• Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI; Mountain View, CA) reported that the North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a third-straight month of record orders in January 2000 and a Book-to-Bill ratio of 1.34. A book-to-bill of 1.34 means $134 in orders were received for each $100 worth of products shipped. The three-month average of worldwide shipments in January 2000 was $1.6 billion. The figure is two percent above the December 1999 level, and is 82 percent above the January 1999 shipments level of $890 million. The three-month average of bookings in January 2000 was $2.2 billion. The bookings figure is 15 percent above December 1999 and 119 percent above the $997 million posted in January 1999. January bookings came in 33 percent above the previous cycle peak of $1.63 billion booked in November 1997. The January ratio of 1.34 is the third highest in the history of the SEMI Express Report and the highest in almost five years. The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving average bookings to three-month moving average shipments for the North American semiconductor equipment industry. Shipments and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.
• Motorola (Austin, TX) and Nortel Networks (Richardson, TX) reported a collaboration that will enable communications equipment manufacturers to develop advanced Internet products using a comprehensive, modular software platform incorporating Nortel Networks' Open IP Environment routing software. The objective is to provide an open programmable environment for network equipment OEMs to build next-generation equipment based on Motorola semiconductor families such as the Power QUICC communications processors and Motorola Power PC CPUs such as the MPC750. Thus, developers will be able to take advantage of Open IP Environment and Motorola's communication processors. Motorola also plans to incorporate Open IP Environment in high-end integrated computer systems from its CompactPCI product family. Nortel Networks and Motorola intend to jointly promote Motorola PowerPC processors as one of the architectures for the Open IP programming environment.
• In a ceremony officiated by Singapore's prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing (Singapore) broke ground on a new "green-field" fabrication facility at its main Singapore campus located at Woodlands Industrial Park. The mega-fab, called Fab 7, will be equipped to support advanced manufacturing process technologies starting at 0.15 micron. To speed the time to initial production, Fab 7 is expected to begin providing wafer fabrication services using 8-inch wafers. The construction of Fab 7 is designed to allow Chartered to put in 300-mm equipment, depending on customer demand and market trends. Fab 7 and its manufacturing support building will occupy about 4.3 hectares, or 11.75 acres of land. The buildings are currently sized at 775,000 square feet. The cleanroom production area will be approximately 170,000 square feet, making it one of the largest eight-inch wafer fabrication centers in the world to be built at this point in time. The cost of construction and equipment in the new facility is currently estimated at approximately US$2.1 billion. First wafer output at the new facility is expected to occur in mid-2001. The new fab is also likely to employ up to 1,000 engineers, operators and support personnel.
• NET-silicon, Inc. (Waltham, MA) has expanded its presence in Southeast Asia through the establishment of several new channel partnerships and the hiring of a sales manager. NET-silicon has forged a relationship with Electec Pte. Ltd., a provider of component solutions to Asian electronic OEMs, through which Electec will represent NET-silicon as a distributor in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Electec will also customize its own offerings around NET-silicon's NET+works architecture as an authorized developer. In the Korean market, NET-silicon has entered into an agreement with Sunin Technology, an IT distributor. And, Destiny Technology Corporation, an embedded technology design firm and distributor representing NET-silicon in a broad range of industries throughout mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, has agreed to become a NET-silicon authorized developer. NET-silicon also appointed Yong Ho On, formerly a product manager at Samsung, as the company's first sales manager located in Southeast Asia. Ho On has thirteen years' experience in the semiconductor industry. Ho On will be based in Seoul, South Korea. Electec and Destiny will be the first NET-silicon authorized developers in their respective regions.
• The conference entitled "PCB Design" for the ATE industry will be hosted by The North Texas Chapter PC Designers Council on May 11-12th, 2000. This two-day conference is a nationwide event that will focus in on the special design requirements of printed circuit board technology specifically for semiconductor automated test equipment. The North Texas Chapter hopes the conference will help raise the skill levels of designers and other associated industry professionals to meet the new challenges in the Semiconductor ATE industry. Woody Adams, who began his career in ATE design at Texas Instruments in 1987 and is currently the Regional Sales Manager for Cerprobe in Dallas, will be the lead instructor for the conference. Adams also teaches printed circuit board design courses at Collin County Community College, in Frisco, TX. Additional instructors include Glenn Wells, a certified IPC Designer and Instructor at Collin County Community College and the 1999 Top Gun Award Winner at PCB Design West, and Dwight Schirmer, a certified designer. This two-day conference is designed to benefit the entry-level designer up through the seasoned industry professional to gain a thorough understanding of ATE design from concept through board fabrication and assembly. Topics will include DUT orientation, unique power distribution issues, decoupling, impedance control requirements. For more information: www.circuit-technology.com.
• ECI Telecom (Petah Tikvah, Israel) and Metalink Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel) have formed a partnership to offer SDH network access systems to major telecom and datacom service providers worldwide. ECI Telecom's integrated network access services are deployed in multi-year contracts to major telecom operators in their metropolitan area networks (MAN). ECI Telecom's network access systems combine a multi-Gbit/s synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) backbone over optical fibers and Metalink's symmetric DSL-over-copper lines at up to double the full E1 or 2.3 Mbps rates to the end user.
• A special day devoted to Embedded Systems is among the new features slated for the 37th annual Design Automation Conference (DAC), to be held June 5-9, 2000, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The conference will again unite electronic design automation (EDA), silicon strategists, and now embedded systems developers, for collaboration on tools and methodologies for effective system and IC design. This year's technical program is expected to draw approximately 20,000 designers, design managers, and exhibitors to the conference. More than 50 technical sessions will be held in areas ranging from system-on-a-chip and intellectual property to signal integrity and verification. Seventy papers will be presented on design methodology, many of them dealing with deep-submicron issues. Three tutorials, one panel and five special sessions on embedded design will be held. For more information: www.dac.com
• OEA International, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) reported the extension of its long-term licensing relationship with Sun Microsystems, Inc. through the signing of an multi-year time-based licensing agreement. This new volume-licensing concept provides Sun with the design tools that will support the design and development of ICs for Sun's high-performance and high-end microprocessors.

