Category Archives: Metrology

SEMI today announced that SEMI Europe’s Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS Europe), coming on the heels of the highly successful ISS 2018 in the U.S., will highlight STEM education and a talent pipeline, critical issues to electronics manufacturing executives sharpening their competitive edge in the global supply chain. Day two of the flagship business event – March 4-6 in Dublin, Ireland – will feature two experts focusing on how companies can “Gain, Train and Retain World-Class Talent.”

Ann-Charlotte Johannesson, CEO, CEI-Europe AB, will examine strategies to attract, retain and develop highly skilled workers in the semiconductor industry as an essential component of Europe´s global competitiveness in her presentation “Smart Training for Smarter Engineers – The Way of Ensuring the Competitive Advantage for the Global European Industry.”

Cheryl Miller, Founder/Executive Director, Digital Leadership Institute, will present an overview of education and digital skills, innovation, entrepreneurship and the workplace of the future. The Digital Leadership Institute, a Brussels-based, international NGO, is a recognised world leader in promoting greater participation of girls and women in strategic, innovative ESTEAM (Entrepreneurship & Arts powered by STEM).

“A skilled workforce is not only a keystone to the success of the global supply chain but a source of competitive advantage, making STEM education and a strong talent pipeline critical focus areas for the industry,” said Laith Altimime, president, SEMI Europe. “SEMI member companies feel the pinch, with thousands of open positions that are critical to sustaining the pace of innovation and growth. To address the talent shortfall, SEMI Europe this year launched a workforce development and diversity initiative.”

Other ISS Europe 2018 highlights include the panel discussion “Critical Strategies to Grow Europe in the Global Supply Chain,” the opening networking reception, a gala dinner, and the 2017 European Award ceremony.

Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced that the European Commission and the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) authorized the acquisition by Qualcomm River Holdings B.V., an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, of NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI).  The acquisition has now received 8 of the 9 approvals around the world, with China remaining.

Qualcomm cooperated with the Commission and the KFTC to obtain authorization, and committed to exclude certain near-field communication (NFC) patents from the proposed transaction and ensure that NXP licenses those patents to third parties.  Qualcomm also committed not to assert the NFC patents it will acquire from NXP and maintain interoperability between Qualcomm’s baseband chipsets and NXP’s NFC chips and rivals baseband chipsets and NFC chips.  Qualcomm also will continue to offer a license to MIFARE on terms commensurate with those offered by NXP today.

“We are pleased that both the European Commission and the Korean Fair Trade Commission have granted authorization of the NXP acquisition, and we are optimistic that China will expeditiously grant its clearance” said Steve Mollenkopf, Chief Executive Officer, Qualcomm Incorporated. “Acquiring NXP is complementary to Qualcomm’s global portfolio, providing tremendous scale in automotive, IoT, security and networking and will greatly accelerate our ability to execute and create value in new and adjacent opportunities.”

Silicon photonics is still a small market today, with sales at die level estimated to be US$30 million in 2016. However, it has big promise, with a 2025 market value of US$560 million at chip level and almost US$4 billion at transceiver level.

illus_si_photonics_applications_range_yole_jan2018

According to Yole Développement (Yole), silicon photonics technology will grow from a few percent of total optical transceiver market value in 2016 to 35% of the market in 2025, mostly for intra-data center communication. The market research & strategy consulting company explains: the strongest demand is for 400G. In parallel, 200G could be only an intermediate step between 100G and 400G. “The next evolution is to develop a 400G optical port over a single fiber across 500m at less than $1 per gigabit and with power <5mW/Gb”, explains Dr. Eric Mounier, Senior Technology & Market Analyst at Yole. One terabit per second rates should follow. Although the wafer area this accounts for will be a minute part of the worldwide SOI market, it will represent significant value because of the SOI wafer high price.

Yole releases this month, the technology & market report titled “Silicon Photonics”. Dr Eric Mounier from Yole and Jean-Louis Malinge, former CEO of Kotura, now at ARCH Venture Partners combined their expertise to perform a comprehensive analysis of the silicon photonics industry. Both experts propose today the status of the market: it is a comprehensive overview of the Silicon photonics industry including technology roadmap, market trends and related figures, competitive landscape and more. The 2018 report gives a detailed description of the supply chain, with player status. It also provides updated market share numbers for the players. In this new study, Yole’s analysts reveal the current status and future challenges for data centers. They also explain why silicon photonics is the answer to future DC needs and other possible applications…

Silicon photonics technology has clearly reached its tipping point, with transceivers shipping in volume, announces the consulting company. Market evolution, competitive landscape, technology innovation, business opportunities: discover today what has been changed within the latest two years.

