The Sandbox

California’s largest electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE) is getting onboard the solar train as today it inked a deal with Pasadena, Calif.-based eSolar to help it secure an additional 245 megawatts of solar power by 2013 for its customers in what the companies say is the nation’s first commercial effort using power tower solar thermal technology.

What exactly is power tower solar thermal technology anyway, you ask? Well, according to the companies, each pre-fabricated module (pictured left) consists of several solar towers each associated with thousands of heliostats, or mirrors, which precisely track the sun over the course of the day and reflect light to a receiver at the top of each tower. The...Read More

Highlighting the news from Solar City this week was the announcement that Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates-based Masdar PV plans to invest more than $2 billion in thin-film photovoltaic solar technology in a three-phased strategy to produce thin-film photovoltaic (PV) modules, and inked a deal (possibly $600 million) with Applied Materials for three of its SunFab thin film lines.

In other PV news, it was exciting to see the first Gen 8.5 thin film solar PV module that Signet Solar completed at its factory near Dresden, Germany, which was manufactured on Applied’s SunFab equipment (pictured below).

The panel (pictured below) meas...Read More

In just some of the solar activity for the week, I was impressed to see this story in The Hindu Business Line that the government in India wants to establish 60 cities as “Solar Cities,” which calls for a minimum 10% reduction in projected total demand of conventional energy at the end of 5 years in each of the cities through energy-efficiency measures and generation from renewable-energy installations. The article says most Indian cities and towns are experiencing peak electricity shortages of more than 15%, so the plan would kill two proverbial birds with one stone: offset the power outages and install clean energy. Very cool.

Wednesday, who could miss Applied Materials’ big move i...Read More

The week is starting out bright for the solar industry as SunPower Corp is saying that it has produced a full-scale, five-inch prototype solar cell with an efficiency of 23.4%, which it claims is a world-record for a large area solar cell.

The company reminded in its statement that it reported improvements of its cell efficiency in the laboratory and in mass production since its first all-back contact solar cell prototype in 2003, and CEO Tom Werner is now saying that this is a step function increase from the company's 22% efficient Gen 2 technology, which has been in mass production since last year.

This level of efficiency is expected to be commercially available in approximately two years, and is expected to reduce system cost by 50% by the year 2012.

In a recent discussion with Applied Materi...Read More

According to market researchers at iSuppli Corp, the explosive global demand for solar energy has driven such a significant shortage of polysilicon used in the manufacture of photovoltaic (PV) cells that PV suppliers are being forced to realign their business structures and strategies and to seek alternative raw materials.

With global revenue for PV cells projected to reach as much as $22.1 billion in 2012, up from $9.6 billion in 2007 (according to a preliminary forecast from iSuppli), by 2020, about 50,000 Megawatts worth of PV systems (MWp) will be installed annually, up by a factor of nearly 20 times from 2,538MWp in 2007. (MWp is a metric that measures the power output of solar cells.)

Indeed, no market can expand so quickly without some growing pains, iSuppli reminds, particularly shortages that can impact supply. While the global PV industry has the capacit...Read More

Following up on its first survey last year that found 40% of respondents did not believe 450-mm wafers would ever happen, productivity management software and consulting services company Wright Williams & Kelly Inc (WWK) said this week it is starting its 2008 survey on equipment and process timing in the semiconductor industry, which can be found here.

WWK reminded that last year’s survey showed that 50% or more of respondents expect to see adaptive test, high K gate dielectrics, metal gates and equipment with energy saving "sleep" states, in production between 2008 and 2010. And, between 2010 and 2012, 50% or more of respondents expect to see 193 high index immersion lithography, wafer-level reliability testing...Read More

Last October, I slammed Lehman Brothers’ downgrade of semiconductor equipment stocks, which at the time, I felt was not called for – however, six months later, it is clearly time to revisit that topic and the facts, following financial results this week from Lam Research Corp and Novellus Systems.

Lam’s revenue for its quarter ended March 30, was $613.8 million, slightly above Q4 2007; gross margin sank to $287.2 million from $307.7 million in Q4 2007; and net income of $103.5 million, or 82 cents per diluted share, compared to Q4 2007’s net income of $115.1 million, or 91 cents per diluted share – and this includes the earnings of the SEZ G...Read More

In addition to its purchase of more of Intel Corp’s optical business this past week, Albuquerque, NM-based Emcore Corp inked a supply agreement for concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems to China energy company XinAo Group.

