Category Archives: Device Architecture

Survey results that will be posted in the March Update to the 20th anniversary 2017 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report show that eleven companies are forecast to have semiconductor capital expenditure budgets greater than $1.0 billion in 2017, and account for 78% of total worldwide semiconductor industry capital spending this year (Figure 1). By comparison, there were eight companies in 2013 with capital spending in excess of $1.0 billion. As shown in the figure, three of the top 11 major capital spenders (Intel, GlobalFoundries, and ST) are forecast to increase their semiconductor spending outlays by 25% or more in 2017.

The biggest percentage increase in spending by a major spender in 2016 came from the China-based pure-play foundry SMIC, which ran its fabrication facilities at ≥95% utilization rate for much of last year. SMIC initially set its 2016 capital expenditure budget at $2.1 billion. However, in November, the company raised its spending budget to $2.6 billion, which resulted in outlays that were 87% greater than in 2015.

In contrast to the surge of spending at SMIC last year, the weak DRAM market spurred both Samsung and SK Hynix to reduce their total 2016 capital spending by 13% and 14%, respectively. Although their total outlays declined, both companies increased their spending for 3D NAND flash in 2016. As shown, Micron is forecast to cut its spending by 13% in 2017, even after including Inotera, which was acquired by Micron in December of last year.

In 2016, GlobalFoundries had plenty of capacity available. As a result, the company cut its capital expenditures by a steep 62%. As shown, the company is forecast to increase its spending this year by 33%, the second-largest increase expected among the major spenders (though its 2017 spending total is still expected to be about half of what the company spent in 2015). It is assumed that almost all of the spending increase this year will be targeted at installing advanced processing technology (the company announced that it is focusing its efforts on developing 7nm technology and will skip the 10nm node).

Figure 1

Figure 1

After spending about $1.06 billion last year, Sony is expected to drop out of the major spender listing in 2017 as it winds down its outlays for capacity additions for its image sensor business and its spending drops below $1.0 billion. As shown in Figure 1, ST is expected to replace Sony in the major spender listing this year by increasing its spending by 73% to $1.05 billion.  It should be noted that ST has stated that this surge in outlays is expected to be a one year event, after which it will revert back to limiting its capital spending to ≤10% of its sales.

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) today announced that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd., (TSMC) has signed an agreement to participate in two SRC research initiatives. In addition to joining SRC’s New Science Team (NST) project, TSMC will be participating in the Global Research Collaboration (GRC) program. TSMC is the pioneer and global leader of the IC foundry business.

The NST project, consisting of both the JUMP and nCORE programs, is a 5-year, $300M research project focused on co-optimized hardware/software solutions for high performance, energy efficient microelectronics. SRC is actively recruiting a diverse group of electronics companies to participate on the NST project that will launch on January 1, 2018. GRC is SRC’s core program consisting of eleven research thrusts that span a wide array of research topics such as analog/mixed-signal, packaging, logic and memory devices, and nano-manufacturing materials and processes.

“SRC is pleased to welcome TSMC to our research consortium of leading semiconductor and technology companies. Today’s announcement represents a strategic partnership for the research and development of disruptive technologies that extend beyond traditional scaling,” said Ken Hansen, President & CEO of SRC. “As SRC continues to grow our global partnerships, one thing is certain, great things happen when we bring brilliant minds together! We look forward to the unique and broad perspective that TSMC can bring to SRC-sponsored research.”

“Our mission to forge a powerful innovation force in the semiconductor industry has led TSMC to this collaborative venture with SRC,” said Dr. Jack Sun, Vice President of Corporate Research and Chief Technology Officer, TSMC. “We believe the NST and GRC research programs exemplify collaborative research amongst industry leaders that will lead to fundamental discoveries upon which TSMC will develop into leading edge process and subsystem integration solution offerings. Together, we will expand semiconductor research and development in the pursuit of next-generation innovation.”

With the addition of TSMC, six of the top 10 global semiconductor companies are now members of SRC. Furthermore, this membership announcement signifies the fourth non-U.S. headquartered company to join SRC within the last 18 months.

