Category Archives: MEMS

Nanoelectronics research center imec, Holst Centre (set up by imec and TNO) and micro-electronic design house Barco Silex, belonging to the Barco group, today announced that they will collaborate to implement data security into sensors for wearable devices and Internet of Things (IoT) sensor networks. The organizations are coming together to bring data security for the IoT to the next level.

Smart wearables for lifestyle and health monitoring as well as many other personal IoT applications are evolving with a plethora of capabilities at a rapid pace. However, trust is key for a broad adoption and the implementation of a true intuitive IoT society -with sensors invisibly embedded everywhere in the environment, measuring all kind of parameters and making smart decisions- to support everyday life. The smart society can only become a reality when the sensor technology is trusted by their users and the privacy of the users’ data is guaranteed at all time. Data security for the IoT is therefore considered as one of the main challenges to solve.

Current security solutions for IoT are designed for communication within one application domain or network. To realize a higher level of security, novel concepts for authentication, onboarding and end-to-end security in heterogeneous IoT networks are needed. Imec, Holst Centre and Barco Silex’ collaboration aims to leverage the technology and design expertise of imec and Holst Centre with the security IP portfolio of Barco Silex to develop novel chip architectures for secure ultra-low power sensors, and novel security concepts for reliable heterogeneous networks. Barco Silex will deliver the needed embedded security solution including crypto IP blocks to be implemented into imec’s multisensor IC for wearables and imec’s demonstrator platform for IoT. Imec will develop novel compute and memory architectures for minimal overhead of the secure implementation on the overall cost and power consumption of the sensors. In a next step, imec will study the impact of secure communication on throughput, response time and other performance aspects of heterogeneous IoT networks.

“This collaboration is part of a roadmap on a secure and intuitve IoT. Close collaborations with security experts like Barco Silex, but also with excellent research groups from KULeuven and iMinds will offer the imec ecosystem to develop novel and complete solutions for secure wearables and heterogeneous IoT networks. The program is open for new companies to join us on this exciting journey!” stated Kathleen Philips, program director  perceptive systems for an Intuitive IoT at imec.

“We are very pleased to be part of imec’s ambitious R&D program on intuitive IoT.” said Thierry Watteyne, CEO of Barco Silex. “This exciting collaboration is the recognition of the quality and flexibility of our security solutions. In addition it will help our developers to push our embedded security platforms solutions to the next level, especially in terms of optimizing the low power-high security equation within the chip architecture.”

Global unit shipments of smart city devices, which are internet-connected devices used in smart city projects, will increase from 115.4 million in 2015 to 1.2 billion in 2025. Although in 2015 North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific each received approximately one-third of unit shipments, the Asia-Pacific region will receive over half of all device shipments by 2025, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical information and insight.

“Unit shipments of smart city devices to Asia Pacific will increase more than shipments to other regions for two main reasons,” said Roz Euan-Smith, senior analyst, smart cities, for IHS Technology. “First, the region’s large population is increasingly moving to cities, which are straining under the increased pressure and demand for resources, creating a clear need for smart city development. Second, several national governments in the region have announced smart city development initiatives that focus on full-city development, not just trials, including India’s 100 Smart Cities program, Singapore’s Smart Nation program, and other initiatives in China and Japan.”

After countries in Asia-Pacific, the United States represents the largest potential market for smart city technology, because of the number of cities and metropolitan areas in the country, according to the recent IHS Smart Cities Devices Report. In September 2015, the White House announced a new smart cities initiative that will invest more than $160 million in federal research funds to bolster the U.S. smart cities market.

Source: IHS, Inc.

A breakthrough by an Australian collaboration of researchers could make infra-red technology easy-to-use and cheap, potentially saving millions of dollars in defence and other areas using sensing devices, and boosting applications of technology to a host of new areas, such as agriculture.

