Category Archives: Online Magazines

Today, everywhere we turn we hear speakers give presentations at conferences and industry events despairing how the rise in silicon design costs is hampering the semiconductor industries growth path. As part of this problem, we now recognize that software design costs have eclipsed silicon design efforts and have become the largest portion of the SoC creation effort. In addition, IP integration costs are now rising as more discrete IP blocks are infused into SoC designs today.

The design landscape has also changed due to rising design complexity and lengthening design cycle times, especially in the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) market. These changes are having an impact on the SoC Design Start market delaying and preventing, to some degree, the architectural refreshes silicon designers undertake periodically to bring their solutions into line with changing market requirements and rising customer expectations.

Semico Research Corp. has looked at these issues and their impact on SoC silicon and software design cost efforts and encapsulated these changes and trends in a new report titled: SoC Silicon and Software Design Cost Analysis: Costs for Higher Complexity Continue to Rise, May, 2013.

Forecasts for SoC silicon design costs and software design costs are given from the 90nm node out through the 10nm node focusing on Advanced Performance Multicore SoCs, Value Multicore SoCs and Basic SoCs. Categories of effort with definitions for silicon and software designs are established with a forecast given at each node for the three types of SoC silicon. A forecast for Derivative SoC design costs at the 28nm node from 2011 through 2017 is also given.

Some of the data discussed in 58 pages with 15 tables and 33 graphs are:

  • Total SoC design costs increased 48 percent from the 28nm node to the 20nm node and are expected to increase 31 percent again at the 14nm node and 35 percent at the 10nm node.
  • Total SoC silicon design costs increased 78 percent at the 28nm node from the 40nm node.
  • Total Software design costs increased 102 percent at the 28nm node and are forecast to show a CAGR of 79 percent through the 10nm node.
  • Advanced Performance Multicore SoCs represent the most expensive silicon designs with Value Multicore SoCs and Basic SoCs exhibiting lower design costs.
  • Derivative SoC silicon designs allow designers to accomplish their solutions at a fraction of the cost compared to first time efforts at the same process node when it first becomes commercially available.
  • Costs for an Advanced Performance Multicore SoC design, continuously done at the 45nm node will experience a negative CAGR of 12.7 percent by the time the 14nm process geometry becomes commercially available, showing that subsequent designs at the same node become less expensive over time.
  • 20nm silicon with a $20.00 ASP is required to ship 9.238M units to reach the breakeven point.
  • The cost to integrate all the discrete IP blocks used in contemporary SoC designs is also rising for both the silicon and software efforts, showing a CAGR of 77.2 percent.
  • Discussion of initiatives by EDA vendors to create tools allowing software designers to reduce design costs and more fully integrate their effort with silicon designers.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced that Rockchip’s next-generation mobile processors are ramping to production on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) process technology. Based on a multi-core ARM Cortex-A9 design, the RK3188 and RK3168 chips are optimized for tomorrow’s high-performance, low-cost tablets that require long-lasting battery life (see product specifications in annex).

The combination of Rockchip’s design and GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 28nm HKMG process technology resulted in a mainstream tablet System-on-Chip (SoC) capable of operating at up to 1.8 GHz performance, while still maintaining the power efficiency expected by mobile device users. The chips began sampling to OEMs in early 2013 and are now ramping to support a wide range of manufacturers.

“Collaborative foundry partnerships are critical for us to differentiate ourselves in the competitive market for mainstream mobile SoCs,” said Chen Feng, vice president of Rockchip. “We have chosen GLOBALFOUNDRIES as our strategic source partner of 28nm HKMG because their 28nm HKMG process has allowed us to ramp our products with very high yields in a relatively short timeframe. This partnership is a true demonstration of GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ unique approach to Collaborative Device Manufacturing.”

