Foundries News

• SMIC Announces Availability of 65-nanometer Low Leakage Process IP Portfolio (Friday May. 15, 2009)
  SMIC announced today the availability of a set of 65-nanometer low leakage process IPs, including the preliminary version release of six memory compliers. This portfolio, which contains a number of new, ready-to-use IPs, follows the 65nm standard cell libraries that were released earlier this year.
  
  
• Fujitsu Microelectronics and TSMC to Collaborate on Leading-edge Process Technology (Thursday Apr. 30, 2009)
  Fujitsu Microelectronics and TSMC today announced that they will collaborate on leading-edge process technology production for the manufacturing of Fujitsu Microelectronics’ products. Under an agreement between the companies, Fujitsu Microelectronics will expand its 40-nanometer generation logic IC business with production at TSMC’s fabs.
  
  
• TSMC Launches Integrated Sign-Off Flow To Shorten Design Cycle, Enhance Tape-Out Quality (Tuesday Apr. 21, 2009)
  The new flow is available now for 65nm designs. Integrated Sign-Off Flow is an automated RTL to GDSII chip implementation flow that tightly integrates all process-specific items including pre-qualified library and IP, selected EDA tools, production-quality flow, advanced design methodology, and TSMC foundry technology files that have been proven and refined over hundreds of applications.
  
  
• TSMC Announces Foundry's First Mixed Signal/RF Reference Design Kit (Tuesday Apr. 21, 2009)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. today unveiled the foundry industry's first Mixed Signal/Radio Frequency Reference Design Kit (MS/RF RDK). The new RDK helps resolve the long-standing challenge of full chip verification of SoCs with both analog, mixed signal and digital content. It enables a top-down MS/RF design methodology and a system-level simulation flow to reduce design cycle time and encourage IP reuse.
  
  
• IBM Technology Alliance Announces Availability of Advanced 28-Nanometer, Low-Power Semiconductor Technology (Thursday Apr. 16, 2009)
  IBM, Chartered, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Infineon, Samsung and STMicroelectronics have defined and are jointly developing a 28-nanometer (nm), high-k metal gate (HKMG), low-power bulk complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process technology.
  
  
• TSMC March 2009 Sales Report (Friday Apr. 10, 2009)
  TSMC today announced its net sales for March 2009: on an unconsolidated basis, sales were approximately NT$13.62 billion, an increase of 18.4 percent over February 2009 and a decrease of 48.7 percent from March 2008.
  
  
• UMC Delivers Customer ICs Produced on its High Performance 40nm Logic Technology (Wednesday Apr. 08, 2009)
  UMC today announced that it has delivered customer ICs produced on its High Performance (HP) 40nm process technology. The products were manufactured with excellent cycle time and yields for the large die-size programmable logic chips, which leveraged the foundry's triple-gate oxide, 12 metal layers and copper/low-k technology to enable 65% reduced power consumption and more than twice the density improvement over previous 65nm generation products.
  
  
• TSMC Qualifies New 0.18-Micron Embedded Flash Family (Tuesday Mar. 31, 2009)
  TSMC today announced that it has qualified its new 0.18-micron embedded flash (embFlash) process technology family that targets a wide range of applications. The new family includes a baseline 1.8 to 5 volt standard process, an ultra-low leakage process, and specific automotive-qualified embedded Flash IP.
  
  
• SilTerra Ready For 110nm CMOS Logic Technology Pilot Production (Wednesday Mar. 25, 2009)
  SilTerra has officially debut the industry foundry compatible copper-based 110nm CMOS Logic Technology as the 10% optical shrink for it's copper-based 130nm CMOS Logic Technology, which has been in mass production for more than 2 years.
  
  
• Ciranova and TSMC Announce Strategic Partnership on Advanced PDK Technology (Tuesday Mar. 24, 2009)
  TSMC and Ciranova announced a multi-year strategic partnership to collaborate on the development of advanced Process Design Kit (PDK) technology based on Ciranova’s PyCell architecture. The results of the collaboration, targeted at 65nm process technology and below, will be an integral part of TSMC’s interoperable PDK development roadmap.
  
  
• TSMC Announces February 2009 Sales Report and Revises First-Quarter Business Guidance (Tuesday Mar. 10, 2009)
  TSMC today announced its net sales for February 2009: on an unconsolidated basis, sales were approximately NT$11.50 billion, a decrease of 7.5 percent from January 2009 and a decrease of 59.5 percent from February 2008.
  
  
• Chartered Updates Guidance for First Quarter (Monday Mar. 09, 2009)
  Today, in a mid-quarter update, Chartered Semiconductor revised its first quarter 2009 guidance, which was originally provided on January 30, 2009.
  
  
• Intel, TSMC Reach Agreement to Collaborate on Technology Platform, IP Infrastructure, SoC Solutions (Monday Mar. 02, 2009)
  Intel Corporation and TSMC today announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on addressing technology platform, intellectual property (IP) infrastructure, and System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions. Under the MOU, Intel would port its Atom processor CPU cores to the TSMC technology platform including processes, IP, libraries, and design flows. The collaboration is intended to expand Intel’s Atom SoCs availability for Intel customers for a wider range of applications through integration with TSMC’s diverse IP infrastructure.
  