When light falls on a very thin, uniform layer almost all of it is reflected (right-hand arrows). By etching thin grooves in the film, the light is directed sideways and almost all of it is absorbed (left-hand arrows) even though the amount of material is very small. Insets show electron micrographs of the structuring. The absorbing layer is only 0.041 μm thick. Credit: Dr Thomas P. White, Australian National University.

When light falls on a very thin, uniform layer almost all of it is reflected (right-hand arrows). By etching thin grooves in the film, the light is directed sideways and almost all of it is absorbed (left-hand arrows) even though the amount of material is very small. Insets show electron micrographs of the structuring. The absorbing layer is only 0.041 μm thick. Credit: Dr Thomas P. White, Australian National University.

Infra-red devices are used for improved vision through fog and for night vision and for observations not possible with visible light; high-quality detectors cost approximately $100,000 (including the device at the University of Sydney) some require cooling to -200°C.

Now, research spearheaded by researchers at the University of Sydney has demonstrated a dramatic increase in the absorption efficiency of light in a layer of semiconductor that is only a few hundred atoms thick – to almost 99 percent light absorption from the current inefficient 7.7 percent.

The findings will be published overnight in the high-impact journal Optica.

Co-author from the University of Sydney’s School of Physics, Professor Martijn de Sterke, said the team discovered perfect thin film light absorbers could be created simply by etching grooves into them.

“Conventional absorbers add bulk and cost to the infrared detector as well as the need for continuous power to keep the temperature down. The ultrathin absorbers can reduce these drawbacks,” Professor de Sterke said.

“By etching thin grooves in the film, the light is directed sideways and almost all of it is absorbed, despite the small amount of material – the absorbing layer is less than 1/2000th the thickness of a human hair,” he said.

Co-lead author Dr Björn Sturmberg, who carried out the research as a PhD student at the University of Sydney with the support of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, said the findings did not rely upon a particular material but could be applied to many naturally occurring weak absorbers.

“There are many applications that could greatly benefit from perfectly absorbing ultra-thin films, ranging from defence and autonomous farming robots to medical tools and consumer electronics,” Dr Sturmberg said.

The Director of Australia’s National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) and co-author, of the paper, Professor Lindsay Botten, said the structures were much simpler to design and fabricate than using existing thin film light absorbers, which required either complex nanostructures, meta-materials and exotic materials or difficult-to-create combinations of metals and non-metals.

“There are major efficiency and sensitivity gains to be obtained from making photo-detectors with less material,” he said.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.59 billion in orders worldwide in April 2016 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10, according to the April Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.  A book-to-bill of 1.10 means that $110 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

SEMI reports that the three-month average of worldwide bookings in April 2016 was $1.59 billion. The bookings figure is 15.6 percent higher than the final March 2016 level of $1.38 billion, and is 1.3 percent higher than the April 2015 order level of $1.57 billion.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in April 2016 was $1.46 billion. The billings figure is 21.5 percent higher than the final March 2016 level of $1.20 billion, and is 4.0 percent lower than the April 2015 billings level of $1.52 billion.

“Bookings reached their highest levels in eight months and billings levels also significantly improved in April,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI. “The data reflect strong investments in 3D NAND and in China.”

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

  Billings
(3-mo. avg)		 Bookings
(3-mo. avg)		 Book-to-Bill
November 2015 $1,288.3 $1,236.6 0.96
December 2015 $1,349.9

 

 $1,343.5 1.00
January 2016 $1,221.2 $1,310.9 1.07
February 2016 $1,204.4 $1,262.0 1.05
March 2016 (final) $1,197.6 $1,379.2 1.15
April 2016 (prelim) $1,455.0 $1,594.6 1.10

Source: SEMI (www.semi.org), May 2016

The nanoelectronics research centers imec and Holst Centre (set up by imec and TNO), presented a low-power wide-area (LPWA) multi-standard radio chip today at imec’s annual technology forum in Brussels (ITF Brussels 2016). The new radio chip is a best-in-class product, which can operate with a lower level of power consumption than any other radio chip technology released to date for long range connectivity in sensor networks. The sub-GHz radio chip’s technology can serve a multitude of protocols including IEEE 802.15.4g/k, W-MBUS, KNX-RF, as well as the popular LoRa and SIGFOX networks, and future cellular IoT for applications such as smart metering, smart home, smart city and critical infrastructure monitoring.