Fabless power semiconductor company Semitrex announced today that it has changed its name to Helix Semiconductors. Having recently introduced a new management team, this new corporate identity is another step toward more closely aligning the company with its objective of efficiently powering the future — a future with zero wasted power.

“As a fabless chip company, we are in the business of providing enabling technology,” noted Harold A. Blomquist, president and CEO of Helix Semiconductors. “We’re known for our commitment to smart power conversion and addressing the global need for more efficient power supplies, and this rebranding brings that front and center. The road to ‘zero power’ will be paved by changing the way that power conversions are made, and that road is being built by Helix Semiconductors.”

Blomquist explains further: “In the human body, DNA strands are cascading sequences (double helixes) of a wide variety of characteristics — selections or programming codes that uniquely define who and what people are. This genetic makeup is reminiscent of our patent-pending MuxCapacitor technology, which consists of a cascading ladder of capacitors that can be tapped at different points and with different gain settings to achieve best-in-class conversion efficiency.”

Helix Semiconductors’ technology can convert mains power worldwide to virtually any lower voltage with over 95 percent efficiency — especially at low-load conditions. The company’s MuxCapacitor voltage reduction technology makes possible best-in-class energy conversion efficiencies while the system is in power down (standby and vampire power) and lightly loaded operation.

Today, NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ:NXPI), the world’s largest supplier of automotive semiconductors, announced that it has joined the Automotive Information Sharing and Analysis Center (Auto-ISAC).

NXP has joined the Auto-ISAC organization to help develop best cybersecurity practices for the automotive industry. Auto-ISAC published the Automotive Cybersecurity Best Practices Executive Summary, which outlines Auto-ISAC’s development of informational guides that cover organizational and technical aspects of vehicle cybersecurity, including governance, risk management, security by design, threat detection and incident response. ISAC implements training and promotes collaboration with third parties. In the United States, 98 percent of vehicles on the road are represented by member companies in the Auto-ISAC.

“Cybersecurity for the automotive industry can only be addressed if carmakers, security experts, and government bodies join forces,” said Lars Reger, CTO of NXP Automotive. “NXP, as a market leader in cybersecurity technology for eGovernment and banking applications, will bring its deep know-how into this organization. Cars require four layers of protection; secure interfaces that connect the vehicle to the external world; secure gateways that provide domain isolation; secure networks that provide secure communication between control units (ECUs); and secure processing units that manage all the features of the connected car. NXP is the leader in these critical areas and looks forward to sharing its expertise and collaborating with our industry partners to shape a secure future for the automated car.”

Auto-ISAC was formed by automakers to establish a secure platform for sharing, tracking and analyzing intelligence about cyber threats and potential vulnerabilities around the connected vehicle. Auto-ISAC operates as a central hub that allows members to anonymously submit and receive information to help them more effectively counter cyber threats in real time.

The automobile industry recognizes that the autonomous driving ecosystem — that includes wireless technologies that enable communications, telematics, digital broadcast reception, and ADAS systems — introduces risks for potential attack by hackers.

IC Insights recently released its new Global Wafer Capacity 2017-2021 report that provides in-depth detail, analyses, and forecasts for IC industry capacity by wafer size, by process geometry, by region, and by product type through 2021.  Figure 1 splits the world’s installed monthly wafer production capacity by geographic region (or country) as of December 2016.  Each regional number is the total installed monthly capacity of fabs located in that region regardless of the headquarters location for the companies that own the fabs.  For example, the wafer capacity that South Korea-based Samsung has installed in the U.S. is counted in the North America capacity total, not in the South Korea capacity total.  The ROW “region” consists primarily of Singapore, Israel, and Malaysia, but also includes countries/regions such as Russia, Belarus, and Australia.

