Alliances

AMD and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing have entered into sourcing and manufacturing technology agreements. Chartered will implement under license portions of AMD's Automated Precision Manufacturing (APM) advanced process control (APC) software suite and become an additional manufacturing source of AMD64 microprocessors.

AMD is lining up additional incremental capacity to augment its production at its state-of-the-art site in Dresden, Germany (Fab 36). AMD will use Chartered's extra capacity to meet the expanding end-customer demand for Athlon 64 and Opteron processor-based systems. Chartered is expected to begin production in 2006.

Gary Heerssen, AMD Corporate Manufacturing senior vice president reports: "Our plans for AMD Fab 36, which is currently under construction, remain unchanged. We intend it to be our benchmark facility for the manufacture of AMD64 products."

Kay Chai "KC" Ang, Chartered senior vice president of fab operations, adds: "The implementation of AMD's Automated Precision Manufacturing will be a fundamental enabler of our success with AMD64 products while providing access to AMD manufacturing innovation to the advantage of all our 300mm customers." Chartered will begin integrating APM into Fab 7, its 300mm wafer fabrication facility in Singapore, starting in Q4 2004.

AMD's APM suite is made up of over 300 patented and patent-pending technologies that provide for dynamic, real-time adjustments to production processes. APM helps reduce time-to-yield on new technologies, improve overall wafer yields and decrease manufacturing costs. An integrated fabric of communication and control links hundreds of tools throughout a plant to constantly monitor the health of microprocessors in production by collecting and analysing information from the tool-sets as wafers enter and exit them for processing.

The Semiconductor Equipment Consortium for Advanced Packaging (SECAP) has successful concluded a venture between Amkor Technology, it's Unitive subsidiaries and SECAP to establish the world's first high volume 300mm electroplated solder bumping line using Unitive's proprietary technology. The line is equipped for electroplated solder bumping and was set up in 2003 at Unitive Semiconductor Taiwan (UST) as a joint project between the SECAP member companies and Unitive. The line has reached volume production and now serves Amkor's 300mm customers.

Originally announced in July 2002, SECAP and Unitive agreed to install a 300mm wafer bumping line for wafer level packaging (WLP). After rapid qualification in May 2003, the line demonstrated full production capability in the first fully integrated 300mm electroplated wafer bumping line installed at a wafer level packaging service provider. The line is currently running volume production and Amkor will expand capacity as required to meet customer demand. With the acquisition of Unitive in August 2004, Amkor now provides a turnkey suite of flip chip solutions, including bumping on 200mm and 300mm wafers, probe, assembly and final test.

The 300mm wafer bumping line includes equipment from SECAP members: SUSS MicroTec coat/develop cluster, 1X full field mask aligner and probe stations; Semitool electroplating system, UBM etch and resist strip tools; BTU International integrated flux coater and reflow ovens.

Dainippon Screen and Nikon have agreed to extend collaborative lithography related research efforts to next generation 65nm processes begun in July 2003 at Nikon's Kumagaya plant in Japan. DNS has installed its latest RF3 300mm coat and develop system in the Nikon lab. The track is linked to Nikon's NSR-S307E high-NA ArF scanner. A key focus of the collaboration is CD uniformity improvement. DNS and Nikon are developing a track/scanner interface that will better control thermal management, airflow, critical time windows such as post exposure delay (PED), along with providing improved lithography cell throughput.

Freescale Semiconductor and Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe (FME) are co-operating to deliver embedded solutions for in-vehicle navigation, infotainment and driver information systems (DIS), as well as industrial control.

Hyundai's Autonet auto electronics business intends to base its next-generation NAVI family of 3-D navigation systems on Freescale's 32-bit, 400MHz, PowerPC-based MPC5200 processor; Fujitsu's high-performance "Coral P/PA" (MB86296) graphics display controller and Tilcon Software's graphics software.

Fujitsu and Tilcon have also joined the mobileGT Alliance, a group of navigation- and infotainment-focused vendors working on customised DIS technologies. mobileGT also includes a broad base of operating system and support vendors. The alliance supports both the Linux and QNX operating systems.