Company News
-- Semiconductor International, 12/1/2000
Integrated Logistics Solutions (ILS, Cleveland) acquired the intellectual property and future development responsibility of IBM's (White Plains, N.Y.) Automation Connection and SiView MATE application software. The development team in Boca Raton, Fla., will continue to provide application consulting services in support of IBM's customers.PRI Automation Inc. (Billerica, Mass.) completed the acquisition of Commotion Technology Inc. (San Francisco). Commotion will receive 120,000 shares of PRI stock, placing the transaction at just over $2M.
KDF Electronic and Vacuum Services Inc. (Rockleigh, N.J.) received its first sale for a 954NT system to a leading European telecommunications company. The system will be used for production and R&D of GaAs-based amplifiers and other related devices.
Texas Instruments (TI, Dallas) renewed and increased its license agreement with Cadence Design Systems Inc. (San Jose) for its EDA technology including synthesis/place-and-route design solutions and the Assura physical verification and extraction tool suite. The agreement is the largest executed by TI and will provide end-to-end Cadence design solutions.
Thermo Electron Corp., Thermo VG Semicon business unit (Waltham, Mass.) received orders for two V150 production molecular beam epitaxy systems from Picogiga (Courtaboeuf, France) for 2001 delivery. The systems will be used to produce heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs).
Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc. (Willow Grove, Pa.) signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cerprobe Corp. (Gilbert, Ariz.). The acquisition will be made in a cash tender offer at $20 for each share of Cerprobe common stock with the total purchase price expected to be ~$225M.
Axcelis Technologies Inc. (Beverly, Mass.) received an order for a 300 mm high-energy ion implanter from one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers. The equipment is expected to be installed at the manufacturer's new 300 mm wafer fab in Q1 2001.
Lambda Physik (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) received follow-on orders for its NovaLine A4020 and NovaLine K2020 lasers from Silicon Valley Group (San Jose) amounting to $16.9M. To date, this is the largest order received at Lambda Physik.
Pac Tech GmbH (Nauen, Germany) was awarded ISO9001 registration for its Nauen wafer-bumping service facility. ISO9001 registration was granted by TUV.
Amkor Technology Inc. (Chadler, Ariz.) and Anam Semiconductor Inc. (Buchon, Korea) extended their cooperative agreement with Texas Instruments (TI, Dallas) for the transfer of TI's CO5 traditional metallurgy process technology, for the production of advanced logic semiconductors. Under terms of the agreement, they will replicate TI's 0.5 µm metal pitch, traditional metallization process in Anam's wafer fabrication facility in Buchon.
CR Technology (Aliso Viejo, Calif.) entered a partnership with Aegis Industrial Software (Philadelphia). Aegis' CircuitCAM software will be adapted into CAD, Gerber, ASII/Centroid and other file conversions for auto-training CR's X-ray and optical inspection systems.
ASM America (Phoenix) received a volume purchase agreement from ATMI Inc. (Phoenix) for the delivery of multiple Epsilon single-wafer epitaxial reactor systems. The units will provide capacity expansion of silicon epitaxy production at ATMI's Epitaxial Services.
Semitool Inc. (Kalispell, Mont.) delivered its Millennium single-wafer processing tool to a leading semiconductor company in Japan. It will be used for advanced development of polymer removal for device structures using low-k materials and copper.
KLA-Tencor Corp. (San Jose) formed a new corporate venture fund, KT Venture Group LLC. The group is chartered with exploring and investing in early-stage start-up companies in the electronics industry. The fund, with $50M in assets, will target industries that complement its line of products and services including semiconductor, reticle, wafer manufacturing and data storage markets.
Synopsys Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.), Avant! Corp. (Fremont, Calif.) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, Hsinchu, Taiwan) jointly developed a complete design flow to support TSMC's 0.25 and 0.18 µm processes on the DesignSphere Access Internet-hosted design environment. The design flow contains the tools, libraries and semiconductor process data from all three companies and will support the DesignSphere Access platform.
Leica Microsystems (Wetzlar, Germany) shipped its LWM 250DUV DUV-based photomask CD measurement system to a major Japanese mask manufacturer.
Robotic Vision Systems Inc. (RVSI, Canton, Mass.) sold three WS-2000 bumped wafer inspection systems. One system was purchased by Flip Chip Technology Inc. (Phoenix), the second by one of Korea's contract semiconductor assembly houses, and the third by a major Taiwan contract assembler. The systems will be shipped before Dec. 31.
