Applied Materials is expecting wafer fab equipment investments in 2021 to hit record numbers.Investments into semiconductors recovered in 2020 and this momentum is expected to continue throughout 2021, company CEO Gary Dickerson said at Applied Materials’ conference call for its fiscal first quarter

The recent hike in prices of helium gas is likely to negatively affect the profitability of semiconductor companies.According to the Korea Customs Service on Friday, helium gas import price was US$82,200 per a metric tonne in 2020, a 44% rise from 2019.Helium gas are used as coolers during semicondu

Coasia said on Wednesday had the most number of engineers among its competitors within Samsung Foundry’s ecosystem.The company, combined with its subsidiary Coasia Semi, had 210 engineers, a Coasia spokesperson said.By contrast, Samsung Foundry’s other design house partners Hanatec, Alpha Holdings,

Chips&Media will launch its new high-resolution video IP product called Wave6 Series in March, TheElec has learned.The first product in the series, called Wave627 (encoder IP), will support AV1 and VVC(H.266) standards.The company will launch Wave637 (codec IP) in August and Wave617 (decoder IP) wit

DS Hi-Metal may face difficulty in procuring raw material due to the military coup at Myanmar.The company is the world’s second largest solder ball maker. It set up its subsidiary DS Myanmar at Yangon on June 2019 through a 100% direct investment to procure tins used to make solder balls. A DS Hi-Me

Silfex, Lam Research’s subsidiary in South Korea, is facing problems with producing silicon (Si) rings, TheElec has learned.This is due to the COVID-19 pandemic that is preventing production staff from going to work normally.Lam Research was considering procuring Si rings from Hana Materials as an a

Key Foundry said on Tuesday that it will offer its third-generation 0.18 micrometer Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) process to customers.BCD process combines bipolar process that controls analog signals, CMOS to control digital signals and DMOS for high power processing, into one chip.It is mainly used to p

South Korea vacuum robot maker Raon Tech has won two major semiconductor customers in South Korea.The company has been supplying its vacuum robot to one of them in 2011.It has passed the demo test from another company and has been producing the robots from them since early 2020, TheElec has learned.

Auros Technology said on Monday that it was close to winning a new order from China within the month.A company spokesperson said results remained to be seen but the situation has been positive up to now.If Auros win the contract, it will be supplying its DRAM production equipment.Company CEO Lee Jun

Japan’s Renesas Electronics said on Monday that it was in talks with UK’s Dialog Semiconductor to potentially acquire the firm.Dialog previously supplied power management IC to Apple. But the company saw sales decline starting in 2019 after Apple began using its own chips. Dialog was in talks with S

Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson warned of the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) to the environment at his keynote speech during Semicon Korea on Friday.Dickerson said if AI data centers are built with the current technology, data centers will be consuming 15% of global power by 2025.This c

The combined sales of the top five semiconductor foundries in the world will increase 10% in 2021 from a year prior, VLSIresearch president Risto Puhakka said on Thursday.TSMC, Samsung Foundry, SMIC, GlobalFounderies and UMC combined will record US$80 billion in sales this year, the president said a

SK Hynix said on Thursday that it plans to install more water scrubbers in the cooling systems at its chip factories.Water scrubbers are used to block gas and chemicals formed during chip production from being released to the atmosphere. Catalysts and water are used during this process. SK Hynix sai

Samsung Electronics was considering Austin, Texas, for a new US$17 billion chip plant, according to a report by Reuters.The South Korean tech giant is seeking tax abatement of US$805.5 million over 20 years from Travis County and the city of Austin, documents seen by Reuters showed.The documents say

3D NAND flash scaling require technology that can reduce the stress on thin films, a Lam Research executive said on Thursday.Production of high performance was leading to more bow on wafers, Lam Research marketing manager Alice Hollister said at Semicon Korea. Technology that can control stress to a

Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf said Thursday that he expects the shortage in foundry production capacity will continue up to the first half of 2021.The CEO told Reuters that the company sell more chips if it could produce more.Qualcomm reported the earnings for its fiscal first quarter (October to De

Samsung Electronics said on Thursday that it plans to expand the application of magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM).MRAM stores data in magnetic domains, unlike most RAMs that store them in electric charge or current flows.The company improved the magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) function of its MRAM to make

Wafer fab equipment spending is expected to exceed US$70 billion in 2022, hitting an all time high from high demand for semiconductors, SEMI director Clark Tseng said.The fab equipment spending will reach US$66 billion this year, double that of US$30 billion in 2012.Spending will increase in wafer f

SK Hynix said on Wednesday that the company’s ultimate aim for its semiconductor fabs are to make them fully autonomous.Company manager Jeong Yu-in said its 300mm wafer fab were currently Level 3 to 4 in autonomy. SK Hynix will need to collaborate with the equipment industry and academia to get clos

A SK Hynix executive said on Wednesday that low-power semiconductors could help ease environmental problems.Company executive vice president Cha Seon Yong said the company’s shift from DDR4 to DDR5 saved power worth a year of power consumption from those consumed for year by all the street lamps in