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Japanese news round-up
Microelectronics Journal, 23 (1992) 85-87
Japanese News Round-up Comline International News Service, Tokyo
Research and Development oshiba Corp. has developed T a new process for fabricating a TFT (thin film transistor) intended for SRAMs which could operate from a 3-V supply. Monosilane gas is used to form an amorphous thin film which is then converted into a polysilicon film at about 600°C using solid phase epitaxy. In other transistor developments, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. has developed a C M O S transistor with a gate electrode length o f 0.2 microns and a gate delay time o f 40 ps. The device is made using a "LATID" (large angle tilt implanted drain) method to form a self-aligned overlapped LDD (lightly doped drain). The device reportedly has a parasitic capacitance 30-50% lower than conventional devices and can operate 20% faster. The company expects the new C M O S transistor to be used in 256-bit DRAMs.
Toshiba Corp. has developed a bipolar transistor which has a current gain o f 35 and a cut-off frequency o f about 10 GHz at a liquid nitrogen temperature of 77 K. The prototype device has 2 x E14 boron (B) atoms/sq cm in the base and 5 x E13 phosphorus (P) atoms/sq cm in the collector (over ten times higher the impurity concentration of conventional bipolar devices), resulting in an improvement in the device characteristics at low temperature. N E C Corp. has developed new C M O S process technology that is applicable to the fabrication o f ICs ranging from m e m o r y devices to logic ICs. The process is said to require only 7 masks, as opposed to 12 for conventional C M O S processes. O n the 29th, the N e w Energy Development Organisation of Japan (NEDO) selected the six firms which will participate in t h e 10-year, 5 - b i l l i o n y e n "Quantum Functional De-
0026-2692/92/$5.00 © 1992, Elsevier Science Publishers Ltd.
vices" project. The project is supported by MITI's Agency o f Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). The selected participants are Sony Corp., N E C Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd., Hitachi Ltd. and Motorola Inc. The firms will act as members o f the Research & Developm e n t Association for Future Electron Devices. A research group (led by Assoc. Prof. M u r a k a m i ) f r o m the University o f Tsukuba has fabricated a prototype thermosensor for ultra-low temperatures. The new sensor has a very high response speed, can measure temperature changes smaller than one-thousandth o f a degree, and can monitor the temperature ofsuperfluid helium at less than 2.2°K.
Company Investment, Business Expansion By the end o f fiscal 1992, Hitachi Ltd. will begin to construct an R & D facility for 1-Gbit
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Microelectronics Journal, VoL 23 No. 2
DRAMs at its Central Research L a b o r a t o r y in K o k u b u n j i (Tokyo). Hitachi hopes to become the industry leader in developing the devices. In other D R A M news, KTI Semiconductor Ltd., a joint venture between Kobe Steel Ltd. and Texa~ Instruments Inc. (TI) in Kobe (Hyogo Pref. I, is planning to begin mass-producing 16-Mbit DRAMs ifithe latter half of its 1993 fiscal year. By the end of this year, NEC Corp. will construct a 20-billion-yen IL&D facility for 256Mbit DRAMs at its Sagamihara works (Kanagawa Pref.). The company is aiming to build its first p r o t o t y p e 2 5 6 - M b i t DR.AM by the end of 1993. By the end of the year, Sony Corp. will increase its production capacity for 6 . 3 - c m diameter magneto-optical (MO) discs for mini-disc (MD) systems to 300,000-500,000 units/month from the current 200,000 units/month, at the Sendai plant of its subsidiary Sony Magnetic Products Inc. in Tagajo (Miyagi Pref.). Also by the end of this year, Hitachi Ltd. will cease producing consumer electronics goods in the US and close its sole US manufacturing base in Anaheim, California. The plant is currently operated by the firm's subsidiary, Hitachi Home Electronics (America) Inc. The
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move is in response to a slump in US demand for consumer electronics goods and because of the decreasing price competitiveness of the US-made products against those made in Southeast Asia and Mexico. By mid-1992, Fujitsu Ltd. will install 0.5-micron CMOS process equipment into a line for producingASICs at itsYakamatsu plant in Aizuwakamatsu (Fukushima Pref.). The move is an attempt to maintain the firm's leading market share for ASICs. Meanwhile, by the end of the year, Hitachi Ltd. will begin to design and develop ASICs at its subsidiary, Hitachi Micro Systems Inc. (HMSI),in California. The devices designed at HMSI will be assembled at Hitachi's plant in Dallas, Texas and will be marketed in the US. Hitachi also plans to gradually expand its "Euro Desk," a technical support centre at its subsidiary Hitachi Europe GmbH, in preparation for the start of its ASIC design operations in Europe.
cluding SMD type devices) from the German firm and will market the devices at an initial rate of 5 million per month to other Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. group companies and outside firms. The rate will be increased to 10 million per month in the future. Last December, Toshiba Corp. and Intel Corp. made an 8-year cross-license agreement covering a wide range of semiconductor manufacturing technology for logic, memory and analog ICs (apart from 32bit MPUs). The move .is an attempt to avoid unnecessary patent-related disputesbetween the firms.