The radio chip operates in industrial, scientific, medical (ISM) and short-range devices (SRD) bands, covering a frequency range from 780MHz to 930MHz. The robust, low-power design combines a large link budget, with state-of-the-art interference rejection and lowest bill of materials by minimizing external components as compared to of-the-shelf available chips. The radio is implemented as a complete System-on-Chip (SoC) including the RF front end, power management, an ARM processor,160kBytes of SRAM and peripherals like SPI, I2C and UART. It features a targeted sensitivity of -120dBm at 0.1% BER (1kbps) and ultra-low power consumption of 8mW (Rx) and 113mW (Tx) for 13.5dBm output power. The receiver supports a wide gain range to handle input signals from -120dBm to -15dBm, corresponding to a large dynamic range of 105dB. The PA features automatic ramp-up and ramp-down for ARIB spectral mask compliancy. Furthermore, the output power is controllable from <-40dBm up to 15dBm.

“With the foreseen release of the NB-IoT protocol in June 2016 by the 3GPP, it is clear that protocols such as NB-IoT, SigFox and LoRA are here to stay for the coming years,” stated Kathleen Philips, program director perceptive systems at imec/Holst Centre. “Our novel sub-GHz radio chip can serve multiple of these protocols and is an ideal solution for long-range wireless connectivity  for IoT applications.”

Imec’s Industrial Affiliation program on the Intuitive Internet-of-Things (IoT) focuses on developing the building blocks for the future. The program explores an intuitive IoT, with sensor systems that can detect and assist with the needs and wants of people in an unobtrusive way, and can take into account their varied perspectives and surrounding environment. Along with low-power radio chips, imec also develops ultra-small, low-cost, intelligent, and ultra–low power sensors and heterogeneous sensor networks. Interested companies are invited to partner with imec on its varied research initiatives. Companies can also connect with imec to request access to imec’s technological advances to further develop their projects through licensing programs with imec.

Fujitsu Limited today announced that it has with Intel Corporation carried out a field trial to visualize manufacturing processes at Shimane Fujitsu Limited, which primarily manufactures notebook PCs. The field trial linked the FUJITSU Cloud Service IoT Platform with the Intel IoT Gateway. As a result of this trial, the companies were able to rationalize functionality testing and repair processes on Shimane Fujitsu’s manufacturing line, and in line with this, cut additional shipping costs that resulted from delays by 30%. The trial was a part of the IoT collaboration with Intel, launched in May 2015.

Going forward, Fujitsu will further strengthen its collaboration with Intel in the IoT field, creating new solutions and making them available to customers.

In May 2015, Fujitsu and Intel reached an agreement to collaborate in building a more optimal systems environment by combining Fujitsu’s cutting-edge technology with the Intel IoT Gateway, a blueprint for interoperable IoT solutions, with the aim of providing high-value IoT solutions. As a field trial of this collaboration, since May 2015 the companies have been working to improve manufacturing process efficiency through factory visualization at Shimane Fujitsu.

At Shimane Fujitsu, when products are detected to have faults in the functionality testing performed on the manufacturing line, they are sent to the repair area to receive a thorough diagnosis, analysis, and repair of the fault before being shipped, but there are sometimes cases in which the fault cannot be reproduced in the repair process. In these situations, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the work done by the worker involved in the functionality testing process who detected the fault, the tools used, and the status of the product being tested, in order to make clear the reason for the fault detection. Because real-time visualization of the task status of the functionality testing process was previously insufficient, however, it was impossible to identify the cause or implement policies to prevent reoccurrence, resulting in an excess of products being repaired.

In addition, in the repair process, information, such as the location of the product to be repaired in the repair line, whether or not it was held up, and each product’s shipping deadline information, was not made visible in real time. This meant that it was not possible to separate out products that should be prioritized, causing them to miss planned shipping deadlines, often resulting in costs for arranging additional shipping trucks.

