Author's Latest Posts


SEMICON West Preview


By Paula Doe The fast growing demand for bandwidth is driving telecomm and data center user interest in moving high speed optical connections closer and closer to the chips, as recent advances in packaging technology, from microbumping to bonding to wafer-level redistribution now help make it possible. Chip-to-chip and chip-to-board optical connections increasingly look like a viable soluti... » read more

What’s Next For MEMS


By Paula Doe While MEMS sensors and actuators are key to enabling most of the high profile markets of tomorrow, from wearables to smart objects in the Internet of Things, MEMS companies face challenges today in transitioning to those new opportunities as basic MEMS devices increasingly becoming commodities. Large corporations are hiring their own in-house MEMS engineers, as standard platforms ... » read more

EU Due Diligence For Conflict Minerals Focuses Upstream, For Now


By Rania Georgoutsakou EU proposed legislation on responsible sourcing of ‘conflict minerals’, published on 5 March 2014, will create a voluntary scheme focusing on upstream suppliers that should help downstream users get the information they need to comply with the U.S. Dodd Frank Act. The EU proposals largely address concerns raised by SEMI and other industry associations, but things cou... » read more

450mm Standards Update


By Kevin Nguyen SEMI has published more than 19 Standards for 450mm generation.  New standards are being created to facilitate supplier and user for material and equipment.  Revisions to published standards are needed as improvements are constantly identified. The Japan Assembly & Packaging Technical Committee (TC) Chapter has initiated document 5636 in effort to meet the demand... » read more

Semiconductor Fab Materials Outlook


By Dan Tracy While segments of the global economy are slowing and uncertainty is once again on the rise, fundamental unit trends for semiconductor materials have improved in recent months and growth expectations for the fab materials market remain modest for 2012 and into 2013. Three-month shipment data shows silicon shipments—from the wafer suppliers to the fabs—during the current cycl... » read more

Upbeat Prediction


By Clark Tseng The semiconductor industry started out quite strong in 2012 but declined rapidly in the second half of the year, resulting in a slight year-over-year decline of 2.7% in worldwide semiconductor sales. On the other hand, worldwide capital equipment market recorded a decline of 15% from $43.5 billion in 2011 to $36.9 billion in 2012 according to the SEMI WWSEMS report. While indust... » read more

European Policy Considerations for Supporting the 450mm Supply Chain and Existing Manufacturing


By Heinz Kundert, president, SEMI Europe European competitiveness in the semiconductor industry was the focus of the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium Europe 2012 executive conference recently held in Munich, Germany. Over 200 delegates from 20 countries gathered to hear about the strengths and issues of concern for chip manufacturing in Europe, including the implications of the industry-wide... » read more

Packaging Community Takes on New Challenges through Industry Collaboration


By Tom Salmon, senior director, SEMI As the semiconductor industry responds to increasing demands for lower power, higher performance and reduced form factor, packaging technologies are increasingly important.  This enhanced importance in the micro-electronics food chain is mirrored in a growth of the different segments of the packaging market.  According to the recently updated Global Sem... » read more

Substrates for Semiconductor Packaging


2012 Market Outlook for Laminate and Leadframe Materials By Jan Vardaman, TechSearch International, and Dan Tracy, SEMI Combined, laminate substrates and leadframes will represent an estimated US$ 13.3 billion market in 2011 and is forecasted to reach $14 billion in 2012. This is larger than the revenues for silicon wafers (including silicon-on-insulator wafers) of $10.3 billion in 2011 and... » read more

The End of the DRAM Era – Flash Spending Surpasses DRAM


By Clark Tseng, SEMI Industry Research and Statistics, Taiwan The semiconductor memory industry has a long history of fluctuating market cycles. The DRAM sector in particular has gone through a few bad cycles and witnessed quite a few consolidations in the past ten years or so.  However, DRAM continues to be one of the most important and capital intensive sectors in the semiconductor indust... » read more

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