Figure 1

Figure 1

As shown, Taiwan led all regions/countries in wafer capacity with 21.3% share, a slight decrease from 21.7% in 2015 when the country first became the global wafer capacity leader.  Taiwan was only slightly ahead of South Korea, which was in second place.  The Global Wafer Capacity report shows that South Korea accounted for 20.9% of global wafer capacity in 2016, slightly more than the 20.5% share it held in 2015.  Two companies in Taiwan and two in South Korea accounted for the vast share of wafer fab capacity in each country.  In Taiwan, TSMC and UMC held 73% of the country’s capacity while in South Korea, Samsung and SK Hynix represented 93% of the IC wafer capacity installed in 2016.

Japan remained firmly in third place with just over 17% of global wafer fab capacity.  Micron’s purchase of Elpida several years ago and other recent major changes in manufacturing strategies of companies in Japan, including Panasonic spinning off some of its fabs into separate companies, means that the top two companies (Toshiba and Renesas) accounted for 64% of that country’s wafer fab capacity in 2016.

China showed the largest increase in global wafer capacity in 2016, rising 1.1 percentage points to 10.8% from 9.7% in 2015. China’s gained marketshare came mostly at the expense of North America’s share, which slipped 0.9 percentage points in 2016. With a lot of buzz circulating about new ventures and wafer fabs in China in the coming years, it will be interesting to watch how quickly China’s installed wafer capacity grows.  It is worth noting that China first became a larger wafer capacity holder than Europe in 2010.  The two companies with the largest portion of wafer fab capacity in China were SMIC and HuaHong Grace (including shares from joint ventures).

In total, the top five wafer capacity leaders accounted for more than half of the IC industry’s wafer fab capacity, having increased from 2009, when the top five wafer capacity leaders accounted for approximately a third of global capacity.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.86 billion in billings worldwide in January 2017 (three-month average basis), according to the January Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.

SEMI reports that the three-month average of worldwide billings of North American equipment manufacturers in January 2017 was $1.86 billion. The billings figure is 0.5 percent lower than the final December 2016 level of $1.87 billion, and is 52.3 percent higher than the January 2016 billings level of $1.22 billion.

“Global billings reported by the North American equipment makers begin the New Year at high levels,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI. “We expect strong spending growth in 2017 based on investments in leading-edge memory and foundry fabs.”

The SEMI Billings report uses three-month moving averages of worldwide billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

Billings
(3-mo. avg)

Year-Over-Year
August 2016

$1,709.0

8.4%
September 2016

$1,493.3

-0.1%
October 2016

$1,630.4

20.0%
November 2016

$1,613.3

25.2%
December 2016 (final)

$1,869.8

38.5%
January 2017 (prelim)

$1,860.3

52.3%
Source: SEMI (www.semi.org), February 2017

 

SEMI ceased publishing the monthly North America Book-to-Bill report in January 2017.  The decision to discontinue the Book-to-Bill report was based on changes in reporting by some participants where the reporting of orders/bookings into the data collection program is no longer considered a necessary component of their industry analysis.

SEMI will continue publish a monthly North American Billings report and issue the Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS) report in collaboration with the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ). The WWSEMS report currently reports billings by 24 equipment segments and by seven end market regions. Beginning with the January 2017 WWSEMS report, bookings information will only be available for the back-end equipment segments of the industry.

GlobalFoundries_Ajit_ManochSEMI, the global association connecting and representing the worldwide electronics manufacturing supply chain, today announced the appointment of Ajit Manocha as its president and CEO. He will succeed Denny McGuirk, who announced his intention to retire last October. The SEMI International Board of Directors conducted a comprehensive search process, selecting Manocha, an industry leader with over 35 years of global experience in the semiconductor industry.  Manocha will begin his new role on March 1 at SEMI’s new Milpitas headquarter offices.

“Ajit has a deep understanding of our industry’s dynamics and the interdependence of the electronics manufacturing supply chain,” said Y.H. Lee, chairman of SEMI’s board of directors. “From his early days developing dry etch processes at AT&T Bell Labs, to running global manufacturing for Philips/NXP, Spansion, and, as CEO of GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Ajit has been formative to our industry’s growth. Ajit is the ideal choice to drive our SEMI 2020 plan and beyond, ensuring that SEMI provides industry stewardship and engages its members to advance the interests of the global electronics manufacturing supply chain.”

