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Leading semiconductor manufacturers-including IBM Corp. and Intel Corp.-have committed $4.4 billion to develop chip technology in New York state, allowing them to share resources as they move to more advanced manufacturing. The agreement aims to help the industry make chips on 450-millimeter wafers, reducing the cost per processor by more than doubling the number of chips made on each wafer.
Researchers have designed promising semiconductor materials that, once optimized, could be a fast, effective, and inexpensive method for detecting dangerous materials such as plutonium and uranium. To design an effective detector, researchers turned to the heavy element part of the periodic table and developed a design concept to make new semiconductor materials of heavy elements.
In an attempt to develop an advanced stacking technology, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) recently entered into a partnership with Minnesota-based materials company 3M. Through this collaboration, IBM intends to develop a new material, which will help it to stack 100 or more chips together to build microprocessors that can be used for commercial purposes.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES announced the appointment of Dr. Rutger Wijburg as vice president and general manager of “Fab 1,” the company’s Germany-based semiconductor manufacturing facility, as of October 2011. Wijburg comes to GLOBALFOUNDRIES from NXP Semiconductors, formerly Philips Semiconductors, where he held executive and senior management positions in worldwide manufacturing, operations and engineering over a 20-plus year career.
The March earthquake and disaster in Japan are still affecting the global semiconductor market and may continue to do so for months to come. When people are trying to find homes and necessities they are not thinking about buying PCs. IDC is forecasting semiconductor growth to be down to 0.9% in 2012 compared with 3.6% growth in 2011.