To visualize the functionality testing process, using Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.’s image-processing technology that raises the recognition ratio for text in images, along with a framework that shortens the development of applications that use the technology, worker task status is recorded on video, along with the error code (a code that displays the content of the fault) displayed on the screen of the product to be repaired. This video is aggregated through the Intel IoT Gateway, for process visualization, by performing analytical image processing. As a result, in addition to improving the efficiency of error code aggregation, it is now possible to find trends in detected faults, and to efficiently analyze the circumstances when a fault was detected. By using the results of this analysis to limit misdetection of faults, Fujitsu will be able to reduce excess product repairs.

Next, for real-time visualization of the repair process, a beacon sensor is attached to each product needing repair that is sent to the repair line, which enables all line workers to grasp each product’s location in the process, how long it has been there, and its shipping deadline. As a result, all employees can quickly understand the state of the entire process, leading them to independently prioritize the repair of products that have close shipping deadlines, or to help out in processes that are causing delays. This has reduced the number of additional shipping trucks required due to delays, leading to a 30% cut in shipping costs.

Fujitsu and Intel will use the experience gained at Shimane Fujitsu to establish IoT solutions for deployment to manufacturing customers. In addition, they will further accelerate the collaboration involving Fujitsu’s IoT Platform and the Intel IoT Gateway by expanding IoT solutions to other fields, beginning with retail and the public sector.

Moving to enable makers to make even more than before, STMicroelectronics and Arduino today announced an agreement that brings the STM32 family of microcontrollers (MCU), along with ST’s full portfolio of sensing, power, and connectivity technology, even closer to the Arduino maker community. The first product of the STAR (ST and Arduino) program, the STM32F469-based STAR Otto baseboard, will be demonstrated at the Bay Area Maker Faire, May 20-22, 2016. Now, IoT developers and other makers can build high-performance graphics into their smart devices using accessible hardware and software to improve their applications with easy-to-use touch displays and audio for command and control as well as for media-streaming use cases.

STAR Otto presents to the Arduino environment exceptional performance from the 32-bit STM32F469 MCU, which includes ST’s Chrom-ART graphics accelerator and MIPI DSI display interface along with an open-source software graphics library. Moreover STAR Otto uniquely provides a pre-integrated wireless link and audio capabilities, enabled by an ST MEMS microphone together with the necessary open-source drivers. This efficient and optimized approach lets makers focus on their value-add and makes integration a breeze while enabling a broad range of Smart Home and Smart Industry applications.

In addition to the STAR Otto microcontroller baseboard, the cooperation aims to deliver a range of Arduino shields that expand the functional possibilities. DSI-display and NFC-reader shields are planned for Q2 2016 and a Sensor shield is scheduled to be available in H2 2016. Moreover, several STM32 Nucleo expansion boards and software libraries, including those for environmental sensors and proximity detection, have already been ported to the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and can seamlessly be used with the new STAR Otto baseboard.

“By adding ST’s broad family of STM32 ARM Cortex-M-based microcontrollers to the Arduino universe along with a broad array of ST sensors and other components, makers will have at their fingertips the ability to design, build, and manufacture just about anything,” said Daniel Colonna, Marketing Director, Microcontroller Division, STMicroelectronics. “Because of the tremendous enthusiasm within the maker community for Smart Home and Smart Industry applications, we’re supporting those development efforts with our audio- and graphics-friendly STM32F469 MCU and other exciting products from ST broad portfolio.”

“Arduino has grown by encouraging kids – from 10 to 100 years old – to learn electronics and programming to make projects by building on the learnings of others and now we’re excited to add the STM32 family into the Maker community, to broaden learning with new features such as audio input/output and touchscreen display control,” said Federico Musto, CEO & President of Arduino S.r.L. “We fully expect commercial IoT companies to also use these new features to easily design new smart home devices and applications, or improve products that drive industrial automation and control.”