“We believe we are only at the very beginning as there is massive ongoing development worldwide for further integration”, asserts Dr. Mounier. And he adds: “The recent involvement of large integrated circuit foundries, such as TSMC’s relationship with Luxtera, and GlobalFoundries with Ayar Labs, are very encouraging signs showing the big promise for silicon photonics.”

The “Zero-Change” processes currently in development, manufacturing optical components without making any changes to a CMOS process, are targeting future inter-chip optical interconnects that could represent huge market volumes. Silicon photonics is at the maturity level of the electronics industry in the 1980s and there are still challenges to overcome. For all these challenges, technical breakthroughs will be necessary and are detailed in Yole’s silicon photonics roadmap:

•  Laser source integration: lasers are still in competition with VCSELs for low distance and developments of Si-based lasers are no longer progressing. Quantum dot lasers could be a solution in long term as they are less temperature sensitive.
•  Modulators: smaller size modulators are required and silicon photonics offers modulator integration advantage.
•  Assembly and testing: more advancements in lower cost packaging and wafer level testing are needed.
•  Design and software: specific software are required for photonics with pre-defined models.
•  Supply chain maturation similar to the semiconductor supply chain.
•  New manufacturing solutions: for example, a new trend is to have a zero-change approach on CMOS lines.
•  Higher distance transmission.

The historic flood of merger and acquisition agreements that swept through the semiconductor industry in 2015 and 2016 slowed significantly in 2017, but the total value of M&A deals reached in the year was still more than twice the annual average in the first half of this decade, according to IC Insights’ new 2018 McClean Report, which becomes available this month.  Subscribers to The McClean Report can attend one of the upcoming half-day seminars (January 23 in Scottsdale, AZ; January 25 in Sunnyvale, CA; and January 30 in Boston, MA) that discuss the highlights of the report free of charge.

In 2017, about two dozen acquisition agreements were reached for semiconductor companies, business units, product lines, and related assets with a combined value of $27.7 billion compared to the record-high $107.3 billion set in 2015 and the $99.8 billion total in 2016 (Figure 1).  Prior to the explosion of semiconductor acquisitions that erupted several years ago, M&A agreements in the chip industry had a total annual average value of about $12.6 billion between 2010 and 2015.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Two large acquisition agreements accounted for 87% of the M&A total in 2017, and without them, the year would have been subpar in terms of the typical annual value of announced transactions.  The falloff in the value of semiconductor acquisition agreements in 2017 suggests that the feverish pace of M&A deals is finally cooling off.  M&A mania erupted in 2015 when semiconductor acquisitions accelerated because a growing number of companies began buying other chip businesses to offset slow growth rates in major end-use applications (such as smartphones, PCs, and tablets) and to expand their reach into huge new market opportunities, like the Internet of Things (IoT), wearable systems, and highly “intelligent” embedded electronics, including the growing amount of automated driver-assist capabilities in new cars and fully autonomous vehicles in the not-so-distant future.

With the number of acquisition targets shrinking and the task of merging operations together growing, industry consolidation through M&A transactions decelerated in 2017.  Regulatory reviews of planned mergers by government agencies in Europe, the U.S., and China have also slowed the pace of large semiconductor acquisitions.

One of the big differences between semiconductor M&A in 2017 and the two prior years was that far fewer megadeals were announced.  In 2017, only two acquisition agreements exceeded $1 billion in value (the $18 billion deal for Toshiba’s memory business and Marvell’s planned $6 billion purchase of Cavium).  Ten semiconductor acquisition agreements in 2015 exceeded $1 billion and seven in 2016 were valued over $1 billion.  The two large acquisition agreements in 2017 pushed the average value of semiconductor M&A pacts to $1.3 billion.  Without those megadeals, the average would have been just $185 million last year. The average value of 22 semiconductor acquisition agreements struck in 2015 was $4.9 billion.  In 2016, the average for 29 M&A agreements was $3.4 billion, based on data compiled by IC Insights.

SkyWater Technology Foundry, the industry’s most advanced U.S.-based and U.S.-owned trusted foundry, announced today that it has appointed Steve Wold as Chief Financial Officer. Steve has more than 25 years of leadership experience, holding a variety of senior corporate finance roles. He brings a rich background to the company in capital markets, including equity, corporate financing and recapitalizations, and risk management. Steve succeeds Bart Zibrowski, who will move on to the role of Vice-Chairman for the company.