  
• Tower Semiconductor Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2008 Financial Results (Thursday Feb. 19, 2009)
  Record annual revenue of $251.7 million, representing year-over-year growth of 9 percent; EBITDA of $36 million and positive annual cash flow from operations
  
  
• Lime Microsystems selects Jazz Semiconductor's 0.18-micron SiGe process for its Configurable Multi-band, Multi-standard Transceiver Targeting WCDMA, CDMA, LTE and WiMAX Femtocells (Wednesday Feb. 18, 2009)
  Lime Microsystems’ proprietary technology combined with Jazz Semiconductor’s 0.18-micron SiGe BiCMOS process has enabled the development of a single-chip multi-band, multi-standard broadband transceiver IC with outstanding RF performance.
  
  
• Tower Semiconductor and Triune Systems to Collaborate on Power Management Platform (Wednesday Feb. 11, 2009)
  Through this collaboration, the companies will design and develop intellectual property (IP) for Tower’s 0.18-micron Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) process to deliver a family of low and high voltage power management products and IP for a variety of applications to enable faster design cycles and lower cost designs.
  
  
• SMIC Reports 2008 Fourth Quarter Results (Friday Feb. 06, 2009)
  Overall revenue decreased to $272.5 million in 4Q08, down 27.5% QoQ from 3Q08 due to a 25.1% decrease in wafer shipments.
  
  
• TSMC Information -- TSMC currently has no plans to conduct a capital reduction (Tuesday Feb. 03, 2009)
  TSMC would like to correct the inaccuracies stated in a report by the Economic Daily News on February 3, 2009 regarding capital reduction.
  
  
• TSMC Reports Fourth Quarter EPS of NT$0.48 (Thursday Jan. 22, 2009)
  Year-over-year, fourth quarter revenue decreased 31.2% while net income and diluted EPS decreased 63.9% and 62.3%, respectively. Compared to third quarter of 2008, fourth quarter results represent a 30.6% decrease in revenue, a decrease of 59.3% in net income, and a decrease of 59% in diluted EPS.
  
  
• SMIC Releases Preliminary Version of Three 65-Nanometer Standard Cell Libraries (Wednesday Jan. 21, 2009)
  SMIC today announced the preliminary release of three in-house 65-nanometer standard cell libraries. The libraries include a high performance Very High Speed (VHS) library, a density and performance optimized High Speed (HS) library, and a power management kit (PMK) for the High Speed (HS) library.
  
  
• TSMC December 2008 Sales Report (Friday Jan. 09, 2009)
  TSMC today announced its net sales for December 2008: on an unconsolidated basis, sales were NT$13,161 million, a decrease of 31.8 percent from November 2008 and a decrease of 54.8 percent from December 2007.
  
  
• UMC Reports Sales for December 2008 (Thursday Jan. 08, 2009)
  UMC today reported unaudited net sales for the month of December 2008
  
  
• Tower Semiconductor Receives $20 Million of Cash Investment from Israel Corp. (Thursday Jan. 08, 2009)
  Tower Semiconductor today announced a $20 million cash investment in the Company by Israel Corp, pursuant to the agreement between the parties announced on September 25, 2008.
  
  
• TSMC November 2008 Sales Report (Wednesday Dec. 10, 2008)
  TSMC today announced its net sales for November 2008: on an unconsolidated basis, sales were NT$19,295 million, a decrease of 32.0 percent from October 2008 and a decrease of 36.0 percent from November 2007.
  
  
• UMC Revised 4Q08 Guidance and Reports Sales for November 2008 (Tuesday Dec. 09, 2008)
  UMC today revised downward its 4Q08 guidance and reported unaudited net sales for the month of November 2008.
  
  
• SMIC Achieves First 45-nanometer Silicon Success (Monday Dec. 08, 2008)
  SMIC today announced its first 45-nanometer yield lot, signifying a working 45nm process. This first silicon success comes less than one year after SMIC signed an agreement with International IBM to license its low-power and high-performance bulk CMOS technologies in December 2007.
  
  
• austriamicrosystems Expands CMOS, High-Voltage, High-Voltage Flash and RF Multi Project Wafer Service for Foundry Customers (Monday Dec. 08, 2008)
  austriamicrosystems’ business unit Full Service Foundry expands its cost-efficient and speedy ASIC prototyping service, known as Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) or shuttle run, in 2009 with a more extensive schedule
  
  
• Tower Semiconductor Continues Execution of $60 Million per Year Cost Reduction Plan (Tuesday Dec. 02, 2008)
  Announced Today a Reduction in Force of 280 Jobs, Comprised of 200 in Tower and 80 in Jazz
  
  
• TSMC's Fourth-Quarter Business Guidance Revised (Monday Dec. 01, 2008)
  The company now expects fourth-quarter revenue to be between NT$63 billion and NT$65 billion, lower than the previous expectation of between NT$69 billion and NT$71 billion.
  
  
• UMC Advances its High-k/Metal-Gate Process Solution (Tuesday Nov. 25, 2008)
  This achievement is a first key-step in demonstrating technology performance and process reliability for HK/MG technology, which will be used for UMC's next generation 32/28nm process.