Prices of quartz used in the production of computer chips are expected to increase again, TheElec has learned.Their prices already increased during the earlier part of the year but are expected to increase another 10%.This is because of the increase in raw material prices as well as the unfavorable

South Korean chip foundries are seeing the operation rate of their fabs drop steeply, TheElec has learned.With the exception of Samsung, which is still seeing high demand from advanced nodes, local foundry companies such as DB Hitek, Key Foundry, Magnachip, and SK Hynix System IC are seeing their op

Pellicles used in Arf and Krf processes in wafer fabrication are in short supply.This is because more fabless companies in China are rising daily, while overall demand for the commodity has increased as chipmakers aim to develop new semiconductors.In South Korea, only FST manufactures pellicles and

Wonik Group has acquired a display driver IC (DDI) fabless chip firm only a year old, TheElec has learned.The move is highly unusual as the group has so far focused on mostly material and production equipment for chips and displays.Wonik Holdings, the holding company of the business group, wholly ac

South Korean blank mask manufacturer S&S Tech is planning to install deposition machines used in the production of blank masks for use in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) next month.The installation is the final step ahead of production and the company is planning for commercial mass production to start in

The legal dispute between the City of Dangjin and Ram Technology over the company’s planned hydrogen fluoride factory has started this month.The company had filed an administrative lawsuit against the city after it refused Ram Technology’s plan to build a factory at Dangjin back in August 2021.Hydro

Fab equipment coating and cleaning solution firm Komico is planning to spend at least US$30 million to expand its factory in Austin, Texas, TheElec has learned.The move is done to better react to customer Samsung’s demand there as the tech giant is building a new foundry fab in Taylor.It provides Sa

Chinese display giant CSOT is continuing to postpone the installation of equipment at its T5 factory dedicated to Gen 6 liquid crystal display (LCD) panel production, TheElec has learned.This is despite company chairman Li Dongsheng making a personal visit to South Korea during the summer when he as

Outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) Winpac company recorded 40.5 billion won in revenue during the third quarter, a jump of 76% year-on-year.The company also recorded an operating profit of 1.2 billion won __ a return to black from last year’s operating loss.Winpac CEO Lee Han-gyu told

Fabless chip firm Abov said on Wednesday that it recorded 45.57 billion won in revenue and 5.256 billion won in operating in the third quarter.Revenue dropped 20% from the prior quarter.The company specializes in microcontroller unit (MCU) which was in short supply during the pandemic.Demand surpass

South Korean chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix are expected to showcase their latest technologies at ISSCC 2023 being held in San Francisco in February of next year.ISSCC, or the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, is called the semiconductor design Olympics by South Korean the chip industr

Fab equipment maker Nextin expects its revenue from China to double this year compared to 2021, its CEO told TheElec.China was accounting for around 70% of the company’s revenue this year, Nextin CEO Tae Hoon Park said in an interview. The company is seeing its revenue from China double this year, P

Qualcomm will continue using multiple foundries to manufacture its chips, one of its executives said on Tuesday.The US chip giant was continuing to collaborate with Samsung Foundry and will use multiple foundries, from the South Korean company, TSMC to GlobalFoundries, depending on their technologic

ASML’s highly anticipated high-NA EUV equipment will begin shipping in 2024 and cost between 300 to 350 million euros per unit, CEO Peter Wennink said in a conference in Seoul on Tuesday.High-numerical aperture (NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) is an upgraded version of the Dutch company’s prior EUV eq

The global chip market is expected to recover in the second quarter of next year, analysts firm IC Insights said in its forecast.The firm said the market will contract by 9% during the third quarter of this year and will further contract by 8% and then by 3% again in the first quarter of 2023.After

SK Hynix was developing a new CMOS image sensor (CIS) that uses neural network technology, TheElec has learned.The South Korean memory giant is planning to embed an AI accelerator into the CIS, sources said.The accelerator itself is based on SRAM combined with a microprocessor __ also called in-memo

Samsung will complete the construction of its new P3 foundry fab next year, TheElec has learned.The tech giant originally planned to finish construction within the year.Samsung only started construction of the cleanroom of the fab late last month, sources said.This reflects the delay that began when

Samsung System LSI, Samsung’s logic chip designing business unit, has been registered as a secondary vendor of automotive CMOS image sensor (CIS) for Hyundai Motor’s latest car model, TheElec has learned.The primary vendor for the car model, which launched during the first half of the year, is Omniv

Samsung said on Monday that it has begun production of 1Tb Gen 8 V-NAND.The chip has 236 layers, more than those of Micron’s with 232 layers that launched early this year.Samsung used its double stack method as it did for Gen 7 V-NAND, sources said.The tech giant said its 1Tb TLC(triple level cell)

Chip IP firm Qualitas Semiconductor was expecting its revenue to more than double this year, its CEO Duho Kim said.The company, founded in 2017, specializes in interconnect IPs and had developed its own SerDes IPs.SerDes technology serializes parallel data to transfer them through a single channel,