Category Archives: MEMS

UPMEM, a fabless semiconductor startup company, announces UPMEM Processing In-Memory (PIM), the next generation hardware solution for data intensive applications in the datacenter, solving server-level efficiency and performance bottlenecks. UPMEM’s programmer friendly acceleration technology is much awaited for by big data players as Moore’s law is fading away.

“The new generation of data intensive applications can no longer be easily handled by traditional CPUs,” said Gilles Hamou, CEO and co-founder of UPMEM. “Initial benchmarks by our partners validate the game-changing added-value of UPMEM PIM technology, as well as the strong fit of its programming model for a large scope of real world data-intensive applications.”

The PIM chip, integrating UPMEM’s proprietary RISC processors (DRAM Processing Units, DPUs) and main memory (DRAM), is the building block of the first efficient, scalable and programmable acceleration solution for big data applications. Associated with its Software Development Kit, the UPMEM PIM solution can accelerate data-intensive applications in the datacenter servers 20 times, with close to zero additional energy premium. This huge leap opens new horizons for Big Data players, in terms of costs and new services.

“Faster and more efficient data analytics require new datacentric application architectures, positioning compute nearer the data,” said Western Digital iMemory Project leader Robin O’Neill. “The UPMEM Processing In-Memory solution is particularly relevant and highly promising for a variety of data analytics use cases, without dramatic changes to server architectures.”

UPMEM’s innovative technology solves the Memory Wall and the dominant energy cost of data movement between the processor and its main memory in application servers. Thousands of UPMEM in-memory co-processors (DRAM Processing Units, aka DPUs) orchestrated by the main processor, localize most of data processing in the memory chips, while proposing familiar programmability. Besides, the UPMEM solution comes without any disruption of existing server hardware, standardized protocols, programming & compiling schemes, removing any barrier for fast & massive adoption. For instance, the UPMEM solution provides a full DNA mapping and variance analysis in minutes instead of hours, making affordable real-time personalized genomics a reality.

The financing round will enable the company to produce and bring to market its disruptive Processing In-Memory (PIM) chip-based solution. In parallel, UPMEM will accelerate its evaluation programs with top tier global big data customers and IT labs, using available programming and simulation tools.

UPMEM obtained this series A financing from actors engaged in semiconductors and with a strong footprint in Europeand the US: C4Ventures, Partech Ventures, Supernova Invest, Western Digital Capital, Crédit Agricole bank, and entrepreneurs from the data center and micro electronics industry led by Etix CEO Charles-Antoine Beyney. Reza Malekzadeh from Partech Ventures and Charles-Antoine Beyney will join the UPMEM board of directors.

“Data intensive use cases are severally constrained by the Memory Wall issue,” explains Olivier Huez, Partner at C4 Ventures. “We’ve looked far and wide and UPMEM’s founders have built the only company on the market which can address this seamlessly and deliver such an impressive uplift in performance.”

“We are no longer in an era were CPUs and other hardware getting continuously faster would mask the slow speed of inefficient software,” said Reza Malekzadeh, General Partner at Partech Ventures. “UPMEM’s solution addresses the performance needs of modern scale-out applications while preserving datacenter and infrastructure hardware investments.”

“The PIM concept is not new in itself,” said Christophe Desrumaux, Investment Director at Supernova Invest. “But UPMEM brings together a world class team, an innovative patented approach without any hardware compatibility disruption, and a full set of design tools that make it widely adoptable by users.”

Lam Research Corporation (Nasdaq:LRCX), a global supplier of innovative wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry, announced that it has completed the acquisition of Coventor, Inc., a provider of simulation and modeling solutions for semiconductor process technology, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and the Internet of Things (IoT). The combination of Lam and Coventor supports Lam’s advanced process control vision and is expected to accelerate process integration simulation to increase the value of virtual processing, further enabling chipmakers to address some of their most significant technical challenges.

“We see a strong synergy between our modeling capability and Lam’s desire to enable virtual experimentation of process development for customers and within its business units,” said Mike Jamiolkowski, president and CEO of Coventor. “We believe that our combination will increase the value we can deliver to our customers by providing more capability and improving their time to market.”

Customers rely on Coventor software and expertise to help predict the structures and behavior of designs before committing to time-consuming and costly wafer fabrication. This fast and accurate “virtual fabrication” allows technology developers and manufacturers to understand process variation effects early in the development timeframe and reduce the number of silicon learning cycles required to bring a successful product to market.

