AXT Weighing Decisions on the Optoelectronic Production FrontJune 26, 2003...AXT, Inc. of Fremont, California USA has officially announced that they're
seriously reviewing their options on the optoelectronic component side of their
business. Those options include spinning off of the division which may involve
a joint venture, sale of the division or all or part of its assets. Another
option, which they hope to avoid, is liquidation. According to Morris Young,
President and CEO of AXT, "By taking this step (towards discontinuing
opto production), we will be able to focus our attention on growing our core
substrate business and bringing it to profitability, while conserving the company's
cash," AXT stated that they have found their HB-LED
and VCSEL epiwafer and device business,
to date, to be unprofitable. Unless an alternative is found soon that allows
the operation to continue, the wind-down of their optoelectronic facility will
involve the dismissal of approximately 165 employees at the California facilities,
who AXT said would be given their notice in 60 days. AXT has assured their customers
they will keep the traditional minimum work force in place to complete current
orders and sell off inventory. The facility, in Southern California, near Los
Angeles, includes 10 MOCVD platforms, including a mix of Aixtron and Emcore
tools for the growth of blue spectrum LED epiwafers and devices, as well as
laser diode machines for the growth of VCSEL epiwafers and devices. AXT has
experienced a variety of industry pressures as it continues to move from California
to China, being one of the first USA companies to build a facility in mainland
China. That facility faced the SARS difficulty of late. On the blue spectrum
HB-LED front, AXT was recently sued by Cree Lighting for allegedly infringing
a patent regarding light emitting diodes that Cree licenses from Boston University.
The stated position from AXT is that they believe that lawsuit to be without
merit, and they intend to vigorously defend their proprietary processes. Cree
itself is facing an unusual bout of pressure due to internal and class action
lawsuits. AXT's pressure is compounded by yet another lawsuit leveled at them
for alleged substrate infringement issues aimed at them by Sumitomo Electric
(SEI), which Morris Young responded were related more to the current recessive
business climate than IP issues. AXT is noted as a traditionally strong supplier
of GaAs, InP and Ge compound semi substrates, grown by VGF. AXT's founders are
noted for their pioneering activities in popularizing the VGF growth method.
Company news release.
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Wireless LAN Stardard-Setting Efforts Underway in Japan via Huge New ConsortiumJune 26, 2003...A group of 106 Japanese companies calling themselves The Mobile Computing
Promotion Consortium, led by DoCoMo and NEC are joining forces to establish
standards for wireless LAN systems as a means of more rapidly expanding their
mutual marketplace. According to a feature in the Friday am June 27 edition
of Nihon Keizai Shimbun current connections already in place connecting
users to the Internet through wireless LANs with devices such as notebook computers
can already be made at approximately 3,000 locations in Japan, including restaurants
and train stations. The article notes, however, that the number of users has
actually not grown and credits that stagnant situation to factors such
as "conflicting connection formats between operators, redundant fee charges,
and incompatible equipment that prevents connections from being established."
The Mobile Computing Promotion Consortium is being organized as an effort towards
creating "universal standards for wireless LAN connectivity" by the
end of 2004. Specific issues to be addressed include roaming rules that allow
connections between LAN operators, equipment specifications to enable any operator
to provide a stable connection, the critical need for a highly secure encryption
system, and a the establishment of a function that automatically turns on a
terminal when it enters a wireless LAN service area. As an initial step, the
consortium established a promotion committee comprised of 28 firms, including:
Fujitsu Ltd., NEC Corp., Toshiba Corp., Hitachi Ltd., NTT DoCoMo Inc., and KDDI
Corp. Nikkei reports that testing and data collection will begin within the
year at connection points nationwide. Link
to Nikkei online article June 26, 2003...The USA's "Great Salt Lake" is one of the most harsh environments in the world, and the irony that Salt Lake City, Utah is the venue for the 45th Electronic Materials
Conference, which is currently underway, fitting illustrates what SiC does best... it
performs incredibly well in extremely harsh environments. Cree, Inc. of Durham,
North Carolina, a company that pioneered the commercially of SiC substrates,
took the opportunity of the meet to debut their new 4-H 100mm Semi-Insulating
(SI) SiC substrates. The new substrates marks yet another significant milestone
in the advancement of single crystal silicon carbide, and a key to future production
of SiC and GaN RF components and systems. Both SiC and GaN are wide bandgap
compound semi materials, and Cree's expertise is in both. "The increased
surface area of these larger wafers should allow us to almost double the number
of devices on each wafer versus current production on Cree's 3 inch SiC HPSI
wafers," said Dr. Robert Glass, VP and GM of Cree's Materials Division.