Movers and Shakers

• Exemplar Logic, Inc. (San Jose, CA), a wholly owned subsidiary of Mentor Graphics Corp., appointed Jose A. Torres as general manager. Torres will oversee all Exemplar operations. Torres brings more than 14 years of CAD/CAE engineering and operations management experience to Exemplar. Prior to joining Exemplar, he was senior director of research and development at Synopsys where he managed product lines and defined future direction for the company's extraction and reliability products. Prior to Synopsys, Torres held a variety of engineering and management positions at Viewlogic, Zycad, and Silicon Solutions.
• Ori Intrator has been named the new vice president of sales and marketing for Europe and Elan Roth is vice president of business development for Aisys, Inc (Santa Clara, CA). Intrator will be driving the effort to establish Aisys' market presence and to expand its sales opportunity in the European market. Roth will be spearheading Aisys' campaign to develop strategic partnerships, particularly with semiconductor vendors. Intrator's last position was with Expert Systems International, Israel's largest public software company, where he was vice president of marketing and sales. He previously worked with SPL WorldGroup, CONTAHAL, SES, and the Israel defense force. Roth's most recent position before joining Aisys was at PC Soft International in Tel Aviv where he was director of marketing and sales and drove the company's development of strategic partnerships with key OEMs. He has also held positions with IBM in Haifa and CDC in Tel Aviv.
• Xilinx, Inc. (San Jose, CA) named Jerald G. Fishman, president and CEO of Analog Devices, Inc., to its board of directors. Fishman, 55, began his career at Analog Devices in 1971 in product marketing. Over the next several years he held a series of management positions in marketing, operations, and strategic planning, prior to being named general manager of the Analog Devices semiconductor division in 1979. He was elected vice president in 1980, group vice president in 1982, and executive vice president in 1988. He was elected president and COO in 1991 and President and CEO in 1996. His appointment expands the number of board members to seven. In addition to his responsibilities at Analog Devices, Mr. Fishman is active as a member of the boards of directors of several other publicly held companies including Kollmorgen Corp. and Cognex Corp.
• Anna Chiang was promoted to director of marketing at Sandcraft, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA). Previously senior marketing manager, she will now be responsible for the complete range of marketing activities for the company. Prior to joining Sandcraft, Chiang was a marketing strategist for microprocessor products at Sun Microsystems and a senior product marketing manager for 2D/3D graphics accelerators at S3, Inc.

Money Bits

• Cynapps (Santa Clara, CA) raised $8 million in second-round funding from a variety of Silicon Valley technologists and investors. Investors in Cynapps include Infinity Capital, L.L.C. and U.S. Venture Partners, as well as technologists Andy Bechtolsheim and Jon Rubinstein, and computer pioneer Gordon Bell.In addition to Bell and Kapadia, other Cynapps board members include Lucio Lanza, U.S. Venture Partners, and Steve Blank, founder of E.piphany.
• Ansoft Corp. (Pittsburgh, PA) reported third quarter revenue for fiscal 2000 of $8.4 million, a new record, up 38% from the third quarter of fiscal 1999 sequentially. Pro forma net income for the third quarter of fiscal 2000 was $458,000, or $0.04 per diluted share, which excludes the effects of the acquisition related amortization of $615,000. This compares with a pro forma net loss of $(356,000), or $(0.03) per diluted share, reported in the third quarter of fiscal 1999 which excludes the effects of acquisition related amortization of $434,000.
• Revenues for BP Microsystems, Inc. (Houston, Texas), a global supplier of electronic device programmers, were $10.5 million for the 4th quarter. This figure reflect an increase of 56 percent in BP revenues compared to the same quarter last year.

Correction

• The Focus Report on Physical Verification (Jan. 2000, pg. 34) neglected to include information for Nassda Corp. of Mountain View, CA. Please refer to the on-line version at http://isdmag.com/Editorial/january 00.html.