“We are looking forward to Coventor being a part of Lam and increasing the value and contribution we jointly provide to our customers,” said Rick Gottscho, executive vice president and corporate chief technical officer of Lam Research. “To keep pace with future design requirements, new technologies such as virtual fabrication and processing will be crucial to improve time to market. Together, our collective goal is to deliver more simulation, more virtual fabrication, and an overall increase in computational techniques to support the development of next-generation transistors, memories, MEMS and IoT devices.”

Healthcare is facing one of its major turning points in decades. After penetrating the consumer market, the digital revolution and its related IoT concept is rapidly changing health models.
Yole Développement’s analysts announce an impressive US$9 billion market in 2016 with a 16% CAGR between 2016 and 2022. Connected devices are now part of the IoT industry: the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is born. Such developments have been performed in parallel of the numerous technical innovations dedicated to the consumer applications.

Yole Développement (Yole) releases today the report Connected Medical Devices Market & Business Models. This report analyzes the dynamics of the connected medical devices market, the competitive landscape and its technical innovations. It also details the drivers for the adoption of connected medical devices as well as devices for personal assistance. Trends for connectivity and typical architecture for an IoMT project and much more are presented in this report.
The IoMT powers industry momentum in digital health and reinvents healthcare organization. The Medical Technology team from Yole offers you today an overview of the latest innovations and their impact on our daily life. What will be the tomorrow’s healthcare?

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The population is growing and aging, and chronic diseases are exploding. More than 415 million people are living with diabetes worldwide and there are more than 1.5 billion people at risk of cardiovascular diseases. The number of doctors and nurses has stayed consistently flat, as health budgets are shrinking in many regions. Fortunately, connected devices and smartphones are now widespread. People are managing their lives through apps and clouds, and now can do the same with their health, from hospital to home or even just walking in the street.

Healthcare is shifting to a patient centric model with nearly 20% growth over the period to 2022 for the segment of self-quantified devices. This compares to single-digit growth for connected implantable devices, which face serious security issues. Preventive and predictive medicine and even participative medicine are on the way to supplement evidence-based approaches, using the large volumes of data generated by these connected medical devices.

Technical developments for the medical sector were made in parallel to consumer applications. However, introduction of these “connected innovations” was longer due to regulation aspect in healthcare as well as longer development time and test to clearance.

“Convergence of sensor technology and connectivity made possible the set-up of IoT,” asserts Jérôme Mouly, Technology & Market Analyst, Medical Technologies at Yole. “Today, when connected devices are medical-grade approved, we can talk about IoMT. And this is the focus of Yole’s report”.

Bringing connectivity to medical devices has offered new experience to patient and health body: self-monitoring, alerts, patient coaching, exchange and storage of data, records at local level. Therefore, IoMT infrastructure clearly offers a wide opportunity to store millions of data from several devices, from several patients. “We are just at the beginning of data exploitation for the benefit of patients”, comments Jérôme Mouly from Yole.

According to Yole’s report, the connected medical devices market is structured within 4 market segments, each one with dedicated requirements and challenges front of connectivity. They are implantable devices – self-monitored – professional oriented – and assistance devices for people’s lacking autonomy.

The healthcare industry is changing smoothly and connected medical devices will slightly impose their presence. For example, chronic diseases are strongly driving connected medical device market with more than 80% of sales generated by monitoring of diabetes, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The connected medical devices penetration rate for chronic diseases is yet reaching 20%+ from comparable market.

These applications will not be the last one. Indeed connected technologies will continue to impact the healthcare industry with always the same objective: move towards an efficient, accurate and personalized healthcare for the benefit of patient.

Lama Nachman will share Intel‘s story of using contextually aware computing to improve assistive technology for Stephen Hawking during her keynote at the 13th annual MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress(November 1-2, 2017 in Napa Valley, Calif.). Hosted by MEMS & Sensors Industry Group®(MSIG), the event also features NXP‘s Lars Reger exploring the critical role of MEMS and non-MEMS sensors in the complex automotive ecosystems of today and tomorrow. Other speakers will address diverse topics spanning ingestible sensors that leverage integrated circuits (ICs), MEMS spectral sensors that improve crop yields, low-power acoustic sensing platforms for always-on voice-activated products, and thin-film pressure-sensitive tiles used for gait and performance analysis.