The CEA (Atomic Energy Commission) and Intel are boosting their collaboration through a new R & D agreement signed in Paris on Thursday 12 May. This collaboration, extended to several key areas in digital technology, will enable the two sides to develop a shared R&D program and jointly submit research and innovation projects on a European scale, particularly as regards High Performance Computing (HPC), as part of the Horizon 2020 programme.

The new CEA-Intel agreement involves several strategic research programmes with the teams of the CEA’s Leti Institute in Grenoble, including the Internet of Things, high-speed wireless communication, security technologies and 3D displays. It also means that the two companies will work together to jointly submit projects to Europe’s biggest innovation and research programme, Horizon 2020.

This agreement, concluded for a minimum of five years, concerns the current development of digital technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT), including:

  • The development of new materials in order to further the miniaturisation and adaptability of electronic components used in mobile phones. The nature of these components and their layout are crucially important to the system’s performance, size and cost.
  • The development of wireless communication systems and faster exchanges,
  • The integration of connected objects and the study of low-consumption communication technologies.

After the signature of the agreement in Paris, the director of the CEA’s Leti Institute, Marie-Noelle Semeria, said, “The CEA and Intel have a long history of shared technological development in high-performance computing. This collaboration marks the recognition of the CEA-Leti as one of Europe’s most innovative players in the IoT and the basic technologies of Cloud computing and Big Data. It also increases the attractiveness of the Grenoble Valley in terms of microelectronics.”

According to vice president of the Data Center Group and general manager of the Enterprise and HPC Platform Group Raj Hazra, said, “This announcement expands upon our long standing high performance computing relationship with CEA to drive leading edge innovation in IoT, wireless, and security in the European community.  We look forward to the important innovations and discoveries to come from this collaboration.”

By Jonathan Davis, global VP, Industry Advocacy, SEMI

The 27th annual SEMI Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC 2016), opened today (May 17) in Saratoga Springs, New York.  A record-setting 340-plus conference attendees joined this year’s event which focuses on key issues and trends in the manufacture of semiconductors.

Don O’Toole, IBM

Opening keynoter Don O’Toole of IBM’s Watson IoT Alliances & Ecosystem Business Development group highlighted the economic implications of the emerging Internet of Things and discussed how cognitive IoT is driving new business models.  He pointed to significant macroeconomic impacts as well as disruption and necessary change at the micro/strategic level within all enterprises.

In his talk on the “Economics of Things” he said that high-tech firms are challenged to continuously transform their business models and partner ecosystems to keep pace with the quickly evolving nature of business technology. Across industries, companies are turning their focus from traditional business equipment to a new generation of devices that will transform not just the electronics industry but many others.

O’Toole said that companies are moving beyond merely selling connected, intelligent products and services to using cognitive IoT to deliver greatly enhanced customer experiences over the life of their products. He described fundamental change or “liquidification” in the markets for physical goods.

Just as the internet created liquid markets with the digitization of music, news, maps, weather and traffic, the Internet of Things will eliminate physical constraints, structure information and create liquid markets in real estate, manufacturing, agriculture, retail and transportation. A radical repricing of credit and risk will improve financing and reduce “moral hazard,” which, in economic terms, is an information asymmetry that influences risk-taking to leverage lack of transparency.

The primary vectors of IoT to produce both opportunity and disruption will be the creation of new asset marketplaces, improved risk management and greater efficiency.  Fuller visibility and predictability will change market analysis and decision making with significant economic impact.  This characteristic will be apparent in widely varied industries including two that O’Toole profiled as examples: agriculture and real estate.

U.S. commercial real estate is a highly inefficient market in which lack of information transparency and predictability constrains utilization.  O’Toole said there is 12 billion square feet of commercial office space, however, only 67 percent is utilized.  IoT solutions that include sensor technology and user analytics potentially shift profit pools (as some actors benefit from the lack of information transparency), but can produce a $128 billion net economic benefit due to price efficiency and the elimination of shadow markets.

