Category Archives: Advanced Packaging

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) recently joined the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a partner in an ongoing NSF project to further develop compact models of emerging nanoelectronic devices such as might be used in next-generation consumer electronics.

The project focuses on nano-engineered electronic device simulation (NEEDS). NEEDS is a node of a larger National Nanotechnology Initiative project called the Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN). NCN offers researchers tools to explore nanoscale phenomena through theory, modeling and simulation, while also developing enhancements to science and engineering education.

The existing $3.5 million award from NSF, now bolstered by joint support from NSF and SRC of $2.5 million, supports a five-year program that is the largest of its kind dedicated to realizing the promise of nanoscience in innovative circuits and systems applications

By enabling the simulation of circuits and systems, compact models connect nanomaterials and devices to potential circuit applications that are simulated with SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis). NEEDS is charged with creating a complete compact model development environment (NEEDS-SPICE) that supports the creation of high-quality models and provides industrial and academic designers with robust models that run in both commercial and open source SPICE-compatible simulation platforms.

NEEDS will support this platform with a set of best practices and processes and a suite of research and educational resources. During the course of this work, NEEDS will produce an open source platform, open source compact models and open content educational resources, which will be available on nanoHUB.org.

“Moving from devices to systems is the next phase of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, and compact models are the critical link between the two,” said Lynn Preston, NCN program team leader at NSF. “Supported by NSF since its inception in 2002, the nanoHUB has become the flagship science and engineering gateway for nanotechnology. It provides the ideal platform for disseminating the work of the NEEDS Node and for engaging a global community in developing compact models for nanodevices and systems.”

“Predictive compact models are vital for circuit designers to explore their novel ideas to take full advantage of these emerging nano-enabled devices and systems, and an organized effort like the NEEDS initiative is both timely and essential,” said Kwok Ng, Senior Director of Device Sciences at SRC.

Led by Purdue University Engineering Professor Mark Lundstrom, this NSF/SRC partnership expands the NSF base support to the core NEEDS team at Purdue, MIT and the University of California, Berkeley and adds faculty from Stanford University to the team. Additionally, the NEEDS team will interact with SRC Global Research Collaboration industry representatives in the device, circuits/systems and CAD areas.

The NEEDS Node was initiated in September 2012 and the NSF/SRC partnership in support of the expanded Node officially begins work today. NEEDS anticipates delivering initial results in December.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, its budget was $7.0 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 50,000 competitive requests for funding and makes about 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $593 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

Scientists from IBM today unveiled the world’s smallest movie, made with one of the tiniest elements in the universe: atoms. Named "A Boy and His Atom," the Guinness World Records -verified movie used thousands of precisely placed atoms to create nearly 250 frames of stop-motion action.

world's smallest movie

"A Boy and His Atom" depicts a character named Atom who befriends a single atom and goes on a playful journey that includes dancing, playing catch and bouncing on a trampoline. Set to a playful musical track, the movie represents a unique way to convey science outside the research community.

Today, it takes roughly one million atoms to store a single bit of data on a computer or electronic device. A bit is the basic unit of information in computing that can have only one of two values, one or zero. Eight bits form a byte. In 2012, IBM Research announced it can now store that same bit of information in just 12 atoms with the creation of the world’s smallest magnetic memory bit. The movie starts with 12 atoms to celebrate the breakthrough by IBM scientists of successfully using 12 atoms to store one bit of data — in our current technology, it takes 1,000,000 atoms to store one bit of data. This breakthrough could transform computing by providing the world with devices that have access to unprecedented levels of data storage, potentially making our computers and devices smaller and more powerful.

But even nanophysicists need to have a little fun. In that spirit, the scientists moved atoms by using their scanning tunneling microscope to make their movie. The ability to move single atoms, one of the smallest particles of any element in the universe, is crucial to IBM’s research in the field of atomic-scale memory.

For now, the 12-atom bit memory lives in a lab. How to make such small bits commercially viable is the big question in the field of nanotechnology. This technology is probably 10 to 30 years in the future, IBM officials say.