“Understanding the essential role of MEMS and sensors in integrated systems, such as smart home, smart automotive, smart biomedical/wellness and smart industrial, is critical to extracting maximum value from these devices, which market research firm Yole Développement expects to grow from $38 billion in 2016 to $66 billion in 2021,” said Karen Lightman, vice president, MSIG, a SEMI Strategic Association Partner. “From our keynote speakers to our featured presenters and panelists, MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress speakers will delve into some of the most exciting ways that MEMS and sensors add intelligence and insight to integrated systems.”

Other Highlights

  • Emerging MEMS & Sensors: Technologies to Watch ─ Alissa Fitzgerald, A.M. Fitzgerald & Associates
  • MEMS & Sensors: Outtakes of 2017 and Outlook for 2018 ─ Jérémie Bouchaud, IHS Markit
  • BioMEMS: The Next Big Thing for MEMS Players? ─ Sébastien Clerc, Yole Développement
  • Fireside Chat with Industry VCs ─ Wen Hsieh of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byersand Rudy Burger of Woodside Capital Partners
  • Featured “Tech Talks” on “Creating Six Senses” ─ styled in the manner of TED Talks™, these short talks feature Marcellino Gemelli of Bosch Sensortec and Peter Hartwell of InvenSense/TDK

For conference registration, please visit: www.semi.org/en/mems-sensors-executive-congress-agenda-register. Register by September 26 for a discount.

 

By Dave Anderson, president, SEMI Americas

The SEMI Strategic Materials Conference (SMC) is the industry’s premier event devoted to technology and business drivers of materials in the electronics supply chain. Slated for September 18-20 in San Jose, Calif., the 18th annual SMC “offers a unique chance to network and discover opportunities in and around the industry in a year where dramatic growth has returned to the semiconductor market,” observes SMC 2017 co-chair Mark Thirsk of Linx Consulting, who will provide opening remarks at the conference.

SMC features three distinguished keynote speakers: AMD’s CTO, Mark Papermaster, will discuss “The Future of Semiconductors: Moore’s Law Plus.”  Next, Lam Research’s CTO, Dave Hemker, will present “The Next Level: Is it Time for Equipment and Materials Suppliers to Collaborate More?” describing how the current market environment is having a rippling effect across the supply chain. “As the continuation of Moore’s Law becomes ever-more challenging, closer, earlier collaboration between materials suppliers, equipment makers, and semiconductor manufacturers becomes necessary,” says Hemker.   SMIC’s Sunny Hui, senior VP of Marketing, will kick off day two telling the audience how to “Collaborate to Win in China.”

The first day’s agenda features “Economic and Market Trends: The Consolidation Game (M&A), China, 200mm & More,” with speakers from Applied Materials, Credit Suisse, Linx Consulting, and SEMI China.

Detailing Heterogeneous Integration for Performance and Scaling, UCLA’s Subramanian S. Iyer will describe how adapting silicon-inspired processing, integration, and materials to advanced packaging constructs may be the key to perpetuating Moore’s Law.

The Future of Materials Market in China will focus on the state of China’s semiconductor materials industry, government policies, growth opportunities for suppliers, and best practices for companies operating in this expanding environment.  Hear from Dow Chemical, Konfoong Materials International (KFMI) and SMIC.

More than twenty program sessions will explore the developments driving industry growth and enabling innovative new materials for today’s evolving electronics industry. The conference agenda also includes:

  • Process Challenges at 5nm & Beyond: Insights from ARM, Samsung, and TSMC.
  • Universities − Innovation Drivers: Viewpoints from Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, and University of Chicago.
  • Materials Supply Chain Challenges in Adjacent Industries: Perspectives from Linde Group, PARC (Xerox), and Pixelligent Technologies
  • Heterogeneous Integration − Design to New Materials & Packaging: Insights from ASE Group, imec, and UCLA

SMC 2017 will close with an Executive Panel discussion addressing emerging material challenges for each participant’s company and the segment within which it operates. Executives from Intel, Tokyo Electron, TSMC and Versum Materials will share their views on how the industry can collectively address challenges through focused R&D investment, collaboration throughout the vertical supply chain, and the application of innovative business strategies to ensure a win-win for all companies across the extended supply chain.

I hope to see you at the SEMI Strategic Materials Conference this month. Learn more and register here.

Note: The SEMI Strategic Material Conference (SMC) is organized by the Chemical and Gas Manufacturers Group, a SEMI not-for-profit Special Interest Group comprised of leading manufacturers, producers, packagers, and distributors of chemicals and gases used in the electronics industry.

