Category Archives: Semiconductors

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, today welcomed newly announced research partnerships between the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and research teams from industry and academia that aim to bolster long-term semiconductor research. The research partnerships, part of new programs within DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI), will target advances in semiconductor circuit design, materials, and systems architectures. The selected research teams were unveiled yesterday in San Francisco during the first annual DARPA ERI Summit, a three-day event bringing together hundreds of members of the microelectronics community.

“As the brains of modern electronics, semiconductors are central to America’s economy, national security, and global competitiveness,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “The DARPA research partnerships announced yesterday will help catalyze transformational advances in semiconductor technology and enhance semiconductors’ positive impacts on our country.”

The ERI is divided into three main research thrust areas – Design, Materials & Integration, and Architectures. Each thrust area will feature two new research programs. The Design research thrust area will include the Intelligent Design of Electronic Assets (IDEA) program and the Posh Open Source Hardware (POSH) program. The Materials & Integration research thrust area will include the Three-Dimensional Monolithic System-on-a-Chip (3DSoC) program and the Foundations Required for Novel Compute (FRANC) program. The ERI Architectures research thrust area will include the Software Defined Hardware (SDH) program and the Domain-specific System on Chip (DSSoC) program.

“The semiconductor industry plows about one-fifth of its revenues into R&D – among the highest shares of any sector – and has a long record of partnering with our government to advance early-stage research,” Neuffer said. “The new DARPA research partnerships mark a major commitment to furthering semiconductor technology and keeping America at the tip of the spear globally in semiconductor innovation.”

Neuffer also noted SIA’s longstanding support for basic scientific research funded through other federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. He expressed the semiconductor industry’s eagerness to work with the Administration and Congress to advance research investments that will promote America’s economic and national security and technological leadership.

In total, the ERI will invest upwards of $1.5 billion over five years to jumpstart innovation in the electronics industry. In addition to fostering advancements in semiconductor technologies used for national security, the ripple effect from this research will be felt across the full range of semiconductor applications: communications, computing, health care, transportation, clean energy, and countless others. For more information about the Electronics Resurgence Initiative and the first annual ERI Summit, please visit http://www.eri-summit.com/.

SiFive, a provider of commercial RISC-V processor IP, today announced Brad Holtzinger as Vice President of Worldwide Sales, where he will work with the existing global portfolio of SiFive customers and onboard new clients seeking to take advantage of the company’s market-leading Core IP.  Holtzinger brings more than 30 years of embedded industry experience in sales, marketing and engineering.

“It is rare to see a company rapidly disrupting the silicon sector,” Holtzinger said. “I look forward to joining the SiFive team and supporting our customers and partners globally in adopting RISC-V and SiFive’s IP to move the industry forward.”

Previously, Holtzinger was the Vice President of Worldwide Sales for MIPS Technologies where he led licensing and sales of its global IP portfolio.  While at MIPS, Holtzinger drove the company to record sales and negotiated the sale and licensing of the MIPS patent portfolio to Bridge Crossing for $350 million and the sale of the remaining company to Imagination.

Prior to MIPS, he led the sales, operations and business development efforts as well as held the position of CEO for a number of privately funded and venture backed startups. He also founded the OEM Systems division of Force Computers, which was sold to Solectron for approximately $190 million.

Holtzinger started his career at Motorola as an embedded hardware and software design engineer, where he authored Motorola’s Technical Training class on Unix® System V and eventually was one of the founding members of Motorola’s Microcomputer Group, (MCG), that sold OEM systems and VME boards.  Holtzinger received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University and was an instructor at University of California, Berkeley.

“SiFive is excited to bring someone with Brad’s decades-long silicon sales leadership to the SiFive executive team,” said Naveed Sherwani, CEO of SiFive. “His experience leading a world-class sales organization and embedded hardware expertise will help continue to propel SiFive customer adoption.”

Semiconductor revenues are expected to increase 12.8% in 2018 as a result of continued strong memory prices. Units are expected to grow 7.2%. The forecast is based on moderate smartphone sales with a possible return to lower memory prices in the second half of the year. This, among other market issues, will push 2018 wafer demand to over 115 million units in 300mm equivalents according to Semico Research’s newest report, Semico Wafer Demand Update Q2 2018 (MA111-18).

