Category Archives: Applications

Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2), an Austin-based integrated circuit research and development joint venture, has launched a project to help designers reduce power consumption, a growing challenge for most system-on-chip designs. The project will develop new power modeling technology to estimate power consumption more easily and more accurately throughout the design process, especially during the earliest stages.

The end result will be a new power modeling standard to reduce resources and costs needed to develop virtually every type of SoC. Jerry Frenkil, director of OpenStandards, said that the Si2 Low Power Working Group, part of the newly restructured Si2 OpenStandards program, will lead this industry-wide effort.

“Every SoC design team is grappling with the continued need to reduce power consumption,” Frenkil said. “That’s especially true for mobile devices, but it’s also a concern throughout the electronics industry. One way to accomplish this is through improved multi-level power modeling techniques that better predict SoC power and performance. Right now there’s no commonly accepted way to develop an accurate estimation of power consumption early in the design phase. This often leads to designs being power inefficient, performance constrained, or both.”

Frenkil said the standard will also “enable more efficient and reliable power analyses and optimizations since the same model will be used from system-level design through gate level implementation and all phases in between.”

The approved specification will be contributed to the IEEE P2416 Standards Working Group for industry-wide distribution. Nagu Dhanwada, senior R&D engineer at IBM, chairs both the IEEE P2416 and Si2 Low Power Modeling Working Groups. “Since Si2 is an R&D joint venture, its members can work together to develop specifications, tests and proof-of-concepts with anti-trust protection. This specification will greatly accelerate standardization efforts within P2416, and testing prior to IEEE standardization will enable us to rapidly prove out the use of the new standard before it hits the street,” Dhanwada explained.

IEEE P2416 is an essential component of a coordinated IEEE effort focusing on system-level design. The IEEE 1801 standard currently expresses design intent. It’s latest update, IEEE 1801-2015, includes support for power modeling.

John Biggs, chair of the IEEE 1801 Working Group said, “Efforts of the Si2 Low Power Working Group will help the IEEE P2416 Working Group standardize the representation of power consumption data. The fruits of this work, in combination with the new power modeling capability in IEEE 1801-2015, should greatly ease the challenging task of energy aware system level design.”

The new Si2 model specification is expected to be completed in October. For more information about this project, contact Jerry Frenkil at [email protected]. For information about the Low Power Working Group and other OpenStandards programs, visit http://www.si2.org/openstandards/.

Founded in 1988, Si2 is a research and development joint venture that provides standard interoperability solutions for integrated circuit design tools. All Si2 activities are carried out under the auspices of the The National Cooperative Research and Production Act of 1993, the fundamental law that defines R&D joint ventures and offers them a large measure of protection against federal antitrust laws. Si2’s international membership includes semiconductor foundries, fabless manufacturers, and EDA companies.

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. today recognized five of the best and brightest computer science and engineering students in the U.S. as it announced the inaugural class of the Samsung PhD Fellowship. Each student will receive a Fellowship award of $50,000 as well as mentorship to support their ground-breaking research.

The new PhD Fellowship program rewards those who dare to innovate. Jointly sponsored by Samsung Semiconductor and the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC), the program recognizes outstanding Ph.D. students working in five areas: Software and Memory System Solutions for Data Centers; Low-Power CPU and System IP Architecture and Designs; Advanced Semiconductor Devices, Materials and Simulation; Internet of Things; and Smart Machines.

Samsung launched the Fellowship program with a call for partner universities to nominate outstanding students working on the above topics. Twelve of the best-qualified nominees were selected as Finalists and invited to showcase events at the new headquarters in Silicon Valley or at the Samsung Austin R&D Center. Each student Finalist presented his or her research proposal to an audience of Samsung engineers, Lab directors, and innovation leaders and met many of them for interviews as well. Following these events, the five Fellows were selected from this terrific group.

