CS Companies, Anadigics and Intersil Announce Job Cuts and Cost Reductions
CompoundSemi News StaffNovember 6, 2008...Anadigics, a maker of wireless and wireline components, reported that it would eliminate about 100 jobs by the end of the week. This cut will be about 15 percent of the company's workforce of about 660 employees. The company expects the cost reductions including the lay-offs will amount to savings of $15 to $20 million per year, after one-time costs for severance and benefits of about $2.2 to $2.4 million.
Gilles Delfassy, chairman and interim CEO of Anadigics, said, “This was a difficult decision because of the impact it has on people, but was a necessary step in our plan to return the company to growth and profitability as soon as possible. We are continuing critical investments in new products and other strategic initiatives that focus on making our customers successful.” Anadigics News Release.
Intersil, a maker of electronic components for displays, and handsets, announced similar measures to cut 140 jobs or 9 percent of its workforce. The company will continue its previously announced Palm Bay, Florida fab consolidation.
Dave Bell, Intersil’s President and Chief Executive Officer said, “We are taking action to lower our current and future operating expenses in order to align our cost structure with the current business conditions, and maintain our competitive position during this economic downturn.”
Intersil expects to save $12 to $14 million annually with cost cutting and job cuts, after the one time pretax costs for the action of $20 to $23 million. Intersil News Release
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IQE Opens New Singapore Facility
CompoundSemi News StaffNovember 6, 2008...IQE, a provider of wafers and wafer services for wireless applications, has formally opened its new facility in Tampines, Singapore. The opening comes after relocating its MBE subsidiary's Singapore Singapore Science Park facility to Tampines. IQE says that the new facility will continue to produce wafers for wireless applications such as mobile phones and WiFi devices but will also provide capacity for materials for advanced electronics and high-efficiency solar cells (photovoltaics).
The 8,500 square meter facility will be housed within Singapore's newest industrial development area in Tampines. IQE points out that it will have 2,000 square meters of specialized cleanroom, and will allow for significant future manufacturing capacity expansion for the company in the Far East.
Manufacturing tools were transfered from the original Singapore site, and equipment was also moved from the company's operation in Bethlehem Pennsylvania. IQE transfered other tools from its manufacturing facilities around the world also. IQE says it carefully orchestrated the manufacturing tool relocation to caused minimal disruption to existing production capacity.
At the opening of the new plant, Dr Drew Nelson, IQE's CEO stated,
"Whilst it is unclear at this point what the impact of the global financial crisis will have on the wireless communications industry, the long term demand drivers for the industry are as strong as ever and the demand for wireless products appears set to grow rapidly over the coming years, and this new facility provides us with the capability to add capacity as and when required."
Company News Release
November 5, 2008...Sony has released a new music format disc technology it calls Blu-Spec CD. While the new CD does use the same polycarbonate material as the company's Blu-ray discs, it does not use the same encoding or decoding optics and blue laser technology that give Blu-ray its name. What give Blu-ray discs the high capacity of 25 GB is the use of a gallium nitride-based blue laser to encode and decode the data. The new Blu-Spec CD is essentially manufactured and cut the same way as a Blu-ray DVD. Other than being made out of the same material in the same way, the new Blu-Spec CD is nothing like a Blu-Ray DVD or the Blu-ray audio format. Sony does contend that the audio format is greatly improved over conventional CD audio. The company will be release some 60 titles in the new format. Roughly Translated Sony Music News Release "Near Perfect” Absorption of Sunlight From All Angles Reportedly Achieved
CompoundSemi News StaffNovember 3, 2008...Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new antireflective coating that could boost the light absorption capabilities of solar cells.
According to the researchers, the nanoengineered coating allows panels to absorb the entire spectrum of sunlight captured by solar panels from any angle.
“To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun’s position in the sky,” said Shawn-Yu Lin, professor of physics at Rensselaer
So, if effective, the coating could theoretically be used with most any solar cells including multi-junction cells, or silicon-based solar cells.
The seven layer coating material reportedly absorbs 96.21 percent of sunlight. This is nearly 50 percent higher than the 67.4 percent absorption from silicon because of reflection. Furthermore the researchers say that the huge gain in absorption was consistent across the entire spectrum of sunlight.
