Mitsubishi Electric Corporation developed a prototype forced-air-cooled three-phase 400V output inverter with all-silicon carbide (SiC) power modules and direct lead bonding that has a power density of 50kVA per liter.

Axus Technology introduced the Titan Carrier Upgrade for IPEC and Strasbaugh legacy CMP chemical mechanical polishing/planarization (CMP) tools for semiconductor and related manufacturing.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor fab equipment posted $1.60 billion in orders and $1.45 billion in billings in April 2012 for a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10, according to SEMI.

Brown University is using supercomputer simulations to better understand the ion bombardment of metal surfaces used in manufacturing nanoelectronics.

Indium Corporation acquired a manufacturing facility in Rome, NY, to expand its production capacities of indium-, gallium-, germanium-, and tin-based materials, as well as other compounds.

Power discretes’ sales revenue will grow at a CAGR of 6.5%, 2012-2016, estimates GBI Research. Power discretes are meeting demand for energy-efficient and environmentally friendly products.

Indian River State College in FL will be the first college in the southeastern US to offer students access to the instrumentation and curriculum provided by the NanoProfessor Nanoscience Education Program from NanoInk.

Stefan Wurm, director of lithography, SEMATECH will present “EUV Lithography Manufacturing Introduction: Infrastructure Readiness” in the session Technology Trends in Semiconductor Manufacturing at The ConFab 2012, June 3-6 in Las Vegas.

ON Semiconductor (Nasdaq:ONNN) expanded its Roznov, Czech Republic, operations with a new 4,000sq.m. research and design facility, a quarter of which is high-tech laboratories.

The massive “gray market” for cellphones is propelling sales of lower-cost flash memories like eMMC and SPI NOR, as manufacturers of the unregulated phones strive to keep production costs low, says IHS.

At The ConFab in Las Vegas, TSMC’s BJ Woo, senior director, Graphic/PLD/CPU Business Development Division, will present “Bridging the Fabless-Foundry Gap.”

DRAM’ percentage of the cost of a smartphone is decreasing, even as DRAM usage in smartphones is on the rise. Lowering ASPs for DRAM components caused DRAM costs in smartphones to fall by more than half in the course of a year, according to IHS.

Barclays Capital updates its wafer fab/semiconductor production equipment (WFE/SPE) capital expenditures expectations for TSMC, Samsung, Intel, UMC, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, SMIC, and Huali.

SEMICON West is less than 2 months away, July 10-12 in San Francisco, CA. Plan your attendee schedule now with highlights from the Extreme Electronics “show within a show;” 4 strong keynotes; sessions on device architecture and node shrink, lithography, 450mm wafers and more.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association published the JESD209-3 LPDDR3 Low Power Memory Device Standard, targeting the performance and density demands of new-gen mobile devices.

A number of techniques have been developed to control mask write time by reducing shot count. This article describes  and compares several techniques, and merits versus cost of each. Steffen Schulze and Tim Lin, Mentor Graphics, Wilsonville, OR

In April 2012, venture investment dollars received by semiconductor companies was $194.2 million; a 901.0% increase M/M and 461.3% increase Y/Y, reports the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA).

Barclays Capital’s C.J. Muse looks at the forecast for PC GPUs based on a new report from Mercury Research. Shipments of PC graphic devices in Q1 2012 came in in-line to slightly below historical trends. Nvidia lost share to Intel and AMD due to tight 28nm chip supply.