“Beyond his experience leading some of our industry’s top fabs, Ajit has long been active at SEMI and has served on boards of several global associations and consortia,” said Denny McGuirk, retiring president and CEO of SEMI. “Ajit’s experience in technology, manufacturing, and industry stewardship is a powerful combination. I’m very excited to be passing the baton to Ajit as he will continue to advance the growth and prosperity of SEMI’s members.”

“I have tremendous respect for the work SEMI does on behalf of the industry,” said Ajit Manocha, incoming president and CEO of SEMI. “I am excited to be joining SEMI at a time when our ecosystem is rapidly expanding due to extensive innovation on several fronts.  From applications based on the Internet and the growth of mobile devices to artificial intelligence/machine learning, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things, there is a much broader scope for SEMI to foster heterogeneous collaboration and fuel growth today than ever before.  I am looking forward to leading the global SEMI organization as we strive to maximize value for our members across this extended global ecosystem.”

Manocha was formerly CEO at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, during which he also served as vice chairman and chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).  Earlier, Manocha served as EVP of worldwide operations at Spansion. Prior to Spansion, he was EVP and chief manufacturing officer at Philips/NXP Semiconductors. Manocha also held senior management positions within AT&T Microelectronics. He began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a research scientist where he was granted several patents related to microelectronics manufacturing. Manocha holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delhi and a master’s degree in physical chemistry from Kansas State University.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced the availability of its 45nm RF SOI (45RFSOI) technology offering, making GF the first foundry to announce an advanced, 300mm RF silicon solution to support next generation millimeter-wave (mmWave) beam forming applications in future 5G base stations and smartphones.

GF’s 45RFSOI offering is the company’s most advanced RF SOI technology. The technology is optimized for beam forming front-end modules (FEMs), with back-end-of-line (BEOL) features including thick copper and dielectrics that enable improved RF performance for LNAs, switches and power amplifiers. The intrinsic characteristics of SOI combined with RF-centric features enable next-generation RF and mmWave applications, including internet broadband low earth orbit (LEO) satellites and 5G FEMs.

The fast emerging 5G and mmWave markets will require innovations in radio technologies, including low power, integrated mmWave radio front ends, antenna phased array subsystems, and high performance radio transceivers. As OEMs integrate more RF content into their smartphones and new high-speed network standards are introduced, state-of-the-art equipment will require additional RF circuitry to support newer modes of operation. This includes chips that support low latency, higher EIRP, and high resolution antenna scanning for ubiquitous coverage and continuous connectivity.

For improved power-handling benefits for devices operating in the GHz frequency range, 45RFSOI incorporates a substrate resistivity of greater than 40 ohm-cm that maximizes the quality factor for passive devices, reduces parasitic capacitances and minimizes disparity in phase and voltage swing. The technology supports operation in mmWave spectrum from 24GHz to 100GHz band, 5x more than 4G operating frequencies.

“Skyworks is pleased to be collaborating with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to drive innovation in millimeter wave solutions,” said Peter Gammel, chief technology officer for Skyworks Solutions, Inc. “GF’s leadership in advanced foundry technology, as exemplified by the 45RFSOI process, is enabling Skyworks to create RF solutions that will revolutionize emerging 5G markets and further advance the deployment of highly integrated RF front-ends for evolving mmWave applications.”

“5G is expected to become the dominant worldwide mobile communications standard of the next decade and will usher in a new paradigm in mobility, multi-GBps data rates, security, low latency, network availability and high quality of service (QoS),” said Bami Bastani, senior vice president of RF Business Unit at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “Utilizing our long history of SOI leadership and high-volume manufacturing, we are excited to release our most advanced RF SOI technology that will help play a critical role in bringing 5G devices and networks to reality.”

GF’s 45RFSOI technology leverages a partially-depleted SOI technology base that has been in high-volume production since 2008. The advanced 45RFSOI technology is manufactured at the GF’s 300mm production line in East Fishkill, N.Y. and will provide the industry ample capacity to address this high growth market.

Process design kits are available now. Customers can now start optimizing their chip designs to develop differentiated solutions for customers seeking high performance in the RF front end of 5G and mmWave phased array applications.

