The Week In Review: Manufacturing

Chipmakers
Samsung is mulling over a plan to reorganize its System LSI division, according to a report from BusinessKorea. As part of the move, Samsung is mulling over the idea to spin off its foundry unit, according to the report. A spokeswoman for Samsung’s foundry unit said: “We don’t have any comments on this story.”

GlobalFoundries has added eight new partners to its FDXcelerator Program. The program helps enable chips based on GlobalFoundries’ 22nm FD-SOI technology. The new partners are Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), Amkor, Infosys, Mentor Graphics, Rambus, Sasken, Sonics and QuickLogic.

GlobalFoundries has demonstrated 56-Gbps SerDes performance in silicon on the company’s 14nm finFET process. The 56-Gbps SerDes is designed for customers seeking to improve power and performance efficiency in long-reach applications.

United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) reported unaudited net sales for the month of November 2016. Sales were up for the period

Micron Technology announced the creation of the Xccela Consortium. The mission of the consortium is to promote the Xccela Bus interface as an open standard for a new type of digital interconnect and a data communications bus. Micron, Winbond, GigaDevice andAP Memory Technology are the initial members of the consortium.

Market research
SEMI reported that worldwide sales of new semiconductor manufacturing equipment are projected to increase 8.7% to $39.7 billion in 2016. In 2017, another 9.3% growth is expected, resulting in a global semiconductor equipment market totaling $43.4 billion.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 0.96, according to SEMI. A book-to-bill of 0.96 means that $96 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

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