Category Archives: Lithography

Research included in the recently released 50-page April Update to the 2018 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report shows that in 2017, the top eight major foundry leaders (i.e., sales of ≥$1.0 billion) held 88% of the $62.3 billion worldwide foundry market (Figure 1).  The 2017 share was the same level as in 2016 and one point higher than the share the top eight foundries represented in 2015.  With the barriers to entry (e.g., fab costs, access to leading edge technology, etc.) into the foundry business being so high and rising, IC Insights expects this “major” marketshare figure to remain at or near this elevated level in the future.

TSMC, by far, was the leader with $32.2 billion in sales last year.  In fact, TSMC’s 2017 sales were over 5x that of second-ranked GlobalFoundries and more than 10x the sales of the fifth-ranked foundry SMIC.

Figure 1

Figure 1

China-based Huahong Group, which includes Huahong Grace and Shanghai Huali, displayed the highest growth rate of the major foundries last year with an 18% jump.  Overall, 2017 was a good year for many of the major foundries with four of the eight registering double-digit sales increases.

Of the eight major foundries, six of them are headquartered in the Asia-Pacific region. As shown, Samsung was the only IDM foundry in the ranking.  IBM, a former major IDM foundry, was acquired by GlobalFoundries in mid-2015 while IDM foundries Fujitsu and Intel fell short of the $1.0 billion sales threshold last year. Although growing only 4% last year, Samsung easily remained the largest IDM foundry in 2017, with over 5x the foundry sales of Fujitsu, the second-largest IDM foundry.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.42 billion in billings worldwide in March 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the March Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI. The billings figure is 0.4 percent higher than the final February 2018 level of $2.41 billion, and is 16.7 percent higher than the March 2017 billings level of $2.08 billion.

“March 2018 monthly billings for North American equipment manufacturers remain at robust levels,” said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. “We are seeing sustained strength in the global semiconductor equipment market, aligning with our expectation for a fourth consecutive year of spending growth.”

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
October 2017
$2,019.3
23.9%
November 2017
$2,052.3
27.2%
December 2017
$2,398.4
28.3%
January 2018
$2,370.1
27.5%
February 2018 (final)
$2,417.8
22.5%
March 2018 (prelim)
$2,426.9
16.7%

Source: SEMI (www.semi.org), April 2018
SEMI publishes a monthly North American Billings report and issues the Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS) report in collaboration with the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ).

Driven by strong growth in the memory market, worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $420.4 billion in 2017, a 21.6 percent increase from 2016 revenue of $345.9 billion, according to final results by Gartner, Inc.

“2017 saw two semiconductor industry milestones — revenue surpassed $400 billion, and Intel, the No. 1 vendor for the last 25 years, was pushed into second place by Samsung Electronics,” said George Brocklehurst, research director at Gartner. “Both milestones happened due to rapid growth in the memory market as undersupply drove pricing for DRAM and NAND flash higher.”

The memory market surged nearly $50 billion to reach $130 billion in 2017, a 61.8 percent increase from 2016. Samsung’s memory revenue alone increased nearly $20 billion in 2017, moving the company into the top spot in 2017 (see Table 1). However, Gartner predicts that the company’s lead will be short-lived and will disappear when the memory market goes into its bust cycle, most likely in late 2019.

Table 1. Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by Revenue, Worldwide, 2017 (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

2017 Rank

2016 Rank

Vendor

2017 Revenue

2017 Market

Share (%)

2016 Revenue

2016-2017 Growth (%)

1

2

 Samsung Electronics

59,875

14.2

40,104

49.3

2

1

 Intel

58,725

14.0

54,091

8.6

3

4

 SK hynix

26,370

6.3

14,681

79.6

4

5

 Micron Technology

22,895

5.4

13,381

71.1

5

3

 Qualcomm

16,099

3.8

15,415

4.4

6

6

 Broadcom

15,405

3.7

13,223

16.4

7

7

 Texas Instruments

13,506

3.2

11,899

13.5

8

8

 Toshiba

12,408

3.0

9,918

25.1

9

17

 Western Digital

9,159

2.2

4,170

119.6

10

9

 NXP

8,750

2.1

9,314

-6.1
Others

177,201

42.2

159,655

11.0
Total Market

420,393

100.0

345,851

21.6

Source: Gartner (April 2018) 

The booming memory segment overshadowed strong growth in other categories in 2017. Nonmemory semiconductors grew $24.8 billion to reach $290 billion, representing a growth rate of 9.3 percent. Many of the broadline suppliers in the top 25 semiconductor vendors, including Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics and Infineon, experience high growth as two key markets, industrial and automotive, continued double-digit growth, buoyed by broad-based growth across most other end markets.

