas, Europe, Japan, and Asia-Pacific—this year, according to data released in the 2015 edition of IC Insights’ IC Market Drivers, A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits. Communications applications are expected to capture just over 41 percent of IC sales in Asia-Pacific and 39 percent of the revenue in the Americas region this year.  Computer applications are forecast to be the largest end-use market in Japan and Europe, accounting for nearly one-third of ICs sales in both regions in 2015 (Figure 1).

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Consumer systems are forecast to be the third-largest end-use category for ICs in the Americas, Japan, and Asia-Pacific regions in 2015. In Europe, automotive applications are expected to remain the third largest end-use category for ICs this year.

Collectively, communications, computers, and consumer systems are projected to account for 85.7 percent of IC sales in the Americas this year compared to 77.9 percent in Japan and 90.8 percent in Asia-Pacific. Communications, computer, and automotive applications are forecast to represent 82.3 percent of IC sales in Europe in 2015.

For more than three decades, computer applications were the largest market for IC sales but that changed in 2013 when the global communications IC market took over the top spot due to steady strong growth in smartphones and weakening demand for personal computers. Globally, communications systems are forecast to represent 38.1 percent of the $310.5 billion IC market this year compared to 35.2 percent for computers, and 12.2 percent for consumer (Figure 2). IC sales to the automotive market are forecast to represent only about 8 percent of the total IC sales this year but from 2013-2018, this segment is projected to rise by a compound average growth rate (CAGR) of 10.8%, highest among all the end-use applications.

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

IC Market Drivers 2015—A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits examines the largest, existing system opportunities for ICs and evaluates the potential for new applications that are expected to help fuel the market for ICs.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.37 billion in orders worldwide in March 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10, according to the March EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.   A book-to-bill of 1.10 means that $110 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

The three-month average of worldwide bookings in March 2015 was $1.37 billion. The bookings figure is 4.6 percent higher than the final February 2015 level of $1.31 billion, and is 5.9 percent higher than the March 2014 order level of $1.30 billion.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in March 2015 was $1.25 billion. The billings figure is 2.4 percent lower than the final February 2015 level of $1.28 billion, and is 1.9 percent higher than the March 2014 billings level of $1.23 billion.

““Three-month average bookings reported by North American-based semiconductor manufacturing equipment providers reflected sequential and year-over-year momentum in the first quarter of 2015,”” said SEMI president and CEO Denny McGuirk. “This marks the third consecutive month that bookings exceeded billing and the ratio remained above parity.””

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

Billings
(3-mo. avg)

Bookings
(3-mo. avg)

Book-to-Bill
October 2014 

$1,184.2

$1,102.3

0.93
November 2014 

$1,189.4

$1,216.8

1.02
December 2014 

$1,395.9

$1,381.5

0.99
January 2015 

$1,279.1

$1,325.6

1.04
February 2015 (final)

$1,280.1

$1,313.7

1.03
March 2015 (prelim)

$1,249.1

$1,374.4

1.10

Source: SEMI, April 2015

Orbotech LTD. today announced that SPTS Technologies, an Orbotech company and supplier of advanced wafer processing solutions for the global semiconductor and related industries, was presented with a Supplier Excellence Award in the ‘Special Achievement’ category at the Analog Devices annual award ceremony held in Hong Kong.

The ADI Supplier Excellence Award goes to suppliers that play a key role in ADI’s successes and collaborate with it on development and improvement of products and manufacturing processes. Winners were required to demonstrate exceptional commitment to excellence in manufacturing, leadership in maintaining quality standards and reliability specifications and on-time delivery of goods and services.

“Our strategic suppliers are vital to ADI’s mission to deliver high-performance analog, mixed-signal, and digital signal processing integrated circuits used in virtually all types of electronic equipment,” said Vince Simonelli, Director of Global Purchasing, Analog Devices.  “SPTS was selected for the Special Achievement Award because it consistently demonstrated innovation, responsiveness and exceptional commitment to bringing our new chemical vapor deposition process capability online as specified and on time.”

