India has seen how the Gulf state of Abu Dhabi has, with a budget of US$10 billion, set about manouvering its way into a key place in the semiconductor industry with the creation of Globalfoundries.

"These comments beg the question how will the equipment market grow 50-plus-percent in 2010 with no new fabs and no new capacity additions, when it dropped nearly 50% in 2009 with no new fabs and no new capacity additions?"

The recruiting of what will be hundreds of new workers over the next few years marks a striking turnaround from last January, when Chartered announced that it would cut 500 jobs.

The combined company employs approximately 10,000 people around the world, anchored by headquarters in Silicon Valley and manufacturing operations in Singapore and Germany, and a new fab under construction in New York.

Answer: Yes and no.

Citing the fab tool recovery, Barclays Capital has raised its immersion lithography unit shipment estimate from 95 units to 105 units for 2010.

Mixed-signal foundry LFoundry (Landshut, Germany) plans to acquire Atmel's fab in Rousset, France, the site of recent worker unrest. CEO Michael Lehnert said the proposed acquisition will make LFoundry the largest analog foundry in Europe.

Angry workers at Atmel's fab in Rousset, France, have gone on an unlimited strike. The strike aims to protest against Atmel's decision to sell its site in Rousset without guaranteeing its employees.

Intel is now completing its first chip-fabrication plant in China; it will lag the technology used by other factories by two years, but the factory will still affect local know-how.

NOR flash supplier Spansion has put its 300mm fab up for sale, according to sources at the ISMI Symposium here.

Sematech has claimed that it continues to make progress in 450mm fab technology, saying that it is in the "test wafer generation" stage in the arena.

The R&D costs for process technology are expected to climb from US$310-to-US$400 million for the 90nm to 65nm nodes, to US$600-to-US$900 million for 45nm to 32nm, to US$1.3 billion for 22nm to 12nm. A fab would run from US$2.5-to-US$3.5 billion for the 90nm to 65nm nodes, to US$3.5-to-US$4 billion for 45nm to 32nm, to US$4.5-to-US$6 billion for 22nm to 12nm.

Like many other chip makers, TI discovered that the cost of Moore's Law–industry shorthand for the race to shrink transistors on digital chips–is too costly for the payoff it brings. It began placing greater emphasis on manufacturing analog chips.

"We believe this delay in fab closures is due to stronger than expected demand, and Fairchild wanting to continue manufacturing product at those facilities to meet this stronger than expected demand...

Texas Instruments has placed a bid of US$172.5 million on used 300mm equipment from the now-shuttered Qimonda fab near Richmond, Va. The Dallas-based company plans to use the equipment for 300mm analog production.

When we asked Jensen about Globalfoundries, the big man from Nvidia said that Nvidia likes to work with companies that are customer centric. Since TSMC has 200 customers its kind of hard to be in center of attention, while such a thing might be possible with some alternative fab companies, such as Globalfoundies.

Applied Materials said orders for wafer fab equipment spiked in the final month of its third fiscal quarter, ending July 26. Foundries increased spending sharply, and display manufacturers are also looking at better times driven by flat panel TV sales, according to company CEO Mike Splinter.

The foundry's goal is to have the first tool move in by October 2011, with qualification coming in early 2012 and commercial production by the second half of 2012.

Low levels of fab spending this year could lead to significant shortages in chip capacity, according SEMI. Fab spending should rise over 60% next year, according to SEMI. However it's coming from the very low base of 2009. US$4.6bn was spent on fab construction last year, but only US$1.6bn will be spent this year.

GlobalFoundries will hold its official groundbreaking for Fab 2 at the Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta on July 24.

Elpida Memory, which operates one of the world's largest DRAM memory fabs in Hiroshima (Japan), will undergo a major internal transformation as the company battles a continued over capacity in the memory markets and seeks Japanese Government funds to continue operations.

Globalfoundries has announced the appointment of Norm Armour as vice president and general manager and Eric Choh as vice president of operations to lead an expanding team dedicated to developing Fab 2 in New York.

Toshiba has said it will shoulder US$307 million in restructuring costs from shutting down its old system chip and discrete chip lines as it seeks to unload losses.

The construction project is expected to take approximately two years to complete and an additional 12 to 18 months to ramp to full operating mode, with volume production anticipated in roughly 2012.