Each Fellow will be connected to an engineer from one of the Samsung Semiconductor or SSIC Labs in Silicon Valley or Austin. This mentor will provide an industry perspective on their research and will invite the student to join Samsung for an internship.

“We are thrilled to be supporting these outstanding students through our Fellowship program. Samsung strives to be a leader in the creation of new technology, and a great way to do that is by supporting basic research and PhD training,” said Stefan Heuser, VP of Operations and Innovation for SSIC. “We were very impressed by the students nominated by the universities—all of them have made an impact in key areas of research. The Finalists were an even stronger group, and we are confident that they will become leaders in their fields. But the five Fellows are truly exceptional, and we look forward to working with them in the coming year. We thank the universities and all of the student nominees for their efforts and for their interest in our program.”

Following are the five Samsung PhD Fellows for 2016-2017:

  • Dinesh Jayaraman, “Embodied Learning for Visual Recognition”
    Nominating professor: Kristen Grauman, University of Texas at Austin
  • Jiajun Wu, “Computational Perception of Physical Object Properties”
    Nominating professors: William Freeman and Joshua Tenenbaum, MIT
  • Joy Arulraj, “Rethinking Database Systems for Next-Generation Memory Technologies and Real-Time Analytics”
    Nominating professor: Andy Pavlo, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Niranjini Rajagopal, “Sensor Fusion and Automatic Infrastructure Mapping for Indoor Localization Systems”
    Nominating professors: Anthony Rowe and Bruno Sinopoli, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Wooseok Lee, “Exploring Future Mobile Heterogeneous Multicore System Architectures”
    Nominating professors: Lizy John and Andreas Gerstlauer, University of Texas at Austin

Nominations for next year’s PhD Fellowship program will open in September 2016. Additional information about the Fellowship program can be found at: http://www.samsung.com/us/labs/fellowship/index.html

With discussion increasingly focused on autonomous vehicles and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication, demand is rising for electronic systems to support new, intelligent cars. Meanwhile, older, existing technology on high-end vehicles continues to migrate down to mid-range and low-end cars and technology-based aftermarket products are gaining momentum.

Given all the new electronic systems that have been added to automobiles in recent years, one might reason that this segment accounts for a large share of the total global electronic system sales. That’s simply not the case. On a worldwide basis, automotive electronics represented only 8.9% of the $1.42 trillion total 2015 worldwide electronic systems market, a slight increase from 8.6% in 2014. Automotive’s share of global electronic system production has increased only incrementally and is forecast to show only slight gains through 2019, when automotive electronics are forecast to account for 9.4% of global electronic systems sales. Despite the many new electronics systems that are being added in new vehicles, IC Insights believes pricing pressures on automotive ICs and electronic systems will prevent the automotive end-use application from accounting for much more than its current share of total electronic systems sales through 2019.

Figure 1 shows the quarterly market trends for the three largest automotive IC markets—Analog, MCU, and special-purpose logic. As shown, falling average selling prices in these three segments have largely offset unit growth over the past few years. In 2015, falling ASPs led to a 3% decline in the automotive IC market to $20.5 billion. Based on IC Insights’ forecast, the automotive IC market will return to growth in 2016, increasing 4.9% to $21.5 billion, as currency exchange rates stabilize and additional electronic systems (such as backup cameras) become mandatory equipment on new cars sold in the U.S. The automotive IC market is now forecast to reach $28.0 billion in 2019, which represents average annual growth of 5.8% from $21.1 billion in 2014. Based on IC Insights’ forecast, the 2019 automotive IC market will be 2.6x the size it was in 2009 when the market was only $10.6 billion—its low-point during the great recession.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Analog ICs and MCUs together accounted for 74% of the estimated $20.5 billion automotive IC market in 2015. Demand for automotive MCUs continues to expand as more vehicles are designed with embedded computer systems to address safety and efficiency issues demanded from legislators and consumers. As cars get smarter and more connected, demand is growing for memory and storage to support a wide array of applications, particularly those that require quick boot up times as soon as the driver turns the ignition key. DRAM and flash memory, which receive considerable attention in computing, consumer, and communication applications, are currently much less visible in the automotive IC market but memory ICs are expected to account for 12.0% of the 2019 automotive IC market, an increase from 7.8% in 2015.

