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Transphorm Inc. today announced at the 2013 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit that its novel 600V Gallium Nitride (GaN) module has enabled the world’s first GaN-based high power converter. Transphorm will demonstrate the product built with its customer-partner Yaskawa Electric, Japan at the upcoming APEC 2013 industry conference. The announcement underscores the significant technical and commercial progress that Transphorm has made since being awarded ARPA-E funding in 2011 to reduce the vast amount of electric power waste globally.

Yaskawa’s product, a 4.5kW PV power conditioner, is powered by Transphorm’s 600V GaN half-bridge modules, which have enabled it to achieve several industry firsts:

1. The first high power converter product in the world utilizing GaN technology

2. The first efficient PV power conditioner to operate at 50KHz

3. Simultaneous achievement of a 40% reduction in inverter size and 98% efficiency operation, a form and function benefit uniquely enabled by Transphorm’s EZ-GaN module technology

Transphorm’s patented, high-performance EZ-GaN module technology, combines low switching and conduction losses offering reduced energy loss of over 50% compared to conventional silicon based power conversion designs while simultaneously operating at higher frequency.

“The partnership between Yaskawa, the world leader in inverter solutions, and Transphorm, the world leader in GaN-based power conversion, has produced the world’s first high power GaN power converter,” said Umesh Mishra, CEO of Transphorm. “This is a disruptive first step which signals the broad adoption of GaN-based power conversion solutions.”

“By teaming with Transphorm, Yaskawa is again the technology leader in introducing new technologies into the market place with tremendous benefits to customers and society” said Tatsuya Yamada , General Manager Environment & Energy Business Div. Drives Division of Yaskawa Electric.

Transphorm’s efficient, compact, and easy-to-embed solutions simplify the design and manufacturing of a wide variety of electrical systems and devices, including power supplies and adapters, PV Inverters for solar panels, motor drives and power conversion for electric vehicles.  Transphorm’s proprietary EZ- GaN platform can reduce power system size, increase energy density and deliver high efficiencies across the grid. 

 

LFoundry, an analog mixed signal and specialized technologies foundry, today announced that it has entered into an agreement with Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: MU) to acquire Micron Technology Italia, Srl. and all of its semiconductor fabrication facility assets in Avezzano, Italy. Micron’s Fab in Italy is expected to become a strategic part of LFoundry’s global growth.

After this acquisition, LFoundry will employ approximately 2,400 people worldwide and will have a wafer start capacity of 65,000 200mm wafers per month, which will allow LFoundry to expand its market presence as the leading analog mixed signal foundry in Europe.

“Operating out of two most advanced European 200mm Fabs, supporting 90nm, a volume copper path and state of the art technology perfectly positions LFoundry to provide flexible and high quality technology and manufacturing services,” said Günther Ernst, CEO of LFoundry. “Combined with our greatly expanded R&D and engineering teams, our customers will have access to a strong partner for specialized technologies and collaborative development, ensuring smooth industrialization from lab to fab, either based on LFoundry’s CMOS or on proprietary technologies.”

Ernst added that the combination of the manufacturing capacity and the technology capabilities of Micron’s Fab in Avezzano with LFoundry’s existing Fab in Rousset, France, is consistent with their development vision for the company.

“We have successfully attained a strategic position in several value added markets in Europe, such as digital security, imaging and power management,” said Ernst. “With the new Fab in Avezzano, we will surpass an important threshold, enabling us to accelerate further growth of our business outside of Europe.”

Ernst believes that this move will allow the company to begin to gain a foothold in U.S. and APAC markets.

DFM Services in the Cloud


February 27, 2013

DFM Services in the CloudJoe Kwan is the Product Marketing Manager for Calibre LFD and DFM Services at Mentor Graphics. He is also responsible for the management of Mentor’s Foundry Programs. He previously worked at VLSI Technology, COMPASS Design Automation, and Virtual Silicon. Joe received a BA in Computer Science from the University of California Berkeley and an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

When to Farm Out Your DFM Signoff

The DFM requirements at advanced process nodes pose not only technical challenges to design teams, but also call for new business approaches. At 40nm, 28nm, and 20nm, foundries require designers to perform lithography checking and litho hotspot fixing before tapeout. In the past, DFM signoff has almost always been done in-house. But, particularly for designers who are taping out relatively few devices, the better path may be to hire a qualified external team to perform some or all of your DFM signoff as a service.

 DRC and DFM have changed pretty dramatically over the past few years. At advanced nodes, you need to be more than just “DRC-clean” to guarantee good yield. Even after passing rule-based DRC, designs can still have yield detracting issues that lead to parametric performance variability and even functional failure. At the root of the problem is the distortion of those nice rectilinear shapes on your drawn layout when you print them with photolithographic techniques. Depending on your layout patterns and their nearby structures, the actual geometries on silicon may exhibit pinching (open), bridging (short) or line-end pull-back (see Figure 1).

