08/10/2005  The relationship will combine Xerox's expertise in design with DALSA's MEMS and high-voltage device manufacturing.

08/05/2005  W. Conshohocken, Pa. — In an upcoming workshop hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in October, technical issues with test methods and reference materials identified by ASTM Committee F40 on Declarable Substances in Materials will be one of the topics to be addressed. The workshop's goal is to assist U.S. manufacturers and their supply chains in meeting new environmental regulations that restrict hazardous substance use in electronics and consumer products.

08/05/2005  Shanghai, China — Advanced Packaging Magazine sister publications, SMT and SMT China, along with the China Electronics Appliance Corporation (CEAC), announce the Call for Papers for the 2005 SMT China International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Lead-free Challenges. Held annually, SMT and SMT China Magazines will focus on SMT, emerging technologies, and hot topics for modern assembly methods.

08/01/2005  As device manufacturing continues down the path of smaller geometries and increased densities laid out by Moore’s law, the importance of packaging technology to the overall performance of the device continues to grow in parallel.

08/01/2005  There are just so many tradeshows that you can attend each year, but if you have to choose just a few for back-end assembly, SEMICON West and IMAPS should be high on your list.

07/28/2005  Chandler, Ariz. — Amkor Technology reports Q2 2005 sales of $489 million, up 17% sequentially and down 1% from Q2 2004. Q2 net loss was $52 million ($0.30 per share). For Q2 2004, net income was $10 million ($0.06 per share) and included after-tax gains of $16.5 million ($0.09 per share) from an equity investment sale and a litigation settlement with a software provider.

07/25/2005  July 25, 2005 - IMEC has developed a 90nm low-cost RF-CMOS platform targeting applications in the 5-24GHz range, according to IMEC's July newsletter on this paper, which was presented at the 2005 VLSI Conference.

07/22/2005  July 22, 2005 - Semiconductor industry leaders gathered last week at the 2005 Electronic Product Miniaturization Symposium in San Francisco to share ideas and explore new technologies for designing next-generation electronic products. A number of innovative miniaturization and integration technologies, such as smart industrial design, semiconductor design tools, semiconductor packaging, and thermal analysis were explored.

07/19/2005  (July 19, 2005) Bernin, France — Soitec, a manufacturer of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers and other engineered substrates, announces record consolidated sales of 51.2 million Euros for Q1 2005-2006. Sales grew 26.1% over the previous quarter and 57.3% over the same period one year ago. Wafer demand was strong for all major diameters, particularly for 300 mm, which represented 54% of total wafer sales for the quarter.

07/13/2005  (July 13, 2005) Jerusalem, Israel — Wafer-level electronics miniaturization technologies provider Shellcase Ltd. has licensed use of its wafer-level chip-size packaging (WLCSP) platforms to Suzhou, China-based packaging services provider China WLCSP.

07/12/2005 

07/01/2005  Have you noticed how electronics experts are all searching for the next piece of news, the next new product that will blow away the competition, or that one bit of “secret stuff” that no one else knows about?

07/01/2005  Feature-rich cell phones, pocket PCs, digital cameras, and other handheld consumer products require maximum functional integration, including memory, DSP, ASIC, RF, MEMs, and other devices in the smallest footprint, lowest profile, and lowest cost package available.

06/21/2005  June 21, 2005 - The Semiconductor Equipment Consortium for Advanced Packaging (SECAP) has announced that it will disband now that the consortium has successfully established 300mm wafer-level packaging as a functional technology, and full-volume production on the first installed wafer-bumping line is underway.

06/17/2005  (June 17, 2005) Milpitas, Calif. — Contract IC assembly services provider CORWIL Technology Corp. has added 300-mm wafer dicing capability to its offering. Both bumped and non-bumped wafers are being processed in CORWIL's fully automatic, dual-spindle Disco system, complementing CORWIL's existing high-volume wafer dicing, pick-and-place, and die inspection services, wire bond and flip chip IC assembly services, and wafer thinning and polishing services.

06/06/2005  (June 06, 2005) Hong Kong and Pleasanton, Calif. — ASAT Holdings Limited and LSI Logic Corp. have entered into a multi-year cross-licensing agreement, under which LSI Logic will provide ASAT with a license to use its flip chip semiconductor package assembly technology. LSI Logic also will certify ASAT's assembly process using copper/low-k technology.

06/03/2005  (June 03, 2005) Chandler, Ariz. — Amkor Technology Inc. has moved its corporate headquarters, originally based in West Chester, Pa., to its Chandler, Ariz. facility. Having established the Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) industry in 1968, Amkor first became present in the greater Phoenix area in 1984, and since that time, Amkor has focused its corporate executive staff, product management, engineering support, and business development teams at its Chandler location.

05/26/2005  (May 26, 2005) Jersey City, N.J. — Cookson Electronics has recently opened its advanced Technical Service Center and warehouse facility in Shanghai, China, which will be the basis for Cookson's customers in China, providing hands-on, local-language technical support to PCB fabricators and assemblers and semiconductor packaging assemblers in Northern and Eastern China. It is located in the Zhong Dian Lu Ke Industrial Park in Pudong.

05/18/2005  (May 18, 2005) San Jose, Calif. — Rising flat-panel display (FPD) production is boosting capacity expansion for gold-bump lithography processing used in advanced packaging in Asia, according to Ultratech Inc., having received multiple-system orders from several customers in Taiwan and China for advanced packaging lithography systems.

05/10/2005  (May 10, 2005) South Portland, Maine — Fairchild Semiconductor announces that it is expanding its Furstenfeldbruck, Germany-based Global Power Resource power design and application lab to provide complete system power solutions for motion and motor control, where the company will invest in new equipment, as well as motion and motor control engineers.