
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.
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26 October 2009

Farhad Moghadam loves to make semiconductor analogies when he talks
about his corner of solar photovoltaics. The former Applied Materials
and Intel exec is wearing a new hat these days as he marks his third
month as president/CEO of Ascent Solar. The
company just announced its latest conversion efficiency numbers
for its copper-indium-gallium-(di)selenide thin-film PV cells (14.1%
peak) and modules (11.7% peak, 10.5%-plus median) and will be ramping
its roll-to-roll CIGS-on-polyimide process to volume scale in
its Thornton, CO, factory early next year.
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04 August 2009

Rudolph Technologies' acquisition of Adventa Control Technologies for an undisclosed wad of cash has immediate implications for those trying to keep their semiconductor manufacturing processes, equipment, and factories under tight control. ACT's software lurks in some 80% of those fabs, with somewhere upwards of 18,000 of its systems installed. The buy certainly won't hurt Rudolph's bottom line either, as the addition of ACT should double the revenues of the company's data analysis and review biz unit. But the move by Rudolph, which launched its own photovoltaic-specific Solar Discover process control and yield management package earlier this year (and which is already an option on Spire's turnkey cell lines), may also end up benefitting the PV production crowd. To read the rest of the blog,
click here to go to pv-tech.org.
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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.
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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 >>
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 >>
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 >>
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 >>
How does that additional 72 MW of cadmium-telluride thin-film PV
module-making capacity planned by First Solar for its Perrysburg, OH,
facilities stack up against the rest of the CdTe competition's current
production levels? According to recent data compiled by NREL and
presented at Intersolar North America/Semicon West, First's extra chunk
of factory output would exceed the total megawatt-nameplate of AVA
Solar, PrimeStar, Calyxo/Q-Cells, Antec, Avendi, and ASP combined. The
same data show the CdTe Gang of Six Followers projected to reach 280 MW
by 2010--by which time First will have passed the gigawatt mark.
Read more >>
The latest numbers from the SIA and SEMI's silicon manufacturers
group (SMG) have come out in the past two weeks, so it's time for Chip
Shots' quarterly metrification-and-comparison woodshed exercise.
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14 August 2008
When the term "traceable calibration standards" gets mentioned, it's
not likely to trigger a giddy rush of excitement among most
professionals in the semiconductor, flat-panel display, and related
micro/nano industries.
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