The combined revenue of the top 10 semiconductor vendors increased by 30.6 percent during 2017 and accounted for 58 percent of the total market, outperforming the rest of the market, which saw a milder 11.0 percent revenue increase.

M&As are taking longer

2017 was a slower year for closing mergers and acquisitions (M&As), with roughly half the deal value and number of deals compared with 2016. However, the semiconductor industry continues to see escalating deal sizes with greater complexity, which are becoming more challenging to close. Avago set a record in its acquisition of Broadcom for $37 billion in 2016, and this record should soon be broken by Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP Semiconductors for $44 billion.

The IoT is starting to pay vendor dividends

Growth in the Internet of Things (IoT) is having a significant impact on the semiconductor market, with application-specific standard products (ASSPs) for consumer applications up by 14.3 percent and industrial ASSPs rising by 19.1 percent in 2017. Semiconductors for wireless connectivity showed the highest growth with 19.3 percent in 2017, and topping $10 billion for the first time, despite reduced component prices and the static smartphone industry.

More detailed analysis is available to Gartner clients in the report “Market Share Analysis: Semiconductors, Worldwide, 2017.”

The next generation of energy-efficient power electronics, high-frequency communication systems, and solid-state lighting rely on materials known as wide bandgap semiconductors. Circuits based on these materials can operate at much higher power densities and with lower power losses than silicon-based circuits. These materials have enabled a revolution in LED lighting, which led to the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics.

In new experiments reported in Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, researchers have shown that a wide-bandgap semiconductor called gallium oxide (Ga2O3) can be engineered into nanometer-scale structures that allow electrons to move much faster within the crystal structure. With electrons that move with such ease, Ga2O3 could be a promising material for applications such as high-frequency communication systems and energy-efficient power electronics.

Schematic stack and the scanning electron microscopic image of the β-(AlxGa1-x)2O3/Ga2O3 modulation-doped field effect transistor. Credit: Choong Hee Lee and Yuewei Zhang

Schematic stack and the scanning electron microscopic image of the β-(AlxGa1-x)2O3/Ga2O3 modulation-doped field effect transistor. Credit: Choong Hee Lee and Yuewei Zhang

“Gallium oxide has the potential to enable transistors that would surpass current technology,” said Siddharth Rajan of Ohio State University, who led the research.

Because Ga2O3 has one of the largest bandgaps (the energy needed to excite an electron so that it’s conductive) of the wide bandgap materials being developed as alternatives to silicon, it’s especially useful for high-power and high-frequency devices. It’s also unique among wide bandgap semiconductors in that it can be produced directly from its molten form, which enables large-scale manufacturing of high-quality crystals.

For use in electronic devices, the electrons in the material must be able to move easily under an electric field, a property called high electron mobility. “That’s a key parameter for any device,” Rajan said. Normally, to populate a semiconductor with electrons, the material is doped with other elements. The problem, however, is that the dopants also scatter electrons, limiting the electron mobility of the material.

To solve this problem, the researchers used a technique known as modulation doping. The approach was first developed in 1979 by Takashi Mimura to create a gallium arsenide high-electron mobility transistor, which won the Kyoto Prize in 2017. While it is now a commonly used technique to achieve high mobility, its application to Ga2O3 is something new.

In their work, the researchers created a so-called semiconductor heterostructure, creating an atomically perfect interface between Ga2O3 and its alloy with aluminum, aluminum gallium oxide — two semiconductors with the same crystal structure but different energy gaps. A few nanometers away from the interface, embedded inside the aluminum gallium oxide, is a sheet of electron-donating impurities only a few atoms thick. The donated electrons transfer into the Ga2O3, forming a 2-D electron gas. But because the electrons are now also separated from the dopants (hence the term modulation doping) in the aluminum gallium oxide by a few nanometers, they scatter much less and remain highly mobile.

Using this technique, the researchers reached record mobilities. The researchers were also able to observe Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations, a quantum phenomenon in which increasing the strength of an external magnetic field causes the resistance of the material to oscillate. These oscillations confirm formation of the high mobility 2-D electron gas and allow the researchers to measure critical material properties.

