Foundries News

• UMC Obtains Advanced Process Tools through Texas Instruments (Thursday Jul. 15, 2010)
  UMC today announced it will further increase its production capacity with the purchase of numerous advanced 300mm CMOS manufacturing tools. The tools will be bought from Texas Instruments (TI) upon closure of a larger asset purchase in Japan that was just announced by TI.
  
  
• CEA-Leti Building Europe’s First 300mm R&D Line Dedicated to 3D-Integration Applications (Monday Jul. 12, 2010)
  
  
  
• TSMC June 2010 Sales Report (Friday Jul. 09, 2010)
  TSMC today announced its net sales for June 2010: on an unconsolidated basis, net sales were approximately NT$35.11 billion, an increase of 3.8 percent over May 2010 and an increase of 36.2 percent over June 2009.
  
  
• TowerJazz Licenses Its Y-Flash Non-Volatile Memory Technology to a Leading Digital Foundry (Wednesday Jun. 30, 2010)
  TowerJazz announced today that it has licensed its Y-Flash Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) technology to a worldwide leading digital foundry. TowerJazz’s Y-Flash cell will be used by this foundry as a building block for its own process modules to enhance its current offering and modify it for implementation in a variety of technology nodes.
  
  
• IBM, Samsung and GLOBALFOUNDRIES Set for Fab Synchronization to Produce Advanced Chips Based on 28nm Process Technology with STMicroelectronics (Thursday Jun. 24, 2010)
  IBM, Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., GLOBALFOUNDRIES and STMicroelectronics said today that the four companies are collaborating to synchronize semiconductor manufacturing facilities for the production of advanced chips based on 28nm process jointly developed by IBM Technology Alliance.
  
  
• Elpida, PTI, and UMC Partner on 3D IC Integration Development For Advanced Technologies Including 28nm (Monday Jun. 21, 2010)
  Elpida, PTI, and UMC today announced their entry into a 3-way cooperation to advance 3D IC integration technologies for advanced processes including 28 nanometer (nm). This collaboration will leverage the strengths of Elpida's DRAM, PTI's assembly, and UMC's foundry logic technologies to develop a total 3D IC Logic+DRAM integration solution.
  
  
• TSMC New Standard Cell Slim Library Reduces Logic Area 15% (Tuesday Jun. 15, 2010)
  TSMC today introduced the first Slim Library that reduces system-on-chip (SoC) routed logic block area by 15 percent compared to blocks routed through current standard cell libraries. The library targets TSMC's 65nm LP process technology and fits existing implementation flows for easy adoption.
  
  
• Samsung Electronics Qualifies Foundry Industry's First 32nm Low Power High-K Metal Gate Logic Process and Design Ecosystem (Friday Jun. 11, 2010)
  Samsung Electronics today announced that its foundry business, Samsung Foundry, has qualified 32nm low-power (LP) process with high-k metal gate (HKMG)* technology. The process has successfully completed reliability testing at Samsung Foundry's 300-millimeter logic fabrication line, the S Line, in Giheung, Korea and, is now ready for production of customer designs.
  
  
• TSMC Unveils Two New Reference Flows (Tuesday Jun. 08, 2010)
  TSMC today introduced Reference Flow 11.0 and Analog/Mixed Signal (AMS) Reference Flow 1.0. Both are key collaborative components of TSMC's recently-announced extension of its Open Innovation Platform™.
  
  
• TSMC Extends Open Innovation Platform(TM) (Monday Jun. 07, 2010)
  TSMC today extended its Open Innovation Platform™ with another focus on system-level design, analog/mixed-signal (AMS)/RF design and two-dimensional/three-dimensional integrated circuit (2-D/3-D IC) implementation. At the same time the company introduced the first three initiatives from the new focus.
  
  
• GLOBALFOUNDRIES Expands Worldwide Manufacturing Capacity (Tuesday Jun. 01, 2010)
  GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced plans to expand its global semiconductor manufacturing operations with a series of new projects across its 300mm operations designed to support expected increases in both near-term and long-term customer demand.
  
  
• TSMC Announces 0.18-Micron Automotive Grade Embedded Flash IP (Thursday May. 27, 2010)
  TSMC today announced the 0.18-um automotive Embedded Flash IP as its second generation Embedded Flash IP that passed AEC-Q100 product qualification requirements for a wide range of automotive applications.
  
  
• TowerJazz to Provide ARM Low Power Libraries for 0.13 SiGe BiCMOS and RF CMOS Platforms (Tuesday May. 25, 2010)
  TowerJazz today announced they will be providing ARM physical IP low power std cells and memory libraries for TowerJazz’s new 0.13u SiGe BiCMOS process (SBL13) and its 0.13u RF CMOS process (TSL13).
  
  
• SMIC Reports Results for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2010 (Tuesday May. 11, 2010)
  SMIC Reports Results for the Three Months Ended March 31, 2010
  
  
• GlobalFoundries hints at further expansion plans (Friday May. 07, 2010)
  GlobalFoundries Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), already at the start of building a $5 billion wafer fab in New York, appears to be getting ready to announce further expansion plans to help it profit from strong demand for foundry manufacturing services.
  
