news review
SEMI equipment spending plummets 13 percent
SEMI has reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$ 10.34 billion in the second quarter of 2012.
The billings figure is 4 percent lower than the first quarter of 2012 and 13 percent lower than the same quarter a year ago.
The data was gathered jointly with the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ) from over 100 global equipment companies that provide data on a monthly basis.
Global semiconductor equipment bookings were $9.70 billion in the second quarter of 2012. The figure is 10 percent lower than the same quarter a year ago and 4 percent lower than the bookings figure for the first quarter of 2012.
The quarterly billings data by region in millions of U.S. dollars is shown in the
Foundries boost
2012 spend SEMI’s World Fab Forecast database indicates that the total fab spending for equipment needed to ramp fabs, upgrade technology nodes, and expand or change wafer size could increase 16.7 percent in 2013 to reach a new record high of $42.7 billion.
graph above and shows that apart from the rest of the world (ROW), Taiwan was the only country to increase spending on semiconductor equipment in the second quarter this year as compared to Q1 2012.
Year-over-year, Japan and China cut their spending from Q2 2011 to Q2 2012 by 48 percent and 44 percent, respectively while Europe slashed its spending by a massive 56 percent.
Creating a low-noise chip-based optical wavelength converter
Researchers from the NIST Centre for Nanoscale Science and Technology have demonstrated a low-noise device for changing the wavelength of light using nanofabricated waveguides created on a silicon-based platform using standard planar fabrication technology.
Optical wavelength conversion is an important resource for applications in both classical and quantum information processing; it can connect physical systems operating at different wavelengths, and facilitate improved light detection by converting light to wavelengths for which highly sensitive detectors are available.
However, for many such applications the conversion process must not introduce additional noise.
Now researchers at NIST have demonstrated noise-free wavelength conversion using silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides fabricated on a silicon substrate. These waveguides were designed based on electromagnetic
simulations to determine an appropriate device geometry for a process called four- wave-mixing Bragg scattering, where an input signal field is converted to an output field whose frequency is shifted from the original by an amount equal to the difference in the frequencies of two applied pump fields.
Measurements show conversion efficiencies in these devices as high as a few percent, approaching the levels needed for some applications, and with no excess noise added during the conversion process. These new noise-free frequency converters are dramatically smaller than the nonlinear crystals and optical fibres used in previous work (by several orders of magnitude), and can be created in arrays and integrated with other on-chip devices using scalable silicon-based fabrication methods.
The scientists say that in the future, they will focus on increasing the conversion efficiency levels by optimising the waveguide geometry and incorporating the waveguides into optical resonators.
The estimate includes new equipment, used equipment, or in-house equipment but excludes test assembly and packaging equipment. The latest edition of the forecast lists over 1,150 based facilities and includes 850 silicon based plants, with 76 facilities starting production this year and in the near future. Since the previous publication in May 2012, SEMI analysts have added 296 fabs to more than 230 facilities, into the database. This includes 244 silicon fabs. Semiconductor manufacturing foundries were significant drivers of fab equipment spending in 2012 with over $10 billion combined investment. Their dominance is expected to continue with approximately $10 billion additional equipment spending in 2013. In 2012, the Americas dominated fab construction. From 2010 to 2012, over $6 billion will be spent on fab construction projects in this region, led by Intel, Samsung, Globalfoundries, and Micron. Most of these construction projects will be completed by the end of 2012. No immediate new fab projects in the Americas are anticipated, resulting in projected investment for 2013 construction to drop below $500 million from almost $3 billion in 2012. The situation is set to change In 2013, however, with most fab construction expected occur in Taiwan, China, and Korea. Samsung has begun an aggressive conversion of up to four existing Memory lines to System Large Scale Integration (LSI). A transition from Flash to System LSI is difficult; some drop in capacity in Memory is expected, but the company is expected to compensate by building a new fab for Memory, in Xian, China, with a whopping investment of $7 billion. The fab is expected to begin construction in mid-September 2012. Other increases in fab construction investment will come from SMIC’s new fab in Beijing, and TSMC and UMC fab projects in Taiwan.
Issue IV 2012
www.siliconsemiconductor.net 9
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