Semiconductor Glossary - W
Integrated circuit
Microwires
Watt
Wait before ACKnowledge
A wafer of virgin silicon sliced from a 4, 5, 6, 8 or 12 inch diameter silicon bar (2.54 cm is equal to 1 inch), which is used as the foundation to build semiconductor products on.
See Fabrication
A region ground into the boule (ingot) to identify crystal orientation, dopant type and mask/reticle location reference.
The electrical testing of each die on the wafer while still in wafer form.
Wide Area Information Servers
The Wireless Application Protocol is a secure specification that allows users to access information instantly via handheld wireless devices such as mobile phones, pagers, two-way radios, smartphones and communicators.
Wide Area Network
Waste is any material which is in the possession of an individual, or an industrial or commercial or other entity, and which that individual or entity no longer wishes to use and must dispose of. Waste can be generated simply because something is broken, too old, too dirty or too contaminated to be of any use any more (a broken plate, an old piece of equipment, a spent solvent, a dirty rag), or because it has served its purpose (packaging is the most obvious example of this category, but so do products which still work perfectly well but which are not the latest model) or because a product was too badly made to be sellable (off specification products) or because no industrial process is perfect and there is always some wastage of the raw materials (unusable side-products in chemical reactions, scrap production in any industrial activity which processes raw materials and products). Although conceptually wastewater and air emissions fall into this definition of waste almost all environmental laws deal with these two forms of waste separately. It is important to remember that what is waste to one individual or entity may be a raw material to another - spent solvents can be regenerated and reused, or if they burn well can simply be used as a fuel, scrap steel can be melted and recast, spent acids can be used to neutralize alkaline wastewaters and viceversa, an old television set which still works but one person wants to get rid of because it is not in colour can be take by someone who has no television at all. In summary, a waste can be considered as simply a raw material which has been mis-directed. This concept of the waste of one being the raw materials of the other is embedded in all natural environmental cycles -the biological wastes or metabolic by-products of one species will be used as a food source by other species.
A term used to describe any activities which are undertaken to reduce the amount of waste which is generated, to increase the amount of waste which is recovered, reused and recycled, and to increase the amount of waste which is destroyed.
Any aqueous stream that has been used in a household or in a commercial, industrial or other activity and is being discharged to surface waters, to a sewer, or to the ground. On an industrial site, several types of waste waters are possible: spent aqueous solutions (spent acids or alkalis, spent salt solutions, etc.), contact process waste waters (waters which have come into contact with industrial processes and are therefore at greatest risk of contamination), non-contact process waste waters (in majority these are cooling waters), sanitary waste waters (waste waters from kitchens, baths and showers, toilets - depending on the source these can have high organic loads), rainwater (which, depending where it fell, is at greater or lesser risk of contamination).
The fundamental element which allows life on Earth. It is made out of the combination of two gases, Oxygen and Hydrogen. It is the most unusual substance existing on Earth: it is the only element whose density does not continually increase as the temperature decreases (it reaches its minimum volume at 4oC). It is the most flexible element, able to create three dimensional complex structures very easily (thanks to the high reactivity of the Hydrogen atoms); the molecular structure does not change from the solid form to the liquid form (which explains some interesting properties like high viscosity and surface tension). No other planet of the solar system is known to have water (it is believed that there is ice on Mars, but this has not yet been proved, and probably it would be a very small quantity).
There are currently two theories to explain the existence of water on Earth:
1) if the Earth was created from the solidification of solar gases by cooling, the water (and the atmosphere) is the remaining part of the most volatile gases;
2) if the Earth was created from a homogeneous mix of solid particles, the water (and the atmosphere) are made out of gases which were later released during the cooling of the solid material.
See Bonding, Wedge.
Joining of two or more pieces of metal by fusing them together.
Work Breakdown Structure
A product-oriented listing, in family tree order, of hardware, software, services and other work tasks which completely defines a product or program.
World Commission on Environment and Development
Western Digital
US hard disk drive manufacturer.
Watchdog timer
WatchDog Timer
Sometimes used as a short form of World-Wide Web. Also used to indicate a www-like service on a smaller scale such as internal company web sites (intranets).
Wafer Fab Yield
World Geodetic System 1984
The mathematical model of the earths shape used by GPS since 1987.
World Health Organization
Watt Hour
World Industry Conference on Environmental Management
Windows Hardware Equipment Conference
Program for compressing and uncompressing files on a Windows personal computer. An ST standard program.
Work In Process
Work In Progress
Quantity of semifinished products in the production area.
The semiconductor manufacturing operation where contacts on the die are connected to leads on the frame by welding thin gold or aluminum wires. Bonding should not be confused with die attach.
Wafer Level Reliability
World Meteorological Organization
Without
Work Order
The name for orders requested to start in production.
Masks printed from master plates that are used for production exposure of wafers. As these plates are subject to wear, they must be replaced periodically.
Generally a piece of equipment where an operator works. In computer terminology refers to a powerful desktop computer generally operated with others in conjunction with a server.
Computerized Aided Manufacturing (CAM) system used in Front-End.
- An organization that has achieved high standards of business performance and is continuously improving its ability to meet its customer's needs.
- The name of ST's Corporate internal newsletter.
Write Once Read Many
Optical disk which can be written once only and then read as a ROM. Laser in recorder is used to burn pits in disk. Photo CDs use WORM technology.
Week Of Sales
Average value of sales over a week, i.e. total cumulative sales during X weeks, divided by X.
1)Word Processor
2)Write Protect
Water Pollution Control Act
Words Per Minute
Water Quality Criteria
Water Quality Standard
Water Soluble Fraction
Wastewater Sewage Treatment Plant
World Semiconductor Trade Statistics
Association of semiconductor companies, which collects sales data from all manufacturers then tells each what share of the market it has achieved.
Working Voltage
1) World Wide
2)Wire wound
3) Wire wrap
4) Work Week
World Wide Data Centre
The St Genis Data Centre with Data Servers for SAP, Esicom and other Corporate applications.
World Wide Fund for nature
World Wide Standard
A conventional value given to materials, semi-finished and finished goods that is established once a year for all of the ST group.
WWS is the target value within the company at the end of next year which also takes into account the international competitive level.
WWS is the best cost we can target.
Wastewater Treatment Plant
A process plant designed to treat waste waters prior to their discharge, to abate their contaminant content. Waste water treatment plants can be divided into plants whose objective is to abate the waste water's organic contaminant content and those whose objective is to abate the waste water's inorganic contaminant content.
All waste water treatment plants for treating municipal, household waste waters are primarily designed to abate their organic contaminant content. Industrial waste water treatment plants can be designed for either objective, depending on the nature of the industry's waste waters. Numerous mechanisms are used to treat waste waters, they can be divided as follows:
- physical treatments (settling or flotation of solids, filtering, absorption, evaporation);
- biological treatments (for waste waters containing organics, and normally based on the principle of breakdown of the organic material by bacteria, however bactericidal processes can also be used);
- chemical treatments (neutralization, oxidation, reduction, changes in solubility, +).
Waste water treatment is often divided into primary, secondary and tertiary treatment, depending on the level of treatment obtained. Primary treatment consists of the simple initial separation of solids in the waste waters. Any simple treatment beyond this initial separation which removes or destroys dissolved contaminants is classified as secondary treatment. Any further, more extreme treatment is considered tertiary treatment.
World Wide Web
A global web of interconnected documents that can be navigated using a program called a browser. This is the most popular way to use the Internet and to many people the www is the Internet.
Address of the ST On Line web server.
What You See is What You Get
What You See Is What You Get X12 American EDI standard