“As we complete our foundry transformation in 2018, I am delighted to welcome Steve Wold to SkyWater as our new CFO,” said Thomas Sonderman, President, SkyWater Technology Foundry. “With his background in high-performance growth organizations, Steve is ideally suited to help us deliver on our long-term vision. I’d also like to thank Bart Zibrowski for the tremendous job he did in putting a strong foundation in place for our finance organization over the last year as we created the company.” 

Steve comes to SkyWater Technology Foundry after most recently serving as a key member of the leadership team of Arctic Cat Inc. (formerly ACAT – NASDAQ), where he was instrumental in completing the sale of the company to Textron Inc. in 2017. Prior to that, he was at Orbital ATK (OA – NYSE) for 18 years, where he was focused on transforming processes, change management, and driving operational efficiencies, as the company grew from approximately $1 billion to over $5 billion in revenue. Steve began his career as a CPA with Deloitte Audit and Assurance for over 7 years, where he focused on providing services to both publicly traded and privately held manufacturing entities. He holds a Bachelor of Accountancy from the University of North Dakota, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Minnesota Society of CPAs. 

SkyWater is a U.S.-based technology foundry, specializing in the development and manufacturing of a wide variety of differentiated semiconductor manufacturing solutions.

By Dan Tracy and Ji-Won Cho, SEMI

2017 proved to be record-setting year for the semiconductor industry. According to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS), worldwide semiconductor market will have grown 20 percent, exceeding $400 billion for the first time. Among all major product segments, memory is the strongest, with sales are on track to grow 60 percent year-over-year, contributing to 30 percent of worldwide semiconductor sales in 2017. The consensus is that the growth momentum in memory will continue in 2018, driven by stable market demand and a favorable pricing environment.

Korean memory makers are the biggest beneficiaries of this memory super cycle. According to the Korea International Trade Association (KITA), the memory export value from Korea grew 86 percent through November 2017 compared to a year earlier, indicating that Korean memory makers are gaining more market share. On the supply side of the market, both Samsung and SK Hynix saw record high capital expenditures in 2017, contributing to the revenue surge from Korean suppliers. The spending spree is expected to continue in 2018. Together, Samsung and SK Hynix are forecast to invest over $20 billion in fab tools worldwide in 2018. (Track fab projects in detail with the SEMI World Fab Forecast or SEMI FabView databases).

WFF-Dec2017-chart

Samsung’s anchor project in 2018 is the ramp of its new Fab P1 phase 2 line in Pyeongtaek. Samsung plans to add new 3D NAND as well as DRAM capacity at this fab, fortifying its leading position in memory market. Beyond 2018, Samsung’s Xian phase 2 plan is also underway for future expansion.

SK Hynix, on the other hand, will ramp up M14 fab in 2018, adding new capacity for both 3D NAND and DRAM. In the meantime, SK Hynix is building a new fab, M15, in Cheongju, Korea, for 3D NAND and Fab C3 in Wuxi, China, for DRAM.

Both of these leading memory makers plan to ride this memory cycle and intend to vault ahead of the competition. Future demand for 3D NAND will continue to be the strongest, driving new fab projects in Korea now and later in China. Nevertheless, DRAM supply will also see new capacity coming online this year, followed by rare new fab projects. Memory not only accounts for a major portion of worldwide semiconductor sales but will also propel the investment momentum in the coming years.

SEMICON Korea 2018

The strong memory growth sets the stage for SEMICON Korea, January 31 through February 2 in Seoul. The largest microelectronics event in Korea, with over 40,000 attendees expected, SEMICON Korea will focus on enabling participants to “Connect, Collaborate, and Innovate.”

Key SEMICON Korea highlights include:

  • The 1,919 booths are sold out as major equipment, materials, and subsystem/parts companies exhibit their new products and technology solutions at the show.
  • Industry giants including Samsung, Micron, Intel, Toshiba, Sony, SK Hynix and LAM Research will connect with Korean equipment, materials and subsystems/parts manufacturers through the Supplier Search Program.
  • Participation by engineers is expected to be strong this year, after more than 10,000 engineers from​ Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and DB Hitek attended SEMICON Korea 2017.

Major SEMICON Korea programs, including the following, will provide key insights into the Korea electronics manufacturing ecosystem:

  • Smart Automotive Forum
  • Smart Manufacturing Forum
  • Test Forum
  • SEMI Technology Symposium
  • Market Seminar

For a complete schedule of programs, visit www.semiconkorea.org/en/agenda-glance.