“Semiconductor manufacturers are rolling out new products targeted at artificial intelligence applications. Products require both the most advanced technologies for AI training functions as well as potentially high-volume products for edge devices,” says Joanne Itow, Manager Manufacturing Research for Semico. “On the other side of the technology spectrum, mature processes for sensors and analog products such as biometric sensors, RF and power management continue to be in high demand aided by growth in Internet of Things (IoT) applications along with more ‘smart devices’ that are beginning to build in algorithms that are the precursor to full-fledged AI devices.”

Key findings include:

  • 2018 NAND revenues are expected to increase 18.9%.
  • MCU revenues are expected to exceed $17 billion in 2018.
  • Total Communication MOS Logic wafer demand is expected to increase 4.0% in 2018.
  • Sensor units are expected to grow 20.4% in 2018.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.49 billion in billings worldwide in June 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the June Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI. The billings figure is 8.0 percent lower than the final May 2018 level of $2.70 billion, and is 8.1 percent higher than the June 2017 billings level of $2.30 billion.

“Global billings of North American equipment manufacturers declined for the current month by 8 percent from the historic high but is still 8 percent higher than billings for the same period last year,” said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. “Billings remain robust.”

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
January 2018
$2,370.1
27.5%
February 2018
$2,417.8
22.5%
March 2018
$2,431.8
16.9%
April 2018
$2,689.9
25.9%
May 2018 (final)
$2,702.3
19.0%
June 2018 (prelim)
$2,485.7
8.1%

Source: SEMI (www.semi.org), July 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). The WWSEMS report currently reports billings by 24 equipment segments and by seven end market regions. SEMI also has a long history of tracking semiconductor industry fab investments in detail on a company-by-company and fab-by-fab basis in its World Fab Forecast and SEMI FabView databases. These powerful tools provide access to spending forecasts, capacity ramp, technology transitions, and other information for over 1,000 fabs worldwide. For an overview of available SEMI market data, please visit www.semi.org/en/MarketInfo.

Researchers have shown that a chip-based device measuring a millimeter square could be used to generate quantum-based random numbers at gigabit per second speeds. The tiny device requires little power and could enable stand-alone random number generators or be incorporated into laptops and smart phones to offer real-time encryption.

Researchers created a chip-based device measuring a millimeter square that can potentially generate quantum-based random numbers at gigabit per second speeds. The small square to the right of the penny contains all the optical components of the random number generator. Credit: Francesco Raffaelli, University of Bristol

“While part of the control electronics is not integrated yet, the device we designed integrates all the required optical components on one chip,” said first author Francesco Raffaelli, University of Bristol, United Kingdom. “Using this device by itself or integrating it into other portable devices would be very useful in the future to make our information more secure and to better protect our privacy.”

Random number generators are used to encrypt data transmitted during digital transactions such as buying products online or sending a secure e-mail. Today’s random number generators are based on computer algorithms, which can leave data vulnerable if hackers figure out the algorithm used.

In The Optical Society (OSA) journal Optics Express, the researchers report a quantum random number generator based on randomly emitted photons from a diode laser. Because the photon emission is inherently random, it is impossible to predict the numbers that will be generated.

“Compared to other integrated quantum random number generators demonstrated recently, ours can accomplish very high generation rates with relatively low optical powers,” said Raffaelli. “Using less power to produce random numbers helps avoid problems such as excess heat on the chip.”

Silicon photonics

The new chip was enabled by developments in silicon photonics technology, which uses the same semiconductor fabrication techniques used to make computer chips to fabricate optical components in silicon. It is now possible to fabricate waveguides into silicon that can guide light through the chip without losing the light energy along the way. These waveguides can be integrated onto a chip with electronics and integrated detectors that operate at very high speeds to convert the light signals into information.

The new chip-based random number generator takes advantage of the fact that under certain conditions a laser will emit photons randomly. The device converts these photons into optical power using a tiny device called an interferometer. Very small photodetectors integrated into the same chip then detect the optical power and convert it into a voltage that can be turned into random numbers.

“Despite the advancements in silicon photonics, there is still light lost inside the chip, which leads to very little light reaching the detectors,” said Raffaelli. “This required us to optimize all the parameters very precisely and design low noise electronics to detect the optical signal inside the chip.”

