The Week In Review: Manufacturing

China’s Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET) has made a bid to acquire STATS ChipPAC for $780 million, according to reports.

This year’s top-20 chip ranking includes two pure-play foundries–TSMC and UMC–and six fabless companies, according to IC Insights. GlobalFoundries is forecast to be replaced in this year’s top 20 ranking by fabless IC supplier Nvidia, according to the firm.

GlobalFoundries announced a partnership with Invecas, a newly formed design services company. Invecas will operate multiple system-on-chip (SoC) design service centers in the United States and India. This new partnership is intended to serve both fabless and large systems companies. The design centers will be staffed by more than 600 engineers. “These newly launched centers will provide a significant complement to our in-house global design solutions capabilities while enhancing our existing ecosystem of design and IP partners,” said Gregg Bartlett, senior vice president of product management at GlobalFoundries, in a statement. “The Invecas team has a strong track record of providing spec-to-silicon solutions for complex SoC designs in multiple high-volume market segments.”

SEMI believes that over the next three to four years upstream LED manufacturers in China will enter a robust era of growth. Unlike 2010 and 2011, this expansion round will be dominated by leading manufacturers, not new entrants. Also, the total increase in MOCVD tool quantity in 2014 and 2015 will be from just six companies and will account for 74% of the total quantity of MOCVD tools installed in China. It is expected that the number of new MOCVD tools installed will exceed 1,000 from 2014 to 2018.

SEMI announced that Tetsuro (Terry) Higashi, chairman, president and CEO of Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL), has been selected as the 2015 recipient of the SEMI Sales and Marketing Excellence Award, inspired by the late Bob Graham.

Intel Capital announced investments in 16 technology companies. Totaling approximately $62 million, the investments cover a broad spectrum of technologies. One of the companies was Reno Sub-Systems. The company designs, develops and delivers subsystems used to control process systems made by OEMs, including vacuum-based chambers to deposit and etch specialty materials.

Texas Instruments will expand its manufacturing capacity in Chengdu, China, with a 300mm wafer bumping facility.

Teradyne has acquired the assets of Avionics Interface Technologies, a provider of equipment for testing avionics data buses. The Avionics Interface Technologies (AIT) business will be operated as an independent division within Teradyne’s Defense and Aerospace business unit.

Sematech announced that Ronald Goldblatt has been named president and chief executive by the company’s board, effective immediately. Goldblatt has served as acting president and CEO since April 2014. He joined Sematech as vice president of technical strategy and operations in September 2013.

The processing, sensing and communications semiconductor device portion of the Internet of Things (IoT) will be a rapidly growing segment of the total semiconductor market, growing 36.2% in 2015, compared with the overall semiconductor market growth of 5.7%, according to Gartner.