Kevin Crofton, President of SPTS Technologies and Corporate VP at Orbotech, commented, “We are proud to be recognized as a strategic supplier and partner to ADI, and honored to receive this Special Achievement Award, which underscores the technical excellence of our solutions and the outstanding performance of our support teams across the entire organization.”

Synopsys, Inc. today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Codenomicon. The additional talent, technology and products will expand Synopsys’ presence in the software security market segment and extend the Coverity quality and security platform to help software developers throughout various organizations quickly find and fix security vulnerabilities and protect applications from security attacks.

Based in Finland, Codenomicon Oy is well-known and highly respected in the global software security world with a focus on software embedded in chips and devices. Its customer base includes some of the world’s leading organizations in telecommunications, finance, manufacturing, software development, healthcare, automotive and government agencies. A team of security engineers at Codenomicon independently discovered the infamous Heartbleed bug while improving a feature in their security testing tools and reported it to the National Cyber Security Centre in Finland (NCSC-FI). A Codenomicon engineer is credited with naming the bug.

“Businesses are increasingly concerned about the security of their applications and protecting customer data. Adding the Internet of Things to the mix increases the complexity of security even further. During the past 15 months, the world was hit by major security breaches such as Heartbleed, Shellshock, etc.,” said Chi-Foon Chan, president and co-CEO of Synopsys. “By combining the Coverity platform with the Codenomicon product suite, Synopsys will expand its reach to provide a more robust software security solution with a full set of tools to help ensure the integrity, privacy and safety of an organization’s most critical software applications.”

Codenomicon’s solutions will help Synopsys deliver a more comprehensive security offering for the software development lifecycle by adding its Defensics tool for file and protocol fuzz testing, and its AppCheck tool for software composition analysis and vulnerability assessment.

The Codenomicon Defensics tool used to discover the Heartbleed bug automatically tests the target system for unknown vulnerabilities, helping developers find and fix them before a product goes to market. It is a systematic solution to make systems more robust, harden them against cyber-attacks and mitigate the risk of 0-day vulnerabilities. The Defensics tool also helps expose failed cryptographic checks, privacy leaks or authentication bypass weaknesses. The Defensics tool is heavily used by buyers of Internet-enabled products to validate and verify that procured products meet their stringent security and robustness requirements.

The Codenomicon AppCheck tool adds software composition analysis (SCA) capabilities to the Coverity platform, helping customers reduce risks in third-party and open source components. When using the AppCheck tool, customers are able to obtain a software bill of materials (BOM) for their application portfolios, and identify components with known vulnerabilities.

“Since our inception, Codenomicon has focused on making the world a safer place by giving organizations the visibility and real-time intelligence necessary to effectively protect their software assets against security vulnerabilities,” said Rauli Kaksonen, co-founder of Codenomicon. “By adding our pioneering solutions to Synopsys’ Coverity platform, we can extend these benefits to a broader audience and help reduce risk across a range of industries and applications.”

The terms of the deal, which is not material to Synopsys financials, have not been disclosed. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close within 30 days.

SiVance, LLC, a subsidiary of Milliken & Company, today announced the opening of a new, 11,000 sq.ft. research and development (R&D) laboratory, on the company’s R&D and manufacturing campus in Gainesville, Fla., that will enhance its ability to quickly develop and scale new silane and silicone technologies. The new facility is part of a planned series of investments enabling SiVance to better address current and future customer needs in target markets such as electronic semiconductors, contact lenses, coatings and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The lab will also speed process development for custom manufacturing of speciality silanes, silicones and other chemistries.