Similarly, agriculture faces high degrees of variability.  Despite significant scientific advancements, crop yields can fluctuate 39% between years, lending the moniker of “legalized gambling” to the farming industry. Employing IoT technologies that leverage sensors, monitoring, drones, cloud-based information systems and data analytics will reduce uncertainties, improve decision making and lead to better deployment of capital assets.  O’Toole estimates that this will produce a 6% decline in farm prices and raise GPD 2%. He cited California wine-maker E.J. Gallo’s ability to decrease water use by 20% as an example of the beneficial impact of cognitive IoT technologies.

While the economic benefits will accrue to multiple industries, high tech and electronics are to be among the greatest beneficiaries of the application of cognitive IoT functions in manufacturing. New ecosystems of customers and partners will develop.  Design and development will necessisarily change to be more agile, with faster prototyping and shorter product lifecycles.  O’Toole sees new value creation with machine-learned cognitive capabilities and natural language interfaces.

O’Toole expects to see far more information sharing between industries. He said that the permutations of ecosystems and industries that devices have to support are making interoperability the biggest challenge in the Internet of Things.

To win in the cognitive IoT era, O’Toole says companies must focus on experience. He offered the following advice:

·         Move from discrete, fixed engineering to continuous engineering

·         Future-proof designs with software-driven feature updates

·         Consider higher value business models that can shift capital expenses to operating expenses

·         Lead product development teams to use design thinking to better understand end-user personas

·         Build stronger relationships with end users by applying cognitive learning technologies to improve product services and experiences.

Other ASMC opening day sessions include contamination free manufacturing, advanced metrology, defect inspection, factory optimization, as well as 37 poster sessions on critical technological topics from representatives from global IC makers, equipment companies and materials providers.

TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry, today announced volume production of a new RF technology capable of integrating a wireless front-end module (FEM) on a single chip, tailored to meet the challenges of Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Analysts estimate that the number of IoT connected devices will grow at a 15-20% growth rate annually, reaching up to 30 billion units by 2020. McKinsey Global Institute recently estimated that IoT could generate up to $11 trillion in global value by 2025.

The TowerJazz process enables integration of power amplifiers, switches, and low noise amplifiers as well as CMOS digital and power control on a single die. TowerJazz is delivering this product today for smartphones, tablets and wearables, and this technology also meets the more universal requirements of IoT applications by providing cost, power, performance, and form factor benefits vs. competing solutions.

As an example, TowerJazz has partnered with Skyworks Solutions, Inc., an innovator of high performance analog semiconductors connecting people, places and things, to deliver a first of its kind integrated wireless FEM using this technology.

“We are pleased that our long partnership with TowerJazz on SiGe BiCMOS for PA based products is now in volume production for key customers of Skyworks Solutions,” said Bill Vaillancourt, GM/VP Skyworks Connectivity Solutions.

TowerJazz’s new RF technology includes a 0.18um SiGe PA device with best in class silicon-based performance, a low Ron-Coff switch device, a SiGe low noise amplifier device, 5V CMOS for power control, 0.18um CMOS for integrating MIPI or other digital content as well as thick Cu metal layers for low-loss inductors and matching components. By offering all active components typically required for a wireless FEM, this technology enables a new family of products that can integrate multiple communication standards (WiFi, Bluetooth, 802.15.4 or NFC) that form the backbone of the IoT fabric today onto the same chip.

“This new technology complements our existing suite of SiGe PA and RF SOI switch technology offerings and provides customers new architectural options by enabling the combination of these elements on a single die while offering best in class silicon-based PA performance,” said Marco Racanelli, Sr. VP and GM of RF/High Performance Analog and US Aerospace & Defense Business Groups, and Newport Beach Site Manager, TowerJazz.

TowerJazz will exhibit and demonstrate its advanced process technologies for specialty IC manufacturing in booth #1532 at IMS2016, the premier conference in the RF and microwave industry. Please visit the company website for more information on TowerJazz’s RF and high performance analog technology offerings.