SEM images of pinching and bridging, 40nm, 28nm and 20nm process nodes
Figure 1: SEM images of pinching and bridging. LPC finds these problems and lets you fix them before tapeout. Litho checking is mandatory at TSMC for 40nm, 28nm and 20nm process nodes.

In the past, these problems were fixed by applying optical proximity correction (OPC) after tapeout, often at the fab. But at 40nm and below, the alterations to the layout must be done in the full design context, i.e. before tapeout, which means that the major foundries now require IC designers to find and fix all Level 1 hotspots. TSMC’s terminology for this is Litho Process Check, LPC.

Usually, design companies purchase the DFM software licenses and run litho checking in-house. This approach has the obvious benefits of software ownership. Designers have full control over when and how frequently they run the checks. The design database doesn’t leave the company’s network. There is a tight loop between updating the design database and re-running verification.

But what if you have not yet set up your own LPC checking flow and need time to plan or budget for software and CPU resources? Or, if you only have a few tapeouts a year? In these cases, you would benefit from the flexibility and convenience of outsourcing the LPC check.

A DFM analysis service is an alternative option to software purchase by performing litho checking for you. Here’s how it works: the design house delivers the encrypted design database to a secure electronic drop box. The analysis service then runs TSMC-certified signoff—for example, Calibre LFD—in a secure data center. Your DFM analysis service should demonstrate that they have an advanced security infrastructure that can isolate and secure you IP. Access should be limited to only those employees that need to handle the data. You would get the litho results back, along with potential guides for fixing the reported hotspots. A cloud-based DFM analysis service for TSMC’s 40nm, 28nm, and 20nm process nodes is available from Mentor Graphics.

A DFM service can also be useful when you already have Calibre LFD licenses, but find yourself with over-utilized computing resources. Having a DFM service option gives you flexibility in getting through a tight CPU resource situation or can ease a critical path in your tape-out schedule. The DMF service can run the LPC while you perform the remaining design and verification tasks in parallel.

Whether you use a DFM services or run LPC in-house on purchased software, it is very important to run litho checking early and often. This lets you identify problematic structures early and allows more time to make the necessary fixes. But now you have more flexibility to make the right business decision regarding how to reach DFM signoff.

Yole Développement’s research has credited STMicroelectronics for capitalizing on the booming demand for MEMS in mobile devices by shipping 58% more MEMS units in 2012, to become the first company to reach $1 billion in MEMS sales. And that was in a year when the average prices of accelerometers and gyroscopes that are its core MEMS products dropped by 20%-30%.

“The company was there and ready with its 8-inch fab when the volume demand started, as well as a large portfolio of products and low prices,” said Laurent Robin, Activity Leader, Inertial MEMS Devices & Technologies at Yole Développement. “They could use a feed-the-fab-strategy to build volumes, and discounts for buyers of multiple devices to meet the price demands of the cell phone makers.”

“Even more than Yole Développement’s recognition of ST’s achieving the revenue milestone, we appreciate the endorsement from our customers, across a broad range of applications and segments, of our strategy of being a reliable one-stop MEMS partner,” said Benedetto Vigna, Executive Vice President and General Manager of STMicroelectronics Analog, MEMS and Sensors Group. “We remain fully committed to continuing to meet our customers’ expectations and to expanding the role of sensors in ways that augment all of our lives.”

The morphing of the MEMS industry into a high volume consumer smart phone business has played to the advantage of big IDMs with their ability to ramp volumes to price aggressively, and to offer customers a wide variety of products from a single source to simplify the supply chain. The inertial sensor business also drove healthy 14% MEMS growth at Robert Bosch, boosting that big IDM’s sales close to those of long time industry leader Texas Instruments in a further reshuffling of the top companies lineup. Yole Développement will release its complete listing of the Top 30 MEMS companies early in April.

ST is now churning out some 4 million MEMS devices a day, offering not only inertial sensors but also now consumer pressure sensors, microphones, and e-compasses. The fully-integrated supplier has been able to optimize all steps in the process to wring out costs, from its mature standard manufacturing process for all inertial sensors, to its inhouse ASIC design, to its long expertise in common LGA packaging across all products, to its high volume parallel testing developed on commercial equipment with SPEA, to its sales force that can sell and deal on the whole smart phone sensor line. The company has also pushed the manufacturing technology to bring down die size, replacing glass frit with narrower gold bonding frames and replacing big bond pads with smaller TSVs made by etching air gaps around polysilicon vias. And it turned to outside partnerships (microphone technology from Omron) and purchases (magnetometers from Honeywell) to get new products to market faster.