  
• TSMC Reports First Quarter EPS of NT$1.30 (Tuesday Apr. 27, 2010)
  TSMC today announced consolidated revenue of NT$92.19 billion, net income of NT$33.66 billion for the first quarter ended March 31, 2010. Year-over-year, first quarter revenue increased 133.4% while net income increased 2059.5% and diluted EPS increased 2059.8%.
  
  
• SMIC: Announcement of 2009 Annual Results (Tuesday Apr. 27, 2010)
  SMIC announces the audited results of the Company for the year ended December 31, 2009. Sales decreased by 20.9% from US$1,353.7 million for 2008 to US$1,070.4 million for 2009, primarily due to a decrease in overall wafer shipments.
  
  
• TSMC Ships 600,000 0.25-Micron Automotive-Qualified Embedded Flash Wafers (Wednesday Apr. 21, 2010)
  TSMC today announced that it has shipped nearly 600,000 8-inch 0.25-micron AEC-Q100 grade 1 qualified embedded flash (EmbFlash) wafers targeted at a wide variety of automotive applications, accounting for over 720 million microcontrollers (MCUs).
  
  
• TSMC Announces Move to 20nm Process (Tuesday Apr. 13, 2010)
  TSMC announced today at its 2010 Technology Symposium that it will skip the 22nm manufacturing process node and move directly to a 20nm technology. The move is value driven to make advanced technology a more viable alternative for its customers.
  
  
• Winbond Ships One Billionth Serial Flash Memory, Ramps 90nm Production, Increases Market Share (Monday Apr. 12, 2010)
  Winbond Electronics today announced it has reached a significant industry milestone – the company has shipped more than one billion SpiFlash® memories. Additionally, Winbond announced it is quickly ramping production of its 90-nanometer (90nm) SpiFlash memories at the company’s 12-inch-wafer fabrication facility in Taichung, Taiwan.
  
  
• TSMC March 2010 Sales Report (Friday Apr. 09, 2010)
  TSMC today announced its net sales for March 2010: on an unconsolidated basis, net sales were approximately NT$30.82 billion, an increase of 5.6 percent over February 2010 and an increase of 126.3 percent over March 2009.
  
  
• IC shortages seen, but inventories grow (Thursday Apr. 01, 2010)
  The IC industry is recovering, but there are also signs of growing chip inventories in the channels.
  
  
• TSMC applies to take 10% stake in SMIC (Monday Mar. 29, 2010)
  Leading foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) has applied to the Taiwan government for approval to acquire a 10 percent stake in China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., according to reports.
  
  
• TSMC February 2010 Sales Report (Wednesday Mar. 10, 2010)
  TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today announced its net sales for February 2010: on an unconsolidated basis, net sales were approximately NT$29.2 billion, an increase of 0.1 percent from January 2010 and an increase of 153.8 percent over February 2009.
  
  
• TowerJazz Joins IPL Alliance to Achieve Interoperability of Process Design Kits for Analog/Mixed-Signal Designs (Wednesday Mar. 10, 2010)
  TowerJazz today announced it has joined the IPL Alliance, an organization chartered with establishing an interoperable custom design ecosystem. The IPL Alliance, comprised of major EDA and foundry companies, has devised the first open standard for interoperable Process Design Kits (iPDKs) for analog/mixed-signal designs.
  
  
• X-FAB First to Deliver Single-Block Embedded NVRAM as Pure Play Foundry Solution (Thursday Mar. 04, 2010)
  X-FAB Silicon Foundries today became the first and only pure play foundry to offer an embedded non-volatile random-access memory (NVRAM) process feature, leading to a single-chip solution.
  
  
• TowerJazz Rolls Out Full Library of Patented Y-Flash Non-Volatile Memory Blocks (Monday Feb. 22, 2010)
  TowerJazz today announced its full library of Y-Flash Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) building blocks. This patented Y-Flash technology, not available from any other foundry in the industry, is designed to give customers flexibility on memory size, allowing optimization of performance/cost for any given application.
  
  
• GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM Define the Standard for Mobile Technology Platform Innovation at MWC 2010 (Monday Feb. 15, 2010)
  GLOBALFOUNDRIES and ARM today unveiled new details on their leading-edge System-on-Chip (SoC) platform technology for powering the next generation of wireless products and applications. The new chip manufacturing platform is projected to enable a 40 percent increase in computing performance, a 30 percent decrease in power consumption, and a 100 percent increase in standby battery life.
  
  
• TSMC January 2010 Sales Report (Wednesday Feb. 10, 2010)
  TSMC today announced its net sales for January 2010: on an unconsolidated basis, net sales were approximately NT$29.16 billion, a decrease of 4.3 percent from December 2009 and an increase of 134.4 percent over January 2009.
  
  
• Veteran chip exec envisions Brazilian mega-fab (Thursday Feb. 04, 2010)
  The modest semiconductor fab that Brazilian startup Ceitec will open later this week is only a stepping stone to a 300-mm mega-fab within about three years, according to the firm's top executive.