SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY
UPDATE
November 2011
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
5N Plus Expands Asian Activities
Kyocera Mita Builds Vietnam Fab
Micrel Ramps MEMS Manufacturing
ASE Expands IC Assembly and Test Manufacturing Facilities
HTOT Inaugurates Sapphire Manufacturing Plant
Micronit Launches MEMS Division
Microsemi Updates Thailand Flooding Impact
Optogan LED Chip Fab Opens in Germany
GlobalFoundries Confirms Cleanroom could be Automated by 2015
The firm expects its Laos and new Korean facilities will be instrumental in allowing 5N Plus to meet increasing demand for its products in this part of the world.
5N Plus, a producer of specialty metal and chemical products has reached an agreement to acquire the remaining 40 percent ownership interest in the joint venture company Lao Industrial Resources Co Ltd., that focuses on metal refining.
5N Plus also announced that it will be setting up a gallium chemicals plant in Korea in conjunction with Hong Kong based Golden Harvest, a leading producer of primary gallium. 5N Plus and Golden Harvest have been joint venture partners in a gallium refining facility located in Shenzhen, China since 2009. The new Korean facility will produce gallium chemicals for the growing LED market and is expected to be operational by mid 2012.
5N Plus President and Chief Executive Officer Jacques L'Ecuyer said, “Expansion of our activities in Asia is part of our growth strategy as we expect to see increasing demand for our products in this part of the world. Our Laos and new Korean facilities will be instrumental in allowing us to leverage this demand and the corresponding business opportunities.”
Kyocera Mita Corp. has held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new manufacturing facility to be constructed in VSIP Hai Phong Integrated Township and Industrial Park, Hai Phong City, Vietnam. The new fab will be operated by Kyocera Mita Vietnam Technology Co. Ltd, a wholly-owned company of Kyocera Mita.
The first stage of the construction, with a total floor area of approximately 66,000m2 (710,160 sq. ft.), is scheduled to be completed by the end of July 2012. Manufacturing operations are scheduled to start in October 2012, starting with approximately 1,000 employees.
By 2016, Kyocera Mita plans to increase the number of employees to roughly 7,000 and reach an annual production volume of around $1 billion.
Micrel Inc. has begun manufacturing micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) at its San Jose, CA wafer foundry operations. Micrel started production with a "major MEMS manufacturer representing a significant percentage of the existing foundry capacity." The IC maker is also developing production processes for several MEMS startups.
Micrel is one of the few 6" wafer fabs in the US offering MEMS manufacturing capability.
Micrel invested several million dollars in the MEMS fab ramp. Its San Jose site can now perform 3D front-to-back wafer alignment and has added a deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) tool to precisely etch very deep trenches, through silicon vias (TSV), and large cavities.
Micrel has achieved full production for its primary MEMS customer, said Guy Gandenberger, vice president, worldwide operations and foundry business unit for Micrel. Additional capacity is now reserved for other MEMS customers, and Micrel is capable of expanding the MEMS foundry space if necessary.
Micrel's Wafer Fab Division offers foundry services to commercial and military IC designers, among other customers. The wafer fab equipment can be used for short runs or volume production. The facility has been certified to ISO14001:1996, the International Environmental Management System Standard.
Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Incorporated, the world's largest semiconductor packaging and test company, celebrated the expansion of several manufacturing facilities in the cities of Kaohsiung and Chung Li, Taiwan with an official ceremony graced by President Ma Ying Jeou. The event was held in Kaohsiung to mark the milestones on the completion of ASE's K12 building, the groundbreaking of Nantze Export Zone Park II as well as the groundbreaking of ASE Chung Li's new building construction. The expansion of these facilities will further provide 19,000 job opportunities. It is estimated that by 2014, the total number of ASE employees hired in Taiwan would have reached 42,000.
ASE K12 Building, Kaohsiung
K12 is slated to be the first assembly and test building to receive the EEWH (Ecology, Energy saving, Waste reduction and Health) diamond certificate and the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold certificate. The EEWH is Taiwan's green standard, and recognized by the internationally acclaimed LEED-NC while the LEED Gold certification is accredited by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). K12 will focus on the production of ASE's advanced packaging technologies and copper wire IC packages.
