The Week In Review: Manufacturing

This announcement could send some shock waves throughout the foundry business. For its baseband chips, Qualcomm uses several foundries, namely GlobalFoundries, Samsung and TSMC. Now, Qualcomm has another foundry partner. China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) says that it has fabricated Qualcomm’s 28nm Snapdragon 410 processors. Snapdragon 410 is a processor that integrates LTE, graphics and imaging, 1080P HD display, 64-bit capable processing and a range of advanced modem features. This milestone represents a big step for SMIC and its fledging efforts in the 28nm process arena.

SEMI praised the bipartisan effort in the U.S. Congress to pass the Revitalize American Manufacturing and Innovation (RAMI) Act as part of the year-end spending package. Since its introduction in August 2013, SEMI has been a champion and leading voice in support of the bill that would create public private partnerships to establish institutes for manufacturing innovation.

SEMI reported the worldwide PV manufacturing equipment billings and bookings for the third quarter of 2014. Worldwide billings decreased to $264 million in Q3 2014, a decrease of 17% from the prior quarter but 36% above the same quarter a year ago. Worldwide bookings for the third quarter declined to $157 million, 33% below Q2 2014 but 71% higher than Q3 2013. At 0.60, the book-to-bill ratio is below parity.

Lam Research announced that, effective Monday, Dec. 22, 2014, the company will be included in the NASDAQ-100 Index. The NASDAQ-100 Index includes 100 of the largest domestic and international non-financial companies listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market based on market capitalization.

Amkor Technology has granted GlobalFoundries a non-exclusive license to its proprietary copper pillar wafer bump technology.

AMD announced James Clifford has joined the company as senior vice president of global operations, reporting to President and CEO Lisa Su. Clifford will be responsible for overseeing all aspects of AMD’s end-to-end manufacturing and supply chain strategy.

Assuming that missing IoT standards are developed in the next several years, web-connected things are forecast to account for 85% of nearly 29.5 billion Internet connections worldwide by 2020, according to IC Insights.

Sixty percent of organizations said high start-up costs are a main factor in the delay of implementing 3D printing strategies, according to a new survey by Gartner.

The global military radar market will grow at a CAGR of 3.6% over the 2013 to 2023 forecast time frame with the total market worth over $18.5 billion in 2023, according to Strategy Analytics.