A 7 percent reduction in Nanometrics’ global workforce has been announced by the company, an action that will cost the company approximately $600,000 in restructuring charges. An attempt at improving profitability and cash flow was cited for the cuts, which will affect employees in each of the company’s locations. Nanometrics has a workforce of approximately 522 worldwide. 

Micronas’ set top boxes for IPTV applications have been discontinued, the company announced.  The company’s restructuring efforts will result in approximately 100 job cuts in Santa Clara, while an estimated 20 employees will be lost in Shanghai, China. 

In an effort to support its growing lithography business in Japan and the Asia-Pacific region in general, ASML has said that it is increasing its Japanese workforce to more than 200 employees, of which about 80 percent are engineers. 12 immersion systems shipped during this year’s third quarter went to Japanese customers, the company noted. Three Japanese chip manufacturers have taken delivery of multiple TWINSCAN XT:1700i and XT:1900i immersion systems to date. 

“Semiconductor Basics: how chips are made” is the title of the upcoming seminar hosted by the Ron Leckie-led Infrastructure Advisors.  The half-day seminar will take place in an as-yet-undisclosed location in Silicon Valley on January 29th, 2008. 

Michelene E. Miller, a Ph.D. student at Alfred University, has been presented with the Bruker AXS X-ray Diffraction Scholarship for her research paper entitled “Novel Processing of Microporous Glass-Ceramics for Gas Separation.”  Ms. Miller was presented with the $6,000 scholarship at the 2007 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston. 

In the same breath as announcing the company’s third quarter fiscal results announcement, which boasted a record-breaking revenue figure over $750 million for the quarter, Marvell Semiconductor released the news that it intends cutting 400 jobs before the end of 2008. 

The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University of Albany has announced its two-day IC fab course, which will take place early next year.  CNSE’s “IC Fab West” training course on IC fabrication and yield control will take place on January 9th and 10th, 2008 at the Hilton Garden Inn in Milipitas, California. 

According to news stories coming from Korea, Samsung Electronics has cut approximately 1,600 jobs in the last six months, many of which are believed to have been recent. The move was widely touted to be due to the continued falling prices in its mainstream memory products with profitability for the group declining significantly compared to a year ago. 

Tundra Semiconductor Corp. intends to adopt a “restructuring plan” under which the company will reduce the amount of staff positions by 30. The cuts seem to be a result of the strengthening of the Canadian dollar and the resulting 15% loss in revenue over the last few quarters. 

Air Liquide Deutschland GmbH has said it will build and operate a new gas liquefaction plant in the Ulm region of Germany at a cost of approximately €60 million. 700 tonnes of liquefied gases (nitrogen, oxygen and argon) per day will be processed at the new plant.