The world’s smallest movie set

The scanning tunneling microscope (STM):
One way to look at the STM is as a needle that drags atoms across a surface using magnetism. But behind that needle is a room full of equipment, all there to control the environment to a spectacular degree. The development of the STM by IBM researchers Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986.

Copper plate:
The scientists used copper 111 as the surface of the animation — the same material they used 10 years ago when they built the first computer that performed digital computation operations.

Carbon monoxide (CO):
The scientists chose carbon monoxide atoms to move around the plate. Carbon monoxide has one carbon atom and one oxygen atom, stacked on top of each other,

Viewers may notice little ripples around the atoms as they watch the movie. Those waves are a disturbance in the electron density in the copper atoms on a copper plate. When a carbon monoxide molecule comes close to the plate, the electrons in the copper atoms are displaced. Because they can’t escape the surface of the copper, they protrude (similar to the way water ripples — but doesn’t break the surface — when you throw a rock into a lake). The scientists used copper because that element, in combination with carbon monoxide, produced the most stable atoms for moving.

Once again demonstrating Apple’s power to ordain winners in the electronics supply chain, the top suppliers last year of microelectromechanical systems microphones were those that provided devices for iPhones and iPads.

Suppliers that had significant sales to Apple occupied the Top 4 MEMS microphone ranks in 2012, according to an IHS iSuppli MEMS and Sensors Special Report from information and analytics provider IHS. These companies were No. 1 Knowles Electronics from Illinois, AAC of China in second place, Massachusetts-based Analog Devices in the third spot, and Goertek of China in fourth. Together the Top 4 players last year commanded combined revenue of $513 million, equivalent to 88 percent of total MEMS microphone industry revenue of $583 million, as shown in the table below.

top MEMS microphone suppliers

 Apple gets on the mic

“Microphones continue to be one of the best success stories in MEMS, with mobile device manufacturers adding increasing numbers of these devices to their phones to support advanced features, such as voice command and noise suppression,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS and sensors at IHS. “Multiple microphones now are being adopted in smartphones to cancel ambient sounds—crucial for handsets when carrying out voice command systems, such as Apple’s Siri. Apple has led the way in the adoption of MEMS microphone technology and has steadily added the number of devices used in each of its mobile products, compelling competitors to follow suit.”

While midrange to high-end smartphones mostly used two microphones in 2010 and 2011, three microphones are fast becoming standard ever since Apple introduced a third device on the back of the iPhone 5 for high-definition video recording, Bouchaud noted.

Noise suppression and voice commands also are seeing increased adoption in tablets and Ultrabooks, resulting in the use of multiple microphones as ultrasonic transducers for hand-gesture commands.

Aside from handsets, MEMS microphones are used in other important applications such as headsets, gaming, cameras, televisions and hearing aids.

The top suppliers, in a nutshell

Knowles continued to dominate the MEMS microphone sphere, outflanking all other suppliers with revenue last year of $291 million—practically half of the industry total. But while it has the most comprehensive product portfolio and ships to virtually every original equipment manufacturer, Knowles has seen its MEMS microphone market share tumble by 16 percentage points from 2011 to 2012 because of erosion in its business with Apple. Knowles is still the first supplier for the iPad mini, but has slipped to second place behind AAC in providing MEMS microphones for the iPhone.

Knowles, however, has exerted efforts to remain competitive, reducing the size of its MEMS die and most likely migrating soon to larger wafer sizes from 6 to 8 inches as it engages with new foundry partners.

No. 2 and No. 4 AAC and Goertek share similar profiles, both being Chinese electret condenser microphone (ECM) suppliers that now rely almost exclusively on MEMS die technology from Germany’s Infineon Technologies. AAC is the top source for the iPhone and iPad 3 with revenue last year of $98 million, while Goertek is No. 1 for iPhone headsets with $46 million in revenue. Apple was the biggest client in both cases, supplying more than 40 percent of MEMS microphone revenue in 2012 for each company.

Third-ranked Analog Devices basked in revenue of approximately $78 million, thanks to its role as lone supplier of the third microphone for the iPhone 5 and the iPad. The company focuses on high-performance parts and sells at significantly higher prices than other suppliers, accounting for its third-place finish overall.