"The demonstration of a 100mm HPSI (High Purity Semi-Insulating) substrate
builds directly on our three inch HPSI program, and validates Cree's commitment
to developing products directed at the needs of the commercial market."
Cree's Executive VP, Advanced Devices and co-founder, Dr. John Palmour added,
"We have received tremendous support in our efforts to develop advanced SiC
substrates from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). When
commercially available, we believe these 100mm substrates can be run on current
GaAs, and other compound semiconductor, 100mm RF production equipment. Likewise,
it will allow Cree to convert its Wide Bandgap RF fabrication line to 100mm
once the substrates are available in production volumes, which we believe could
enable further reductions in component costs." Company
news release Consortium for Advanced Switching to Result in Important New SpecificationJune 26, 2003...Intel Corporation and others in a noteworthy large communications industry
consortium, calling themselves the Arapahoe Work Group, have let it be known
that they have joined as a group to develop an advanced switching specification
that will be a clear-cut complement PCI Express technology. The new members
of the Arapahoe consortium include: Agere Systems, Alcatel, Altera Corp., EMC
Corp., Fujitsu Limited, Hitachi Ltd., Huawei Technologies, National Semiconductor
Corp., Nokia, Petalynx, OSE Systems, PMC-Sierra Inc., Siemens AG, Sun Microsystems
Inc., Synopsis Inc., TeraChip Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., Vitesse Semiconductor
Corp., Xyratex and ZettaCom Inc. The Advanced Switching specification is a switched
interconnect and data fabric technology based on the PCI Express architecture
for joining components and system boards in low-to-midrange communications and
embedded applications. The PCI Express architecture builds on the highly successful
PCI standard, and was designed as the general-purpose chip-to-chip interconnect
technology for the next decade. "The participation of these companies reflects
the momentum that has built around the Advanced Switching specification, positioning
it for broad adoption," said Tim Parker, spokesperson for the Arapahoe Work
Group and Intel Communications Group director of technology initiatives. "Their
contributions will help frame a universally available switched interconnect
and data fabric with the features, ecosystem support and cost efficiencies required
by the communications industry to meet the demands arising from the convergence
of computing and communications." The new companies join existing members
of the Arapahoe Work Group, the long list of which is included in the joint
news release. Spire Contracted to Help Create "Solar Breeder" FactoriesJune 26, 2003...Spire Corporation of Bedford, Massachusetts USA has been awarded a $5.2 million
cost-shared contract from the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable
Energy Laboratories (NREL) to develop automated manufacturing processes for
fabricating large-scale solar electric modules. The three-year research and
development contract will enhance Spire's capabilities for building high-volume
production equipment that can assemble solar modules as large as 10 feet by
8 feet or more than five times the size of today's standard size module. NREL
will fund one half of the cost-shared contract, or approximately $2.7 million,
under the Photovoltaic Manufacturing Research and Development ("PVMRD") program,
and $2.5 million will be spent by Spire. According to Spire President/CEO Roger
G. Little, "This contract will enable our Spire Solar business to raise its
core machine building skills to the next level. The equipment and technology
that we plan to develop under this program will enable the building of super-sized
modules, each generating as much as one kilowatt. It is a well-known fact that
the larger the size of the module, the lower the overall cost of an installed
photovoltaic system. We believe these new modules can be used to cover contaminated
land sites with large utility-connected arrays to generate clean energy. Our
objective is to show that it can be economically feasible to transform industrial
brownfields into Solar Brightfields. We see a big potential market for 'Solar
Breeder' factories, a term used for photovoltaic module assembly factories that
will continuously produce these specialized modules for deployment in Solar
Brightfields." Company
news release Taiwan Government Continues To Invest In Its FutureJune 25, 2003...Aixtron AG of Aachen, Germany, has announced that the Taiwanese government
has approved funding for the establishment of a new R&D Center for intense production-oriented
technology transfer in Taiwan. Aixtron Taiwan has received the funding for the
three-year project by Taiwan's Department of Industrial Technology (DoIT), Ministry
of Economic Affairs, along with other companies like HP (Product Development
Center), Dell (Taiwan Research Center), Becker Avionics (Research Center), Sony
(Design & Engineering Center). Professor Dr. Michael Heuken, Head of the Scientific
Advisory Board and VP of Corporate Research & Development at Aixtron commented,
"Our long-term and focused commitment to the Taiwanese Industry has been once
more made clear by this latest R&D government cooperation agreement and the
received funding. Our ultimate goal is to enable the Compound Semiconductor
Industry and many other high-tech industries in Taiwan to achieve highest productivity
whilst establishing high quality, cost-efficient production processes for electronic
and photonic devices which have huge market potentials." Company
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