Mergers, Acquisitions, New Business
On January 22nd, Applied Materials Inc., a US semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker in Santa Clara (California), set up a wholly-owned TFT LCD equipment manufacturing firm in Chiba (Chiba Prefecture). The concern, Applied Display T e c h n o l o g y (ADT), is capitalised at 10 million yen, and will begin development of CVD, sputtering and etching systems for TFT LCDs this year.
Matsushita Electronics Corp. has made a transistor manufacturing and marketing agreement with ITT Intermetall, an affiliate of the US conglomerate ITT Corp. based in Freiburg, Germany. Matsushita Electronics will import six types of general-purpose transistors (in-
By the end of February, Sony Corp. will begin preprocessing 6-inch wafers for 256-kbit and 1-Mbit SRAMs at its San Antonio plant in Texas. Initially, the wafers will be preprocessed at a combined rate of 1,000-2,000 wafers (equivalent to 200,000-
Japanese News Round-up
300,000 ICs) per month but the rate will be increased to 5,000 wafers (400,000-600,000 ICs) per month in the middle of this year.
chip,8-bit, 500-MHz A/D converter. The converter is designed to be used in logic analysers, ultrasonic systems, radars, and r a d i o - a c t i v i t y measuring systems.
New Products Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. and the Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) have developed a portable Hi-Vision VCR. The V C R uses half-inch tapes, the U N I H I format, and is for recording only. N H K plans to use it at the Albertville Winter Olympics. The 33 x 20 x 55 cm unit is based on the "AU-HD1500" V C R which Matsushita began marketing last November, and it weighs about 23 kg (including battery). In other H D T V developments, Fujitsu Ltd., Hitachi Ltd., Texas Instruments Japan Ltd. (TI) and Sony Corp. have join@ developed a MUSE decoder chipset which is available in 13 models and consists of a total of 15 ICs. The companies have already begun shipping engineering samples of the devices. The chips are fabricated with 0.8-1.2 micron processes, and enable the number of ICs req u i r e d to b u i l d a M U S E decoder to be reduced to 29. In April, Matsushita Electronics Corp. will begin shipping samples of the "AN8101," a single
Toshiba Corp. says it has developed a novel 3-D display device which uses a panel of LEDs and creates a 3-D image by moving the LEDs back and forth at very high speed. Reportedly, the display panel is made up of 768 LEDs and measures 10 x 3.3 cm. The panel is moved back and forth, over a distance of 5 cm, 15 times every second. Toshiba claims that "after-image" left in the eye of the onlooker creates an optical illusion, so that the object in the display appears to be solid, and looks as if it is floating in the air. Togai Infi:alogic Inc. (TIL) of Irvine, California and Hitachi Ltd. have jointly developed the "H400uFPK&C," a fuzzy-logic based compiler for Hitachi's "HMCS4000" series of 4-bit MCUs. Meanwhile, on January 22nd, Fujitsu Ltd. began accepting orders for its "MB90730 Series" of 16-bit MCUs. The MCUs have built-in EEPROMs and serial interfaces and are designed to be used with high-
speed devices. In Februar~ Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. began sample shipping its "STK311-010," a hybrid IC that contains most of the necessary functions for an RDS (radio data system), including demodulation, synchronisation and error correction. In other communications product-related news, N T T Corp. has begun accepting orders for an IC for encoding confidential information. The IC is being distributed through its subsidiary, N T T Electronics Technology Corp. On the optical communications front, Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. has developed a laser diode which emits light w i t h w a v e l e n g t h o f 1.48 microns and has an output power of 310 m W at 25°C, compared to 250 m W for the most powerful existing laser diodes. K.K. Yoken, a firm specialising in the development and sales of welding equipment, has developed the "YS700," a fullyautomated soldering machine for use in the production of high-current printed circuit boards (PCBs), such as PCBs for microwave ovens.
