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Editor's Blog
The blog is written by Semiconductor Fabtech's Editor-in-Chief, Mark Osborne. He has been covering the semiconductor and related industries for over ten years. Mark has been blogging tech since 2005.Reducing the cost and impact of innovation
02 July 2009
Dr. Dirk Ortloff, is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Process Relations GmbH. Here he discusses the advantages of investing in new technologies and methodologies during the economic downturn as a guest columnist.
Read more >>Where’s the fab capacity needed in 2010?
22 June 2009
As a direct follower of the move to 300mm fabs, the lack of new build in 2008 and that expected in 2009 looks set to cause a serious capacity constraint over the next two years as the industry recovers from one of the worst downturns in its history. In his May, 2009 monthly report, Malcolm Penn at Future Horizons believes the capacity shortage at 300mm fabs will impact the industry as soon as 2010. He claims that only 40,000 200mm wafer starts/week equivalent, minus any capacity closures, will come on stream next year, based on the incredibly low capital spending levels.
Read more >>Goodbye Moore’s Law, hello Len’s Law
18 June 2009
Much chatter and condemnation has gone Len Jelinek’s way since declaring the end of scaling for the majority of the industry when we reach the 18nm node in 2014. This is due to economics, not technical barriers - something that gets the 'Moore’s Law forever' folks all hot under the collar.
Read more >>When demotion is a promotion
15 June 2009
Last week's news that TSMC would enter the Solar and LED markets and not as a foundry supplier, coincided with Morris Chang taking back the reins of daily management of the company and Rick Tsai moving to run the new business venture. This was taken as a demotion for Tsai and a form of retribution for his actions to cut TSMC’s workforce as the foundry struggled with record low utilization rates. Apparently, there had been worker protests over the redundancies, which had impacted TSMC’s reputation.
Read more >>
ASM’s Levitor RTP technology rises from the ashes
10 June 2009
One of the white elephants of modern semiconductor equipment design would have to be ASM’s Levitor RTP technology. After years of development and no customers, (one I can recall, though that could have been an eval-only deal), ASM pulled the plug on the development of the tool last year as it struggled to restructure its front-end fab equipment operations. ASM had hoped to off-load the unique but unwanted technology but that had proved too difficult, especially since the collapse in capital equipment sales and lack of access to capital.
Read more >>Chip Shots
The Chip Shots blog channels the observations of Fabtech's and PV-Tech/Photovoltaic International's Senior Contributing Editor--USA, Tom Cheyney, a 20-year veteran of semiconductor, advanced micro/nanoelectronics, and solar manufacturing trade journalism. For 15 years, Tom was editor in chief of MICRO (the original home of Chip Shots) until it ceased publication in July 2006. Tom calls Los Angeles home. View MICRO Magazine archive.A few words from Lehman on why DRAM, solar industries don’t compare, but polysilicon does
10 September 2008
The news has been grim
for Lehman Brothers today, but one part of the giant investment bank
that's doing yeoman work is its solar energy equity research group, led
by analyst Vishal Shah. His daily email newsletter and periodic reports
are some of the most informative and cogent in the space.
Read more >>SMIC plows ahead with process migration plans, but will chip foundry ever make money?
09 September 2008
Since its inception, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., better known as SMIC,
has pursued an aggressive plan to join the elite chip foundry
companies. During the Chinese firm's chase of the big two--TSMC and
UMC--it passed Chartered to ascend to the number-three slot a couple of
years ago, although it has been nip and tuck with the Singaporean
concern since then, alternating between third and fourth place. But the
one cornerstone of SMIC's gameplan where it has failed miserably is one
of the most basic to any business model--profitability.
Read more >>
National Semiconductor execs are all smiles when it comes to SolarMagic
08 September 2008
National Semiconductor may have seen net income slip a bit in its latest quarterly results,
but Brian Halla and his team have shown no erosion in their excitement
over the company's initial product foray into the photovoltaics market
space, launched in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008: SolarMagic.
Read more >>Oberai discusses Magma’s move into solar PV yield management space
29 August 2008
The semiconductor industry has long had its eye on improving yields
in the fabs, developing an ever-more sophisticated array of software
and hardware tools to detect defects and faults, monitor and analyze
process and design variations, zero in on the root causes, and crunch
the giga-reams of resultant data to try and make sense of the
perturbations of the production flows. As the solar photovoltaics
manufacturing industry ramps up and seeks ways to improve its own best
practices on the factory floor while reducing costs, the need for a
comprehensive, PV-specific yield enhancement strategy has become more
acute. One company familiar to the design and yield communities in the chipmaking realm, Magma Design Automation,
announced earlier this week that it is developing a new solar-specific
software system based on its proven YieldManager platform.
Read more >>
Solar start-up Suniva sees plenty of efficiency, cost innovations left in crystalline silicon PV
21 August 2008
Spun out of the Georgia Institute of Technology's Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics (UCEP) last year, Suniva
has emerged as one of the most intriguing start-ups in the solar PV
space. Over the past six months, the Atlanta-based company has raised
$50 million in Series B funds; started to build, outfit, and ramp its
first solar-cell production line; and struck big-ticket, nine-figure,
multiyear deals with its supply chain (REC for wafers) and customer
base (Solon for modules). Suniva's goal is not to bring yet another "disruptive" thin-film or
concentrator PV technology to market, but to harness the
high-efficiency, low-cost potential of solar's workhorse starting
material--crystalline silicon.
Read more >>