Crocus Technology, a French start-up focusing on Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAM), announces the closing of its Series A round of funding totalling $17 million.

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The round's participants include San Francisco-based Sofinnova Ventures (lead investor), Paris-based firms Ventech, CDC Entreprises Innovation, AGF Private Equity and Sofinnova Partners, and NanoDimension. Crocus wants to become the world leader in the MRAM market.

Crocus was first incorporated in France in 2004 with an initial grant from CEA and CNRS, France's leading research organizations. Crocus is headquartered in Grenoble (France) with operations in the Paris area and in Silicon Valley (California). The MRAM technology that is the foundation on which Crocus is built was developed in the Grenoble-based SPINTEC research center. The related patents and know-how are being transferred to Crocus and will be continuously improved through formal joint development programs between the company, Spintec and other European laboratories.

MRAM memories uniquely combine several key features of other existing memory technologies. They are non-volatile, have a fast read and write speed, an SRAM like interface, an extended lifetime, and a low manufacturing cost.
The proceeds from this fund raising will allow Crocus to hire engineers and scientists in process engineering, test and design from all over Europe and the US. Crocus is also acquiring specialized equipment, which will enable the company to complete a first memory test vehicle in the next 12 months and its first commercial product shortly thereafter.

"This first round, quite unique in this technology area, is a defining moment for Crocus," commented Jean-Pierre Braun, CEO of Crocus. "We now have everything we need to be the first to bring to the marketplace a competitive MRAM memory that will fulfill the customers' expectations, in particular with regards to reliability, speed and capacity," Braun added.

There are many important applications for MRAM memory. They are an ideal fit for mobile phones, PDA's, smart cards, notebook computers, RFID tags, as well as automotive and military applications.

French based Altis Semiconductor, a joint-venture between IBM and Infineon, will have to find new customers to survive. Both IBM and Infineon want to exit from their common fab by 2009. Wolfgang Ziebart, Infineon CEO, August Franze, IBM Microelectronics vice-president, and Françoise Gri, IBM France CEO, met with the French representatives in Corbeil-Esssonnes in the beginning of June, to explain that they didn’t want to pass new orders after 2009. The best solution for Altis would be to become a pure foundry, but it means to invest in more advanced processes. At present, Altis is engaged in a restructuring plan concerning the layoff of 424 employees out of 1946 total workforce.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) released an updated forecast projecting worldwide sales of semiconductors will grow by 9.8 percent to $249.6 billion in 2006. The forecast was revised upward from the November forecast projecting an increase of 7.9 percent. The SIA attributed the upward revision to stronger than expected growth in key end markets for semiconductors, most notably cell phones. The SIA now believes approximately one billion cell phones will be sold worldwide in 2006. With an average semiconductor content of $41 per unit, this segment is now second only to personal computers in terms of total chip consumption.

The revised forecast also includes more optimistic projections for industry sales from 2006 through 2009. According to the SIA, the industry will grow by 11.0 percent in 2007, 12.0 percent in 2008, and 4.0 percent in 2009. If the latest forecast materializes, worldwide semiconductor sales will reach $323 billion in 2009. The new forecast projects an average compound annual growth rate of 9.2 percent from 2005 through 2009.

The new forecast projects that analog products will be one of the fastest-growing segments of the market in 2006, with growth driven by strong demand from wireless communications and industrial and medical equipment applications. The revised forecast projects growth of 17.3 percent to $37.4 billion. This segment is projected to grow to $48.6 billion by 2009, a CAGR of 11.1 percent.

Discrete products are projected to grow by 4.9 percent to $16.0 billion in 2006 and to $18.9 in 2009, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5 percent.

Optoelectronic device sales are projected to grow by 11 percent to $16.5 billion in 2006 and to $21.9 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 10.1 percent.

Microprocessor sales are projected to grow by 4.3 percent to $36.4 billion in 2006 and to $46.0 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 7.1 percent.

Microcontroller sales are projected to grow by 1.9 percent to $12.3 billion in 2006 and to $15.4 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 6.3 percent.

Digital signal processors (DSPs) sales are projected to grow by 18.5 percent to $9.0 billion in 2006 and to $14.1 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 16.7 percent.

MOS logic device sales are projected to grow by 7.6 percent to $62.1 billion in 2006 and to $82.5 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 9.3 percent.

DRAM sales are projected to increase by 9.1 percent to $27.9 billion in 2006 and to $32.8 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 6.4 percent.