If the technology is as the researchers reported, it could some day make automatic solar tracking technology for solar panels obsolete, because it reportedly absorbs solar energy evenly and equally from all angles.
Each of the seven layers of material has a height of 50 nanometers to 100 nanometers that is made up of silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide nanorods positioned at an oblique angle. A layer looks and functions like a dense forest where sunlight is “captured” between the trees. The nanorods were attached to a silicon substrate via chemical vapor disposition. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute News Release Replisaurus Secures Financing to Drive Commercialization its Packaging Technology
CompoundSemi News StaffNovember 3, 2008...Replisaurus a company based in Kista, Sweden, has secured significant financing to commercialize its new, clean metallization technology for the chip packaging market.
Noble Venture Finance committed €7 million in venture financing for Replisaurus.
Replisaurus says that the funding gives it substantial resources to draw on as it integrates its metallization technology into a high-volume manufacturing solution. Replisaurus pointed out that earlier this year it won a EuroAsia IC Industry Cleantech award for its ElectroChemical Pattern Replication (ECPR) technology, which it contends eliminates many steps from the traditional packaging process and does away with solvents, developers, and strippers.
"Noble Venture Finance recognizes the game-changing opportunities our system offers to the global chip market, and given the difficult economic climate, it shows that companies with strong, forward-looking technology can still attract investments," said James Quinn, CEO of Replisaurus. "Our economical, fab-friendly, environmentally clean technology will help other companies reduce their carbon footprint, and we take great pride in that," he added. Replisaurus News Release Surrey Nanosystems Customizes Sputtering Tool to Extend Capabilities
CompoundSemi News StaffNovember 3, 2008...Surrey NanoSystems, a company based in New Haven, UK, announced that Low Demensional Systems Laboratory of Romania's National Institute of Materials Physics (NIMP) in Magurele has ordered one of its sputtering tools.
NIMP wanted a Gamma sputtering tool with customized capabilities.
Surrey says that NIMP wanted it to allow its software user interface to monitor its LEED and ellipsometer instruments in real time and dynamically modify deposition parameters of its Gamma sputtering tool.
"This sputtering tool will incorporate a very advanced collection of instrumentation that will significantly automate the trial and evaluation of thin film deposition," says Surrey NanoSystems' Duncan Cooper. "It's certainly one of the highest-specification sputtering tools we will ever have produced, and is probably one the most sophisticated configurations ever requested by the research community. We're extremely pleased to have won this significant order at a time when so much development activity in this sector is beginning."
Surrey NanoSystems News Release Alfalight Receives $1.36 Million Army Contract to Develop 1 kW Laser Diode Pump Source
CompoundSemi News StaffOctober 29, 2008...Alfalight Inc., a maker of high-power laser diodes based in Madison, Wisconsin USA, reported that it has received a $1.36 million, 12-month contract from the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Adelphi, Maryland. The program entitled "High Brightness Diode Sources II" (HiBriDS II), will extend Alfalight's success with previous programs to create more reliable solid state laser diode pump sources with higher brightness than current technology. According to the company, the goal of the program is to demonstrate 1 kW of 975 nm narrowband, wavelength-locked diode laser light coupled into a 600 um, 0.22 NA fiber. Alfalight contends that the new design be more cost effective and robust compared to fiber-coupled lasers because it will require less-demanding manufacturing tolerances and fewer optical components to scale power. Furthermore, Alfalight says that instead of micro-channel cooling, only industrial water cooling will be required.
"Alfalight's past performance in DARPA's ADHELS (Architecture for Diode High Energy Laser Systems) and ARL's HiBriDS programs has allowed us to push both the spatial and the spectral brightness of pump diodes by implementing brightness enhancement and wavelength-stabilization technologies," said Manoj Kanskar, vice president of Research and Development at Alfalight. "The extended scope of HiBriDS II will allow us to make a significant improvement to the brightness and power of cost-effective kilowatt-class pump modules."