The new chip-based device not only brings portability advantages but is also more stable than the same device made using bulk optics. This is because interferometers are very sensitive to environmental conditions such as temperature and it is easier to control the temperature of a small chip. It is also far easier to precisely reproduce thousands of identical chips using semiconductor fabrication, whereas reproducing the necessary precision with bulk optics is more difficult.

Testing the chip

To experimentally test their design, the researchers had a foundry fabricate the random number generator chip. After characterizing the optical and electronic performance, they used it for random number generation. They estimate a potential randomness generation rate of nearly 2.8 gigabits per second for their device, which would be fast enough to enable real-time encryption.

“We demonstrated random number generation using about a tenth of the power used in other chip-based quantum random number generator devices,” said Raffaelli. “Our work shows the feasibility of this type of integrated platform.”

Although the chip containing the optical components is only one millimeter square, the researchers used an external laser which provides the source of randomness and electronics and measurement tools that required an optical table. They are now working to create a portable device about the size of a mobile phone that contains both the chip and the necessary electronics.

Applied Materials, Inc. today announced it has been awarded a contract by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a new type of electronic switch for artificial intelligence that mimics the way the human brain works to enable dramatic improvements in performance and power efficiency. The project is being supported by DARPA’s Electronics Resurgence Initiative, a multi-year research effort intended to achieve far-reaching improvements in electronics performance well beyond the limits of traditional Moore’s Law scaling.

Applied is working with Arm and Symetrix to develop a new neuromorphic switch based on CeRAM memory that can allow data to be stored and processed in the same material. The goal of the project is to enable a major improvement in artificial intelligence compute performance and power efficiency with the use of analog signal processing as compared to current digital approaches.

“This project is a perfect example of how new materials and architectures can be developed to enable new ways to accelerate artificial intelligence applications as classic Moore’s Law scaling slows,” said Steve Ghanayem, senior vice president of New Markets and Alliances at Applied Materials. “Applied has the industry’s broadest portfolio in materials engineering capabilities and is excited to be part of a team enabling breakthroughs for artificial intelligence.”

Today’s announcement was part of DARPA’s first annual ERI Summit in San Francisco. Applied Materials’ president and CEO, Gary Dickerson, delivered a keynote speech at the event highlighting the need for materials innovation in the AI era and calling for a new level of industry connectivity to speed progress across materials engineering, design and manufacturing.

Announced in September 2017, the ERI Materials & Integration programs seek to answer this question: Can we use the integration of unconventional electronics materials to enhance conventional silicon circuits and continue the progress in performance traditionally associated with scaling?

The Applied Materials team is part of the ERI Foundations Required for Novel Compute (FRANC) program, which seeks innovations that go beyond von Neumann compute architectures. Central is the design of circuits that leverage the properties of new materials and integration schemes to process data in ways that eliminate or minimize data movement. The novel compute topologies that come out of this effort could allow processing to happen where the data is stored with structures that are radically different from conventional digital logic processors, ultimately allowing for significant gains in compute performance.

Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMAT) is a developer of materials engineering solutions used to produce virtually every new chip and advanced display in the world.

Imec, a research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics, energy and digital technology, within the partnership of EnergyVille, today announced a record result for its 4-terminal Perovskite/silicon tandem photovoltaic cell. With a power conversion efficiency of 27.1 percent, the new imec tandem cell beats the most efficient standalone silicon solar cell. Further careful engineering of the Perovskite material will bring efficiencies over 30% in reach.

Perovskite microcrystals are a promising material system to make high-performance thin-film solar cells. They can be processed into thin, light, semitransparent modules that can achieve a high power conversion efficiency, are inexpensive to produce, and have a high absorption efficiency for sunlight. Because they can be made semitransparent, perovskite solar cells and modules can also be used on top of silicon solar cells. When the Perovskite is carefully engineered, the absorbance in the Perovskite minimizes the thermal losses that occur in the silicon cell. As a result, a Perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell can potentially reach power conversion efficiencies above 30 percent.

Imec’s new record tandem cell uses a 0.13 cm² spin-coated Perovskite cell developed within our Solliance cooperation stacked on top of a 4 cm² industrial interdigitated back-contact (IBC) silicon cell in a 4-terminal configuration, which is known to have a higher annual energy yield compared to a 2-terminal configuration. Additionally, scaling up the tandem device by using a 4 cm2 perovskite module on a 4 cm2 IBC silicon cell, a tandem efficiency of 25.3% was achieved, surpassing the stand-alone efficiency of the silicon cell.