Flash memory sales are projected to grow by 20.0 percent to $22.3 billion in 2006 and to $31.1 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 13.7 percent..

The Asia-Pacific region will continue to be the fastest-growing market for chips, and is projected to reach 49 percent of a worldwide market in 2009. Europe will show the slowest growth during the period, growing from $40 billion last year to about $51 billion by 2009. In the same period, the U.S. market is expected to increase from $40.5 billion to about $58 billion, with the Asia Pacific region moving from $103 billion in 2005 to $158 billion in 2009. Japanese market is expected to reach $59 billion by 2009 from $42 million last year.

Fujitsu, NEC Electronics, Renesas Technology and Toshiba have agreed to seek to define a standard process technology that can be applied to the manufacture of advanced system LSIs at the 45 nm generation and beyond.
The joint program will define a basic standard for certain aspects of the process technology that will enable each company to have easier access to the intellectual property (IP) and libraries of the others, in consideration of possible shared use of one another's wafer fabs and potential integration of fabs in the future. Following technical studies, the companies will strive to define the standardized specifications by the end of this year.

Success in defining a basic standard has the potential to promote cross use of IP and libraries among the participants, improve fab operating rates, and facilitate large-scale capital investments among the companies. The framework is expected to boost the overall efficiency of the companies as well as the Japanese semiconductor industry.

In consideration of Advanced Process Semiconductor Foundry Planning Co. Ltd.'s recommendations emphasizing the importance of process technology standardization at the 45nm generation and beyond, the four companies will strive toward this end.

Powerwave Technologies and Filtronic announced that they have signed a definitive agreement for Powerwave to acquire the majority of Filtronic's Wireless Infrastructure division business for a combination of 20.7 million newly issued shares of Powerwave common stock and $150 million in cash. The specific product lines included in this transaction comprise transmit/receive filters, integrated remote radio heads and power amplifier products, all for use in commercial wireless infrastructure base station equipment. The proposed acquisition does not include point to point radio backhaul equipment, as well as Filtronic's other divisions, of compound semiconductors and defence electronics. Immediately following the close, Filtronic will have an equity interest in Powerwave of approximately 13%. Filtronic's wireless infrastructure business had a 12-month revenue for the period ending November 30, 2005 of approximately $332.1 million. Powerwave believes that combined revenues for calendar year 2007 will easily exceed $1.4 billion.

A key part of the strategy for Filtronic is to achieve further substantial growth in value for compound semiconductors. This division is seeing strong long term market growth as the mobile handset industry continues to adopt switches based on GaAs pHEMT technology, with the expectation that they will be used in around 80% of handsets produced by 2008, says Filtronic. So, the British company plans to expand the semiconductor facility to increase the size of this business by up to three times in the coming two years, at an estimated cost of £45m over the next twelve months.

The Bosch Group is investing some 550 million euros in the construction of a new manufacturing facility for 200 mm semiconductors at its site in Reutlingen, near Stuttgart. Construction of the facility is to begin in the autumn of 2007. Rollout of production is planned for mid-2009. The plant will have a total capacity of up to 1,000 silicon wafers per day, equivalent to a daily production volume of up to one million microchips. Bosch has been manufacturing 150-mm semiconductors in Reutlingen for ten years now. In total, some 800 jobs will be created in the new 200-mm semiconductor manufacturing facility by 2012.

Semiconductor and micromachined chips from Reutlingen are used above all in the automobile industry. As components in electronic control units, they form the "central nervous system" of many functions in the vehicle, including electronic safety systems such as ABS, ESP, or airbags, fuel-efficient and clean engines with electronic engine management, or modern driver assistance systems.

The new 200-mm wafer fab in Reutlingen will mainly be geared to the "smart power process." In this technology, integrated circuits combine on one chip highly sensitive signal processing and high-voltage circuits for the control of high-performance actuators.

In the initial stages, these structures will be 0.35 micrometers wide. At a later stage, Bosch plans to halve structure width to 0.18 micrometers.

Created in 1996, Europe Technologies, a French company specialized in the design and sale of ARM based systems-on-chip (SoC) for dedicated customer applications, changes its name to become Scaleo chip. Scaleo chip's methodology in ARM based system-on-chip (SoC) technology allows to create a first functional chip for its clients in less than six months. Gilles Marsigné is appointed sales and marketing manager.