Under the agreement, Emcore will first deliver a 50 kilowatt (kW) CPV system to be installed in Langfang, China, which will be used for test and evaluation purposes. Then, once the expected reliability and performance metrics have been met, XinAo said it would install CPV systems to provide electric power for its coal gasification project -- estimated to have a requirement of 60 megawatts (MW) of power.

XinAo also said it plans to build a manufacturing plant in ...Read More

Financial analyst Doug Freedman at American Technology Research says yes.

“Semiconductors and the market have had a nice move in recent weeks, but we think there is another leg higher as we move to be more constructive and vocal in our “Overweight” semiconductor sector call at this time. We believe it is an opportune time to aggressively buy semiconductor stocks in light of recent under-performance of the SOX as we move past seasonally weak demand periods. Several signs exist that the stocks are becoming more attractive to value investors and that we may look past a macro bottom in the next 3 to 6 months, suggesting now is a good entry poin...Read More

This week, market research company iSuppli Corp said it has acquired Munich, Germany-based Wicht Technologie Consulting (WTC), a provider of market intelligence on photovoltaics, Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), sensors and nanotechnology, so that it could begin a service for these industry areas.

The service is set to begin in Q2, and is a welcome move by iSuppli, which consistently provides valuable data and industry expert opinion for EDN readers.

Also, there is a serious lack of analysts in the solar space, and iSuppli’s semiconductor expertise coming to bear in the burgeoning photovoltaic arena makes perfect sense.

Derek Lidow, president and CEO of iSuppli Corp said of the move, in a statement, “Technology companies around the world now are focusing on the solar/photovolta...Read More

Following yesterday’s news reports that semiconductor manufacturing foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) along with fellow Taiwan-based chipmakers, Powerchip Semiconductor Corp and specialty IC foundry Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp, were planning to build 5 new semiconductor manufacturing plants for $14.7 billion, TSMC’s director of brand management, Chuck Byers, who attended the ceremony in Taiwan, around which the announcement was made, clarified the company’s plans.

“What TSMC commented on yesterday was a $5 billion addition to phase IV and V of Fab 12 that will serve as the company's R&D Fab for the next six years, working on process technology development for the 32nm, 22nm, and 15nm nodes,” he said.

According to Applied Materials, it is.

As 32 nm technologies ramp within the next two years, the extension of optical lithography to meet patterning requirements is the industry’s most urgent technology hurdle, the company reminded.

Applied recently held technical discussions and presentations on the self-aligned double patterning (SADP) technique that it proposes may be the most cost-effective answer to continued scaling down to the 22 nm node, whereby a consensus was reached that extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography will eventually replace optical lithography, but since EUV is not likely to be ready for mass production until 2012, optical lithography must pattern 32nm and possibly even 22nm devices.

While immers...Read More

To support the growing semiconductor industry in India, industry organization Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) said today it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the India Semiconductor Association (ISA) to support and promote the industry's growth.

The groups said their MOU is aimed at reinforcing the semiconductor-related ecosystem in India, which also lays the groundwork for exchange of market information, and membership benefits between the respective associations.

Poornima Shenoy, president of the ISA said in a statement, “India has the innate potential to become a strategic and world class manufacturing hub. SEMI also has an increasing focus on the solar photovoltaic space which is emerging as a se...Read More

In a recent blog post by EDN sister publication Semiconductor International on how IC makers are looking to cash in on “green” chips, Editor-in-Chief Peter Singer noted that “The global explosion in information technology, combined with rapidly escalating energy costs, has chipmakers asking how much does it really cost to run today’s computers,” and questions what can be done to provide more energy-efficient solutions.

Pointing to remarks made recently by AMD’s executive VP of the computing solutions group, Mario Rivas, who said that computers today are an integral part of people’s lives around the world, made possible by massive computational power combined with a global network and data storage. As well, Rivas sai...Read More

AMD’s stock was up this morning temporarily with rumors that surfaced late yesterday that IBM might be considering a “deeper partnership” with the microprocessor challenger or even an outright merger. But alas, by noon eastern time, things had settled down and stock was trading at about $7.50/share. Surely the daytraders had fun with this one.

In November, another rumor circulated temporarily regarding Apple acquiring AMD, but it was short-lived. 

While that one seemed only somewhat plausible, thinking seriously about IBM rescuing AMD makes more sense for AMD from one perspective alone: cash.

AMD would definitely be stron...Read More