Infineon’s strategy

Also in a notable development, Infineon has hit upon a successful formula for operating in the market. The German manufacturer focuses only on silicon, developing and then selling MEMS microphone dies as well as application-specific integrated circuits to traditional ECM companies, which then package the chips into MEMS microphones that are sold afterward under their individual brands. Infineon’s customers include AAC and Goertek, as well as two other Top 12 MEMS microphone suppliers—sixth-ranked Hosiden of Japan; and No. 7 BSE of South Korea.

STMicroelectronics on the rise

Rounding out the Top 5 and becoming a serious challenger last year to the incumbents was French-Italian manufacturer STMicroelectronics, which sold 60 million MEMS microphone units in 2012, up from zero in 2010.

Unlike AAC and Goertek that buy their MEMS dies from Infineon, STM sources from Omron Electronics in Japan and also relies on its own application-specific integrated circuit, producing innovatively assembled MEMS microphones that enable a high signal-to-noise ratio. Nokia is STM’s top customer, but STM also supplies product to HTC, Amazon’s Kindle tablet as well as laptops from HP, Dell, Lenovo and Asus.

The other ranking suppliers in the Top 12 provided MEMS microphones for a range of other electronic devices made by companies besides Apple. Hosiden supplied to Nintendo handheld game players and Sony handsets; BSE provided for Samsung and LG smartphones; Germany’s Bosch played mostly in the laptop segment for HP and Dell; and Scotland-based Wolfson Microelectronics broke through at the end of last year by supplying to the Microsoft Surface tablet.

New kids on the MEMS block

The newcomers to watch included a clutch of Chinese companies. Among them were startups NeoMEMS and MEMSensing, as well as ECM manufacturers Gettop, XingGang and Kingstate. Other new entrants of note besides the Chinese included TDK-EPC from Germany, Solid State Systems from Taiwan, and Tokyo-based New Japan Radio.

Panasonic of Japan shipped MEMS microphones in 2007 for a limited time like fellow Japanese maker Yamaha, but then exited the market due to high costs. While the company had planned to return in 2011 with new product offerings, IHS believes that Panasonic has given up altogether on the MEMS microphone market.

What would happen if half of all global production for dynamic random access memory (DRAM), two-thirds of NAND flash manufacturing and 70 percent of the world’s tablet display supply suddenly disappeared from the market?

The answer would be chaos, with the worldwide electronics supply chain grinding to a halt and stopping major market product segments in their tracks, including smartphones, media tablets and PCs.

For high-tech companies, this could be the outcome if current tensions escalate to the point of war on the Korean peninsula, resulting in the disruption of South Korea’s technology manufacturing base. While IHS regards such a major conflagration and disruption as unlikely, forward-thinking technology firms are planning for such a contingency, just as they are preparing for other natural and man-made disasters that could impact their businesses in the future.

“However, South Korea now plays a more important role than ever in the global electronics business. And with the supply chain having become more entwined and connected, a significant disruption in any region will impact the entire world. Because of this, it is important for companies to understand the magnitude of South Korea’s role in the global electronics market—and to prepare for any contingencies,” said Mike Howard, senior principal analyst for DRAM and memory at IHS.

Leading technology firms Samsung and SK Hynix are headquartered close to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, which lies only about 30 miles from the border with North Korea. Both companies have major manufacturing operations in the area as well.

“Any type of manufacturing disruption of six months would prevent the shipment of hundreds of millions of mobile phones and tens of millions of PCs and media tablets,” Howard warned.

Memory loss

Fully 66 percent of industry revenue for the dynamic random access memory (DRAM) market, as well as 48 percent of total NAND flash revenue, belonged in 2012 to the two South Korean memory titans Samsung and SK Hynix. While their combined share of both in the NAND market has remained fairly level for the last three years, the collective portion in DRAM of the two entities has been steadily rising.

Such a high proportion of global production could not be easily or quickly replaced by manufacturers in other regions.

The Icheon facility of SK Hynix is located approximately 30 miles southwest of Seoul, while Samsung’s massive manufacturing complex at Hwaseong is within 24 miles of the capital.

DRAM plays an essential role in products including PCs, media tablets and smartphones.

