SAN FRANCISCO – Makers of semiconductor production equipment and materials can look forward to the market for their wares growing 19% sequentially this year and 10% next year to reach $40 billion, the highest level since 2000.
The forecast was disclosed this week at the SemiCon West trade show by Strategic Marketing Associates.
According to SMA president George Burns, the double-digit growth for this year and next is being fueled by rising levels of new wafer fab construction that began in 2004 and is expected to crest in 2007. “We see the industry bringing 35 new fabs online by end of 2007 with a total equivalent capacity, when fully ramped, of more than 2 million 200mm diameter wafers per month. Representing more than 15 acres of silicon, this monthly output is roughly equal to 18% of industry's theoretical full capacity today.”
LONDON -- The National Physical Laboratory has launched a six-month study into the use of XRF techniques.
NPL said in a press release that 10 companies have already signed on to participate in the project, which will assess XRF as a means for determining the presence and amount of various hazardous substances.
The protocol would include assessing a range of sample configurations incorporating known issues with RoHS-prohibited contaminants. Samples would be chemically analyzed prior to round-robin testing. After testing, the actual samples used will be chemically analyzed again to eliminate batch variance problems. The final report would include a comparison of XRF techniques and test sites.
The project is scheduled to launch this month July and last six months. The work will be presented to the NPL Soldering Science & Technology Club and disseminated in an NPL Report.
For more information contact Dr. Chris Hunt at chris.hunt@npl.co.uk
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SAN FRANCISCO – A group of 34 U.S. attorneys general on Friday filed suit in California District Court against seven computer memory chip manufacturers alleging the firms violated antitrust laws, and harmed consumers and governmental agencies, by conspiring to fix prices they charged for widely used DRAM chips.
The defendants include Infineon
Technologies, Hynix Semiconductor, Micron Technology, Mosel Vitelic, Nanya Technology, Elpida Memory and
NEC Electronics America. Also named as defendants were certain subsidiaries that sold and
distributed DRAM chips in the U.S.
Infineon, Hynix, Micron, along with Samsung, control roughly 70% of the U.S. market.