Once completed, Globalfoundries' Fab 2 project is expected to create more than 6,400 direct and indirect jobs in the region.

Intel is interested in building another chip manufacturing plant in southern Israel by 2012 at a cost of US$2.5 billion, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported on Monday.

Applied Materials executives said customer confidence is improving, but cautioned that the company is seeing "a very dynamic environment" in all of its major segments. China's stimulus plans may continue to support cellphone and PC consumption there, said CEO Mike Splinter following release of fiscal Q2 financial results.

Infineon sites in Asia are working far below capacity. The company denied to break down utilization rates by fab, but provided figures more or less in line with the industry-wide average.

Japan's chip industry, awash in red ink, plans to consolidate older fabs. Fujitsu, NEC Electronics and Renesas Technology all detailed scheduled closings of older facilities. Also, executives at NEC and Toshiba, which have been discussing a merger of their system-on-chip (SoC) operations, appeared reluctant to go ahead with a merger until internal restructuring efforts take effect.

ASM International (ASMI) today announced it will cut 200 jobs as it shifts some manufacturing and operational procurement activities from the Netherlands to Singapore. The changes will take place over the next 12 months and involve the transfer of the remaining manufacturing and operational procurement activities for ASMI's vertical furnace product line from Almere, the Netherlands, to the company's front-end manufacturing operations in Singapore (FEMS).

Unlike the SEMI Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Subscription (WWSEMS) data, the World Fab Forecast and its related Fab Database reports track any equipment needed to ramp the fab, upgrade, expand, or change its wafer size regardless if it is new equipment, used equipment, or transferred equipment, while WWSEMS tracks only new equipment.

Tejas Silicon Holdings (UK) has completed the acquisition of the Atmel wafer fabrication operation in Heilbronn, Germany. The sale follows a leasing agreement announced in September and its completion on December 31 has enabled Atmel to achieve its goal of reducing the number of its manufacturing facilities from five to two in 2008.

According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Microchip disclosed that it owns a 5.4% stake in Supertex, a publicly-held mixed signal semiconductor manufacturer. Over the last 90 days, ''Microchip has purchased 594,300 shares in the open market and the remaining 103,100 shares were acquired through the exercise of put options sold by Microchip.

As downward revisions of December quarter guidances flow as steadily as pink slips this month, reports are swirling of company-enacted manufacturing plant shutdowns in what seems to be a heavy trend compared to previous years. Samsung, Spansion, TI, and TSMC are among those reportedly shutting down manufacturing sites at the end of the year for up to three weeks. Such action is nothing new...

AMD spinnoff, The Foundry Company. has been given the green light by New York state's economic development arm, which has approved US$1.2 billion in state incentives for the firm's new chip fab.

Fab capacity utilisation in Q3 was high for advanced processes and 300mm fabs but overall showed a decline, according to the latest Semiconductor Industry Capacity Statistics (SICAS) report, with the foundry industry experiencing sharp declines in capacity, actual wafer starts and capacity utilisation.

The board of directors of the Empire State Development had been scheduled to vote on whether to transfer a US$1.2 billion package of state incentives from Sunnyvale-based AMD to The Foundry Co., a joint venture between AMD and UAE-based Advanced Technology Investment. Instead, that vote has been postponed until a December meeting, according to AMD and state officials. However, Travis Bullard, a spokesman for AMD, said the decision to push off a vote until the board’s December meeting does not delay the plant.

Tejas Silicon Holdings has agreed to acquire the Heilbronn, Germany fab operation, including equipment, but will lease the facility and license fab process technology from Atmel. About 300 Atmel employees associated with fab operations and other support functions will become a part of Tejas Silicon, Atmel said. Atmel and Tejas Silicon will also enter into a supply agreement whereby Atmel will continue to procure products from the Heilbronn fab over a three-year period, Atmel said.

Russia's Ministry of Industry and Trade has given formal approval to provide 27B roubles (US$1.09B) to co-finance 65nm chip production, according to local reports. Mikron, a unit of Sitronics, will manufacture the ICs. The plan calls for 65nm production down to 45nm on 300mm wafers. Mikron expects to be producing 10,000 wafers per month by 2010, according to officials. The investment project is estimated at 58B roubles (US$2.3B), with Sitronics financing the remaining amount.