Semiconductor firms urged to work with public research institutes
It is hoped that with a more systematic approach to determine research areas in semiconductors, Singapore will be able to tap new advances in technology.
POSTED: 13 Oct 2015 23:16
SINGAPORE: Semiconductor firms should work more closely with public research institutes, so as to strengthen Singapore as a hub for semiconductor manufacturing - this was one of the recommendations contained in a White Paper by the Singapore Semiconductor Vision 2020 Task Force.
Other recommendations included enhancing labour productivity and improving the talent pipeline. The task force comprises representatives from organisations including A*STAR, Applied Materials SEA, GLOBALFOUNDRIES Singapore, the Institute of Microelectronics, Lantiq Asia Pacific, Micron, Singapore Economic Development Board, SSMC and STATS ChipPAC.
The task force hopes that by adopting a more systematic approach to determine research areas in semiconductors, it will help Singapore tap new advances in technology as well as trends such as the Internet of Things.
Said Mr Russell Tham, regional president for Applied Materials and chairman of the Singapore Semiconductor Vision 2020 Task Force: "Singapore's ability to collaborate between the public and private sector is certainly a unique strength.
“I can tell from our experiences, the collaborations that we had create a unique competitive advantage for the company - by leveraging A*STAR's research institutes, by leveraging the ability to construct models that are complementary to Singapore's interests.”
The semiconductor industry employs over 40,000 people in Singapore and has annual output of around S$50 billion.
- CNA/xq
- wong chee tat :)
Showing posts with label semiconductor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label semiconductor. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Friday, January 30, 2009
Chartered Semiconductor announces Q4 loss, cuts 540 jobs in Singapore
Chartered Semiconductor announces Q4 loss, cuts 540 jobs in Singapore
By Wong Siew Ying, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 30 January 2009 1229 hrs
SINGAPORE: Chartered Semiconductor, one of the world's largest microchip makers, announced on Friday it would cut 600 jobs worldwide - about eight per cent of its total workforce.
This will help the company save some US$16 million annually in payroll and benefits.
Channel NewsAsia understands that about 540 workers in Singapore will be affected by the retrenchment exercise.
Chartered said it is currently working with the unions on a retrenchment package for affected staff.
This came as the company, which is listed in Singapore as well as on the Nasdaq in New York, reported a fourth-quarter net loss of US$114 million.
It said revenues for the three months ended December 31 were down by 24 per cent at US$351.7 million, compared to the third quarter of 2008.
The fall was largely due to the "unprecedented rate of decline in semiconductor demand worldwide".
For the full year 2008, Chartered reported a net loss of US$92.6 million compared with a net income of US$101.7 million the previous year.
Looking ahead, Chartered said the negative macroeconomic environment and weakening demand will continue to affect its business in a significant way.
It is already projecting a 32 per cent fall in revenues for the first quarter of 2009, compared with the fourth quarter of 2008.
- CNA/yb
- wong chee tat :)
By Wong Siew Ying, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 30 January 2009 1229 hrs
SINGAPORE: Chartered Semiconductor, one of the world's largest microchip makers, announced on Friday it would cut 600 jobs worldwide - about eight per cent of its total workforce.
This will help the company save some US$16 million annually in payroll and benefits.
Channel NewsAsia understands that about 540 workers in Singapore will be affected by the retrenchment exercise.
Chartered said it is currently working with the unions on a retrenchment package for affected staff.
This came as the company, which is listed in Singapore as well as on the Nasdaq in New York, reported a fourth-quarter net loss of US$114 million.
It said revenues for the three months ended December 31 were down by 24 per cent at US$351.7 million, compared to the third quarter of 2008.
The fall was largely due to the "unprecedented rate of decline in semiconductor demand worldwide".
For the full year 2008, Chartered reported a net loss of US$92.6 million compared with a net income of US$101.7 million the previous year.
Looking ahead, Chartered said the negative macroeconomic environment and weakening demand will continue to affect its business in a significant way.
It is already projecting a 32 per cent fall in revenues for the first quarter of 2009, compared with the fourth quarter of 2008.
- CNA/yb
- wong chee tat :)
Sunday, November 16, 2008
800 workers retrenched
| Updated: 30th October 2008, 1709 hrs |
| IM Flash Technologies lays off 800 |
Internal sources say the retrenchments were made known to staff early this month. An affected employee spoke to 938LIVE on condition of anonymity. "What Intel wants to do is they want to set up a new base here in Singapore, but because of the current market conditions, apparently they tried to postpone the opening of the base, they postponed it for the next 3 to 4 years and they just lay-off everybody." The company is a joint-venture between technology giants Micron and Intel. It had planned to build a plant costing nearly $5 billion to make cutting-edge memory chips. However, construction of the high-tech factory at Bendeemeer Road was pushed back due to the worsening economic conditions. It's understood that a large percentage of workers that had been recruited were foreign workers. Some 300 hired as production operators, mostly from India, have already left the company. They were given either two weeks or a one month layoff notice period. A large number of staff had undergone training in the US in preparation for the plant's original start-up due to open later this year. The training period lasted for 3 to 6 months, and for some as long as 1 year. Officials from IM Flash Technologies could not be reached for comments despite several attempts. [I just found this piece of news and update it here] - wong chee tat :) |
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
IBM's Advanced Chip Fab Available for Hire
IBM's Advanced Chip Fab Available for Hire
Got a cutting edge chip and no one can manufacture it? IBM might have the solution for you with its 45nm foundry.
