Parking this competitor info:
Cypress Expands WaferYield Licensing Agreement
Online staff -- Electronic News, 8/20/2002
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today said it has expanded its non-exclusive license agreement to use WaferYield Inc.’s wafer-yield boosting technology. Financial details were not disclosed, but the licensing agreement will last several years.
Cypress will use WaferYield’s Wama technology, a proprietary wafer mapping patent-pending technology. Cypress said it expects this to improve the yield, throughput, and profitability of its wafer fabrication operations, supporting its manufacture of ICs.
"In this challenging economic climate, all capital expenditures are highly scrutinized and need to be strongly justified," said Christopher Seams, Cypress executive VP of technology and worldwide manufacturing, in a statement. "It makes much better sense to find ways to improve the yield of existing equipment. By expanding the use of Wama technology and implementing it in all of our fabs, we look forward to seeing greater manufacturing efficiencies."
Privately held WaferYield said Cypress would be able to use its tools without changing processes or redesigning products. The company said that modules of its Wama technology each target a different aspect of the wafer fabrication process and are designed to increase gross die, maximize good die, maximize fab throughput, and maximize return on investment.
Tower Semi to Use PDF’s Technologies
Staff -- Electronic News, 8/19/2002
Israel’s Tower Semiconductor Ltd. is collaborating with PDF Solutions Inc. to use the company’s yield enhancement technologies to better the performance of its 0.18-micron CMOS process technology.
Tower will use the San Jose company’s technologies at Fab 2. As part of the agreement, PDF’s technologies will be use to achieve maximum yield from all of Tower’s process-modules and to speed yield ramp for semiconductor products from several Tower customers, the companies said.
“Use of PDF’s methodology, Characterization Vehicle test chips, process analysis software and yield simulation tools is expected to provide a high level of process flexibility, intelligent customization, accelerated yield ramp, and high-target yields for our Fab 2 customers,” said Ron Niv, manager of Tower’s Fab 2, in a statement.
Tower’s Migdal, Haemek, Israel-based fab is prototyping 0.18-micron products and is expected to begin volume production by the end of the year. Once the plant is up and running, it will produce up to 33,000 200mm wafers per month |