While some gadgets could have their amount of memory reduced—a smartphone with 32 gigabytes (GB) of NAND could be downsized to 8GB, or an 8GB laptop reduced to 4GB—other devices must have the memory for which they were originally designed, especially where DRAM is involved.

“A server with only half its intended DRAM is essentially half a server—and a smartphone cannot have its DRAM quantity changed, as it needs the original amount for which it was designed,” Howard noted.

Display disaster

An equally bad situation could occur in the large-sized display market, which is heavily dependent on South Korean suppliers, especially in the media tablet market.

LG Display and Samsung Display of South Korea together held a 49.6 percent share of unit shipments of large-sized liquid crystal display (LCD) panels in the fourth quarter of 2012. Large-sized panels are defined as those that are 10-inches or larger in the diagonal dimension and are used in products including televisions, notebook PCs and desktop monitors. Also included in the category are and 7-inch and larger displays used in media tablets.

South Korea accounts for 70 percent of global supply of tablet display unit shipments, as presented in the figure attached.

“Inventory and production capacity for media tablet displays currently are at a high level,” said Sweta Dash, senior director, display research & strategy, for IHS. “Because of this, a short-term disruption of South Korean production would have a minimal impact. However, a long-term stoppage or reduction of production would have a major effect and dramatically reduce global tablet supply.”

Media Tablet Display Production by Country in Q4 2012

(Share of Global Unit Shipments

global tablet display makers

Phone hangup

Samsung at present is the global leader in smartphones as well as in total handsets, while fellow South Korean manufacturer LG Electronics ranks No. 6 in both categories. Together, the two companies account for more than a 30 percent market share for cellphones and smartphones.

IMT, the largest pure-play MEMS foundry in the US, announced today the appointment of MEMS industry pioneer and technology visionary Dr. Kurt Petersen to the IMT board of directors. Dr. Petersen is recognized as an expert and a voice of the MEMS industry having created fundamental MEMS technology from inception. He has co-founded six successful MEMS companies and acted as a consultant to more than 50 MEMS enterprises.

"MEMS are transitioning from primarily highly specialized applications to the mainstream, increasing production from millions of devices to billions of devices, a shift that is as significant as the development of wireless was to phones," said Dr. Petersen. "The industry needs strong wafer foundries to support this immense growth, and IMT has a solid track record of tackling the most challenging MEMS development projects with technical excellence and innovation, while also delivering devices in volume."

Dr. Petersen has significantly influenced the flourishing MEMS industry. With more than 30 years of expertise, Petersen co-founded Verreon, acquired by Qualcomm; SiTime, a successful MEMS producer; Cepheid, now public with a market cap over $2.5B; and NovaSensor, now owned by General Electric. Serving in a variety of roles at those companies from CTO to president and CEO, Petersen’s work has influenced the development of millions of MEMS parts that are still in production today.

"Dr. Petersen is a fantastic addition to the IMT board. We look forward to leveraging his valuable technical and strategic expertise as we grow the company into the next decade," said Craig Ensley, president and CEO. "Being located near Silicon Valley, the center of MEMS innovation, combined with our strong scientific and engineering expertise and state-of-the-art fabrication facility, IMT is perfectly positioned to lead the next phase of MEMS technology."

With a bachelor of science degree cum laude in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley and a PhD in EE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Petersen went on to establish the micromachining research group at IBM in 1975, where he wrote the seminal review paper "Silicon as a Mechanical Material," published in the IEEE Proceedings (May 1982). This paper is still the most frequently referenced work in the field of MEMS. Since then he has published more than 100 papers and has been granted 35 patents in the field of MEMS. He has been awarded the IEEE Simon Ramo Medal for his contributions to MEMS, is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and is a Fellow of the IEEE in recognition of his contributions to "the commercialization of MEMS technology."

"I look forward to my advisory role at IMT, because they have one of the most talented MEMS process development teams in the world," added Dr. Petersen. "When it comes to MEMS, IMT is the company to watch."

Additionally, visit IMT next week at the M2M Forum 2013 in Cambridge, Mass. On May 9 at 1:00pm, IMT sales manager Brian O’Loughlin and other panelists will explore the use of MEMS in medical devices and the supply chain challenges associated with "Incorporating End-User Experience into MEMS-Powered Design through Human Factors Engineering."