“At GLOBALFOUNDRIES, we are constantly seeking opportunities to offer our customers innovative silicon solutions to help them get the most benefits from their SoC designs,” said Mike Noonen, executive vice president of marketing, sales, design and quality at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “Our partnership with Rockchip is a great example of how early collaboration can result in better performance and power characteristics with reduced time-to-market. We are excited to see Rockchip successfully leveraging this technology on our production-proven HKMG process.”

GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 28nm-SLP technology is based on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ “Gate First” approach to HKMG, which has been in volume production for more than two years.

The market for hard disk drives (HDDs) used in video surveillance will hit the billion-dollar level in less than five years, as safety concerns and the requirement for higher image quality spur demand for more data storage, according to a Storage Space Market Brief from information and analytics provider IHS.

Revenue for both internal and external HDDs in video-surveillance applications will rise from $638.7 million this year to $1.0 billion by 2017, a remarkable 57 percent increase. Growth this year alone is forecast to reach 23 percent from 2012 revenue of $521.1 million, and double-digit-percentage revenue expansion will ensue each year for the next four years.

The revenue figures translate to 7.3 million units in shipments by 2017, up from 2.4 million units in 2012 and a projected 3.5 million units this year.

“The HDD industry as a whole will reap the benefits of a fast-growing video surveillance industry that requires ample storage, with the need for higher-quality video, network connectivity and cloud storage also driving the market,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “At present, internal HDDs that combine storage capacity with the recording system in one unit have a larger market than external HDDs in which the drive is separate. Shipments of HDDs for internal storage were higher than those for HDDs in external storage during 2012—a feat that will be replicated this year.”

Products on the market today that use internal HDDs for video surveillance include internal direct attached storage (DAS), enterprise digital video recording (DVR), box appliance network video recorder (NVR) and PC-based network video recorders.

Next year, however, the tables get turned permanently as external storage HDD shipments take the lead. From a 48 percent share of the market in shipments last year of the total HDD space for video surveillance, external HDDs leap over internal HDDs in 2014 with a slight majority of 51 percent share of the market. And while internal HDDs continue to retain a viable portion of the market, external HDDs will keep gaining in the market with their share hitting approximately 54 percent by 2017.

Internal vs. external storage

While internal storage is a cost-effective way of storing video data, external storage boasts larger capacities that can be added flexibly to a system as the need arises.

External storage also has more versatile applications as it can be connected or viewed anywhere, such as in the cloud, where the potential for external storage is plentiful and abundant. The capability of external systems to scale and accommodate large amounts of video data is one reason why more hard disk drives will be needed in the coming years, pushing both shipments and revenues up. Another reason is that high-quality video itself will demand more storage space, which also will help boost HDD use in video surveillance.

All told, total HDD shipments for video surveillance will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 29 percent from 2012 to 2017, with revenue likewise increasing at a lower but still-solid rate of 14 percent during the same period.

Multitest’s James Quinn will present during the 2013 SEMICON West exhibition and conference, scheduled to take place July 9-11, 2013 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. The presentation, entitled “Quality in 3D Assembly- Is KGD Enough,” will enable the audience to understand the additional risks of 3D assembly and match them with their own situation.

Quinn will provide an overview of the current discussion in the industry and how to manage the risks of 3D assembly. Also, the audience will learn more about the special requirements of the new approaches and understand their pros and cons. The audience will be able to apply the presented concepts to their own 3D business models. The most appropriate equipment will be discussed: What are the limitations of using probing tools or deploying final test equipment? Which strategy will offer the most synergies and reduce cost of test in the end? Finally, an analogy with the MEMS will give an interesting perspective on how to leverage the expertise that has been gained during the last decade.

Quinn is the VP of Sales and Marketing at Multitest. He has a strong semiconductor background and has served as executive VP responsible for sales and marketing at respected companies including Süss Microtec AG, MD of Süss Microtec Inc. in the U.S., and most recently as CEO of a venture capital wafer front-end equipment company in Sweden and France. Quinn studied business administration and marketing at San Francisco State University.