87
Japanese News Round-up Comline International News Service, Tokyo
Research and Development oshiba Corp. has developed T a new process for fabricating a TFT (thin film transistor) intended for SRAMs which could operate from a 3-V supply. Monosilane gas is used to form an amorphous thin film which is then converted into a polysilicon film at about 600°C using solid phase epitaxy. In other transistor developments, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. has developed a C M O S transistor with a gate electrode length o f 0.2 microns and a gate delay time o f 40 ps. The device is made using a "LATID" (large angle tilt implanted drain) method to form a self-aligned overlapped LDD (lightly doped drain). The device reportedly has a parasitic capacitance 30-50% lower than conventional devices and can operate 20% faster. The company expects the new C M O S transistor to be used in 256-bit DRAMs.
Toshiba Corp. has developed a bipolar transistor which has a current gain o f 35 and a cut-off frequency o f about 10 GHz at a liquid nitrogen temperature of 77 K. The prototype device has 2 x E14 boron (B) atoms/sq cm in the base and 5 x E13 phosphorus (P) atoms/sq cm in the collector (over ten times higher the impurity concentration of conventional bipolar devices), resulting in an improvement in the device characteristics at low temperature. N E C Corp. has developed new C M O S process technology that is applicable to the fabrication o f ICs ranging from m e m o r y devices to logic ICs. The process is said to require only 7 masks, as opposed to 12 for conventional C M O S processes. O n the 29th, the N e w Energy Development Organisation of Japan (NEDO) selected the six firms which will participate in t h e 10-year, 5 - b i l l i o n y e n "Quantum Functional De-
0026-2692/92/$5.00 © 1992, Elsevier Science Publishers Ltd.
vices" project. The project is supported by MITI's Agency o f Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). The selected participants are Sony Corp., N E C Corp., Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd., Hitachi Ltd. and Motorola Inc. The firms will act as members o f the Research & Developm e n t Association for Future Electron Devices. A research group (led by Assoc. Prof. M u r a k a m i ) f r o m the University o f Tsukuba has fabricated a prototype thermosensor for ultra-low temperatures. The new sensor has a very high response speed, can measure temperature changes smaller than one-thousandth o f a degree, and can monitor the temperature ofsuperfluid helium at less than 2.2°K.
Company Investment, Business Expansion By the end o f fiscal 1992, Hitachi Ltd. will begin to construct an R & D facility for 1-Gbit
85
Microelectronics Journal, VoL 23 No. 2
DRAMs at its Central Research L a b o r a t o r y in K o k u b u n j i (Tokyo). Hitachi hopes to become the industry leader in developing the devices. In other D R A M news, KTI Semiconductor Ltd., a joint venture between Kobe Steel Ltd. and Texa~ Instruments Inc. (TI) in Kobe (Hyogo Pref. I, is planning to begin mass-producing 16-Mbit DRAMs ifithe latter half of its 1993 fiscal year. By the end of this year, NEC Corp. will construct a 20-billion-yen IL&D facility for 256Mbit DRAMs at its Sagamihara works (Kanagawa Pref.). The company is aiming to build its first p r o t o t y p e 2 5 6 - M b i t DR.AM by the end of 1993. By the end of the year, Sony Corp. will increase its production capacity for 6 . 3 - c m diameter magneto-optical (MO) discs for mini-disc (MD) systems to 300,000-500,000 units/month from the current 200,000 units/month, at the Sendai plant of its subsidiary Sony Magnetic Products Inc. in Tagajo (Miyagi Pref.). Also by the end of this year, Hitachi Ltd. will cease producing consumer electronics goods in the US and close its sole US manufacturing base in Anaheim, California. The plant is currently operated by the firm's subsidiary, Hitachi Home Electronics (America) Inc. The
86
move is in response to a slump in US demand for consumer electronics goods and because of the decreasing price competitiveness of the US-made products against those made in Southeast Asia and Mexico. By mid-1992, Fujitsu Ltd. will install 0.5-micron CMOS process equipment into a line for producingASICs at itsYakamatsu plant in Aizuwakamatsu (Fukushima Pref.). The move is an attempt to maintain the firm's leading market share for ASICs. Meanwhile, by the end of the year, Hitachi Ltd. will begin to design and develop ASICs at its subsidiary, Hitachi Micro Systems Inc. (HMSI),in California. The devices designed at HMSI will be assembled at Hitachi's plant in Dallas, Texas and will be marketed in the US. Hitachi also plans to gradually expand its "Euro Desk," a technical support centre at its subsidiary Hitachi Europe GmbH, in preparation for the start of its ASIC design operations in Europe.
cluding SMD type devices) from the German firm and will market the devices at an initial rate of 5 million per month to other Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. group companies and outside firms. The rate will be increased to 10 million per month in the future. Last December, Toshiba Corp. and Intel Corp. made an 8-year cross-license agreement covering a wide range of semiconductor manufacturing technology for logic, memory and analog ICs (apart from 32bit MPUs). The move .is an attempt to avoid unnecessary patent-related disputesbetween the firms.