Innovative Micro Technology, Inc. is the largest pure-play MEMS foundry in the US. With a 30,000-square-foot class 100 clean room in Santa Barbara, Calif., IMT is easily accessible to Silicon Valley, the heart of MEMS innovation. IMT employs scientists and engineers with expertise in magnetics, micro-mirrors, microfluidics, sensors, wafer-level packaging, through silicon-VIAs and planar lightwave circuits.

For more than twelve years, IMT has been working closely to develop and mass produce breakthrough MEMS products for Fortune 500 companies and startups in the optical communications, biotechnology, infrared, RF, and navigation industries.

China rose to the top of the PC market for the first time ever on an annual basis last year, relegating the United States to second place with a lead of more than 3 million units, according to an IHS iSuppli PC Dynamics Market Brief from information and analytics provider IHS.

PC shipments in 2012 to China amounted to 69 million units, exceeding the 66 million total reached by the United States. Only a year earlier in 2011, the United States was the leading global destination for PCs.

Beyond its large size, China’s PC market exhibits distinct characteristics that set it apart from the computer trade elsewhere, possessing a vast untapped rural market and unique consumer-purchasing patterns. While desktop PC shipments lagged notebooks around the world, the two PC segments were on par in China in 2012, with an even 50-50 split, as shown in the table below.

China PC shipments

“The equal share of shipments for desktops and notebooks in China is unusual, since consumers in most regions today tend to prefer more agile mobile PCs, rather than the bulky, stationary desktops,” said Peter Lin, senior analyst for compute platforms at IHS. “The relatively large percentage of desktop PC shipments in China is due to huge demand in the country’s rural areas, which account for a major segment of the country’s 1.34 billion citizens. These consumers tend to prefer the desktop form factor.”

The market will change gradually as desktop PCs face rising competition from the high value proposition presented by notebooks. Notebooks will then surpass desktops in the country by 2014, tracking more closely with the worldwide desktop-to-notebook PC ratio of 36 to 64 percent.

The desktop vs. notebook pattern of consumption in China is only one example of the distinctive hallmarks of the country’s dynamic PC market. In another indicator, China also has approximately a 50-50 proportion in consumer vs. commercial PCs, compared to the 65-35 percent ratio for the rest of the world.

A third pattern unique to the China PC market is the preferred notebook display size of 14 inches, which accounts for more than 70 percent of notebook PC shipments in the country. For the rest of the world, the 14-inch makes up less than 30 percent.

A fourth pattern of note is the attach rate of PCs with a pre-installed operating system, especially for notebooks. While mature PC markets in other parts of the world claim a 90 percent attach rate, the proportion for China comes out to lower than 50 percent, with the ratio even lower in the desktop PC market.

Despite such exclusive behavior, the China PC space shares one common trait with the worldwide PC market. Like the rest of the world, demand in China remains weak as consumers migrate to using mobile devices like cellphones. China’s PC market is projected to grow only by 3 to 4 percent this year.

Even so, a vast market opportunity continues to exist for PCs in the country, in the form of potential first-time buyers mostly residing in the countryside. The government already plans this year to invest some 40 trillion yuan—equivalent to some $6.4 trillion—to build rural infrastructure in the next 10 years, and PC original equipment manufacturers can take advantage of the initiative to build out and expand from the cities, IHS believes.

China is also on track to retain its position as the largest PC market in the world for the foreseeable future unchallenged and alone—further providing PC brands a rare opportunity for expansion, counter to the myriad travails they face in the rest of the world.

An estimated 405 million handsets, including 197 million smartphones, were shipped in the first quarter of 2013, according to market intelligence firm ABI Research. Smartphone shipments grew 38 percent year-over-year (YoY) while feature phone shipments declined 5.2% YoY. Shipments of all handsets grew 12 percent YoY in the first quarter thanks to the continued strength of the smartphone market, which achieved an all-time high of 49% shipment penetration.

“Worldwide handset and smartphone shipments exhibited classic Q1 softness,” says senior analyst Michael Morgan. “Samsung accomplished strong smartphone growth while Apple dismissed a troubling mix of slowed growth and declining margins as a sign that the older iPhone 4S was in high demand.”

