Jan

30

Equipment makers bank their hope on foundry and solar segments.

Filed Under Equipment, Semiconductor Industry, Video Gallery | Leave a Comment

With the DRAM makers tighten their belt as a consequence of oversupply and depressing ASP, equipment makers are banking their hope more on foundry and the upcoming solar segments this year. CEO of Lam Research,Steve Newberry, believed that the demand for wafer fab equipment from foundries could rebound sharply in the first half of this year (Ref). However, the signals on foundry capex are quite murky at this point of time. There are some tell-tale signs indicating that foundries are beginning to expand their fab capacity. Two days ago, China’s SMIC announced that it would build 200- and 300-mm fabs at Shenzhen for the Shenzhen municipal government (Ref). The groundbreaking for the new fabs will start as early as in the first half of 2008. More surprising to me is that the upcoming 300-mm fab is going to deploy 45-nm CMOS technology licensed recently from IBM (Ref). Yesterday, Singapore’s Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing appeared to plan for fab capacity expansion by announcing a $190 million loan from banks to purchase ASML scanners (Ref). On the other hand, the top two foundries in the world, TSMC and UMC respectively, have allegedly announced more than 20% capex reduction from their 2007 capex (Ref).

Another possible bright spot for equipment makers that have diversified to solar industry is the emerging market of solar segment. Despite risk of oversupply, strong demand of solar panels is expected to continue this year (Ref).

When searching the web for video, I am pleasantly surprised to find Chartered Semiconductor 2007 Dinner and Dance video on youtube. I post the video to share with my friends at Chartered Semiconductor.

 

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Jan

28

AMD launched dual-GPU video card

Filed Under GPU and Gaming, Video Gallery | Leave a Comment

Just two months after the launch of Radeon HD 3800 in Nov 2007 (Ref), AMD today introduced a new video card, ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2, that combines two RV670 GPUs into one card (Ref). The RV670 GPU was manufactured using TSMC 55nm process and the two RV670 GPUs were “Crossfired” on a single board. In contrast, the latest Nivida G92 GPU used in GeForce 8800 GT was manufactured using TSMC 65nm process. According to Ref, the Radeon HD 3870 X2 outperformed Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX running Half Life Episode 2 and Hellgate London. However, Nvidia is definitely going to fight back soon with upcoming dual-GPU Geforce 9800 GX2 due to launch in late February or early March (Ref).

The Radeon 3870 X2 supports Microsoft’s upcoming DirectX® 10.1 technology, ATI CrossFireX™, Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and ATI Avivo™. The suggested retail price of US $449. The following video is a commentary on Radeon 3870 X2.

 

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