Imec presents a CMOS image sensor capable of capturing 12-bit 4,000×2,000 pixel progressive images at 60 frames per second (fps). Based on a stagger-laced dual exposure, the image sensor developed with Panasonic, was processed using imec’s 130nm CMOS process on 200mm silicon wafers to deliver high-speed and high-quality imaging, at reduced output bit rate.

The number of pixels on image sensors in video and still cameras keeps increasing, along with the frame rate and bit resolution requirements of the images. 4K2K will be the next-generation broadcasting format, offering an increase by a factor of two in both horizontal and vertical resolution compared to current state-of-the-art High Definition TV. 

The image sensor chip is a floating diffusion shared 4T pixel imager, with a pitch of 2.5 micron and a conversion gain of 70 μV/e-, which allows for both a classical rolling shutter or stagger-laced scanning mode. The 4K2K 60-fps imaging performance is realized by 12-bit column-based delta-sigma A/D converters. The stagger-laced scanning method improves imaging sensitivity and realizes a 50 percent reduction in output data rate by alternating the readout of two sets of horizontal pixel pairs arranged in two complementary checkerboard patterns. Additionally, the overall power consumption of the imager is less than two Watts.

“This is an important milestone for imec to demonstrate our capability to co-design, prototype and manufacture high performance CMOS image sensors in our 200mm CMOS fab,” commented Rudi Cartuyvels, senior vice president of Smart Systems  and Energy Technologies at imec.

The glass slimming market topped $600 million in value in 2012 and is forecast to continuously grow to surpass $1 billion in 2014, according to a new report released by Displaybank.

 

Slimness and lightness are key competitive factors of consumer IT devices that use flat panel displays such as TFT-LCD and OLED. Display makers are responding to market changes by slimming down the glass substrate used in consumer goods as part of an effort to reduce the weight and thickness of finished goods, while finding ways to select the less heavy hardware at the same time.

Reducing the thickness of a glass substrate to cut its weight has proven to be the most effective way to make a flat panel display thinner and lighter. However, if a glass substrate used in the TFT or cell manufacturing process starts off as a thin sheet, it runs into many difficulties because of the variables arising from the LCD module, or OLED manufacturing process. Thus, it is essential to slim the glass substrate through chemical and physical methods at the time when the cell production process is completed. This process is called glass slimming.

The glass slimming industry requires both chemical materials and process technologies. The glass slimming process can be divided into a chemical etching method, in which the glass substrate of laminated LCD panels is chemically etched after TFT process and color filter process are completed, and a physical polishing method. The general trend these days is moving towards chemical etching.

This report analyzes glass slimming technologies, which are processes used to reduce the glass thickness and weight after TFT LCD or OLED panels are made, and provides the industry outlook and forecasts.

Ongoing weakness in notebook personal computers will be offset by stronger unit growth of touch-screen tablets—especially smaller “mini” systems with 7- and 8-inch displays—resulting in a four percent increase in integrated circuit sales for all types of personal computing products this year, says a new update of IC Insights’ 2013 edition of IC Market Drivers—A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits.  Combined IC sales for standard PCs, tablets, and new cloud-computing portables are forecast to reach $77.6 billion in 2013 compared to $74.9 billion in 2012, when the total fell six percent from $79.6 billion in 2011, according to the 2Q13 update to the IC Market Drivers report.

IC Insights is now forecasting a two percent decline in integrated circuit sales for keyboard-equipped standard PCs (desktops and notebooks) to $62.5 billion in 2013, following drops of 12 percent in 2012 and seven percent in 2011.  IC sales for standard PCs are slumping primarily due to slowing shipments of notebook computers, which are being superseded by tablets in consumer computing markets worldwide.  IC sales for tablet computers are forecast to rise 37 percent to $14.7 billion in 2013 after climbing 77 percent in 2012 and 190 percent in 2011.