Maintaining a cutting edge semiconductor foundry is neither easy nor cheap; just ask AMD. The bulk of chip designers don't maintain their own foundries because they are so expensive to maintain and those factories have to be kept up to date or they fall into obsolescence very fast.
The result is most semiconductor firms don't maintain their own fabs, they farm the business out to third parties to do the manufacturing work. While some of these firms, like TSMC and UMC in Taiwan do an adequate job, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is considered the gold standard in chip manufacturing.
Well, IBM (NYSE: IBM) intends to change that by offering the first 45 nanometer (nm) Silicon on Insulator (SOI) foundry offering to anyone with a chip to make and sell. IBM claims that 45nm SOI chips will offer up to 30 percent performance improvement or 40 percent power reduction when compared to the industry-standard bulk complementary metal-oxide (CMOS) technology.
"45nm is our 6th generation of SOI technology and is a key driver in many collaborative designs with clients – including networking, storage, gaming and other consumer applications," said Mark Ireland, vice president of IBM Semiconductor Platforms in a statement. "Today's announcement is a progression of this deep experience, providing a world-class resource for the industry to build on this proven, next-generation technology."
IBM has a separate semiconductor alliance, consisting of AMD (NYSE: AMD), Toshiba, Chartered, Freescale, Infineon, Samsung and STMicroelectronics. The alliance is working on SOI technology for the 32nm process node and beyond for a 2010/2011 release.
This, however, is a leap forward, bringing 45nm, the cutting edge of manufacturing technology, to third parties. Up to now, it's been Intel's competitive advantage, and while this offering won't hurt Intel, it does flatten the playing field for competitors somewhat, according to one analyst.
A window of opportunity
"This would certainly narrow the barrier to entry," Dean McCarron, president of chip research firm Mercury Research told InternetNews.com. "Obviously it wouldn't eliminate it because you got to design the chip, and Intel will be moving to 32nm in the next year or so. So the window of opportunity to be directly competitive is relatively narrow."
As part of this news, ARM (NASDAQ: ARMH) announced the availability of its standard cell, memory and I/O libraries for the foundry. The ARM SOI library of physical IP provides the synthesis and implementation flows needed in the manufacturing of SOI-based chips.
McCarron said this is a "fairly cutting edge process" IBM is rolling out, and that would likely bring in business from chip vendors currently looking to other foundries for chip manufacturing. "What we typically see happen is there is a portion of the business that goes to whatever is the best process out there is. So there will be some jumping," he said.
- wong chee tat :)
Got a cutting edge chip and no one can manufacture it? IBM might have the solution for you with its 45nm foundry.
Maintaining a cutting edge semiconductor foundry is neither easy nor cheap; just ask AMD. The bulk of chip designers don't maintain their own foundries because they are so expensive to maintain and those factories have to be kept up to date or they fall into obsolescence very fast.
The result is most semiconductor firms don't maintain their own fabs, they farm the business out to third parties to do the manufacturing work. While some of these firms, like TSMC and UMC in Taiwan do an adequate job, Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is considered the gold standard in chip manufacturing.
Well, IBM (NYSE: IBM) intends to change that by offering the first 45 nanometer (nm) Silicon on Insulator (SOI) foundry offering to anyone with a chip to make and sell. IBM claims that 45nm SOI chips will offer up to 30 percent performance improvement or 40 percent power reduction when compared to the industry-standard bulk complementary metal-oxide (CMOS) technology.
"45nm is our 6th generation of SOI technology and is a key driver in many collaborative designs with clients – including networking, storage, gaming and other consumer applications," said Mark Ireland, vice president of IBM Semiconductor Platforms in a statement. "Today's announcement is a progression of this deep experience, providing a world-class resource for the industry to build on this proven, next-generation technology."
IBM has a separate semiconductor alliance, consisting of AMD (NYSE: AMD), Toshiba, Chartered, Freescale, Infineon, Samsung and STMicroelectronics. The alliance is working on SOI technology for the 32nm process node and beyond for a 2010/2011 release.
This, however, is a leap forward, bringing 45nm, the cutting edge of manufacturing technology, to third parties. Up to now, it's been Intel's competitive advantage, and while this offering won't hurt Intel, it does flatten the playing field for competitors somewhat, according to one analyst.
A window of opportunity
"This would certainly narrow the barrier to entry," Dean McCarron, president of chip research firm Mercury Research told InternetNews.com. "Obviously it wouldn't eliminate it because you got to design the chip, and Intel will be moving to 32nm in the next year or so. So the window of opportunity to be directly competitive is relatively narrow."
As part of this news, ARM (NASDAQ: ARMH) announced the availability of its standard cell, memory and I/O libraries for the foundry. The ARM SOI library of physical IP provides the synthesis and implementation flows needed in the manufacturing of SOI-based chips.
McCarron said this is a "fairly cutting edge process" IBM is rolling out, and that would likely bring in business from chip vendors currently looking to other foundries for chip manufacturing. "What we typically see happen is there is a portion of the business that goes to whatever is the best process out there is. So there will be some jumping," he said.
- wong chee tat :)
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