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Apr 30, 2008 at 08:01 AM |
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James "Jim" Rogers' appointment to the Applied Materials' board of directors adds a seasoned nonsemi industry pro to the mix.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 29, 2008 at 05:16 PM |
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Monday's announcement that Dow Chemical's Building Solutions unit has asked Global Solar Energy to participate in its Department of Energy Solar America Initiative (SAI) project to develop building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) products came as no surprise--to me, anyway.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 23, 2008 at 11:22 PM |
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The Chip Shots one-man show is taking it on the road this week, first to Sheboygan, WI, to visit the SAFC Hitech plant and now in Phoenix, for a solar-heavy schedule of facility tours in the sunburned McCainiac state of Arizona.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 21, 2008 at 12:54 PM |
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The most iconic list in American business journalism--Fortune's roster of the top 500/1000 US companies ranked by revenues--came out today online and will appear in the magazine's May 5 issue.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 17, 2008 at 04:05 PM |
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The latest update of Gartner Dataquest's semiconductor capital equipment spending forecast paints a grim picture of the market's prospects this year, with capital expenditures expected to slide 19.8% compared to 2007's results (down from the 13.2% downtick forecast issued in December).Write Comment (2 comments) |
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Apr 16, 2008 at 03:17 PM |
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The odd press release issued by Obducat last week and blogged about here, in which the Swedish nanoimprint lithography (NIL) company took the unusual step of announcing a pending order agreement that hadn't been signed yet, has been trumped by today's news that the customer company and tool supplier have closed the deal.Write Comment (2 comments) |
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Apr 16, 2008 at 09:44 AM |
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Apart from the onslaught of marketing blitzes surrounding big industry trade shows, it's rare to have two semiconductor equipment companies launch products on the same day.Write Comment (2 comments) |
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Apr 11, 2008 at 10:19 AM |
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When your book has jumped from 1,140,557 to 726,360 to, at last check, 188,346 on the Amazon sales list over the past couple of weeks, that's great progress but it's no indication of best-seller status coming any time soon.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 10, 2008 at 02:31 PM |
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A microelectronics equipment company tooting its own horn about scoring recent orders is one thing, but to hear public talk about a deal not even signed is rare, yet that is precisely what Obducat did earlier today.Write Comment (2 comments) |
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Apr 09, 2008 at 02:47 PM |
Reporting from this week's Printed Electronics Europe show in Dresden, Germany--as well as recent news from Thin Film Electronics and other companies--has opened the door for some blatant self-promotion for an article I wrote for the March/April 2008 issue of Small Times, which has also been picked up in slightly tweaked form in the April 2008 Solid State Technology.
My feature focuses on coating and deposition challenges facing the developers and manufacturers of various types of flexible, printed, and organic electronics (FPOE) devices and includes input from people working in and around the trenches at Motorola, Uni-Solar/ECD, the Flexible Display Center, Aveso, Polymer Vision, and Hewlett-Packard.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 08, 2008 at 01:33 PM |
The idea may not be original, but it has an elegant obviousness: why not use some of the many industrial rooftops in the sprawling southern California megalopolis as sites for megawatt-level, solar-powered electricity-generating plants? The scale of the recently announced Southern California Edison (SCE) project, however, is unprecedented, dwarfing that of any comparable plans, such as Colexon Energy's deployment of First Solar and other PV modules on rooftops of chicken farms and various commercial structures in Germany.
The utility company plans to build 250-MW worth of these stations over the next five years, adding a megawatt of installed power each week (ed.--corrected from "month") on between 100 and 200 leased warehouse roofs, at a total cost of $875 million.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 04, 2008 at 03:11 PM |
For a midsize semiconductor equipment company (or any semi tool concern, for that matter), Aviza Technology had a very busy news week.
The week started with its announcement of a change in auditor accounting firms (yawn), switching from the pricey Deloitte & Touche to the more affordable Armanino McKenna.
Next, Aviza said it had sold its ET Equipment machine shop unit in Wales, hinting at things to come with head honcho Jerry Cutini's mention of the unit not being part of the company's "core expertise."
Yesterday, Aviza had not one, no two, not three, but four pieces of PR hit the wires, starting with the biggest news of the week, the company's plans for a major global restucturing and reducing its DRAM dependency by downsizing its large-batch thermal system business.
Aviza's Cutini seeks decreased
DRAM dependency.
In the official announcement and also during a teleconference held earlier today, Cutini and CFO Patrick O'Connor detailed how Aviza will "refocus its core strategies" on the atomic layer deposition sector for advanced <45 nm logic and on etch and physical vapor deposition (PVD) in the 3-D interconnect, through-silicon via, power device, and MEMS sectors---areas where Cutini believes the company has a competitive advantage and the best opportunities for sustainable growth.
The restructuring includes cutting the workforce by 15%, selling their current facility in Scotts Valley, CA, and moving to a smaller base of operations elsewhere in Silicon Valley, getting out of the DRAM trench capacitor business, and consequently ramping down the batch thermal product line down in most respects (although sales and service on the installed base, and some system upgrades, will continue, and Cutini said there might be a few new machines built over the next few quarters).
One literal cost of refocusing will be a one-time writedown of between $20 million and $24 million, according to O'Connor, which should end up saving the company up to $20 mill annually.Write Comment (2 comments) |
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Apr 02, 2008 at 11:01 AM |
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As I've said in the past, one of the best ongoing documentations of the history of Silicon Valley is SEMI's Oral History Project, curated by Craig Addison.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 01, 2008 at 05:06 PM |
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Although I had to decline the invitation to attend Monday's official inauguration ceremony at the Center for Advanced Microelectronics Manufacturing, it's not for lack of interest.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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Apr 01, 2008 at 12:18 PM |
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About a month ago, Chip Shots featured a blog post about the latest International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors and how most (but not all) of the chapters were available at the ITRS Website.Write Comment (0 comments) |
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