In the new update to the IC Market Drivers report, IC Insights is raising its forecast for tablet unit shipments to 190 million systems worldwide in 2013, which would be a 62 percent increase from 117 million in 2012.  The forecast for standard PC shipments has been lowered to 347 million units in 2013, which is slightly less than a 1 percent increase from 344 million units in 2012.  IC Insights’ new forecast continues to show tablet unit shipments surpassing desktop PCs in 2013 (190 million tablets versus 150 million desktop PCs).  The updated forecast also continues to show tablet shipments exceeding notebook unit volumes in 2014, but the gap has been increased—253 million tablets versus 210 million notebook PCs next year.

IC Insights believes it now takes the sale of nearly 2.3 tablets to roughly equal the IC dollar value of one notebook PC.  The average IC content of a tablet computer is estimated at $77.50.  Nearly all tablets today are made with 32-bit microprocessors, which are often similar to application processors found in smartphones.  The vast majority of tablet processors are built with RISC cores licensed from ARM in the U.K. instead of the x86 MPU architecture used in microprocessors sold by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices for standard PCs.  ARM-based tablet microprocessors have much lower average selling prices (ASPs) than x86 MPUs—often 20 percent or less than the ASPs of PC processors.  Most tablet processors are also system-on-chip (SoC) designs with integrated graphics and many system-level functions, which reduce the need for a number of ICs and chipsets that have populated notebook PC motherboards.  Tablets also contain less DRAM memory than standard PCs, but they use NAND flash for internal storage instead of hard-disk drives.

The outlook for tablet IC sales has been increased with revenues projected to rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 25 percent between 2012 and 2016, reaching $26.6 billion in the final forecast year.  IC sales for standard PCs are now expected to grow by a CAGR of nearly 2 percent in the four-year period to $68.5 billion in 2016.  IC sales for new cloud-computing portable systems—such as Google’s Chromebook platform—are forecast to increase by a CAGR of 41 percent percent from about $500 million in 2012 to $1.8 billion in 2016.  These Internet-centric portables must be connected online to the web to fully function.   Low-cost cloud-computing portables are expected to be a small-but-fast growing market niche, reaching 27 million systems in 2016 compared to 5 million in 2012, according to IC Insights’ new market update report.

Global sales of handsets featuring Near Field Communication (NFC) grew 300 percent in 2012 to reach 140 million units, according to a new research report by Berg Insight. Growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 48.2 percent, annual shipments are forecasted to reach 1 billion units by 2017. Wider adoption of NFC in mobile phones began in 2011 and accelerated in 2012 when the top-ten handset vendors released nearly 100 NFC-enabled models. NFC technology enables numerous applications such as information exchange, device pairing for establishing Bluetooth or WLAN connections, access control, electronic ticketing and secure contactless payments. However, Berg Insight anticipates that it will take some time before the stakeholders agree on business models for payment networks and access to secure elements that store the sensitive user information in NFC-enabled handsets. Once developers gain experience with NFC and get access to a larger installed base of compatible handsets, we can also expect to see entirely new use cases not yet imagined.

“It is the sum of many possible use cases for NFC rather than one single killer application that make the technology compelling for smartphone vendors already today. Once developers gain experience with NFC and get access to a larger installed base of compatible handsets, we can also expect to see entirely new use cases not yet imagined,” concluded Andre Malm, senior analyst at Berg Insight.

Connectivity technologies such as Bluetooth, WLAN and GPS are already standard features in most smartphones. Shipments of WLAN-enabled handsets increased to 700 million units in 2012 and the attach rate reached 44 percent. Several new WLAN standards and certification programs are now being adopted to enable new use cases and improve the user experience when using WLAN in handsets. Wi-Fi Direct facilitates making device-to-device connections to enable content sharing and wireless connection to peripherals. Wi-Fi Miracast enables peer-to-peer HD video and audio streaming without cables, for instance between a smartphone and a TV. Wi-Fi Passpoint enables mobile devices to discover and connect to WLAN networks automatically without user intervention.