Nantze Export Zone Park II
There are 3 buildings planned for construction at the new park with two scheduled for completion in 2013 and one in 2014 respectively. When completed, these 3 buildings will have a total area of 122,644 square meters (1,319,649 sq. ft.) and will be used to house production facilities as well as a core research and development center to advance ASE's capabilities in IC manufacturing services. In line with new building trends, the design and construction will also embrace green building standards for energy saving, reduction of CO2 emissions and a healthier working environment.
ASE Chung Li
Located near Taiwan's international Taoyuan airport, the Chung Li campus will develop 3 new buildings to expand production areas, as well as a recreational center for employee welfare and a research center. When completed in 2014, these facilities will also attain green building certification.
By expanding the Taiwan campuses, ASE continues its quest to become a world class leader in assembly and test manufacturing services. Increasing production floor space and embarking on increased research focus, assure our customers of ASE's long term plan to support growth and development of new technologies to produce faster, more cost effective and higher quality IC chips.
The firm is now ramping up to volume production and when the plant is fully operational, it will be capable of producing 30,000,000 TIE of sapphire material annually.
Haotian Optoelectronics Technology (HTOT) celebrated the opening of its sapphire production facility with a gala event on October 26, at HTOT’s new facility located in Guiyang City, Guizhou Provence, China.
GT announced the sale of its ASF sapphire crystal growth furnaces to HTOT in April, 2011.
Micronit opened its MEMS division, specializing in the design, prototyping and manufacturing of MEMS devices and wafers based on glass.
The Micronit manufacturing line processes several hundreds of thousands of wafers per year on 100-300mm substrates.
Micronit began manufacturing micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) after completing several projects for customers, and the company's existing processing and materials capabilities. Prototyping and manufacturing will use many of the same processes and equipment as lab-on-a-chip production, explained Ronny van 't Oever, managing director and co-founder of Micronit.
The company will make MEMS for LED applications, photovoltaics, static and active displays, fuel cells and sensors, among others where glass and silicon are combined in devices.
Micronit manufactures microfluidic lab-on-a-chip products and performs other micromachining technologies. The company works mainly in glass but also in silicon, polymers, and other materials. Micronit is ISO 9001 certified.
Microsemi Corporation, a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, updated expectations for the impact to its business as a result of the continued flooding in Thailand.
Ongoing flooding in the country has now forced a shutdown of Microsemi operations in a second facility in Thailand, just outside the capital city of Bangkok. With water levels still high, the company's operations in Ayutthaya, Thailand remain inoperative.
"The disaster in Thailand continues to negatively affect our operations in the region," said James J. Peterson, Microsemi's president and chief executive officer. "With two of our subcontracted facilities in Thailand now shut down, we expect there will be some revenue effect in the current quarter and to a lesser extent the ensuing two to three quarters beyond. We remain focused on the safety of our team and the community as we are working on a recovery plan to identify solutions that ensure our customers' needs are met as soon as is safe and practicable."
Microsemi is in the process of evaluating the revenue effect on the December quarter. The Ayutthaya and Bangkok facilities together can account for as much as 5 percent of total quarterly revenues.
Entegris' Taiwan lab, manufacturing facility serves advanced semiconductor manufacturers
Entegris, Inc., contamination control company opened a manufacturing and research facility in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, for design and manufacturing of advanced filtration and materials handling components for the semiconductor industry and other high-tech industries. The facility will also provide lab services to customers in Taiwan and across Asia.
Once the new facility is fully operational, it should employ as many as 160 manufacturing, sales, service and engineering staffers in Taiwan.
"Taiwan is an important market for Entegris, representing 16 percent, or nearly $110 million, of our sales in fiscal 2010. This expansion adds to our existing presence in this region and extends our ability to address growth opportunities in the semiconductor, solar, energy storage, and other emerging markets across Asia," said Gideon Argov, president and CEO of Entegris.
Entegris provides a wide range of products for purifying, protecting and transporting critical materials used in processing and manufacturing in semiconductor and other high-tech industries. Additional information can be found at www.entegris.com.
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. the established SRAM industry leader, affirmed its commitment to the market with the announcement of strategic investments in new product development and manufacturing.
The investment in new product development centers on the next generation of high-performance synchronous SRAMs, vital to the performance of high-speed networking equipment. Cypress is now sampling QDRII+ Xtreme SRAMs announced with the QDR Consortium earlier this year, and is investing to extend the QDR architecture with new products in 2012. Cypress has also completed a major capacity expansion with a foundry partner that triples capacity for its advanced 65-nm SRAM products with very low lead-times. In addition Cypress is also investing in a new wafer manufacturing process technology and expanding its patented "autoline" packaging and test capability that dramatically cut Cypress's packaging time and cost.
