Company News
-- Semiconductor International, 3/1/2001
Conexant Systems Inc. (Newport Beach, Calif.) and TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) entered into a long-term semiconductor cross-licensing wafer supply and technology agreement. Under the agreement, TSMC will license from Conexant advanced specialty rf process technology intellectual-property use with bipolar and SiGe BiCMOS applications, and will also supply foundry capacity of the technology to Conexant.Entegris Inc. (Chaska, Minn.) signed a letter of intent with Nisso Engineering Co. Ltd. (NSA, Tokyo) to acquire the NSE fluid-handling product line. Under terms of the agreement, Entegris intends to purchase complete interest in NSE's component product lines. In addition, Entegris opened its first Microelectronics Group Regional Service Center in Portland, Ore. Future locations are slated for Taiwan, Japan and Germany.
Tescom Corp. (Elk River, Minn.) opened a new facility, Hankuk Tescom Ltd., in the Eyon-Hansan Industrial Park near Pyoungtaek-City, Korea. The facility features a Class 10 cleanroom.
SEZ AG (Villach, Austria) opened SEZ Taiwan, a regional office in Asia. In addition, a training lab in Taiwan previously operated through ICS is now being operated by SEZ.
Infineon Technologies (Munich, Germany) extended its collaboration with IMEC (Leuven, Belgium) in the field of microelectronics technology and design and system-oriented research. They will collaborate on advanced CMOS process steps and modules and system-on-chip design, as well as wireless LAN applications.
3C Software (Atlanta) entered a software license and professional service agreement with TriQuint Semiconductor (Hillsboro, Ore.). TriQuint will use Impact:3C to calculate and report product and process costs for its Oregon and two Texas manufacturing locations.
EMCORE Corp. (Somerset, N.J.) opened its expanded facility in Sandia Technology Park site in Albuquerque, N.M. This expansion triples the company's cleanroom manufacturing capacity and adds 36,000 ft2 to the existing 50,000 ft2 building.
STMicroelectronics (ST, Geneva) agreed to purchase the assets of RAVISENT Technologies Inc. ST will invest ~$55M to acquire ownership.
Kulicke & Soffa Industries Inc. (Willow Grove, Pa.) and its Flip Chip Technologies LLC joint venture received an additional site license for wafer-bumping technology and added a separate license for Ultra CSP wafer-level packaging technology from Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc.
Mattson Technology (Fremont, Calif.) signed agreements with UMC to ship nine Aspen III 300 mm strip systems. The systems are scheduled to begin shipping this month and will be installed at UMC's 300 mm Fab 12 in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
Teradyne Inc. (Boston) received an order for multiple Catalyst Tiger test systems from ASE Test. The units will be used to test SOC devices.
IBM (East Fishkill, N.Y.) and LSI Logic Corp. (Milpitas, Calif.) signed a licensing agreement. Under the agreement, IBM licensed LSI's ZSP 400 digital signal processor (DSP) core and software-development and design-verification tools.
Robotic Vision Systems Inc. (RVSI, Canton, Mass.) acquired Auto Image ID. Auto Image ID will operate within RVSI's Acuity CiMatrix Division and focus on the scanning of 2-D data matrix codes that are directly marked on surfaces.
Abrasive Technology Inc. (Lewis Center, Ohio) completed construction on both a new 40,800 ft2 facility in Elgin, Ill., and a 40,000 ft2 expansion at its headquarters. The additional space is designed to increase production capacity for its CMP product line.
ADE Corp. (Westwood, Mass.) received multiple orders for its 3220 advanced flatness system (AFS) and the UltraGage 9900 wafer geometry measurement system from Wacker Siltronic. The 3220 AFS will be installed at Wacker's Burghausen facility, and the UltraGage at the Portland, Ore., and Singapore polished-wafer manufacturing facilities.
GEM Services Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) opened a new, wholly owned assembly and test facility in Shanghai, China. The company will invest $40M to equip this 30,000 ft2 building and plans to reach full production capacity of 1.1B units/ year by the end of 2001.
i2 Technologies Inc. (Dallas) partnered with Hitachi Ltd. (Tokyo) to implement i2 TradeMatrix Solutions at select Hitachi divisions to improve supply chain processes. Initial implementations will begin in the United States and expand to other global locations.
Axis Systems Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) opened Axis Japan Co. Ltd. (Tokyo).
MKS Instruments Inc. (Andover, Mass.) formed an alliance with X-Fab Texas (Lubbock, Texas) in support of all flow products. X-Fab Texas is outfitting tools with MKS pressure-based mass flow controllers (MFCs) for low-vapor source materials and advanced material applications.
Applied Materials Inc.'s (Santa Clara, Calif.) Black Diamond low-k dielectric film was selected by Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to manufacture high-performance 0.13 µm logic chips. Both companies have been working jointly with Applied on CVD low-k process development.
Asyst Technologies Inc. (Fremont, Calif.) completed its acquisition of Advanced Machine Programming (AMP, Morgan Hill, Calif.). AMP is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Asyst. Under terms of the agreement, Asyst acquired AMP in a forward subsidiary merger, with merger consideration of $19M in cash and $19M in Asyst stock.
GEL-PAK (Sunnyvale, Calif.) moved its Quik-Pak division in San Diego into a new manufacturing facility. The move doubles the facility size and includes improvements in cleanroom and environmental control.
Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL, Tokyo) reached a definitive agreement to acquire Timbre Technologies Inc. (Fremont, Calif.). This acquisition will allow TEL to incorporate technologies required for next-generation wafer-processing equipment.
WaferNet Inc. (San Jose) opened its first international subsidiary, WaferNet GmbH, in Munich, Germany. The new operation will concentrate on supporting a European customer base, including IC fabrication facilities, research institutes and semiconductor equipment and material manufacturers.
August Technology Corp. (Bloomington, Minn.) received a repeat order for multiple NSX series inspection systems from a leading manufacturer of data-storage components. The systems will be installed at the customer's U.S. production facilities.