“This…facility is a major milestone in our continuous investment strategy for the business, which was initiated following Milliken’s acquisition of SiVance in 2011,” said Saikat Joardar, vice president, SiVance, LLC. “The new lab was designed from the ground up to support customer needs. It enables us to accelerate product and process development and scale up to manufacturing, strengthen collaboration with customers and take advantage of new market opportunities for chemistries that fit our expertise and capabilities.”

The new building is outfitted with sophisticated equipment for research, process development and testing. Installations include eight benchtop hoods for small-scale research development and eight large walk-in fume hoods that enable large-scale development activities and the manufacturing of materials for sampling. A dedicated instrument lab houses an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) that allows laboratory staff to detect minute levels of trace elements, a capability that supports the high purity demands of semiconductor manufacturing. The facility is further equipped with video conferencing systems that simplify remote collaboration with customers and researchers at other Milliken sites. Customers are also encouraged to make onsite visits to observe running processes and conduct quality audits.

The Gainesville site has experienced steady capacity and infrastructure expansion since SiVance was acquired by Milliken to accommodate current and future growth. The new R&D lab will further propel growth in standard and custom products, while offering customers improved capabilities for developing innovative new solutions.

SiVance, LLC develops silicone chemistry, focusing on the development and manufacture of specialty silicone technologies and intermediates required to modify basic silicone polymers.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today applauded the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 (TPA-2015), legislation introduced today by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). The SIA board of directors, led by Intel CEO and SIA chairman Brian Krzanich, sent a letter today to congressional leaders expressing support for the legislation and urging its swift passage. Additionally, SIA president and CEO John Neuffer released the following statement in support of the bill:

“SIA strongly supports Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and applauds the introduction of this bipartisan legislation. TPA paves the way for free trade by empowering U.S. negotiators to reach final trade agreements consistent with negotiating objectives laid out by Congress. Free trade is especially critical to the U.S. semiconductor industry, which designs and manufactures the chips that enable virtually all electronics. Our industry relies on a global ecosystem of materials and equipment suppliers, technology providers, services, R&D, and customers, so we depend on open access to international markets.

“In 2014, U.S. semiconductor company sales totaled $173 billion, representing over half the global market, and 82 percent of those sales were to customers outside the United States. The U.S. semiconductor industry employs nearly 250,000 people in high-skilled, high-wage jobs in America, and supports over one million additional U.S. jobs. Since most of the U.S. semiconductor industry’s customers are abroad, free trade is critical to creating and supporting these U.S. jobs.

“The United States is currently pursuing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), two important trade agreements that would result in billions of dollars in global trade of semiconductor products. Without TPA, these agreements may never see the light of day.

“TPA makes sense for America and for the future prosperity of Americans. We commend Chairman Ryan, Chairman Hatch and Ranking Member Wyden for introducing this pro-growth legislation and urge lawmakers to act swiftly to approve it.”

GaN Systems Inc., a developer of gallium nitride power switching semiconductors, today announced it has signed an agreement with Japanese semiconductor and electronic component distributor, Value Integrated Technology (Vitec). Vitec will distribute GaN Systems’ Island Technology high-power GaN devices to its customer base in Japan, Taiwan, and China, including many well-known consumer brand and enterprise equipment manufacturers.

Announcing the deal, Jim Witham, CEO, GaN Systems said: “We are delighted to have signed Vitec as a distributor in Japan. Vitec has a strong presence in the consumer and enterprise segments and has links with major brand name manufacturers. Demand for our GaN power switching transistors is growing very rapidly as manufacturers seek to design smaller, lighter and more power-efficient products in order to gain competitive edge. Multiple consumer and enterprise products designed with our GaN devices will be launched starting in 2015, and we’re excited that Vitec and GaN Systems will expand this reach substantially.”

Osamu Komaki, VP of Marketing for Vitec, comments: “We are fully committed to our partnership with GaN Systems and we are very excited about the growth of GaN E-HEMT power switch designs in consumer and enterprise applications. Additionally, Vitec is expanding into industrial and automotive markets and GaN Systems has a very strong portfolio of higher-current GaN power switches for high-power applications in these sectors. GaN Systems’ product portfolio also complements Vitec’s existing businesses in solar inverter and infrastructure power. Together, we will have very strong business growth for next-generation high-efficiency power designs.”