Rajan explained that such modulation-doped structures could lead to a new class of quantum structures and electronics that harnesses the potential of Ga2O3.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, this week presented its Congressional Leadership Awards to Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Congressman Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) for their leadership in enacting tax reform legislation, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The Semiconductor Industry Association believes the corporate provisions included in the new law will strengthen the U.S. semiconductor industry by making it easier for semiconductor companies to continue to grow and innovate in the United States.

“We applaud Senator Crapo and Congressman Roskam for their steadfast support of policies that strengthen the semiconductor industry, the tech sector, and the U.S. economy,” said John Neuffer, SIA President & CEO. “We especially appreciate the award winners’ resolute leadership in advancing critical corporate tax reform legislation that will help sustain U.S. leadership in semiconductor research, design, and manufacturing. The new law has helped modernize the corporate tax code and improve the competitiveness of the U.S. semiconductor industry.”

“Semiconductors are foundational to America’s economic strength, national security, and technology leadership,” Neuffer said. “Corporate tax reform was urgently needed to help the industry take the next innovative steps forward and promote America’s global competitiveness. We salute Senator Crapo and Congressman Roskam for their instrumental work in helping to push the final bill across the goal line.”

SIA presented the Congressional Leadership Award in recognition of efforts to support policies that are vital to sustaining a strong and vibrant U.S. semiconductor industry.

Getting better by design


April 18, 2018

By Ajit Manocha, President and CEO of SEMI

Mantra by Design

SEMI’s mantra is: Connect, Collaborate, Innovate. This mantra has delivered industry-enabling value to our members since SEMI’s beginnings in 1970. It has been essential for SEMI members to grow and prosper locally, while being synchronized globally. As the electronics manufacturing business has become more complex and interdependent, SEMI’s mantra has increasingly been applied across the full span of electronics manufacturing.

With the IC industry now worth over $400 billion in annual revenue, developing a single new chip can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Consequently, industry players now connect, collaborate, and innovate in new, but more often, deeper ways. This is especially true with IC design – what’s possible in chip design is only possible if the manufacturing processes can be developed as projected. It makes sense, as complexity grows and the stakes get higher, that design and manufacturing are closely linked and apply the SEMI mantra together.

Where Electronics Begin

“Where Electronics Begin” is the tagline of the Electronics System Design Alliance, or the ESD Alliance. It aptly distills the fact that all IC manufacturing begins with design – and the design ecosystem. This week, SEMI announced it reached an agreement with the ESD Alliance to join SEMI as a SEMI Strategic Association Partner. The ESD Alliance will become part of the SEMI organization in 2018. With the ESD Alliance and its community joining SEMI, its membership will complete the full electronics design and manufacturing span.

This is a momentous step forward. The ESD Alliance’s ecosystem is vital and thriving and includes the world’s leading EDA and IP companies. Within the ESD Alliance community, Aart de Geus (Synopsys), Wally Rhines (Mentor, a Siemens Company), Simon Segars (Arm), and Lip-Bu Tan (Cadence), among others, are already familiar figures, having brought their thought leadership to SEMI platforms in the past. Now they, and the rest of the ESD Alliance members, will be able to more directly work with semiconductor equipment manufacturers, devices makers, and the rest of SEMI’s membership.

At events like SEMICON China, which recently concluded in March and attracted over 90,000 attendees, SEMI and the ESD Alliance members will be able to efficiently connect and engage the supply chain players and find new areas for collaboration. As SEMI’s membership looks out towards new applications and systems opportunities, having both ecosystems together will find possibilities faster and innovate approaches more practically.

The ESD Alliance will maintain its distinct community identity and governance while having access to, and the ability to augment, SEMI’s global platforms including seven regional offices, programs and expositions (including SEMICONs), advocacy (including trade, tax, talent, and technology), industry research and statistics, and other SEMI Strategic Association Partner and technology communities.

SEMI will gain direct access to the electronics design ecosystems to provide a deeper and wider value – to its combined membership – with SEMI’s mantra. SEMI and its more than 2,000 corporate members and more than 1.2 million stakeholders look forward to connecting, collaborating, and innovating with the ESD Alliance and its members. SEMI’s global reach and wide span of membership with ESD Alliance’s deep expertise in design and IP is truly the best of both worlds for all stakeholders.

Connect:  Design & Manufacturing

SEMI’s members have been reaching into the electronics design ecosystem and the ESD Alliance members have been reaching into SEMI’s ecosystem to optimize design and manufacturing process for lowest cost and highest yield. This week’s announcement is a step forward to directly and more intimately connect electronics design and manufacturing for the supply chain to work more closely together in full synchronization.

