INDUSTRY NEWS

World Beat

Middle East

Tower snares volume order

Alliance Semiconductor has placed the first volume order for chips from Tower Semiconductor's newest chip factory. The pure-play foundry says Alliance wants volume output of its 4-Mb asynchronous SRAM using Tower's 180-nm process. Shipments are scheduled for mid-2003. One of Tower's four partners, Alliance is a fabless maker of memory and mixed-signal devices. The company has invested $75 million in Fab 2, located in Migdal Haemek, Israel.

Asia

Selete buys analyzers

Selete, the Japanese research consortium, has purchased analytical tools from n&k Technology of Santa Clara, CA. The 12-member organization will use the Model 3300 Analyzer systems for 300-mm wafer fabrication. By 2004 the consortium wants to develop a 65-nm technology node using high-k gate dielectric and multilevel interconnects using low-k materials, according to n&k. Inabata & Co., n&k's representative in Osaka, Japan, made the sale.

TEL to build office

TEL's Chinese subsidiary plans to buy land in Shanghai for a new office, the equipment manufacturer announced. TEL's Shanghai operations will build a 62,040-sq-ft office in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, Pudong. Established in April 2002, the Shanghai subsidiary is expanding to tap into expected growth in the Chinese IT market. The company employs approximately 150 persons and hopes to have an employee roster of approximately 300 by the end of 2006.

Europe

ON opens Slovak fab

ON Semiconductor has opened a second fab in Piestany, Slovak Republic. Targeting the wireless, computing and automotive markets, the plant will produce power-management microchips using the manufacturer's MOSFET HD3e technology. ON will make the devices on 150-mm wafers. The company says it has doubled fab capacity in Central Europe in the past three years. The ongoing expansion has enabled ON's fabs in the region to make more than 21% of the company's total chip output.

School installing MEMS line

A technical university in Madrid plans to install a MEMS fabrication line with the help of a Florida-based company specializing in maskless photolithography tools. Intelligent Micro Patterning of St. Petersburg will install its SF-100 system at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales de Madrid under the terms of a turnkey contract signed with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. The system uses Smart Filter technology to project master images directly onto quartz, plastic, and other substrates without needing photomasks. Intelligent Micro Patterning licenses the technology from the University of South Florida. The company will also install etching and deposition tools at the university's research line.

Prototyping services expand

Two providers of IC prototype services will expand their offerings as part of a recently signed agreement. Europractice IC Service and MOSIS, its U.S. counterpart, say the pact will enable them to offer additional technologies from AMI Semiconductor (AMIS). Based in Pocatello, ID, AMIS designs and manufactures mixed-signal and midrange digital ASICs. Europractice is affiliated with IMEC, the Belgian research consortium.

MOSIS of Marina del Rey, CA, offers the AMIS C5F 0.5-µm mixed-signal process with maskless EPROM option. Europractice supplies the 0.7-µm I²T 100-V process from AMIS Belgium. Both IMEC and MOSIS will be able to offer both AMIS technologies under the terms of the agreement.