Charles Bailley, GaN Systems’ Senior Director, Marketing and Sales, Asia adds: “Vitec is a high-quality distributor and we are excited about this partnership. Vitec’s core businesses and customers complement our existing network in Asia and Vitec also has excellent potential to expand across multiple market sectorss. Vitec conducts business with great professionalism and has strong technical and FAE capabilities. GaN Systems has many existing design wins with our GaN E-HEMTs, and we are looking forward to accelerating this growth further with Vitec.”

GaN Systems is the first company to have developed and productised a comprehensive portfolio of GaN E-HEMT power devices with current ratings from 7A to 220A, in both 650V and 100V ranges. GaN Systems’ Island Technology die design, combined with the extremely low inductance and thermal efficiency of GaNPX packaging and Drive Assist technology, provides its GaN E-HEMTs with 40x improvement in switching and conduction performance over silicon MOSFETs and IGBTs.

Vitec Co. Ltd. is headquartered in Tokyo (www.vitec.co.jp) with major offices throughout Japan (Iwaki, Osaki, Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka), in addition to sales and FAE staff in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Taipei, and Singapore. Additionally, Vitec has a strategically-located logistics centre in Hong Kong.

SEMI reports that the worldwide semiconductor photomask market was $3.2 billion in 2014 and is forecasted to reach $3.4 billion in 2016. After increasing 1 percent in 2013, the photomask market increased 3 percent in 2014. The mask market is expected to grow 4 and 3 percent in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Key drivers in this market continue to be advanced technology feature sizes (less than 45 nm) and increased manufacturing in Asia-Pacific. Taiwan remains the largest photomask regional market for the fifth year in a row and is expected to be the largest market for the duration of the forecast.

Revenues of $3.2 billion place photomasks at 13 percent of the total wafer fabrication materials market, behind silicon and semiconductor gases. By comparison, photomasks represented 18 percent of the total wafer fabrication materials market in 2003. Another trend highlighted in the report is the increasing importance of captive mask shops. Captive mask shops, aided by intense capital expenditures in 2011 and 2012 and a weakening Yen in 2013 and 2014, gained market share at merchant suppliers’ expense, with captive mask suppliers accounting for 53 percent of the total photomask market last year, up from 49 percent in 2013. Captive mask shops represented 31 percent of the photomask market in 2003.

A recent published SEMI report, “2014 Photomask Characterization Summary,” provides details on the 2014 Photomask Market for seven regions of world including North America, Japan, Europe, Taiwan, Korea, China, and Rest of World. The report also includes data for each of these regions from 2003 to 2016 and summarizes lithography developments over the past year.

By Lara Chamness, senior market analyst manager, SEMI

Semiconductor Market Trends

2014 was the second record breaking year in a row in terms of semiconductor device revenues; the industry grew a robust 10 percent to total $336 billion, according to the WSTS. The strong momentum of the device market was enough to drive positive growth for both the equipment and materials markets. After two successive years of revenue decline, both the equipment and materials markets grew 18 percent and 3 percent, respectively last year, according to SEMI (www.semi.org). Even though the semiconductor materials market did not enjoy the same magnitude of recovery as the equipment market last year, the materials market has been larger than the equipment for the past seven years.