Littelfuse, Inc. (NASDAQ:LFUS) today announced the completion of its acquisition of IXYS Corporation (NASDAQ:IXYS). IXYS is a global pioneer in the power semiconductor market with a focus on medium- to high-voltage power semiconductors across the industrial, communications, consumer and medical device markets.

“Today marks a significant step forward in our company strategy to accelerate growth within the power control and industrial OEM markets,” said Dave Heinzmann, President and Chief Executive Officer of Littelfuse. “The combination of our companies brings together a broad power semiconductor portfolio, complementary technology expertise and a strong talent pool.”

The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to adjusted EPS. Littelfuse expects to achieve more than $30 million of annualized cost savings within the first two years after closing. The combination is also expected to create significant revenue synergy opportunities longer term, given the companies’ complementary offerings and combined customer base.

In conjunction with the close of the transaction, IXYS founder Dr. Nathan Zommer has been appointed to the Littelfuse Board of Directors, increasing the size of the board to nine members.

With today’s transaction close, each former IXYS stockholder is entitled to receive, per IXYS share held immediately prior to the closing, either $23.00 in cash or 0.1265 of a share of Littelfuse common stock. In total, 50% of IXYS stock was converted into the cash consideration and 50% into the stock consideration.

Picosun Oy, a supplier of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) thin film coating technology for global industries, partners with STMicroelectronics S.r.l. to develop the next generation 300mm production solutions for advanced power electronics.

Power electronic components are right at the heart of many core elements of our society, where energy saving, sparing use of natural resources, and CO2 emission reductions are called for to provide for sustainable future. Energy production with renewables such as wind and solar, clean transportation with electric vehicles and trains, and industrial manufacturing with energy-smart power management and factory automation are key markets where the demand for advanced power components is increasing.

Most power semiconductor industries use 200 mm wafers as substrates. Transfer to 300 mm enables more efficient, ecological, and economical production through larger throughputs with relatively smaller material losses, and adaptation of novel manufacturing processes such as ALD allows smaller chip sizes with increased level of integration.

As a part of the funded project R3-POWERUP (*), Picosun’s PICOPLATFORM™ 300 ALD cluster tool will be optimized and validated for 300 mm production of power electronic components. The SEMI S2 certified PICOPLATFORM™ 300 cluster tool consists of two PICOSUN™ P-300S ALD reactors, one dedicated for high-k dielectric oxides and one for nitrides, connected together and operated under constant vacuum with a central vacuum robot substrate handling unit. The ALD reactors are equipped with Picosun’s proprietary Picoflow™ feature which enables conformal ALD depositions in high aspect ratios up to 1:2500 and even beyond. Substrate loading is realized with an EFEM with FOUP ports. The fully automated cluster tool can be integrated into the production line and connected to factory host via SECS/GEM interface.

“Our PICOPLATFORM™ 300 cluster tools have already proven their strength in conventional IC applications, so expansion to the power semiconductors is only natural. We are very pleased to work with a company such as STMicroelectronics to tailor and validate our 300mm ALD production solutions to this rapidly growing market. This is also a prime opportunity both to contribute to the future of European semiconductor industries, and to utilize ALD to provide technological solutions to the global ecological and societal challenges such as climate change and dwindling natural resources,” summarizes Juhana Kostamo, Managing Director of Picosun.

Sales of analog ICs are expected to show the strongest growth rate among major integrated circuit market categories during the next five years, according to IC Insights’ new 2018 McClean Report, which becomes available this month.  The McClean Report forecasts that revenues for analog products—including both general purpose and application-specific devices—will increase by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6% to $74.8 billion in 2022 from $54.5 billion in 2017.

The 2018 McClean Report separates the total IC market into four major product categories: analog, logic, memory, and microcomponents.  Figure 1 shows the forecasted 2017-2022 CAGRs of these product categories compared to the projected total IC market annual growth rate of 5.1% during the five-year period.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Analog ICs, the fastest growing major product category in the forecast, are a necessity within both very advanced systems and low-budget applications.  Components like power management analog devices help regulate power usage to keep devices running cooler and ultimately to help extend battery life in cellphones and other mobile/battery operated systems. The power management market is forecast to grow 8% in 2018 after increasing 12% in 2017.

In 2018, the automotive—application-specific analog market is forecast to increase 15% to be the fastest growing analog IC category, and the third-fastest growing of 33 IC product categories classified by WSTS. The growth of autonomous and electric vehicles and more electronic systems on board all new cars are expected to keep demand robust for automotive analog devices.