The way the world is lit up could be revolutionized by a new European-wide research project being led by the University of Dundee.

The 11.8 million Euros NEWLED project aims to develop a new generation of white light-emitting LED lights, which would be much more efficient than existing light bulbs.

It is estimated that efficient white-light LEDs, if successfully developed and widely implemented, could have a massive effect on reducing global energy consumption and C02 emissions.

"Common lightbulbs have a pretty low efficiency rating and even the best current white LEDs in use only have an overall efficiency of around 25%," said Professor Edik Rafailov, NEWLED project leader based in the School of Engineering, Physics and Mathematics at Dundee. "What we are aiming to develop is a significantly more efficient white LED, which would be around 50-60% efficient. If we can do that and it becomes widely adopted, then the effects on energy consumption would be enormous. It would also produce lighting over which much more control could be exercised in brightness and tone."

NEWLED brings together academic and industrial partners and is funded through the European Union’s FP7 program.

The effort to produce highly efficient white LEDs will see the project examine every stage of the LED fabrication process, from developing new knowledge on the control of semiconductor properties on a near-atomistic level to light mixing and heat management.

By examining the entire process, NEWLED aims to ensure that the new LEDs will be well adjusted to avoid compromising the achievements of the overall process and to ensure significant system and operating cost reduction.

Connecting the (quantum) dots


February 26, 2013

Recent research offers a new spin on using nanoscale semiconductor structures to build faster computers and electronics. Literally.

University of Pittsburgh and Delft University of Technology researchers reveal in the Feb. 17 online issue of Nature Nanotechnology a new method that better preserves the units necessary to power lightning-fast electronics, known as qubits. Hole spins, rather than electron spins, can keep quantum bits in the same physical state up to 10 times longer than before, the report finds.

"Previously, our group and others have used electron spins, but the problem was that they interacted with spins of nuclei, and therefore it was difficult to preserve the alignment and control of electron spins," said Sergey Frolov, assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy within Pitt’s Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, who did the work as a postdoctoral fellow at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.

Whereas normal computing bits hold mathematical values of zero or one, quantum bits live in a hazy superposition of both states. It is this quality, said Frolov, which allows them to perform multiple calculations at once, offering exponential speed over classical computers. However, maintaining the qubit’s state long enough to perform computation remains a long-standing challenge for physicists.

"To create a viable quantum computer, the demonstration of long-lived quantum bits, or qubits, is necessary," said Frolov. "With our work, we have gotten one step closer."

The holes within hole spins, Frolov explained, are literally empty spaces left when electrons are taken out. Using extremely thin filaments called InSb (indium antimonide) nanowires, the researchers created a transistor-like device that could transform the electrons into holes. They then precisely placed one hole in a nanoscale box called "a quantum dot" and controlled the spin of that hole using electric fields. This approach— featuring nanoscale size and a higher density of devices on an electronic chip—is far more advantageous than magnetic control, which has been typically employed until now, said Frolov.

"Our research shows that holes, or empty spaces, can make better spin qubits than electrons for future quantum computers."

"Spins are the smallest magnets in our universe. Our vision for a quantum computer is to connect thousands of spins, and now we know how to control a single spin," said Frolov. "In the future, we’d like to scale up this concept to include multiple qubits."

Production system from AIXTRONAIXTRON SE today announced that, in the third quarter of 2012, long-term customer Formosa Epitaxy Inc. (FOREPI), Taiwan, placed a new order for multiple CRIUS II-L MOCVD production systems in a 69×2-inch configuration. All systems will be used for the manufacturing of ultra-high brightness (UHB) GaN-based blue and white LEDs.

AIXTRON’s local service team has started installing and commissioning the new systems in the fourth quarter of 2012 at FOREPI’s new state-of-the-art factory in the Pin-Jen industrial zone, Taiwan. Delivery will be completed in the second quarter of 2013. In May 2012, FOREPI had already purchased several CRIUS II-XL and AIX G5 HT reactors.

“This new order reflects our on-going satisfaction with AIXTRON’s products,” comments FOREPI’s chairman Dr. Frank Chien. “AIXTRON has proven itself as an excellent partner, providing superior customer care by responding to our requests and delivering the needed solutions. With short time-to-production, and highest performance and throughput, AIXTRON’s latest MOCVD generations meet the specific challenges of larger wafers and maximum chip yields.”

All CRIUS II-L systems will be delivered with AIXTRON’s new ARGUS Topside Temperature Control (TTC) system. The new method eliminates temperature variation within each run and run-to-run, enabling unmatched production yields.

