In an article at EETimes, Mark LaPedus reports out on what was going on at SEMICON West this year in regards to 450mm efforts. His update includes status from ISMI, SEMI, Semico, VLSI Research and a variety of experts. The key message is that things look somewhat nebulous right now. There’s no significant movement with regards to announcements of prototypes, prototype fabs, target dates, or funding. However, a variety of SEMI Standards have been released in preparation. There is conjecture that “something big” is about to happen in the next quarter or two, but that is left to speculation.