Cypress's investment is part of its long-term product strategy and is unparalleled in the industry. In recent years, numerous suppliers have either de-emphasized or exited the SRAM market, including reports from a number of customers that they have recently received end-of-life notices from Samsung Electronics informing them that Samsung will complete final shipments for all synchronous SRAMs by the end of 2012.
"Cypress's first product launched almost 30 years ago was a 1-kilobit SRAM, and from that point on we have never wavered from our commitment to our customers," said T.J. Rodgers, President and CEO of Cypress. "At a time when the actions of SRAM suppliers are causing valid concerns among customers about their supply and development roadmaps, it is appropriate for Cypress to further invest in the SRAM market and continue to support our customers for the long term."
"Our commitment to the market has been rewarded, as our SRAM business is now the unquestioned industry leader," Rodgers said. "Our promise to customers is to continue to provide the broadest SRAM portfolio with leading-edge technology, clear roadmaps to future generations of products, and superior quality and delivery."
"By continuing to invest strategically in the market, we are assuring our customers that we will support their efforts to provide new generations of higher-performance equipment to keep up with expanded data networking requirements across the globe that are not abating," said Dana Nazarian, Executive Vice President of Cypress's Memory Products Division. "SRAMs continue to provide clear performance advantages over other memory technologies."
Optogan opened its light-emitting diode (LED) production site in Landshut, Germany, bringing "future-oriented" industry to Bavaria, said the Minister of Economic Affairs of the German Federal State of Bavaria, Martin Zeil, who spoke at the opening.
Optogan expanded in Germany with the new site, located near to Munich Airport. A former Hitachi semiconductor fab, the site boasts a 4000m2 (43,040 sq. ft.) cleanroom. Up to 100 workers will staff the site. Initial capacity will exceed 1 billion chips/year. The site will be Optogan's hub of international business, which is expanding from Europe to a global scale, explains Hans Peter Ehweiner, managing director of Optogan GmbH.
The Landshut LEDs will be used for lamps and luminaires in indoor, outdoor, and residential applications.
The Optogan Group develops and manufactures state-of-the-art chip technologies.
GlobalFoundries has designed its Fab 8 computer chip facility in Malta to be "lights-out" -- a term used to describe heavily automated factories where few humans are needed on the production floor.
Former Fab 8 General Manager Norm Armour, who recently left the company, said at a company conference in Silicon Valley at the end of August that the Fab 8 cleanroom -- which has enough space to hold eight football fields -- could be totally automated by 2015, according to press accounts.
GlobalFoundries spokesman Travis Bullard confirmed Armour's remarks but he said the company's employment projections shown in presentations to business and civic groups around the region were always based on a lower number of cleanroom employees in contact with manufacturing equipment -- known as "tools" -- than is found at other fabs around the world.
"I don't know if we'll ever see a truly 'lights-out' operation, but the trend in the industry, as well as all manufacturing, really, is toward higher levels of automation and less manual operations," Bullard said.
That means that the company is still on track to have roughly 1,400 employees when it starts full-scale chip production in the next two years. The company already has 900 people in Malta.
"He (Armour) was referring to 'lights out' in the cleanroom -- which would mean fewer operators physically in the cleanroom, but not necessarily fewer employees at the fab in general as technicians would still be driving or operating the tools from client devices (such as a laptop computer) from outside the cleanroom," Bullard said.
Lights-out factories have been envisioned in many manufacturing sectors, including the auto industry, for decades. The concept is especially popular in the semiconductor industry because even the smallest amount of human hair or dirt particles can ruin the 12-inch silicon wafers that are processed into hundreds of chips. Human error can also cause problems with the multi-million dollar tools, which need to run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to maximize output. A broken tool can lead to millions of dollars in wasted production time.
In fact, when GlobalFoundries showed off the inside of Fab 8 to the Times Union earlier this year, it indicated it wouldn't allow clients on tours inside the cleanroom. Instead, the company is building a virtual tour room with banks of flat-panel TVs connected to video cameras trained on every part of the manufacturing process in real time.
"We won't be able to do tours," Bullard said at the time. "But we can give them virtual tours. We can show them the product being made."
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