Manoj Jaysankar, doctoral researcher at imec/EnergyVille, adds: “We have been working on this tandem technology for two years now, and the biggest difference with previous versions is in the engineering and processing of the Perovskite absorber, tuning its bandgap to optimize the efficiency for tandem configuration with silicon.”

“Adding Perovskite on top of industrial silicon PV may prove to be the most cost-effective approach to further improve the efficiency of photovoltaics,” concludes Tom Aernouts, group leader for thin-film photovoltaics at imec/EnergyVille. “Therefore, we invite all companies in the PV value chain that are looking into higher efficiencies, to partner with us and explore this promising path.”

After a quiet period due to the saturation of the mobile handset industry, the GaAs wafer market wakes up.  The technical choice made by Apple creates a real and vast enthusiasm for GaAs solutions. 3D sensing in mobile phone as well as LiDAR’s applications are giving a new breath for GaAs substrates suppliers.

Under its new technology & market report “GaAs Wafer & Epiwafer Market: RF, Photonics, LED and PV applications”, Yole Développement (Yole) announces a 15% CAGR between 2017 and 2023 (in volume), with an impressive 37%, especially for photonics applications (1).

GaAs analysis from Yole proposes a comprehensive overview of the GaAs wafer and epi wafer industry. This report outlines Yole’s understanding of the industrial landscape, its evolution as well as the technical challenges. The analysts are offering a relevant technical description of GaAs wafer and epiwafer growth. Market size and forecasts are also delivered in four big applicative markets: RF, Photonics, LED, and PV. Photonics applications are driving the GaAs wafer and epiwafer market into a new era. Yole’s analysts invite you to discover the latest GaAs technology and market trends.

Figure 1

 As one of the most mature compound semiconductors, GaAs has been ubiquitous as the building block of power amplifiers in every mobile handset. In 2018, GaAs RF business represents more than 50% of the GaAs wafer market. However, market growth has slowed down in the past couple years due to the handset market’s gradual saturation and shrinking die size. “At Yole, we expect GaAs to remain the mainstream technology for sub-6 GHz instead of CMOS, owing to GaAs’ high power and linearity performance as required by carrier aggregation and MIMO technology,” explains Dr. Hong Ling, Technology and Market Analyst at Yole.

Since 2017, GaAs wafer has been particularly notable in photonics applications. When Apple introduced its new iPhone X with a 3D sensing function using GaAs-based lasers, it paved the way for a significant boost in the GaAs photonics market. GaAs wafers market segment for photonics applications should reach US$150 million by 2023.

“GaAs-based ROY and infrared LED applications have also caught our attention”, asserts Dr. Ezgi Dogmus, Technology & Market Analyst at Yole. “We estimate, 2017-2023 CAGR achieves 21% (in units) for the total GaAs LED market, surpassing more than half of GaAs wafer volume by 2023.”

In terms of the wafer and epiwafer businesses, each application requires a different size and quality when determining wafer and epiwafer prices. As a new entrant, photonics applications will impose new specification requirements compared to the well-established RF and LED wafer and epiwafers, creating significant ASP diversity.

From a value chain point of view, the GaAs photonics market’s remarkable growth potential will offer plenty of opportunities for wafer, epiwafer, and MOCVD equipment suppliers, as well as for investors.
GaAs wafer supply: Sumitomo Electric, Freiberger Compound Materials, and AXT, involved in GaAs wafer supply, lead the market with about 95% of market share collectively. And since new laser applications have very high specification requirements for GaAs wafer that are constantly evolving, Yole analysts’ expect the top players to maintain their technical advantage for at least another 3 – 5 years.

Regarding GaAs epiwafer production, Yole’s analysts identified different business models. The GaAs LED market is principally vertically integrated, with very well-established IDMs like Osram, San’an, Epistar, and Changelight. In parallel, GaAs RF businesses outsource significantly from well-established epihouses.

Within the GaAs photonics market, the epi business is still applications-dependent. GaAs datacom market segment is mostly epi-integrated, with dominant IDMs like Finisar, Avago, and II-VI. For 3D sensing in smartphones, epi outsourcing is significant.

