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The usual suppliers that include the major sector players and host of Japanese firms dominated Intel’s Preferred Quality Supplier (PQS) award system in 2011. However, the word ‘velocity’ has become the new measuring stick, with Nikon winning an ‘Achievement’ category award for ‘velocity.’ In total 19 companies received Intel’s PQS honour in 2011 and 2 companies as Achievement winners. In the Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement (SCQI) award category system, Intel acknowledged 9 suppliers in 2011. Read more >>

Spansion and SK Hynix have announced that they will work together to deliver Spansion SLC NAND products at the 4x, 3x, and 2x nodes to the embedded market. The alliance, which will make its first Spansion SLC NAND products available from the second quarter of 2012, will see the companies enter into a patent cross-licensing agreement in order to facilitate commercial manufacture.

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Elpida Memory has had its stock removed from the Tokyo stock market after filing for bankruptcy protection on February 27th 2011. Elpida began trading shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in November 2004 but has reported losses in all five quarters preceding December 31st 2011.

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By Ernst Richter et al - ABSTRACT - This article follows up on a previously published paper that introduced the 110nm technology transfer of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) for the Inotera Memories joint venture at start-up [1]. In this paper, technology transfer and ramp of the 75nm DRAM technology is outlined for Inotera in full production mode. Again, technology transfer was done from Qimonda (previously Infineon Technologies) at Dresden in Germany where the technology was jointly developed with Nanya Technologies. Inotera at Taoyuan in Taiwan was the first receiving site to repeat the technology qualification. Continuous sales price reduction puts pressure on memory firms for fast introduction of technology shrinks to remain cost competitive [2]. Delays as short as a few days in the production ramp can translate into millions of dollars of missed opportunity in revenue. This paper sets forth the steps taken by the two companies to avoid such setbacks in the technology transfer. Read more >>

By Brandon Lee & Susanta Dash, CIMAC, San Jose, California, U.S. - ABSTRACT - Performance testing is carried out on an MES system to identify and eliminate bottlenecks that can potentially cause production outages and lost revenue in a semiconductor production fab. In a distributed system, bottlenecks can occur at the client site, within the server or in the  network. The MES system is the heart of the manufacturing operation and interacts with a number of other systems to support the manufacturing line in a fab. As production increases with ramping up of the production volume, the loads on the various systems that support the production also increase. This paper puts forward the potential benefits in applying the MES system for testing and validation of performance and scalability to measure the various key parameters, thus providing good ROI by early detection of potential problems. Read more >>

Dean W. Freeman, Gartner Dataquest, San Jose, California Read more >>