 

FlexTech, a SEMI strategic association partner, will host a one-day Flexible Hybrid Electronics and Sensors Automotive Industry workshop in Detroit, Michigan on September 13, 2017 to explore how FHE adds functionality, decreases weight and impacts design. Automotive and electronics industry leaders will gather to discuss the market demands and challenges with automotive technology and present disruptive changes brought by flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) and sensors.

The forum will breakdown the topic into four key areas: OEM applications; market analysis and forecasts; challenges to integration; and solutions for Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers. Speakers include representatives from SBD Automotive, Fiat-Chrysler Group LLC, Velodyne LiDAR, Lumitex, Alpha Micron, NextFlex, Auburn University, Universal Instruments, Interlink Electronics, Georgia Institute of Technology, DuPont Photovoltaics & Advanced Materials and more.

“This forum is an excellent opportunity to discover the possibilities of flexible electronic systems incorporating advanced semiconductors, MEMS, and sensors, which will provide lightweight, sensor networks that conform, curve, and possibly more.  New automotive applications in this area will enable wholly new approaches for the in-cabin driving experience,” said Dr. Melissa Grupen-Shemansky, CTO for Flexible Electronics & Advanced Packaging at SEMI | FlexTech.

Company tours to Ford and a networking dinner are scheduled for September 12, 2017. For more information on the forum and how to register visit the event websiteat www.semi/org/en/FHE-forum-summary.

STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) has announced the integration of its contactless NFC technology with MediaTek’s mobile platforms. This creates a complete solution for handset developers to design next-generation smartphones capable of supporting tightly integrated NFC mobile services.

Mobile payments are expected to see triple-digit growth in the coming years, with contactless transport ticketing also rising fast in Asia, notably in China’s largest cities.

By integrating ST’s NFC chipset with the MediaTek mobile platforms, the two partners help mobile OEMs overcome key technical challenges such as antenna design and integration, antenna miniaturization, and bill-of-material optimization while assuring interoperability with payment terminals in locations like retailers and transportation hubs.

MediaTek is the world’s second-largest supplier of mobile-handset solutions, and with the addition of ST’s technology can demonstrate high contactless performance relative to alternative platforms.

“ST will provide its NFC technology to MediaTek, to deliver high contactless performance solutions to OEMs with a focus on cost and integration optimization through smaller antennas and reduced bill of materials,” said Marie-France Florentin, Group Vice President, General Manager, Secure Microcontroller Division, STMicroelectronics. “While ST has for years been providing to customers its own robust NFC and RFID technology, the ST21NFCD is the first device from ST to integrate the market-proven booster technology ST recently acquired.”

About ST’s Mobile-Transaction (NFC) Technology:

Mobile payments and other contactless applications are primarily enabled by Near-Field Communication (NFC) technology, as found in contactless-payment cards and payment terminals. ST’s NFC chipset, or System-in-Package, solves the challenges of achieving a robust wireless connection over extended communication distances to make mobile payments easy, dependable, and private, while protecting against cybersecurity threats including eavesdropping and hacking.

ST’s latest NFC Systems-in-Package ST54F and ST54H comprise the ST21NFCD NFC controller with active load modulation for extended range with ST33G1M2 and ST33J2M0 embedded secure element (eSE), and operating system.

 

Leti today announced that the European R&D project known as PiezoMAT has developed a pressure-based fingerprint sensor that enables resolution more than twice as high as currently required by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The project’s proof of concept demonstrates that a matrix of interconnected piezoelectric zinc-oxide (ZnO) nanowires grown on silicon can reconstruct the smallest features of human fingerprints at 1,000 dots per inch (DPI).

“The pressure-based fingerprint sensor derived from the integration of piezo-electric ZnO nanowires grown on silicon opens the path to ultra-high resolution fingerprint sensors, which will be able to reach resolution much higher than 1,000 DPI,” said Antoine Viana, Leti’s project manager. “This technology holds promise for significant improvement in both security and identification applications.”

The eight-member project team of European companies, universities and research institutes fabricated a demonstrator embedding a silicon chip with 250 pixels, and its associated electronics for signal collection and post-processing. The chip was designed to demonstrate the concept and the major technological achievements, not the maximum potential nanowire integration density. Long-term development will pursue full electronics integration for optimal sensor resolution.

 

The project also provided valuable experience and know-how in several key areas, such as optimization of seed-layer processing, localized growth of well-oriented ZnO nanowires on silicon substrates, mathematical modeling of complex charge generation, and synthesis of new polymers for encapsulation. The research and deliverables of the project have been presented in scientific journals and at conferences, including Eurosensors 2016 in Budapest.