Mohamed Saleem has joined Brooks Instrument as the company’s new chief technology officer (CTO), where he will oversee its California-based technology development center. Brooks Instrument is a provider of precision fluid measurement and control technology for the semiconductor, industrial and life science industries.

“We’re pleased to have Saleem as our new CTO,” said Vice President and General Manager, Sharon Szafranski. “He will play an integral role in establishing our technical vision, driving advanced technology development, and providing a strategic focus on new and disruptive technology and solutions.”

“Brooks Instrument has a long legacy in fluid measurement and control,” said Saleem. “I look forward to working with our engineering group and our leadership team and the technical community to enhance and develop new products for our key market segments and to grow into new markets.”

Saleem has more than 20 years of experience working with leading companies in the semiconductor industry. Most recently, he was vice president of engineering and business development at Fujikin of America, and a member of their board of directors.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the National Institute of Technology in India; a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Tufts University; and a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Florida. In addition, Saleem is active in several SEMI industry technical groups and has published and co-authored numerous technical papers in semiconductor-related journals.

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a material that could reduce signal losses in photonic devices. The advance has the potential to boost the efficiency of various light-based technologies including fiber optic communication systems, lasers and photovoltaics.

The discovery addresses one of the biggest challenges in the field of photonics: minimizing loss of optical (light-based) signals in devices known as plasmonic metamaterials.

SEM images of a 'lossless' metamaterial that behaves simultaneously as a metal and a semiconductor. Credit: Ultrafast and Nanoscale Optics Group at UC San Diego

SEM images of a ‘lossless’ metamaterial that behaves simultaneously as a metal and a semiconductor. Credit: Ultrafast and Nanoscale Optics Group at UC San Diego

Plasmonic metamaterials are materials engineered at the nanoscale to control light in unusual ways. They can be used to develop exotic devices ranging from invisibility cloaks to quantum computers. But a problem with metamaterials is that they typically contain metals that absorb energy from light and convert it into heat. As a result, part of the optical signal gets wasted, lowering the efficiency.

In a recent study published in Nature Communications, a team of photonics researchers led by electrical engineering professor Shaya Fainman at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering demonstrated a way to make up for these losses by incorporating into the metamaterial something that emits light — a semiconductor.

“We’re offsetting the loss introduced by the metal with gain from the semiconductor. This combination theoretically could result in zero net absorption of the signal — a ‘lossless’ metamaterial,” said Joseph Smalley, an electrical engineering postdoctoral scholar in Fainman’s group and the first author of the study.

In their experiments, the researchers shined light from an infrared laser onto the metamaterial. They found that depending on which way the light is polarized — which plane or direction (up and down, side to side) all the light waves are set to vibrate — the metamaterial either reflects or emits light.

“This is the first material that behaves simultaneously as a metal and a semiconductor. If light is polarized one way, the metamaterial reflects light like a metal, and when light is polarized the other way, the metamaterial absorbs and emits light of a different ‘color’ like a semiconductor,” Smalley said.

Researchers created the new metamaterial by first growing a crystal of the semiconductor material, called indium gallium arsenide phosphide, on a substrate. They then used high-energy ions from plasma to etch narrow trenches into the semiconductor, creating 40-nanometer-wide rows of semiconductor spaced 40 nanometers apart. Finally, they filled the trenches with silver to create a pattern of alternating nano-sized stripes of semiconductor and silver.

“This is a unique way to fabricate this kind of metamaterial,” Smalley said. Nanostructures with different layers are often made by depositing each layer separately one on top of another, “like a stack of papers on a desk,” Smalley explained. But the semiconductor material used in this study (indium gallium arsenide phosphide) can’t just be grown on top of any substrate (like silver), otherwise it will have defects. “Rather than creating a stack of alternating layers, we figured out a way to arrange the materials side by side, like folders in a filing cabinet, keeping the semiconductor material defect-free.”

As a next step, the team plans to investigate how much this metamaterial and other versions of it could improve photonic applications that currently suffer from signal losses.