Veteran industry journalist David Manners presents an interesting take on the MEDEA+ conference over in lovely Budapest this week in noting the words of wisdom from veteran market analyst Bill McClean from IC Insights. 

News via Japan’s Nikkei newspaper claims that Canon is preparing to ship its production-ready 193nm ArF immersion lithography tool by the end of this month, though the customer was not identified. I can add that last month we got some information that supports the Nikkei news. 

Applied Materials can't seem to leave the solar equipment business alone at the moment, as it continues its acquisition trail. The latest is Baccini S.p.A for a cool $330 million in greenbacks.

The news sent me scurrying to dig into the market occupied by Baccini, and I must admit that at first I couldn’t see why AMAT has spent that much on a small company. Later on in a conference call to discuss the acquisition, some interesting aspects of the deal emerged [read more].

I had picked up these rumors a while back, immediately discarded them and then had gotten on with other things. However, a story over at the The Street indicates strongly that the investor community is after Hector’s head again! 

Texas Instruments has been playing the ‘green’ initiative a little too long now, in regard to its hyper-environmental-energy efficient 300mm fab known as R1. When the fab was built, I fully supported the hype surrounding its light sensors, grated windows, reflective roof and fish pond etc… but the story keeps coming back again and again about how great the achievements have been and what a model it is to the semiconductor industry! 

Though off my beat, I found a press release from sp3 Diamond Technologies, a company involved in the semiconductor industry but with tentacles in many places announce that their technology is being used by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland.  The University is using the technology to evaluate the benefits of using diamond-coated reactors for the next generation of fusion reactors due to diamonds’ ability to withstand the intense heat involved in the process. 

Several emails made their way to me yesterday, as did a few more this morning, that include some stories citing John Lau, a semiconductor analyst at New York-based Jefferies & Co., as saying that AMD is negotiating the sale of Fab 38 (previously Fab 30, 200mm) to TSMC. 

Walking into the West Hall of the Moscone at next year’s SEMICON West will provide a look into the future of the semiconductor equipment industry as never before!