The 44-month, €2.9 million PiezoMAT (PIEZOelectric nanowire MATrices) research project was funded by the European Commission in the Seventh Framework Program. Its partners include:

  • Leti (Grenoble, France): A leading European center in the field of microelectronics, microtechnology and nanotechnology R&D, Leti is one of the three institutes of the Technological Research Division at CEA, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. Leti’s activities span basic and applied research up to pilot industrial lines. www.leti-cea.com/cea-tech/leti/english 
  • Fraunhofer IAF (Freiburg, Germany): Fraunhofer IAF, one of the leading research facilities worldwide in the field of III-V semiconductors, develops electronic and optical devices based on modern micro- and nanostructures. Fraunhofer IAF’s technologies find applications in areas such as security, energy, communication, health, and mobility. www.iaf.fraunhofer.de/en
  • Centre for Energy Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Budapest, Hungary):  The Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science, one of the institutes of the Research Centre, conducts interdisciplinary research on complex functional materials and nanometer-scale structures, exploration of physical, chemical, and biological principles, and their exploitation in integrated micro- and nanosystems www.mems.hu, www.energia.mta.hu/en
  • Universität Leipzig (Leipzig, Germany): Germany’s second-oldest university with continuous teaching, established in 1409, hosts about 30,000 students in liberal arts, medicine and natural sciences. One of its scientific profiles is “Complex Matter”, and contributions to PIEZOMAT are in the field of nanostructures and wide gap materials. www.zv.uni-leipzig.de/en/
  • Kaunas University of Technology (Kaunas, Lithuania): One of the largest technical universities in the Baltic States, focusing its R&D activities on novel materials, smart devices, advanced measurement techniques and micro/nano-technologies. The Institute of Mechatronics specializes on multi-physics simulation and dynamic characterization of macro/micro-scale transducers with well-established expertise in the field of piezoelectric devices. http://en.ktu.lt/ 
  • SPECIFIC POLYMERS (Castries, France): SME with twelve employees and an annual turnover of about 1M€, SPECIFIC POLYMERS acts as an R&D service provider and scale-up producer in the field of functional polymers with high specificity (>1000 polymers in catalogue; >500 customers; >50 countries). www.specificpolymers.fr/
  • Tyndall National Institute (Cork, Ireland): Tyndall National Institute is one of Europe’s leading research centres in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) research and development and the largest facility of its type in Ireland. The Institute employs over 460 researchers, engineers and support staff, with a full-time graduate cohort of 135 students. With a network of 200 industry partners and customers worldwide, Tyndall generates around €30M income each year, 85% from competitively won contracts nationally and internationally. Tyndall is a globally leading Institute in its four core research areas of Photonics, Microsystems, Micro/Nanoelectronics and Theory, Modeling and Design. www.tyndall.ie/
  • OT-Morpho (Paris, France): OT-Morpho is a world leader in digital security & identification technologies with the ambition to empower citizens and consumers alike to interact, pay, connect, commute, travel and even vote in ways that are now possible in a connected world. As our physical and digital, civil and commercial lifestyles converge, OT-Morpho stands precisely at that crossroads to leverage the best in security and identity technologies and offer customized solutions to a wide range of international clients from key industries, including Financial services, Telecom, Identity, Security and IoT. With close to €3bn in revenues and more than 14,000 employees, OT-Morpho is the result of the merger between OT (Oberthur Technologies) and Safran Identity & Security (Morpho) completed in 31 May 2017. Temporarily designated by the name “OT-Morpho”, the new company will unveil its new name in September 2017. For more information, visit www.morpho.com and www.oberthur.com

To perpetuate the pace of innovation and progress in microelectronics technology over the past half-century, it will take an enormous village rife with innovators. This week, about 100 of those innovators throughout the broader technology ecosystem, including participants from the military, commercial, and academic sectors, gathered at DARPA headquarters at the kickoff meeting for the Agency’s new CHIPS program, known in long form as the Common Heterogeneous Integration and Intellectual Property (IP) Reuse Strategies program.

Many future microelectronics systems could be assembled with a library of plug-and-play chiplets that combine their respective modular functions with unprecedented versatility.

Many future microelectronics systems could be assembled with a library of plug-and-play chiplets that combine their respective modular functions with unprecedented versatility.