Mergers, Acquisitions, New Business
On January 22nd, Applied Materials Inc., a US semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker in Santa Clara (California), set up a wholly-owned TFT LCD equipment manufacturing firm in Chiba (Chiba Prefecture). The concern, Applied Display T e c h n o l o g y (ADT), is capitalised at 10 million yen, and will begin development of CVD, sputtering and etching systems for TFT LCDs this year.
Matsushita Electronics Corp. has made a transistor manufacturing and marketing agreement with ITT Intermetall, an affiliate of the US conglomerate ITT Corp. based in Freiburg, Germany. Matsushita Electronics will import six types of general-purpose transistors (in-
By the end of February, Sony Corp. will begin preprocessing 6-inch wafers for 256-kbit and 1-Mbit SRAMs at its San Antonio plant in Texas. Initially, the wafers will be preprocessed at a combined rate of 1,000-2,000 wafers (equivalent to 200,000-
Japanese News Round-up
300,000 ICs) per month but the rate will be increased to 5,000 wafers (400,000-600,000 ICs) per month in the middle of this year.
chip,8-bit, 500-MHz A/D converter. The converter is designed to be used in logic analysers, ultrasonic systems, radars, and r a d i o - a c t i v i t y measuring systems.
New Products Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. and the Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) have developed a portable Hi-Vision VCR. The V C R uses half-inch tapes, the U N I H I format, and is for recording only. N H K plans to use it at the Albertville Winter Olympics. The 33 x 20 x 55 cm unit is based on the "AU-HD1500" V C R which Matsushita began marketing last November, and it weighs about 23 kg (including battery). In other H D T V developments, Fujitsu Ltd., Hitachi Ltd., Texas Instruments Japan Ltd. (TI) and Sony Corp. have join@ developed a MUSE decoder chipset which is available in 13 models and consists of a total of 15 ICs. The companies have already begun shipping engineering samples of the devices. The chips are fabricated with 0.8-1.2 micron processes, and enable the number of ICs req u i r e d to b u i l d a M U S E decoder to be reduced to 29. In April, Matsushita Electronics Corp. will begin shipping samples of the "AN8101," a single
Toshiba Corp. says it has developed a novel 3-D display device which uses a panel of LEDs and creates a 3-D image by moving the LEDs back and forth at very high speed. Reportedly, the display panel is made up of 768 LEDs and measures 10 x 3.3 cm. The panel is moved back and forth, over a distance of 5 cm, 15 times every second. Toshiba claims that "after-image" left in the eye of the onlooker creates an optical illusion, so that the object in the display appears to be solid, and looks as if it is floating in the air. Togai Infi:alogic Inc. (TIL) of Irvine, California and Hitachi Ltd. have jointly developed the "H400uFPK&C," a fuzzy-logic based compiler for Hitachi's "HMCS4000" series of 4-bit MCUs. Meanwhile, on January 22nd, Fujitsu Ltd. began accepting orders for its "MB90730 Series" of 16-bit MCUs. The MCUs have built-in EEPROMs and serial interfaces and are designed to be used with high-
speed devices. In Februar~ Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. began sample shipping its "STK311-010," a hybrid IC that contains most of the necessary functions for an RDS (radio data system), including demodulation, synchronisation and error correction. In other communications product-related news, N T T Corp. has begun accepting orders for an IC for encoding confidential information. The IC is being distributed through its subsidiary, N T T Electronics Technology Corp. On the optical communications front, Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. has developed a laser diode which emits light w i t h w a v e l e n g t h o f 1.48 microns and has an output power of 310 m W at 25°C, compared to 250 m W for the most powerful existing laser diodes. K.K. Yoken, a firm specialising in the development and sales of welding equipment, has developed the "YS700," a fullyautomated soldering machine for use in the production of high-current printed circuit boards (PCBs), such as PCBs for microwave ovens.
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