“Mobile operators that were initially sceptical about WLAN are now adopting a range of strategies for using WLAN as a cost-effective data offloading solution to handle the rise in data traffic from smartphones,” said Malm. He adds that WLAN is also a central component in hybrid location solutions that can enable reliable indoor navigation services. Hybrid location solutions fuse signal measurements from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), cellular and WLAN network signals, together with data from sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses and altimeters.

SEMATECH, the global consortium of semiconductor manufacturers, today announced that William R. Rozich has assumed the role of chairman of the board of directors. Rozich, who previously was a member of the company’s board, succeeds Michael R. Polcari, who served as chairman since November 2009.

“The strength and commitment of our board is a great advantage for SEMATECH and we welcome Bill to his role as chairman. His extensive industry experience, familiarity with the progressive developments of our industry in Albany, NY and his leadership and insights are valuable to SEMATECH and our members,” said Dan Armbrust, SEMATECH’s president and CEO.

“I am honored to serve as chairman of SEMATECH’s board,” said Rozich. “SEMATECH has been setting global direction through the facilitation of precompetitive collaboration among its members for over 25 years, and I look forward to building on that history and collaborating with our board to address the complex, ever-changing technology landscape and the unique needs of our members.”

Rozich, who begins his new role July 1, most recently served as the director of semiconductor operations of IBM Corporation at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany, New York. He has more than 30 years of semiconductor fabrication operations experience and extensive interactions with equipment and materials suppliers, as well as leading complex alliances.

Rozich began his career at IBM in 1974 and progressed through a variety of assignments in equipment engineering, manufacturing technology and alliance management. He previously served on SEMATECH’s Executive Technical Advisory Board from 1994 through July 2006, the I300I Executive Steering Committee from 1995 until December 2000, and as a SEMATECH board member from 2006 to 2010.

Rozich received his bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from Fordham University and Marist College, as well as a Master of Arts degree in chemistry from State University of New York at New Paltz.

Samsung announced today that it has begun mass producing the industry’s first PCI-Express (PCIe) solid state drive (SSD) for next-generation ultra-slim notebook PCs.

“With the Samsung XP941, we have become the first to provide the highest performance PCIe SSD to global PC makers so that they can launch leading-edge ultra-slim notebook PCs this year,” said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales and marketing, Samsung Electronics. “Samsung plans to continue timely delivery of the most advanced PCIe SSD solutions with higher density and performance, and support global IT companies providing an extremely robust computing environment to consumers.”

Samsung started providing the new SSD to major notebook PC makers earlier this quarter. The XP941 lineup consists of 512, 256 and 128GB SSDs.

The new Samsung XP941 delivers a level of performance that easily surpasses the speed limit of a SATA 6Gb/s interface. Samsung XP941 enables a sequential read performance of 1,400MB/s (megabytes per second), which is the highest performance available with a PCIe 2.0 interface. This allows the drive to read 500GB of data or 100 HD movies as large as 5GB in only six minutes, or ten HD movies at 5GB in 36 seconds. That is approximately seven times faster than a hard disk drive (which would need over 40 minutes for the same task), and more than 2.5 times faster than the fastest SATA SSD.

By mass producing the new PCIe SSD, Samsung has established the groundwork for a significant transition into the new paradigm in the global SSD market which enables increasing the performance and the memory storage capacity of SSDs at the same time.

The XP941 comes in the new M.2 form factor (80mm x 22mm), weighing approximately six grams – about a ninth of the 54 grams of a SATA-based 2.5 inch SSD. Also, the XP941’s volume is about a seventh of that of a 2.5 inch SSD, freeing up more space for the notebook’s battery and therein providing the opportunity for increased mobility that will enhance user convenience.

Samsung intends to continuously expand its production volumes of high-performance 10nm class NAND flash memory, in helping the company to maintain its lead in PCIe SSDs for ultra-slim PCs and notebook PCs. Furthermore, Samsung plans to introduce next-generation enterprise NVMe SSDs in a timely manner to also take the lead in that high-density SSD market, adding to its competitive edge.