Online information source for semiconductor professionals

Supported by growing losses and weakening demand, Toshiba Corp is considering a major reorganization of its semiconductor operations, though no timeline was given, according to a Bloomberg story, citing Masashi Muromachi, Corporate Senior Executive Vice President of Toshiba’s semiconductor business units. Read more >>

The news that Elpida Memory is putting a 300mm joint venture fab in China on hold makes perfect sense for the DRAM producer as it posted its fourth straight quarter of financial losses. Even though the deal with SVG, a Chinese venture capital group based in Suzhou City, meant that the local government would pay for the construction and offer a wide range of other incentives along the lines of those SMIC has benefited from, the whole project didn’t make much sense in the first place? Read more >>

Even Samsung is feeling the effects of overcapacity and plunging ASPs for its NAND and DRAM chips as its quarterly profits declined 44 percent and only made approximately $850 million in the last quarter. Things like mobile phones and LCD’s are now under huge pricing pressure with margins down to just 7 percent.Semiconductor margins are down 74 percent Y-on-Y. Read more >>

Listening to the latest Cymer conference call highlighted that the major foundries are seeing a significant drop in fab utilization rates. Cymer provides a laser pulse chart each quarter, highlighting the use of its lasers during the lithography process step. Read more >>

A long time ago I thought it would be a good - perhaps funny-ish - blog idea to regularly post some good quotes from semiconductor executives. The problem was there weren’t any! Well, there were some occasionally, but not enough of them to string together to make any sense. Read more >>

Having claimed 65 percent of the lithography market in 2007, ASML positioned itself for further gains in 2008. The significant capital spending cuts by memory manufacturers this year, coupled to very tight spending from the major foundries, meant that not even Moore’s Law enablers such as lithography tool vendors would be immune from the serious slump in spending. Read more >>

We all waited and waited and waited some more to find out from AMD and Hector Ruiz what exactly was its ‘asset smart’ plan. Now that it has been revealed, it is very close to what we and others thought it would mean. Read more >>

Barely two months after releasing unrealistic capital spending projections for 2009, SEMI have slipped out news that 2009 doesn’t look like it's going to be bright as once (just) thought. I noted in this blog that things were worse than being painted by SEMI and that the memory manufacturers would remain cautious on spending until the mess they have created is sorted out. Read more >>

How low can you go? That question has been asked by iSuppli Corp’s analysts after trawling over the financial figures coming out of semiconductor manufacturers (though not foundries). Read more >>

The latest round of capital spending and production cuts from the likes of Elpida, Hynix and Powerchip Semiconductor are a concern to Gartner and suppliers alike as they may impact the potential for a fourth quarter recovering in tool spending that should see a better capital spending environment develop in 2009. Read more >>