The Week in Review: June 1
By Mark LaPedus
Mentor Graphics announced that GlobalFoundries Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) will use Mentor’s SmartFill technology from its Calibre YieldEnhancer line for 20nm manufacturing. In addition, Mentor recently posted its results and raised its guidance for fiscal year 2013.
At next week’s Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco, GlobalFoundries plans to demonstrate a design flow for its 28nm technology. The flow provides support for advanced analog and mixed-signal designs. In addition, GlobalFoundries has selected Synopsys‘ Yield Explorer solution as part of its Yield Management System (YMS) for faster yield ramp in production.
The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) released the OPDK v1.0 standard as approved by the Open Process Design Kit Coalition. The OPDK v1.0 standard includes the schematic symbol standard and the design parameter and callback specification.
Three silicon foundries, including LFoundry, MagnaChip and TSMC, are expanding their embedded memory intellectual-property (IP) offerings in an effort to reach into new and emerging markets.
Taiwan’s Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), the world’s largest semiconductor packaging and test company, has opened its phase 3 manufacturing facility in Weihai, Shangdong province, China. The new building is part of ASE’s expansion plans to increase its manufacturing capacity for discrete packaging and test.
Barclays Capital raised its forecast for FormFactor, as the struggling probe-card maker upgraded its own guidance for the quarter. “We continue to expect FormFactor’s cash burn to end in 2H ‘12, though (we) don’t anticipate GAAP profitability through 2013,” said C.J. Muse, an analyst with Barclays.
VLSI Research maintained its semiconductor equipment forecast, which calls for the industry to fall by 7.2% in 2012 over 2011. But business is getting better. Fab equipment makers “are now seeing a strong momentum in order activity carrying over into the second half of the year. This will offset some of the weakness seen in the NAND space where end demand has fallen short of expectations, prompting NAND manufacturers to postpone some capacity additions,” according to VLSI Research.
Tags: ASE, Barclay's Capital, GlobalFoundries, LFoundry, MagnaChip, Mentor Graphics, Si2, Synopsys, TSMC, VLSI Research