Company News Release Concentrix Solar and Abengoa Solar Connect 2 MW Power Station to Spanish Grid
CompoundSemi News StaffOctober 29, 2008...Concentrix Solar, a maker of solar concentrator technology, and Abengoa Solar, a maker of silicon-based solar cells, connected a 2 MW solar plant to Spain's public utility grid. Concentrix uses fresnel lenses to concentrate the sun's rays 500 times and triple-junction solar cells. Its modules use three different types of cells that are stacked on one another to cover different parts of the solar spectrum. Abengoa Solar uses silicon flat modules. Both types of cells are mounted on tracking systems. According to the companies, it is the first combination solar power plant of its kind. The installation uses 19 of Concentrix Solar's FLATCON trackers which tilt the solar cells to face the sun directly as the sun moves across the horizon.
The companies connected the solar power station under the still valid version of the Real Decreto 661 / 2007, the first Spanish feed-in tariff law. The power station is installed in Sanlúcar la Mayor near Seville on grounds belonging to Abengoa Solar. The companies reportedly plan to have a total power of 300 MW installed at the power station by 2013. At that time it will be enough to power 153 000 houses in the Seville region with electricity.
The CEO of Concentrix Solar, Hansjörg Lerchenmüller stated, “Casaquemada is an important step for us to show that FLATCON is a competitive technology and an alternative to conventional photovoltaics technology. The technology has proven itself in a commercial power plant, clearly demonstrating that a mature state has been reached."
Concentric Solar News Release AWR and UMS to Begin “Try the Power” GaAs MMIC Design Incentive ProgramOctober 29, 2008...AWR and United Monolithic Semiconductors (UMS) have announced an incentive program that the companies hope will allow new customers to get MMIC design prototypes to market sooner. Under the "Try the Power" program new customers of AWR and UMS will get a free 90-day lease for AWR's Microwave Office electronic design automation (EDA) software. Also under the program, new customers will receive the UMS PPH25X foundry process design kit. Additionally, customers can utilize a reduced-rate prototype development quickturn (PDQ) shared-wafer foundry run using the UMS' PPH25X process. The program commences November 15, 2008, and runs through May 31, 2009.
AWR says its Microwave Office software has all the essential tools for high-frequency design including: linear and non-linear circuit simulators, electromagnetic (EM) analysis tools, integrated schematic and layout, statistical design capabilities, and parametric cell libraries with built-in design-rule check (DRC). AWR boasts that its software delivers unprecedented ease-of-use, openness, and interoperability, as well as integration with best-in-class tools for each part of the design process.
UMS says that its PPH25X pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMT) process offers a high breakdown voltage, which provides power density up to one watt per millimeter of gate periphery. UMS contends that the high performance of the PPH25X process (45GHz of Ft), makes it especially useful for power design at very high frequencies.
United Monolithic Semiconductors News Release
RFMD Extends Broadband GaAs pHEMT Amplifiers Family
CompoundSemi News StaffOctober 29, 2008...RFMD of Greensboro, North Carolina USA, added four new broadband GaAs pHEMT amplifier integrated circuits (ICs) to its SUF family of products for the Aerospace and Defense (A&D) market. RFMD notes that the new ICs are also applicable to telecom infrastructure, optical network, and test and instrumentation markets. RFMD says that the SUF-7000, -8000, -8500 and -9000 die-level GaAs pseudomorphic heterojuction transistor (pHEMT) amplifiers extend the operational frequency range of the company's product family, which now covers DC to 20 GHz. The four pHEMT's also deliver multiple combinations of P1dB, gain, and linearity performance. The company points out that in many A&D applications die-level amplifiers are preferred because they offer superior high-frequency performance compared to packaged parts, they enable flexibility for integration, and help end-product designers to achieve smaller board layouts. RFMD said it will release packaged versions of select SUF family amplifiers for production during the first quarter of 2009.
"Given the broadband frequency performance requirements of our defense customers, we are able to simultaneously deliver a family of new high performance ICs which address both military and non-military opportunities with the same IC solution," said Jeff Shealy, vice president and general manager of RFMD's Aerospace and Defense Business Unit. "Intelligent re-use of RF circuit design combined with our Optimum Technology Matching (OTM(TM)) strategy are key to our ability to accelerate penetration in multiple RF markets."
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