Manufacturing

Allocation, rationing, higher prices and a fight for wafers are the inevitable fate of the semiconductor industry next year, according to Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons, speaking at his company's mid-term forecast meeting, IFS2008-MT, in London today.

<p>The semiconductor industry cannot afford the R&amp;D costs for both shrinking transistors and moving to 450mm wafers according to a report from Equipment Productivity...</p>

Despite fears of a downturn in spending in the semiconductor equipment industry, immersion lithography is keeping ASML buoyant, as the company shipped 16 immersion systems and got new orders for 33 (29 new and four used) in Q2.

Good news for the stability of the chip market is that the leading foundry, TSMC, reckons Q3 sales will be better than Q2 and that the semiconductor market will grow 5 per cent this year.

Fuel prices continue to escalate, with concerns over US domestic stocks leading to the price of crude hitting a record high of $135 a barrel - and with no indication of a slowdown in the immediate future

IQE has announced significant orders from its largest customers for various products from the semiconductor wafer manufacturer's New Jersey facility

A pick of the main stories crossing the ElectronicsWeekly.com News Index this week, from Intel fines for antitrust behaviour and lay-offs at Spansion, to the East Kilbride fab closing and an obituary for Evan Steadman...

Freescale concedes that a sale of the company's fab at East Kilbride now looks 'unlikely' and that, while consultation continues, 'the focus will now be on the proposed closure of the fab' with the loss of 850 jobs.

A pick of the main stories crossing the ElectronicsWeekly.com News Index this week, from lighting OLEDs and the EC versus Qualcomm and Rambus, to Qualcomm investing in femtocell supplier ip.access and National Semiconductor publishing the metrics behind its 'PowerWise' brand of energy efficient chips...

German newspapers, fed by an apprently leaky supervisory board at Infineon Technologies, are saying that Infineon and NXP are in 'intensive' talks about merging their operating businesses.