Revenue associated with the wireless competitive landscape continued to serve as a bright spot in the larger semiconductor market in 2015, growing almost 4 percent to over $56 billion, year over year, while total semiconductor revenue fell 2 percent to $347 billion during the same period. The wireless competitive landscape includes logic and analog semiconductors used in connectivity, mobile phones, media tablets, mobile infrastructure and other applications. However, due to slowing sales of smartphones and other wireless devices, the wireless competitive landscape faces a set of challenges that could result in similar or slower growth in 2016, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical information and insight.

wireless semiconductors

“Apple recently reported its fiscal second quarter results, and for the first time iPhone unit sales fell year over year, indicating the potential magnitude of the softness in the premium smartphone market,” said Brad Shaffer, senior analyst, mobile devices and networks, IHS Technology. “If the iPhone and other premium smartphones fail to gain enough traction to support growth in that market segment, it may be reflected in the underlying semiconductor market in 2016.”

According to the IHS Wireless Semiconductor Competitive Intelligence Service, the mobile handset integrated-circuit (IC) market is the largest segment in the wireless competitive landscape, comprising 62 percent of revenue in 2015 as the smartphone market continued to grow. “If unit shipments from Apple and other smartphone original equipment manufacturers continue to decline, the wireless competitive landscape could have a dragging effect on the larger semiconductor market in 2016. However, though currently too early in their lifecycles to make a material difference in the short term, emerging technologies like LTE-Advanced Pro or 4.5G could provide upside potential in the next 12 to 18 months,” Shaffer said.

Along with maturing growth rates in the smartphone market, Samsung, Apple, Huawei and other OEMs that are vertically integrated have varying degrees of internal semiconductor capabilities at their disposal — with the potential to supply their own smartphones and other OEMs as well. These internal design decisions tend to be cyclical in nature and can change from one product iteration to another, switching from internally-supplied components to third-party solutions.

“While this vertical integration has been especially evident in the premium smartphone tier, it helps to create a fiercely competitive environment in all market tiers, as it can limit the available market for third-party suppliers,” Shaffer said. “The increased competition resulting from a smaller market could impact core handset integrated-circuit prices in the entry-level and mid-range segments, with MediaTek, Spreadtrum and other suppliers vying for revenue share with market leader Qualcomm.”

Nanoelectronics research center imec has announced that Dr. Gordon E. Moore, creator of the famous Moore’s law theory and co-founder of Intel, is the recipient of its lifetime of innovation award. Imec’s annual award recognizes Dr. Moore’s visionary view, unrivalled innovation, and his profound impact on the global electronics industry.

In 1965, Dr. Moore predicted that the number of components on an integrated circuit (IC) would double every year for the coming 10 years, thereby making ICs and computer processing simultaneously faster, cheaper, and more powerful. In 1975, Dr. Moore revised the forecast rate to approximately every two years. Moore’s law turned out to be incredibly accurate, growing beyond its predictive character to become an industry driver that holds true today, 50 years later. Keeping up with Moore law’s progression has required a tremendous amount of engineering and commitment from the global semiconductor industry. While its meaning has evolved over generations, it has had a profound impact in many areas of technological change and progress.

“It is truly an honor to present imec’s lifetime innovation award to Dr. Moore, on behalf of all our global partners and our researchers,” stated Luc Van den hove, president and CEO of imec. “Dr. Moore’s name is synonymous with progress, and his vision has inspired and given direction to the entire semiconductor industry, which has revolutionized the way we compute, communicate, and interact. As the industry upholds this prediction and brings forth new innovations in chip technology, the future of Moore’s law will impact such things as healthcare, a sustainable climate, and safer transport all for the better.”