Nokia handset shipments plummeted to 62 million in Q1 with smartphone shipments at a 5-year low of 6.1 million. Considering market and OEM specific conditions, BlackBerry delivered a respectable 6 million shipments, with 1 million coming from the launch of BlackBerry 10-based devices. Despite HTC’s well-designed ONE devices, shipments continued to decline 37 percent YoY to 4.8 million. LG continued its revival with 10.3 million smartphone shipments and 16.2 million handset shipments.

“The last time a major smartphone OEM showed a trend of decreasing margins combined with falling ASPs and slowing growth, BlackBerry was still on the favorable side of a large market share and revenue drop,” adds senior practice director Jeff Orr. “With major product announcements teased for Q3, Apple risks falling behind the innovation curve unless the next iPhone is more revolutionary than evolutionary.”

TSMC


April 26, 2013

TSMC

Dongbu HiTek today announced that it has begun volume production of Ambient Light Proximity Sensor (ALPS) chips for Clairpixel Co., Ltd., a Korean company specializing in single-chip image and motion sensor solutions for mobile, automotive, medical and security applications. Leveraging Dongbu HiTek’s specialized mixed-signal process, Clairpixel’s advanced ALPS chip is expected to target the growing Chinese smartphone market.

“Clairpixel’s ALPS chip highlights the system-on-chip attributes of our specialized 0.18um mixed-signal process,” said Jae Song, Dongbu HiTek EVP of marketing. “We look forward to expanding our collaboration before year end to add a color sensor function to this highly integrated chip design.” He credited the rapidly rising adoption rate of ALPS chips to their ability to extend battery life by optimizing screen brightness against ambient light. “With the addition of a color sensor, ALPS will also be able to automatically optimize color on large mobile screens while conserving battery power.”

According to recent market research from Gartner, Inc., worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to more than double from about 718 million units last year to more than1.6 billion units in 2016. Over this same period, Chinese smartphone shipments are forecast to rise from 25 percent to 33 percent of the total. Smart phone manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE Corporation are expected to lead the expanding share of Chinese shipments. During the fourth quarter of 2012, some estimates report that Huawei shipped nearly 5 percent the worldwide total giving them the third largest market share worldwide

Dongbu HiTek Co., Ltd. specializes in developing s analog and mixed-signal processing technologies. The company processing portfolio encompasses Analog CMOS, BCDMOS, High Voltage CMOS, CMOS RF, CMOS Image Sensor (CIS), Display Driver IC (DDI), Touch Screen Controller IC and NOR Flash technologies.

Demand for 4-inch or larger AMOLED panels has continued to increase in the fourth quarter of 2012 thanks to strong growth in the market for high-end smartphones with large screens, such as the Galaxy S and Note series by Samsung Electronics, according to a recent report released by Displaybank. The larger size group made up 88 percent of total AMOLED panel shipments, which amounted to 41 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012: In detail, 4.x-inch panels accounted for 65.1 percent and 5.x-inch ones 22.8 percent.

In particular, shipments of 5.x-inch AMOLED panels hiked in the fourth quarter of 2012, expanding its market share for the third consecutive quarter, to 22.8 percent of the total. It is a rather rapid growth, considering that 5.3-inch AMOLED panel was first released in the third quarter of 2011, thanks to the popularity of larger-screen smartphones. This is in stark contrast to 3.x-inch AMOLED panels whose market share plunged to 11.6 percent in total shipments in the last quarter of 2012 from more than 60 percent in the first quarter of 2011. Along with the 4.x-inch sector, which takes the majority of total AMOLED shipments, 5.x-inch panels are expected to become the main display size group in the market.

By application, demand of AMOLED panels for mobile phones accounted of 96 percent of the total AMOLED panel shipments in the last quarter of 2012, up from 86 percent in the first quarter of the year. Mobile phones have contributed to the rapid growth of the market for AMOLED panels, but this caused concerns about the market’s too much dependence on one application. The trend also indicates how difficult for the AMOLED technology to enter the mid-to-large-sized panel market.