Just like last year, the weakened Yen negatively impacted total revenues for semiconductor materials and equipment (refer to Dan Tracy’s March 2014 article for more detail). The Table (below) shows the impact of the weakened Yen on Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan’s (SEAJ) book-to-bill data. SEMI reveals that if the data was kept in Yen, the 2014 market for Japan-based suppliers would be up 37 percent. However, when the Yen are converted to dollars the 2014 equipment market for Japan-based suppliers only increased 26 percent. When silicon semiconductor shipment volumes are compared year-over-year, shipments were up 11 percent. By comparison, silicon revenues only increased one percent. SEMI also tracks leadframe unit shipments. In 2014, leadframe shipments were up 9 percent year-over-year; however, leadframe revenues increased only 4 percent. Silicon and leadframe revenues were adversely impacted by intense price down pressure exasperated by the weakened Yen. Given that Japan-headquartered suppliers represent a significant portion of the equipment and materials markets; this has the effect of muting the growth of the global equipment and materials markets as well.

Semiconductor Equipment

Worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totaled $37.5 billion in 2014, representing a year-over-year increase of 18 percent and placing spending on par with 2004 levels. According to SEMI, looking at equipment sales by major equipment category, 2014 saw expansions in all major categories — Wafer Processing equipment increased 15 percent, while the Assembly and Packaging and Test equipment segments grew 32 and 31 percent, respectively. The Other Front-end segment (Other Front End includes Wafer Manufacturing, Mask/Reticle, and Fab Facilities equipment) increased 15 percent.

Taiwan retained its number one ranking last year at $8.2 billion, even though it was the only region to experience a year-over-year contraction in spending. The equipment market in North America maintained second place at $8.2 billion for the second year as its market grew a robust 55 percent due to investments in excess of a billion dollars each from Intel, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and Samsung.  Spending levels of $6.8 billion in South Korea remain significantly below their market high set in 2012 resulting in South Korea maintaining the third spot for the second year in a row. China moved up in the rankings to hit a market high and displacing Japan to claim the fourth position in the market. Strong investments by Samsung, SK Hynix, SMIC, and back-end companies are driving the equipment market in China. Equipment sales to Europe and Rest of world increased 24 and 4 percent, respectively in 2014. Rest of World region aggregates Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, other areas of Southeast Asia and smaller global markets.

Semiconductor Materials
SEMI reports that the global semiconductor materials market, which includes both fab and packaging materials, increased 3 percent in 2014 totaling $44.3 billion. Looking at the materials market by wafer fab and packaging materials, the wafer fab materials segment increased 6 percent, while the packaging materials segment was flat.  However if bonding wire were excluded from the packaging materials segment, the segment increased more than 4 percent last year. The continuing transition to copper-based bonding wire from gold is negatively impacting overall packaging materials revenues.

Taiwan maintained the top spot for the fifth year in a row, followed by Japan, South Korea, Rest of World, and China. Driving the materials market in Taiwan are advanced packaging operations and foundries. Japan still claims a significant installed fab base and has a tradition in domestic-based packaging, although many companies in Japan have rapidly adopted a fab lite strategy and have consolidated their fab and packaging plants. South Korea passed Rest of World (primarily SE Asia) as the third largest market for semiconductor materials given the dramatic increase in advanced fab capacity in the region in recent years.

Outlook

Most analysts predict mid- to high single-digit growth for the semiconductor device market for 2015. Initial monthly data for silicon shipments and semiconductor equipment are proving to be encouraging. In light of growth expectations for the device market, SEMI projects that the semiconductor materials market will increase 4 percent this year. Given current CapEx announcements, the outlook for semiconductor equipment is optimistic as well, with current projections of the equipment market showing another year of growth, which would place the equipment market on par with the last market high set in 2011.

2014 was a much welcomed year for equipment and materials suppliers as device manufacturers easily exceeded revenues of $300 billion. Even with the weakened Yen, both the semiconductor and equipment segments experienced growth. 2015 is promising to be another growth year for the entire market with device, materials and equipment suppliers poised to experience increases for the year.

Portions of this article were derived from the SEMI Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS), the Material Market Data Subscription (MMDS) and the World Fab Watch database. These reports are essential business tools for any company keeping track of the semiconductor equipment and material market. Additional information regarding this report and other market research reports is available at www.semi.org/marketinfo