Dr. Moore began his career at Johns Hopkins University. He cofounded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and launched Intel in 1968 together with Robert Noyce and Andy Grove. Today, Intel is a world leader in the design and manufacturing of integrated circuits and is the largest semiconductor company. Dr. Moore served as Intel CEO from 1975-1987, and then became its chairman of the board until his retirement in 1997.

“Although Moore’s law was created more than 50 years ago, it remains extremely valid and serves as a guide to what we innovate at imec,” continued Van den hove. “Throughout our organizations’ 32-year existence, we’ve worked at enabling Moore’s law and helping our partners innovate and develop the modern technology that society has embraced and demands. Dr. Moore’s legacy continues to be our mission and we are privileged to honor him.” 

Imec’s Lifetime of Innovation award is awarded to Dr. Moore on May 24, 2016 at its annual ITF Brussels, the flagship of imec’s worldwide ITF events.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (Nasdaq:  CY) and Broadcom Limited (Nasdaq:  AVGO) today announced the signing of a definitive agreement under which Cypress will acquire Broadcom’s Wireless Internet of Things (IoT) business and related assets in an all-cash transaction valued at $550 million. Under the terms of the deal, Cypress will acquire Broadcom’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee IoT product lines and intellectual property, along with its WICED brand and developer ecosystem. Broadcom’s IoT business unit, which employs approximately 430 people worldwide, generated $189 million in revenue during the last twelve months. The acquisition strengthens Cypress’s position in key embedded systems markets, such as automotive and industrial, and establishes it as a leader in the high-growth consumer IoT market, a segment that includes wearable electronics and home automation solutions.

The transaction, which has been approved by the board of directors of Cypress and Broadcom, is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2016, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals. Cypress expects the transaction to be accretive within a year of closing and to improve its gross margin, earnings and long-term revenue potential.

“Cypress is a significant player in the IoT today because of our ultra-low-power PSoC programmable system-on-chip technology, but we’ve only been able to pair it with generic radios so far. Now we have the highly regarded Broadcom IoT business—Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Zigbee RF technologies—that will transform us into a force in IoT and provide us with new market opportunities as well,” Cypress President and CEO T.J. Rodgers said. “What we bring to the party is over 30,000 customers worldwide who need advanced, ultra-low-power wireless communication but only can absorb it in the form of an easy-to-use programmable embedded system solution.”

“We are thrilled to be joining forces with Cypress to address the fast growing IoT market,” Broadcom IoT General Manager Stephen DiFranco said. “With our IoT connectivity products, Cypress will be able to provide the connectivity; the MCU, system-on-chip, module and memory technologies; and the mature developer ecosystem that IoT designers require, creating an end-to-end portfolio of embedded solutions and a single IoT design platform.”

Under the terms of the deal, Broadcom will continue to focus on its wireless connectivity solutions for the access and mobility segments that are not IoT related, including serving set-top box, wireless access, smartphone, laptop and notebook customers. Cypress will capitalize on the rapidly growing Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity (17% per year1) markets in consumer, industrial and automotive IoT segments.

“The robust, ready-to-scale WICED brand and developer network of module makers, value-added resellers (VARs), technology partners and ODMs who are already working with its technology will give us immediate revenue growth capability in new channels,” Rodgers said. “Cypress will continue to support and grow this network and to provide it with future generations of innovative, disruptive connected products. Cypress will also bring these new technologies to the automotive market, where we are already No. 3 worldwide in microcontrollers and memories, and where the connected car boom has just started.”

Greenhill & Co., LLC served as lead financial advisor, Bank of America Merrill Lynch served as financial advisor and is providing committed debt financing, subject to customary conditions, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati acted as legal counsel to Cypress for this transaction.

