The semiconductor industry grabs headlines as companies such as Intel announce the construction of multi-billion-dollar state-of-the-art research and manufacturing facilities. High performance servers, PCs and most of our electronic devices would not exist today if it weren’t for the continual advancements made in semiconductor manufacturing technology. While the most advanced chips supply the processing power [...]

MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) are perceived as being simple mechanical devices manufactured on 6-inch wafers or smaller, utilizing mature semiconductor fab technology.  Recently MEMS devices have experienced high growth rates as they revolutionized the smart phone screen orientation and game controllers for motion detection. Now the foundries and EDA/IP vendors are salivating over the [...]

On September 15th, 2010 Panasonic Corp. quietly announced they would begin shipping 32nm gate-first HKMG LSI parts for use in their consumer line of Blu-ray DiscTM players.  This announcement is notable for several reasons.  First, this is another endorsement for the gate-first HKMG team.  IBM and the Common Platform foundries are going with gate-first.  Intel [...]

Joanne Itow discusses how the secondary equipment market will thrive via the markets that don’t require 300mm fabs, including discretes, analog, sensors, etc. Included in the video are multiple charts, showing how these markets will grow. Semico has partnered with SEMI on a study that will be available in the 4th quarter.

Fifteen years ago fabless companies flourished because production became somewhat routine and foundries could provide more than adequate manufacturing capacity. Many IDMs also realized they no longer needed to invest in internally developed, proprietary technology. Marketing and product development was the way to gain market share. After reviewing the technology announcements and presentations from DAC [...]

As the semiconductor industry grows its way out of the 2008/2009 downturn, it’s inevitable that the debate over 450mm wafers will rear its head again. The major objection to 450mm wafers lies in the research and development cost, and the ability of all parties involved to benefit from the large investment.
The industry cannot stagnate at [...]

Semiconductor units are expected to increase by 24% in 2010, while wafer demand is only going to increase by 17%. Why is wafer demand growing at a slower rate?
One reason is that the industry is in a tight capacity situation. Manufacturers find ways to be more efficient when they have to. Certain product categories are [...]

On March 23rd, 2010, the Silicon-On-Insulator Consortium (SOIC) announced a new program geared towards creating an ecosystem for Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) around SOI wafers. The initial members of the IP ecosystem are IBM, ARM, Ltd., and Cadence Design Systems, Inc. additional members include Synopsys, Inc. and Boeing, Corp. The idea behind this announcement is [...]

On March 17th, 2010, SEMI released its 2009 semiconductor material market statistics.  While the headline pegged worldwide semiconductor material sales at $34.6 billion, that was reportedly a 19% decline in sales compared to 2008.
Although SEMI stated that was not as bad as the 26% decline suffered by material suppliers in the devastating 2001 down cycle, [...]

Micron continues its tradition of innovative business strategies by buying distressed assets and creating highly productive joint ventures.  For DRAM, the company is projecting 160% bit growth per wafer from Q4 2009 – Q4 2011.  NAND is forecasted to achieve 114% bit growth per wafer over the same time.
Their copper and leading edge process drives [...]