Soitec, French supplier of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers, announces the conclusion of an agreement to acquire all the shares of TraciT Technologies, a company based in Grenoble, France. TraciT Technologies specializes in thin-film layer transfer technologies that leverage molecular adhesion and mechanical, as well as chemical, thinning processes for the production of micro-electro mechanical (MEMS) and power circuits. A spin-off from the CEA-Leti, TraciT Technologies was formed in 2003. Following an initial development phase, TraciT Technologies, with its confirmed potential growth, has to quickly move to production to satisfy the needs of its customers in Europe, North America and Asia.

Mosaid Technologies announced the settlement of its patent litigations with Infineon Technologies and that both Infineon and its memory products spin-off, Qimonda, have licensed the Mosaid patent portfolio. Mosaid has also purchased 50 patents from Infineon and Qimonda.

BridgeCo, a provider of processor and middleware platforms that connect consumer electronics to computers and the Internet over home networks, raised $23M. The financing round was led by Advent Venture Partners and Wellington Partners, who were joined by all of BridgeCo’s Series C investors: Benchmark Capital, Cipio Partners (formerly Infineon Ventures), Earlybird Venture Capital, Fidelity Ventures and Intel Capital. The company also announced the opening of their new global headquarters in Los Angeles. The company’s CEO, COO, CFO and North American sales and marketing team will be based in LA, while the bulk of BridgeCo’s engineering and development team will continue to be located in Zurich, Switzerland.

Analog Devices has named Frederic Boutaud to the distinguished position of ADI Fellow. The Fellows honor is awarded when an engineer has contributed significantly to ADI's business and demonstrated important qualities such as innovation, leadership, entrepreneurial ability, and consulting skills. A 25-year veteran of integrated circuit design and architecture work, Mr. Boutaud joined ADI in 1996. He holds 46 patents in programmable architectures and wireless communications circuit design. Mr. Boutaud is a graduate of the Ecole Centrale de Lyon of Ecully Cedex, France and is also a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Mindspeed Technologies is establishing an engineering design center in Dubai for the development of communications ICs and software. The Mindspeed facility will be located at the DSOA Microelectronics Innovation Center. In addition to its facilities in the United States, Mindspeed operates design centers in China, India and the Ukraine.

The DSOA is a legal entity in Dubai defined by the Dubai Government. DSOA is developing an 'industrial city,' a technology center for leading international high-technology companies. The technology center comprises a Duty Free Zone, spanning over 7.2 million square meters, and is designed to include manufacturing, design, and development centers for microelectronics, photovoltaics and optoelectronics.

Some 17 chip makers are expected to join the $1 billion club in terms of semiconductor capital spending in 2006, according to market researcher Gartner. In total, capital spending is expected to hit $55.5 billion in 2006, up 17 percent over 2005, according to the firm. Wafer fab equipment is expected to jump 25 percent in 2006.

Market researcher IC Insights has also increased its semiconductor capital spending forecast for 2006. Worldwide capital spending is expected to hit $51.3 billion in 2006, up 12 percent over 2005. However on a quarter-by-quarter basis, capital spending is expected to decelerate. Capital spending is projected to grow 8 percent in Q1 to $11.7 billion, 7 percent in Q2 to $12.5 billion, 6 percent in Q3 to $13.3 billion and 4 percent in Q4 to $13.8 billion.

IC Insights does not change its overall semiconductor forecast, which calls for 8 to 10 percent growth in 2006. And according to Reuters, Gartner projected the IC industry to grow 10.6 percent in 2006 over 2005. Chip sales will grow 14 percent in 2008, before falling to less than 1 percent growth in 2009. Gartner analyst Jim Tully said 35 percent of existing chip makers — about 350 companies — will be driven out of business or acquired by larger rivals.

The worldwide market for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) was $5.1 billion in 2005 and is set to grow to $6.0 billion in 2006 (+17,6%) and to $9.7 billion in 2010, according to Yole Developpement (Lyon, France). Due to MEMS growth now moving to consumer applications where there is low pricing, competition and price erosion, and the diminishing significance of industrial applications, the growth rate at 15% is lower than the previous years in term of revenue. However, with consumer electronics come large numbers and the MEMS market’s unit growth will be higher, close to 20 percent over the same period.

Yole says that all 50 of the top 50 semiconductor companies are now involved in MEMS manufacturing or development.