Cartamundi, imec and Holst Centre (set up by imec and TNO) are proud to announce to have just won the “Best Product” – Award at Printed Electronics Europe for their ultra-thin plastic RFID technology integrated into Cartamundi’s playing cards. The jury has hereby recognized the potential of this technology to become a gamechanger for the gaming industry, as well as for many other printed electronics applications in the Internet-of-Things domain.

With economic and form-factor advantages compared to traditional silicon-based technologies, Holst Centre’s and imec’s ultra-thin plastic RFID solution is essential to improve and broaden the applicability of electronics seamlessly integrated in paper. This enables Cartamundi to develop connected devices with additional value and content for consumers. At the conference, Cartamundi, imec and Holst Centre demonstrate an industry-first prototype of the ultra-thin flexible RFID chip integrated into a playing card. In each card, the RFID chip has a unique code that communicates wirelessly to an RFID reader, giving the cards in the game a unique digital identity.

Chris Van Doorslaer (CEO) is delighted with the award and sounds ambitious:

“Cartamundi’s ambition to embed wireless RFID tags in games and trading cards products is a ‘game changer’ indeed. The new technology will connect traditional game play with electronic devices like smartphones and tablets. As Cartamundi is committed to creating products that connect families and friends of every generation to enhance the valuable quality time they share during the day, this technology is a real enabler.”

“This is a thrilling development to demonstrate our TOLAE electronic technology integrated in the product of a partner company. TOLAE stands for Thin, Oxide and Large-Area Electronics”, stated Paul Heremans, department director of thin-film electronics at imec and technology director at the Holst Centre. “Our prototype thin-film RFID is thinner than paper—so thin that it can be invisibly embedded in paper products, such as playing cards. This key enabling technology will bring the cards and traditional games of our customer in direct connection with the Cloud. This achievement also opens up new applications in the IoT domain that we are exploring, to bring more data and possibilities to applications such as smart packaging, security paper, and maybe even banknotes.”

Steven Nietvelt Chief Technology & Innovation Officer: “This is Cartamundi at it’s very best: bringing new solutions to the ever creative game developing community. We are convinced the gaming community will be inspired by this technology. It can possibly enhance existing games but also allows for brand new concepts to arise.”

Imec and Cartamundi engineers will now explore up-scaling of the technology using a foundry production model.

This award would not have been possible without the support and advise of VLAIO. VLAIO played a substantial role by bringing all partners of the project together.

icards

Researchers at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) discovered single-walled carbon nanotube semiconductors could be favorable for photovoltaic systems because they can potentially convert sunlight to electricity or fuels without losing much energy.

The research builds on the Nobel Prize-winning work of Rudolph Marcus, who developed a fundamental tenet of physical chemistry that explains the rate at which an electron can move from one chemical to another. The Marcus formulation, however, has rarely been used to study photoinduced electron transfer for emerging organic semiconductors such as single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) that can be used in organic PV devices.

In organic PV devices, after a photon is absorbed, charges (electrons and holes) generally need to be separated across an interface so that they can live long enough to be collected as electrical current. The electron transfer event that produces these separated charges comes with a potential energy loss as the molecules involved have to structurally reorganize their bonds. This loss is called reorganization energy, but NREL researchers found little energy was lost when pairing SWCNT semiconductors with fullerene molecules.

“What we find in our study is this particular system — nanotubes with fullerenes — have an exceptionally low reorganization energy and the nanotubes themselves probably have very, very low reorganization energy,” said Jeffrey Blackburn, a senior scientist at NREL and co-author of the paper “Tuning the driving force for exciton dissociation in single-walled carbon nanotube heterojunctions.”

The paper appears in the new issue of the journal Nature Chemistry. Its other co-authors are Rachelle Ihly, Kevin Mistry, Andrew Ferguson, Obadiah Reid, and Garry Rumbles from NREL, and Olga Boltalina, Tyler Clikeman, Bryon Larson, and Steven Strauss from Colorado State University.