Communications and consumer applications continue to represent the biggest end-use applications for signal conversion analog ICs.  Signal conversion components (data converters, mixed-signal devices, etc.) are forecast to continue on fast-track growth with double-digit sales gains expected in three of the next five years.

After an extraordinary 58% sales spike in 2017, the memory market is forecast to return to more “normal” growth through the forecast.  The memory market is forecast to increase by a CAGR of 5.2% through 2022. New capacity for flash memory and, to a lesser extent for DRAM, should bring some relief from fast-rising ASPs and result in better supply-demand balance for these devices to support newer applications such as enterprise solid-state drives (SSDs), augmented and virtual reality, graphics, artificial intelligence, and other complex, real-time workload functions.

Meanwhile, growth in the microcomponent market (forecast CAGR of 3.9%) has cooled significantly due to weak shipments of standard PCs (desktops and notebooks).  Tablet sales have also slowed and weighed down total microcomponent sales. With the exception of the 32-bit MCU market, annual sales gains in most microcomponent segments are forecast to remain in the low- to mid single digit range through 2022.

IC Insights forecasts the total IC market will increase by a CAGR of 5.1% from 2017-2022.  Following the 22% increase in 2017, the total IC market is forecast to grow 8% in 2018 to $393.9 billion and then continue on an upward trend to reach $466.8 billion in 2022, the final year of the forecast.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue totalled $419.7 billion in 2017, a 22.2 percent increase from 2016, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. Undersupply helped drive 64 percent revenue growth in the memory market, which accounted for 31 percent of total semiconductor revenue in 2017.

“The largest memory supplier, Samsung Electronics, gained the most market share and took the No. 1 position from Intel — the first time Intel has been toppled since 1992,” said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. “Memory accounted for more than two-thirds of all semiconductor revenue growth in 2017, and became the largest semiconductor category.”

The key driver behind the booming memory revenue was higher prices due to a supply shortage. NAND flash prices increased year over year for the first time ever, up 17 percent, while DRAM prices rose 44 percent.

Equipment companies could not absorb these price increases so passed them onto consumers, making everything from PCs to smartphones more expensive in 2017.

Other major memory vendors, including SK Hynix and Micron Technology, also performed strongly in 2017 and rose in the rankings (see Table 1).

 

2017 Rank

2016 Rank

Vendor

2017 Revenue

2017 Market Share (%)

2016 Revenue

2016-2017 Growth (%)

1

2

Samsung Electronics

61,215

14.6

40,104

52.6

2

1

Intel

57,712

13.8

54,091

6.7

3

4

SK Hynix

26,309

6.3

14,700

79.0

4

6

Micron Technology

23,062

5.5

12,950

78.1

5

3

Qualcomm

17,063

4.1

15,415

10.7

6

5

Broadcom

15,490

3.7

13,223

17.1

7

7

Texas Instruments

13,806

3.3

11,901

16.0

8

8

Toshiba

12,813

3.1

9,918

29.2

9

17

Western Digital

9,181

2.2

4,170

120.2

10

9

NXP

8,651

2.1

9,306

-7.0

Others

174,418

41.6

157,736

10.6

Total Market

419,720

100.0

343,514

22.2

Source: Gartner (January 2018)

Second-placed Intel grew its revenue 6.7 percent in 2017, driven by 6 percent growth in data center processor revenue due to demand from cloud and communications service providers. Intel’s PC processor revenue grew more slowly at 1.9 percent, but average PC prices are on the rise again after years of decline following the market’s shift from traditional desktops toward two-in-one and ultramobile devices.

The current rankings may not last long, however, “Samsung’s lead is literally built on sand, in the form of memory silicon,” said Mr. Norwood. “Memory pricing will weaken in 2018, initially for NAND flash and then DRAM in 2019 as China increases its memory production capacity. We then expect Samsung to lose a lot of the revenue gains it has made.”

2017 was a relatively quiet year for mergers and acquisitions. Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP was one big deal that was expected to close in 2017, but did not. Qualcomm still plans to complete the deal in 2018, but this has now been complicated by Broadcom’s attempted takeover of Qualcomm.

“The combined revenues of Broadcom, Qualcomm and NXP were $41.2 billion in 2017 — a total beaten only by Samsung and Intel,” said Mr. Norwood. “If Broadcom can finalize this double acquisition and Samsung’s memory revenue falls as forecast, then Samsung could slip to third place during the next memory downturn in 2019.”