The largest application area at present is the inkjet print head which is already being rivaled by optical MEMS (MOEMS), used for optical multiplexing. Both sectors were worth over $1 billion in 2005 and while inkjet heads will enjoy steady growth to $2 billion in 2010, MOEMS will grow even faster to approach $3 billion in annual sales in 2010, according to Yole. RF MEMS and silicon microphones should enjoy strong growth, each getting close to $1 billion in annual market in 2010.

North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.65 billion in orders in May 2006 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.12 according to SEMI. The three-month average of worldwide bookings in May 2006 was $1.65 billion. The bookings figure is three percent higher than the final April 2006 level of $1.60 billion and over 62 percent higher than the $1.02 billion in orders posted in May 2005. The three-month average of worldwide billings in May 2006 was $1.48 billion. The billings figure is about three percent above the final April 2006 level of $1.44 billion and over 22 percent above the May 2005 billings level of $1.21 billion.

Manufacturers will begin shipping Ultrawideband (UWB) chipsets in 2H06 and shipments are expected to ramp up with a total of 289 million chipsets shipping in the year 2010, reports In-Stat. PCs will be the initial and largest volume market for UWB wireless chipsets, with PC vendors shipping over 125 million desktop and laptop PCs with UWB capability by 2010.

Strategy Analytics' latest study, "Gallium Nitride Markets: Commercial Markets Drive Power Electronics," concludes that military and high power electronic applications will be the catalysts for the development of a Gallium Nitride (GaN) device market through to 2010. Commercial wireless infrastructure applications will also drive demand in the future and the study forecasts that the total market for GaN microelectronic devices will grow at a CAGR of 151 percent through 2010.

Analog Devices has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Integrant Technologies of Seoul, Korea. An innovator in the field of high-performance analog circuits designed for reconfigurable radio frequency (RF) signal processing, Integrant (78 employees) supplies low-power radio tuners that allow mobile communications, computer, and consumer devices to receive digital television (TV) and digital radio broadcasts. Integrant is best known for the low-power Digital Multimedia Broadcast (DMB) tuners it supplies to Korea's leading mobile phone manufacturers. ADI expects to pay approximately $127 million in cash at the closing in exchange for substantially all of the outstanding shares of Integrant. ADI may pay up to an additional $33 million upon the achievement of certain milestones.

Spansion said it plans to spend $1.2 billion to build a new flash memory production line in Japan. First output is expected by mid-2008.The new line is expected to have the capacity to process up to 20,000 300-mm wafers a month and will be Spansion's first 300-mm line.

Texas Instruments unveiled details of a 45 nm semiconductor manufacturing process that leverages a "wet" lithography process to double the number of chips produced on each silicon wafer, increasing performance by 30 percent while reducing power consumption 40 percent. TI's 45-nm process will be manufactured on 300-mm wafers in the DMOS6 facility in Dallas, Texas. The low-power ASIC design library will be available by the end of this year, with samples of the first SoC product delivered in 2007 and initial production in mid-2008.

Raza Microelectronics and AMD have entered into a broad strategic relationship. RMI will acquire the MIPS-based AMD Alchemy processor product line and operations from AMD, and AMD will become an investor in RMI. Raza Microelectronics is a fabless semiconductor company with more than 150 employees. The company offers a portfolio of solutions, led by the XLR(TM) Processor family -- a power-efficient solution optimized for embedded communications and networking applications -- and solutions for the next-generation Information Infrastructure. The company is headquartered in Cupertino, Calif. with subsidiaries in Beijing and Shenzhen, China, Tokyo, Japan and Bangalore, India.

Wafer manufacturer Sumco announced that it has reached an agreement with Komatsu to acquire a 51% stake in its silicon wafer subsidiary, Komatsu Electronic Metals for ¥36.9 billion (about $320.4 million U.S.). The acquisition will make Sumco similar in size to top wafer supplier Shin-Etsu Handotai.

Sumco had net sales of ¥1.702 trillion ($15.035 billion U.S.) in fiscal year ended Mar. 31, 2006. Komatsu Electronic Metals (KEM) had net sales of ¥86.6 billion ($765 million) over the same period.

National Semiconductor reported annual revenues of $2.16 billion compared to $1.91 billion in FY05 and $1.98 billion for FY04. For fiscal 2006, the company reported net income of $449.2 million. This compares to the $415.3 million net profit reported for FY2005 and the $282.8 million net profit reported for FY2004.