Organic PV devices involve an interface between a donor and an acceptor. In this case, the SWCNT served as the donor, as it donated an electron to the acceptor (here, the fullerene). The NREL researchers strategically partnered with colleagues at Colorado State University to take advantage of expertise at each institution in producing donors and acceptors with well-defined and highly tunable energy levels: semiconducting SWCNT donors at NREL and fullerene acceptors at CSU. This partnership enabled NREL’s scientists to determine that the electron transfer event didn’t come with a large energy loss associated with reorganization, meaning solar energy can be harvested more efficiently. For this reason, SWCNT semiconductors could be favorable for PV applications.

SEMI today announced the second annual edition of the SEMI European MEMS Summit, dedicated to MEMS and sensors, to be held on September 15-16. After a successful inaugural event in Milan that attracted 265 attendees, this year’s SEMI European MEMS Summit will convene in Stuttgart, one of the world’s major MEMS and Sensor hubs.

MEMS volumes are expected to nearly double, compared to today’s levels, and reach 30 billion units by 2020, based on a Yole Developpement forecast.  While the growth is impressive, challenges exist, and through the SEMI European MEMS Summit’s unique combination of plenary executive talks, exhibition and networking opportunities, major issues will be addressed for discussion and collaboration:

  • Making sensors smaller, smarter, and cheaper
  • Emerging technologies and readiness, maturity
  • Price and margin pressures and business models
  • Markets dynamics and new opportunities

In addition, leading companies will share key messages on their product and business strategic development.  Sessions will focus on automotive, consumer electronics and wearables, Internet of Things (IoT), and more.

“Stuttgart is the ideal location for the 2016 SEMI European MEMS Summit, and we look forward to exchanging views on the latest advances in the MEMS industry,” said Klaus Meder, president of Automotive Electronics at Robert Bosch GmbH.

The conference program is developed by a steering committee composed of industry and thought leaders including ASE, Bosch, Bosch Sensortec, CEA-Leti, EV Group, Fraunhofer ENAS, Fraunhofer IZM, IHS, NXP, Okmetic, Sencio, SPTS, STMicroelectronics, SUSS MicroTec, X-Fab, and Yole Developpement.  The program will feature executive speakers from organizations shaping the industry and will be announced in late spring.

Registration for the conference, exhibition and sponsorship packages are open for bookings with ‘early bird’ prices valid until May 31.  Visit www.semi.org/europeanMEMSSummit for details and more information.

MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation, a Korea-based designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, today announced that it is now shipping its e-Compass sensor (MXG2320) in China to a major smartphone manufacturer that is targeting mobile markets in China and India.

MagnaChip’s MXG2320 e-Compass product is a Hall effect magnetic direction sensor. The MXG2320 supports high resolution (0.6uT/bit) at low voltage (1.8V/3.3V) and is well-suited for mobile applications because of its small die size (1.2mmX1.2mm). The e-Compass design win in China is recognition of MagnaChip’s mixed-signal design and manufacturing expertise and reflects the potential for future design-win opportunities for its entire line of sensor products.

In addition to the MXG2320, MagnaChip is in the final development stages of a buffer-embedded, e-Compass sensor with the smallest footprint (1.2mmX0.8mm) currently available in the market. This product is now undergoing beta testing and is being evaluated for use by a major smartphone manufacturer.

The e-Compass has become an essential part of mobile device applications and has now found its way into new applications such as virtual reality, indoor navigation and drone control.  An e-Compass sensor interprets compass direction through the detection of the earth’s magnetic polar fields.

“MagnaChip has been developing e-Compass and other sensor products for mobile applications as part of its strategy to target emerging growth markets,” said YJ Kim, CEO of MagnaChip Semiconductor. “I am very pleased to say that this e-Compass design win is very significant because it marks the beginning of our expansion into the China mobile market with our line of sensor products.”

Headquartered in South Korea, MagnaChip is a Korea-based designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products for high-volume consumer applications.