A third-consecutive month of growth in semiconductor sales has the SIA cautiously optimistic about an industry recovery, though shied away from calling the next upturn. Worldwide sales of semiconductors in May rose to US$16.5 billion, an increase of 5.4% from April’s figure of US$15.6 billion.
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Eyelit, Inc. has shipped one of its integrated manufacturing execution software (MES) suites to materials technology company Umicore for production of germanium wafers at its Olen, Belgium-based Electro-Optic Materials Business Unit. The company intends to roll out the system to Quapaw, Oklahoma in the second half of this year.
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Elpida Memory, which operates one of the world’s largest DRAM memory fabs in Hiroshima, Japan, will undergo a major internal transformation as the company battles a continued over capacity in the memory markets and seeks Japanese Government funds to continue operations. Elpida said it would divide the massive facility into two separate lines, one dedicated to mobile device-related DRAM and the other to PC related DRAM devices. Both lines will have their own management teams and operate separately, the company said.
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One of the equipment suppliers that consistently brings out new products is KLA-Tencor. However, the metrology supplier rarely figures in the most popular rankings in any given year. That has changed in 2008 with its TeraFab tool. Although only released recently, the fifth most popular product was from TEL and Novellus for copper interconnects.
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Product Briefing Outline: CIMAC is now offering a new MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) migration packaged service solution for semiconductor fabs with obsolete server platforms. These server platforms run the manufacturing control software that coordinates the movement and processing of material through the fab. Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced dates when support for their AlphaServer and HP PA-RISC 9000 Server platforms will no longer be available. This could effect up to 100 mostly 200mm fabs. Legacy MES software including WorkStream, PROMIS and FACTORYworks (Applied Materials) all have software versions that run on HP AlphaServers Open as well as HP 9000 Servers.
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Product Briefing Outline: Imera Systems has announced
its next-generation network virtualization solutions for
cross-enterprise e-Diagnostics and equipment knowledge base access. The
solutions are claimed to connect manufacturers and equipment vendors to
maximize productivity and reduce unscheduled equipment downtime with no
VPN connection, or a third party service provider without IP leakage.
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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.
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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.
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