 

Connect-image1

Collaborate: From Beginning to End in Electronics Applications

With the ESD Alliance joining SEMI as a Strategic Association Partner, SEMI members can better collaborate across the full supply chain. Gone are the days when it was enough to collaborate only with one’s direct customer. Today, for example, components and c-subs suppliers frequently collaborate not just with their OEM equipment manufacturer customers, but with device manufacturers – and even system integrators. To be successful, companies are striving for connection to their customers’ customers.

The ESD Alliance, with its design ecosystem and linkage to the fabless community, will join three existing SEMI Strategic Association Partners: Fab Owners Alliance (FOA), MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), and FlexTech (the association representing the flexible hybrid electronics ecosystem). These relationships now cover the entire span of electronics manufacturing.

To provide focused collaboration across the full supply chain, SEMI has developed five vertical application platforms: IoT, Smart Manufacturing, Smart Transportation, Smart MedTech, and Smart Data. These have been chosen because of unique and pressing needs to synchronize the supply chain and to engage and develop solutions collectively.

Collaborate-image1

Innovate:  Faster Future

With the confluence of emerging digital disruptions and new demand drivers, forecasts suggest the IC industry could grow to over $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030. To deliver this growth, the supply chain must efficiently innovate together. SEMI’s value proposition is to speed the time to better business results for its members across the global electronics (design and) manufacturing supply chain. The addition of the ESD Alliance as a Strategic Association Partner is a key contributor to deliver this value proposition for the industry to grow and prosper now and in the future.

Global-Semi-Sales

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

SEMI, the industry association representing the global manufacturing supply chain, today announced postponement of SEMICON Southeast Asia from 8-10 May 2018 to 22-24 May 2018. The postponement avoids a timing conflict with the recently announced Malaysian election planned for 9 May 2018. The venue for SEMICON Southeast Asia, the newly constructed Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre (MITEC), remains unchanged

The postponement is in respect to Malaysian exhibitors and visitors to exercise their right to vote, said Ng Kai Fai, President of SEMI Southeast Asia. The decision was made in view of the election date and following discussions with SEMICON Southeast Asia stakeholders.

“We highly value and respect the country’s election process, which is very important for Malaysia and Malaysians,” Kai Fai said. “We also want to ensure that SEMICON Southeast Asia achieves its primary objective of forming connections and collaborations for exhibitors and visitors, both regionally and globally. We have received very strong support from our stakeholders and are confident and reassured that this will be the largest SEMICON Southeast Asia show to date.”

 

Research included in the April Update to the 2018 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report shows that the world’s leading semiconductor suppliers significantly increased their marketshare over the past decade. The top-5 semiconductor suppliers accounted for 43% of the world’s semiconductor sales in 2017, an increase of 10 percentage points from 10 years earlier (Figure 1).  In total, the 2017 top-50 suppliers represented 88% of the total $444.7 billion worldwide semiconductor market last year, up 12 percentage points from the 76% share the top 50 companies held in 2007.

2e775855-14c8-463e-883d-ead33f35beb6

Figure 1

As shown, the top 5, top 10, and top 25 companies’ share of the 2017 worldwide semiconductor market each increased from 10-12 percentage points over the past decade.  With the surge in mergers and acquisitions expected to continue over the next few years (e.g., Qualcomm and NXP), IC Insights believes that consolidation will raise the shares of the top suppliers to even loftier levels.

As shown in Figure 2, Japan’s total presence and influence in the IC marketplace has waned significantly since 1990, with its IC marketshare (not including foundries) residing at only 7% in 2017.  Once-prominent Japanese names missing from the top IC suppliers list are NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Matsushita. Competitive pressures from South Korean IC suppliers—especially in the memory market—have certainly played a significant role in changing the look of the IC marketshare figures over the past 27 years. Moreover, depending on the outcome of the sale of Toshiba’s NAND flash division, the Japanese-companies’ share of the IC market could fall even further from its already low level.

Figure 2

Figure 2

With strong competition reducing the number of Japanese IC suppliers, the loss of its vertically integrated businesses, missing out on supplying ICs for several high-volume end-use applications, and its collective shift toward the fab-lite IC business model, Japan has greatly reduced its investment in new semiconductor wafer fabs and equipment.  In fact, Japanese companies accounted for only 5% of total semiconductor industry capital expenditures in 2017 (two points less than the share of the IC market they held last year), a long way from the 51% share of spending they represented in 1990.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES Inc. (GF) and Toppan Photomasks, Inc. (TPI) today announced a multi-year extension to their Advanced Mask Technology Center (AMTC) joint venture in Dresden, Germany. Opened in 2002, the AMTC provides GF’s fabs in Dresden, Malta and Singapore with high-end production and development masks at world-class cycle times in support of the foundry’s ambitious technology roadmap. The AMTC also supports TPI customers worldwide from Dresden.