“This latest multiple tool order reflects FOREPI’s growth as a top-tier LED chip manufacturer. We are pleased to support this prized customer with our latest technology. Besides reactor size and design, we believe that successful in-situ measurement and control offer the greatest optimization potential because they provide a direct impact on yields,” said Dr. Christian Geng, general manager of AIXTRON Taiwan.

GaN Systems Inc., a developer of gallium nitride power switching semiconductors, announced today the opening of a new office facility located in Reading, England. This expansion of the Company’s European operations will aid the Company in continuing to impact key industries, like manufacturing and automotive, where the need for clean technology power conversion applications continue to grow. GaN Systems’ head office is currently located in Ottawa, Canada.

"GaN Systems new office facility comes in response to a strong pull from our growing base of European customer partners," said Geoff Haynes, the Company’s UK based VP Business Development. "The Company has a strong focus on collaborating across the manufacturing value chains for global power electronics markets to accelerate the adoption, and drive the cost of manufacture of GaN components. That can only be achieved through a strong local technical presence."

In addition to sales offices, the new location will include technical support and seminar facilities.

GaN Systems expands
GaN Systems is a developer of gallium nitride power switching semiconductors

 

Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) and TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today announced that Qualcomm’s wholly owned subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., will be the first company to produce working silicon on TSMC’s 28nm HPM (High Performance Mobile) process technology. TSMC’s 28HPM is the first production process that can support 2GHz + application processors with low power consumption. The process is ideally suited for tablet and high-end smartphone applications.

The first 28HPM production device is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor with quad core Krait 400 CPUs with speeds of up to 2.3 GHz per core, customized for low power consumption.  It also is the first SoC to integrate a 4G LTE Advanced modem with Carrier Aggregation and Category 4 data speeds up to 150 Mbps. Compared to previous generations, Qualcomm Technologies has significantly improved overall power efficiency via reduced leakage and active power while substantially increasing speed in its Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors.

With its large speed and power range, TSMC’s 28HPM process is optimized for mobile computing applications. It also supports wide market applications from application processors, integrated application processors with multimode LTE-Advanced Qualcomm Gobi modems to cloud-computing networking applications. The process could support CPU speeds of 2-2.3GHz with less than 750mW of power consumption per core. Compared to TSMC’s 40LP, 28HPM devices are 2.5-2.7X faster, and cut active power in half.

"By utilizing TSMC’s 28HPM process, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors will deliver industry leading performance and outstanding battery life," said Jim Lederer, executive vice president and general manager, Qualcomm Technologies. "In working closely with TSMC, we maximize the impact this process will have on bringing Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processors to tablet and high-end smartphone solutions, while continuing to find ways to align our business and strategic objectives that help to define the value of our partnership."

"Qualcomm Technologies uses its world-class architecture and deep familiarity with 28nm design to achieve breakthrough 2.3GHz performance and power characteristics high-end smartphone users want today," said Rick Cassidy, President, TSMC North America. "We are happy to see Qualcomm Technologies’ achievement in producing the first 28HPM device and congratulate them on their ongoing mobile device leadership."

The German trade fair organizer Messe Düsseldorf and ESNA (European Association for Specialist Printing Manufacturers of Screen, Digital and Flexo Technology) have formed a strategic cooperation in order to address the fast-growing printed electronics market and its huge potential in a wide range of sectors.  By organizing the new special show PEPSO – Printed Electronics Products and Solutions at six of Messe Düsseldorf’s relevant trade fairs, Messe Düsseldorf and ESNA will offer an information platform for the latest trends and developments relating to printed electronics in the glass and solar industry, the medical and retail technology sector as well as in the plastics and printing industry.

“Printed electronics is becoming attractive in many user sectors for which Messe Düsseldorf stages the respective flagship fairs,” said Hans Werner Reinhard, deputy managing director of Messe Düsseldorf, “By establishing PEPSO, we are giving this topic a platform of its own and are integrating it in the trade fairs for the retail, glass processing, packaging, printing and medical sector. We are in the ideal position to offer manufacturers of printed electronics a marketing showcase for specific target group.,”

“The printing industry is ready to vertically integrate functionality and electronic applications. This cooperation is an ideal opportunity for the printing sector to gain access to the many industries and markets covered by Messe Düsseldorf’s range of exhibitions,” added Peter Buttiens, CEO of ESMA.

The two partners will combine their public relations and online activities and promote each other’s events by presenting themselves at the appropriate partner events. Messe Düsseldorf will be represented with an information stand at the upcoming AFIP – Advanced Functional & Industrial Printing – in Düsseldorf on March 6 and 7, 2013 while ESMA will take part in the relevant Düsseldorf trade fairs.