In 2017, Apple’s supplier Lumentum used IQE as its VCSEL epi supplier. This resulted in an almost 10x increase in IQE’s stock price. Other leading GaAs epihouses are in qualification or ramping up. Yole expects the photonic epiwafer market to behave similar to the GaAs RF epiwafer market.

Toshiba Memory Corporation today announced that it has developed a prototype sample of 96-layer BiCS FLASH, its proprietary 3D flash memory, with 4-bit-per-cell (quad level cell, QLC) technology that boosts single-chip memory capacity to the highest level yet achieved.

Toshiba Memory will start to deliver samples to SSD and SSD controller manufacturers for evaluation from the beginning of September, and expects to start mass production in 2019.

The advantage of QLC technology is pushing the bit count for data per memory cell from three to four and significantly expanding capacity. The new product achieves the industry’s maximum capacity [1] of 1.33 terabits for a single chip which was jointly developed with Western Digital Corporation.

This also realizes an unparalleled capacity of 2.66 terabytes with a 16-chip stacked architecture in one package. The huge volumes of data generated by mobile terminals and the like continue to increase with the spread of SNS and progress in IoT, and the need to analyze and utilize that data in real time is expected to increase dramatically. That will require even faster than HDD, larger capacity storage and QLC products using the 96-layer process will contribute a solution.

A packaged prototype of the new device will be exhibited at the 2018 Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California, USA from August 6th to 9th.

Looking to the future, Toshiba Memory will continue to improve memory capacity and performance and to develop 3D flash memories that meet diverse market needs, including the fast expanding data center storage market.

Scientists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have created the most dense, solid-state memory in history that could soon exceed the capabilities of current hard drives by 1,000 times.

Faced with the question of how to respond to the ever-increasing needs of our data-driven society, the answer for a team of scientists was simple: more memory, less space. Finding the way to do that, however, was anything but simple, involving years of painstaking incremental advances in atomic-scale nanotechnology.

But their new discovery for atomic-scale rewritable memory–quickly removing or replacing single atoms–allows the creation of small, stable, dense memory at the atomic-scale.

To demonstrate the new discovery, Achal, Wolkow, and their fellow scientists not only fabricated the world’s smallest maple leaf, they also encoded the entire alphabet at a density of 138 terabytes, roughly equivalent to writing 350,000 letters across a grain of rice. For a playful twist, Achal also encoded music as an atom-sized song, the first 24 notes of which will make any video-game player of the 80s and 90s nostalgic for yesteryear but excited for the future of technology and society. Credit: Roshan Achal / courtesy Nature Communications

“Essentially, you can take all 45 million songs on iTunes and store them on the surface of one quarter,” said Roshan Achal, PhD student in Department of Physics at the University of Alberta and lead author on the new research. “Five years ago, this wasn’t even something we thought possible.”

Previous discoveries were stable only at cryogenic conditions, meaning this new finding puts society light years closer to meeting the need for more storage for the current and continued deluge of data. One of the most exciting features of this memory is that it’s road-ready for real-world temperatures, as it can withstand normal use and transportation beyond the lab.

“What is often overlooked in the nanofabrication business is actual transportation to an end user, that simply was not possible until now given temperature restrictions,” continued Achal. “Our memory is stable well above room temperature and precise down to the atom.”

Achal explained that immediate applications will be data archival. Next steps will be increasing readout and writing speeds, meaning even more flexible applications.

More memory, less space

Achal works with University of Alberta physics professor Robert Wolkow, a pioneer in the field of atomic-scale physics. Wolkow perfected the art of the science behind nanotip technology, which, thanks to Wolkow and his team’s continued work, has now reached a tipping point, meaning scaling up atomic-scale manufacturing for commercialization.

“With this last piece of the puzzle now in-hand, atom-scale fabrication will become a commercial reality in the very near future,” said Wolkow. Wolkow’s Spin-off company, Quantum Silicon Inc., is hard at work on commercializing atom-scale fabrication for use in all areas of the technology sector.

To demonstrate the new discovery, Achal, Wolkow, and their fellow scientists not only fabricated the world’s smallest maple leaf, they also encoded the entire alphabet at a density of 138 terabytes, roughly equivalent to writing 350,000 letters across a grain of rice. For a playful twist, Achal also encoded music as an atom-sized song, the first 24 notes of which will make any video-game player of the 80s and 90s nostalgic for yesteryear but excited for the future of technology and society.