Owned equally by TPI and GF, the AMTC joint venture was previously extended in 2012 to further increase tool capability and capacity. This new extension to the agreement aims to continue the current charter for manufacturing production masks as well as developing mask technology for ever smaller geometries. GF is both TPI’s partner in the joint venture and a strategic and critical customer, while TPI is GF’s preferred mask supplier, leveraging AMTC and TPI’s global manufacturing network to support GF’s worldwide operations.

The AMTC provides one of the most essential and complex elements in the semiconductor manufacturing process, which puts the latest technology innovations at consumers’ fingertips.

Since its inception, the output of AMTC has grown continuously with growth rates exceeding 10 percent in recent years. Sizeable investments have enabled the AMTC to keep up with the rapid technological developments and challenges of this dynamic market sector; in 2017 alone more than 100 million euros (US$124 million) were invested.

“From computing to communication, and from automotive to medtech – our dual roadmap allows us to provide innovative technologies for the benefit of our customers around the world,” said Geoff Akiki, World Wide Mask Operations Executive at GF. “Regardless if they choose FD-SOI with its focus on energy efficiency or FinFET with its focus on high performance, both require leading-edge lithographic masks. AMTC is a great partner and provider of those masks. We are especially pleased that the experience of AMTC will be fully utilized to support us at the leading edge of chip technology.”

“Having been in place for more than 15 years, this joint venture is one of the lengthiest in the mask industry,” said Mike Hadsell, TPI CEO. “This is a testament to the synergy and commitment of the partners, as well as the strength of the AMTC and Toppan Dresden team members. AMTC is truly a best-of-breed effort that has provided high-quality masks to TPI’s customer base, both in Europe and globally.”

“AMTC was founded with a mission to be its customers’ first choice for photomasks. To achieve this goal, our experienced and dedicated team pursues cost-effective and timely manufacturing of high-quality masks for multiple nodes. In the process, the partners have continued to strengthen their relationship while allowing AMTC to serve as a valuable resource for our demanding global customer base,” noted Thomas Schmidt, AMTC’s general manager. “AMTC was established to support AMD’s microprocessor production in Dresden at the 65nm/90nm node. We have moved way beyond that and are looking beyond the current 14nm node.”

AMTC was founded in 2002 by AMD, Infineon Technologies and DuPont Photomasks, which became TPI in 2005. Subsequently, GF and TPI became the ownership partners in 2009. AMTC has seen a cumulative investment of more than US$600 million since 2002. The mask facility employs more than 250 engineers and other specialists. The company is currently expanding its team.

SEMI, the global industry association representing the electronics manufacturing supply chain, today announced that after several years of incremental increases the worldwide semiconductor photomask market surged 13 percent to a record high $3.75 billion in 2017 and is forecast to exceed $4.0 billion in 2019. The mask market is expected to grow 5 percent and 4 percent in 2018 and 2019, respectively, according to the SEMI report. Key photomask market drivers remain advanced technology feature sizes (less than 45nm) and Asia-Pacific manufacturing growth. Taiwan is again the largest photomask regional market for the seventh year in a row and is expected to retain the top spot for the duration of the forecast. Korea rose in the rankings to claim the second spot.

With the $3.75 billion in revenues, photomasks accounted for 13 percent of the total wafer fabrication materials market, behind silicon and semiconductor gases, in 2017. By comparison, SEMI reports that photomasks represented 18 percent of the total wafer fabrication materials market in 2003. Reflecting their growing importance, captive mask shops, aided by intense capital expenditures in 2011 and 2012, continue to gain market share at merchant suppliers’ expense. Captive mask suppliers accounted for 65 percent of the total photomask market last year, up from 63 percent in 2016. In 2013, captive mask shops represented 31 percent of the photomask market.

The recently published SEMI report, 2017 Photomask Characterization Summary, provides details on the 2017 Photomask Market for seven regions of the world including North America, Japan, Europe, Taiwan, Korea, China, and Rest of World. The report also includes data for each of these regions from 2003 to 2019 and summarizes lithography developments over the past year.