The Week In Review: June 8
By Mark LaPedus
Applied Materials was the world’s largest supplier of 200mm fab equipment in 2011, as the company more than doubled its 200mm business last year, according to the new rankings from VLSI Research. Applied’s 200mm equipment sales were $423.9 million in 2011, up from $207 million in 2010, according to VLSI Research. In the rankings, Lam Research was in second place ($195.1 million), TEL was third ($156.2 million), ASML was fourth ($132.3 million) and Nikon was fifth ($116.9 million). Overall 200mm sales represented 6% of the total wafer fab equipment (WFE) market. “200mm equipment sales is capacity-driven,” said Risto Puhakka, president of VLSI. “200mm share of total equipment sales is expected to decline. More 200mm manufacturing is moving to 300mm.’’
In its first ion implanter product rollout since acquiring Varian Semiconductor, Applied Materials said the high-current Applied Varian VIISta Trident system is optimized for the implant recipes employed at foundries.
In a blog posted this week, Gold Standard Simulations (GSS) talked about process-induced variability for Intel’s bulk finFETs. A joint paper between the University of Glasgow and GSS presented at the recent International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) revealed that SOI finFETs are poised to meet the low statistical variability requirements of 11nm CMOS technology.
Mentor Graphics announced deals with two foundries for 20nm production. Mentor and Samsung Electronics have expanded their collaboration to include Calibre signoff design kits for 20nm. In addition, Mentor also said that its Calibre physical verification platform and pattern matching capabilities are available for TSMC’s 20nm process. And separately, Hitachi has adopted Mentor’s Olympus-SoC place and route tools for ASIC development.
GlobalFoundries expanded its RF foundry efforts. The silicon foundry vendor is using Integrand Software’s inductor synthesis tool for RF IC design within its 40nm-LP process. GlobalFoundries also announced support for Agilent’s GoldenGate RF circuit and Momentum 3D planar electromagnetic (EM) simulators for its 65nm low-power enhanced (LPe) RF CMOS process.
SEMI predicts that fab equipment spending will hit $39.5 billion in 2012, a 2% increase over last year. For 2013, fab equipment spending is expected to reach an all-time record high, with $46.3 billion or 17% growth from 2012.
Semiconductor stockpiles held by IC suppliers increased during the first quarter of 2012, but the rise in inventory for a second straight quarter was driven by the anticipation of higher demand from customers, according to IHS iSuppli. And although production of hard disk drives (HDDs) is recovering from the Thailand floods that occurred in October, HDD average selling prices (ASPs) are not expected to decline to pre-disaster levels until 2014, according to the research house.
Led by tablets, IC Insights has raised its forecast for total shipments of personal computers and now expects total PC shipments to rise to 478 million units in 2012, an increase of 15% over 416 million units in 2011.
During this week’s Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco, IBM and Intel separately outlined the new techniques and challenges in microprocessor design from two different angles.
The industry will require new breakthroughs in chip-scaling and EDA technology to enable the next wave of systems over the next decade, according to a technologist from ARM.
Tags: Agilent, Applied Materials, ARM, GlobalFoundries, Gold Standard Simulations, IBM, IC Insights, IHS iSuppli, Integrand Software, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Samsung, SEMI, SOI, University of Glasgow, VLSI Research