“Now we are moving beyond pretty pictures and mere words, and we are rolling up our sleeves to do the hard work it will take to change the way we think about, design, and build our microelectronic systems,” said Dan Green, the CHIPS program manager. The crux of the program is to develop a new technological framework in which different functionalities and blocks of intellectual property—among them data storage, computation, signal processing, and managing the form and flow of data—can be segregated into small chiplets, which then can be mixed, matched, and combined onto an interposer, somewhat like joining the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Conceivably an entire conventional circuit board with a variety of different but full-sized chips could be shrunk down onto a much smaller interposer hosting a huddle of yet far smaller chiplets.

Central to the design and intention of the program is the creation of a new community of researchers and technologists that mix-and-match mindsets, skillsets, technological strengths, and business interests. That is why the dozen selected prime contractors for the program include large defense companies (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing), large microelectronics companies (Intel, Micron, and Cadence Design Systems), other semiconductor design players (Synopsys, Intrinsix Corp., and Jariet Technologies), and university teams (University of Michigan, Georgia Institute of Technology, and North Carolina State University). What’s more, many of these prime contractors will be working with additional partners who will extend the village of innovators working on the CHIPS program.

“If the CHIPS program is successful, we will gain access to a wider variety of specialized blocks that we will be able to integrate into our systems more easily and with lower costs,” said Green. “This should be a win for both the commercial and defense sectors.”

Among the specific technologies that could emerge from this newly formed research community are compact replacements for entire circuit boards, ultrawideband radio frequency (RF) systems, which require tight integration of fast data converters with powerful processing functions, and, by combining chiplets that provide different accelerator and processor functions, fast-learning systems for teasing out interesting and actionable data from much larger volumes of mundane data. “By bringing the best design capabilities, reconfigurable circuit fabrics, and accelerators from the commercial domain, we should be able to create defense systems just by adding smaller specialized chiplets,” said Bill Chappell, director of DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office.

“The CHIPS program is part of DARPA’s much larger effort, the Electronics Resurgence Initiative, in which we are striving to build an electronics community that mixes the best of the commercial and defense capabilities for national defense,” Chappell said. “The ERI, which will involve roughly $200 million annual investments for the next four years, will nurture research in materials, device designs, and circuit and system architecture. The next round of investments are expected this September as part of the broader initiative.”

BY PETE SINGER, Editor-in-Chief

At a SEMICON West press conference, SEMI released its Mid-year Forecast. Worldwide sales of new semiconductor manufacturing equipment are projected to increase 19.8 percent to total $49.4 billion in 2017, marking the first time that the semiconductor equipment market has exceeded the market high of $47.7 billion set in 2000. In 2018, 7.7 percent growth is expected, resulting in another record-breaking year—totaling $53.2 billion for the global semiconductor equipment market.

“It’s really an exciting time for the industry in the terms of technology, the growth in information and data and that’s all going to require semiconductors to enable that growth,” said Dan Tracy, senior director, IR&S at SEMI.

The average of various analysts forecast the semiconductor industry in general 12% growth for the year. “It’s a very good growth year for the industry,” Tracy said. “In January, the consensus was about 5% growth for the year and with the improvement in the market and the firmer pricing for memory we see an increase in the outlook for the market.”

The SEMI Mid-year Forecast predicts wafer processing equipment is anticipated to increase 21.7 percent in 2017 to total $39.8 billion. The other front-end segment, which consists of fab facilities equipment, wafer manufacturing, and mask/reticle equipment, will increase 25.6 percent to total $2.3 billion. The assembly and packaging equipment segment is projected to grow by 12.8 percent to $3.4 billion in 2017 while semiconductor test equipment is forecast to increase by 6.4 percent, to a total of $3.9 billion this year.

“Based on the May outlook, we are looking at a record year in terms of tracking equipment spending. This is for new equipment, used equipment, and spending related to the facility that installed the equipment. It will be about a $49 billion market this year. Next year, it’s going to grow to $54 billion, so we have two years in a row of back to back record spending,” Tracy said.

In 2017, South Korea will be the largest equipment market for the first time. After maintaining the top spot for five years, Taiwan will place second, while China will come in third. All regions tracked will experience growth, with the exception of Rest of World (primarily Southeast Asia). South Korea will lead in growth with 68.7 percent, followed by Europe at 58.6 percent, and North America at 16.3 percent.

SEMI forecasts that in 2018, equipment sales in China will climb the most, 61.4 percent, to a total of $11.0 billion, following 5.9 percent growth in 2017. In 2018, South Korea, Taiwan, and China are forecast to remain the top three markets, with South Korea maintaining the top spot to total $13.4 billion. China is forecasted to become the second largest market at $11.0 billion, while equipment sales to Taiwan are expected to reach $10.9 billion.