|
Warming up the Friday leftovers: New hires, flexible electronics, and ATDF speculation |
|
|
|
Nov 02, 2007 at 11:45 AM |
Several news and muse items have collected in the Chip Shots hopper over the past few weeks, so since it's Friday and the weekend's almost here, it's time to clear out those leftovers.
While the naming of ex-TI honcho Hans Stork as Applied Materials' silicon systems group's new CTO and group VP raised alot of eyebrows, one of my oldest (not old in age, but old as in I've known him a long time!) industry friends (and friend to many, many others) also landed a new job, albeit with a lot less fanfare than Hans' appointment: Matheson Tri-Gas named Terry Francis as chief technologist of its electronics group earlier this month (although I just found out about it).
Terry had told me at Semicon West that he was in negotiations with someone, but discreetly left out which company was wooing him (although I had my suspicions).
The past few years Terry has been building a nice consulting practice---T.A. Francis and Associates---but the lure of a steady gig, the right steady gig, finally proved too much. Matheson's electronics R&D group will report to Terry (who will report to Matheson boss Bill Kroll), and he will also be tasked with setting up advanced collaborative research programs, a duty he is very well-suited for. Congrats to Terry and good luck!
The flexible, printed, and organic electronics sector has been steadily gaining momentum in recent months, and this week saw a couple of significant announcements. Plastic Logic hired former HP heavy-hitter Richard Archuleta as its CEO, and said it will open a San Francisco area office in the coming weeks. With over $100 million in venture and other funds, the flexible display/e-paper company is building a fab in Dresden and will ramp production next year, with a manufacturing capacity of about a million 10-inch displays per year.
In the unusual equivalent of going from fabless or fab-lite to becoming an IDM, another flex display player, Polymer Vision, said this week that it's buying contract-manufacturing partner, Innos and its Southampton, UK, fab, for an undisclosed amount. Although details are a little thin on the ground, it's clear that the acquisition move was done to solidify and strengthen Polymer Vision's supply chain. Innos was positioning itself as a foundry of sorts, so that part of its business model will be set aside as it becomes wholly dedicated to ramping and producing its new parent company's rollable displays.
Speaking of acquisitions, Mark LaPedus of EETimes reported last week that the sale of ATDF, Sematech's R&D foundry subsidiary, to unnamed private investors was "a done deal," although no official announcement has been made. Speculation has centered on the Oak Hill Capital (which includes Texas billionaire Robert Bass) and Tallwood VC investment groups, which also have major interests in that other process development foundry, SVTC Technologies, which spun off from Cypress Semi and now is an indie entity.
The combination of ATDF and SVTC into one multifab development foundry company could be a powerful one: There's a potent synergistic potential there, putting under one corporate roof ATDF's 300-mm capabilities and its Sematech process and materials legacy (including a bit more emphasis on the "R" part of R&D) with SVTC's popular FastXfer Commercialization package and newly expanded analytical and engineering services.
Another interesting speculative point is the future of the respective development foundries' relationships with the Big Two pure-play manufacturing foundries---ATDF with UMC and SVTC with TSMC---if the two entities were to merge as one. Would the new company have to choose or be able to continue working with both of the big guys? Also worth pondering would be the evolution of the combined company's dealings with its process-outsourcing/process-development specialist partners, such as Entrepix (CMP) and Innovion (implant)---and the possible benefits therein to their collective customer base.
Whether the alleged sale of ATDF begats a rumored coupling with SVTC remains in the realm of speculation, but my sources say the ATDF deal---whatever it turns out to be---will be officially announced soon. Given the song-and-dance routine around the ATDF purchase, I had a chuckle when I discovered there was another, nontechie ATDF---the American Tap Dancing Foundation. Imagine the crossover potential.
|
Blogs 
