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In the first of two installments, we examine the global issues facing the semiconductor industry, as released by Linx Consulting in The Econometric Semiconductor Forecast. Part two predicts that semiconductor growth should recover by 2014.

United States’ economic outlook 

The January 1st “fiscal cliff” deadline in the US dominates the near term outlook for the world economy.  ANY settlement will stabilize the situation, but any politically acceptable near term agreement in Washington will not be enough to truly begin to solve the longer-term problems. The political dynamics are not yet in place to lead to a long-term solution to debt restructuring or reducing excessive growth in entitlements. The first fiscal cliff compromise, which includes higher taxes on the wealthier income-earners, elimination of the 2% social security tax reduction, and a permanent fix to the alternative minimum tax levels, gave clarity to consumers on their tax situations. Discretionary and entitlement government spending controls or cuts to reduce government debt burdens were deferred, leaving key questions about policy to later negotiations. That extension of uncertainty will dampen investment spending and government purchases of equipment at least into the first half of 2013. Economic growth will stagnate in the beginning of the year, and then bounce briefly when the new policy environment becomes clear.  Post bounce, the longer term issues will begin to re-surface, and economic growth should settle back into a sluggish trend that lags potential output. This modest growth will be slow to lower unemployment.  Without a strong labor market, businesses will plan for very modest gains in consumer spending, relatively low inflation, and no significant change in interest rates.

Europe’s economic outlook

Most economies are in mild recession, as central governments raise taxes and/or cut spending in attempt to reduce debt. Austerity measures, coupled with potential national bankruptcies in Greece, and recessions in Spain and Italy which will likely extend into early 2014, produce severe stress on euro currency. For the euro to survive, Germany and the most troubled countries will need to compromise national needs to develop an approach that will satisfy financial markets.  France introduces a growing uncertainty to the European outlook. It continues to head in the opposite direction from most countries, expanding the central government’s involvement in the economy, ignoring debt growth, and pushing income redistribution measures which could stifle growth. While the Eurozone should survive intact, the political process will likely keep markets uncertain and most countries’ fiscal budgets austere.  Overall economic activity measured by real GDP most likely will contract slightly in 2013.

Asia’s economic outlook

With key developed world markets in recession or growing weakly, Asian economies will have difficulty producing strong expansions in 2013. With the exception of Japan, however, rates of growth are likely to improve from 2012. Led by China, which moved a bit too aggressively to cool its economy in 2012, policies have become slightly more expansive across the region and should produce slightly stronger real growth rates. Growth will come more from internal regional development than export-led growth.

Risks affecting the semiconductor industry 

Negative risks dominate discussions among serious analysts. In Europe, a financial calamity from either a banking system failure or the breakup of the Eurozone would produce a severe recession with global implications. In the US, an imbalanced solution to the fiscal cliff could stifle growth and tumble the economy into a brief recession. Emerging commodity-focused or dependent economies would be negatively impacted by a weaker Asian expansion. Positive risks, which get very little discussion in popular press these days, include a much sharper boost in the US following a settlement of the “fiscal cliff” dilemma, and a slowly improving European situation (most likely led by Germany or a group of northern European economies) that stabilizes more rapidly the fiscal situation in Europe.  A number of US forecasters surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics on December 17th expect US growth to rebound sharply and exceed 3 ½% by the end of 2013 as the uncertainty “discount” is removed from markets. While an equal number expect growth to stagnate around 1%, the upside should be at least acknowledged as a possible upside risk to the current consensus.

A new econometric semiconductor industry forecast predicts semiconductor wafer area production to grow slightly less than 6% in 2013, according to Linx Consulting.

Using a macroeconomic forecasting tool that incorporates measures of economic uncertainty, global economic shocks, and regional volatility, the forecasting service, called The Econometric Semiconductor Forecast, predicts a slow first quarter in 2013 will be followed by a strong second quarter with moderate growth in the second half of the year. This modest growth forecast is believed to be demand-driven, since inventory levels have not shown a significant increase in 2012.

The Econometric Semiconductor Forecast is the first to use global GDP macroeconomic models to provide semiconductor industry forecasts at a quarterly frequency with monthly updates, allowing forecast recipients to plan for short-term fluctuations in the volatile semiconductor industry.

“An unstable global economy leads to wide variations in economic forecasts, making it difficult to develop meaningful demand-side forecasts,” said Mark Thirsk, managing partner of Linx Consulting. “Our econometric forecast model allows us to develop more accurate forecasts on a monthly and quarterly basis, which are vital for operations planning and business forecasting in the semiconductor supply chain.”

Based on a demand-driven equation that captures >98% of the long run variation in semiconductors, the economic forecast model used by Linx Consulting includes global real GDP growth from consensus forecasts, US consumer and business spending on technology goods, inventory-shipments ratio, computer and electronics, and financial crisis shock indicator to capture panic behavior in the latest cycle.

Headwinds in the Global Economy

Uncertainty surrounding government policies and ongoing fallout from the financial crisis combine to restrain growth in 2013. Protracted periods of uncertainty followed financial crises in the past, accompanied by prolonged subdued growth rates as major economic policies changed and debt restructuring dampened investment and spending.  Few of today’s policymakers or business leaders have experience dealing with this type of an environment. That lack of experience adds to the uncertainty in the current outlook, as it tends to increase cautious economic behavior by consumers and businesses. In 2013, policies should become a bit more settled in the first half of the year, improving confidence somewhat.  Global economic growth is unlikely to recover to its longer-term potential until after 2013 as fundamental structural imbalances will improve slowly at best.

In the face of these headwinds, the more than 250 forecasters surveyed in the December 2012 Consensus Forecasts produced a consensus subdued, below-trend global growth of 2.6% in 2013.  This is a slight improvement over the 2.5% now expected for 2012, but less than the 3.1% achieved in 2011 and below the long-term potential real global growth rate of around 3.5%.  While the consensus averages to 2.6% for 2013, there is a relatively wide range in individual forecasts, reflecting the uncertainty in the outlook.  Individual outlooks depend most on how forecasters see developments in the US and Eurozone.

Read more from The Econometric Semiconductor Forecast: Regional developments to affect growth of semiconductor industry

The forecasting service will provide subscribers with monthly updates of quarterly forecasts of total semiconductor production in Million Square Inches of silicon processed, as well as segmentation by device, including DRAM, flash, MPU, ASIC, analog and discrete.

 

STMicroelectronics and the University of Amsterdam Faculty of Science have announced that a sophisticated bird-tracking system developed by the university is using advanced MEMS sensing technology from ST.

Weighing as little as a 20 euro cent coin or a US quarter and smaller than a car key so as not to impede the birds’ flight, the tracking systems are sophisticated data loggers that can be attached to the back of the birds. The trackers enable valuable scientific research on bird behavior by measuring GPS position every three seconds.

“MEMS technologies are finding their way into a broad range of applications,” said Benedetto Vigna, executive vice president and general manager of ST’s Analog, MEMS and Sensors Group. “The light weight, low power, and high accuracy of the MEMS make it ideal for innovative projects like UvA’s bird tracking system to study avian migration and behavior.”

In addition to the bird’s location, determined via GPS, the tracker collects acceleration and direction data from STMicroelectronics’ LSM303DLM digital compass that integrates low-power, high-performance motion and magnetic sensing in a miniature form factor. The MEMS chip monitors the direction and vertical/horizontal orientation of the animal and can determine the body angle of birds flying in a crosswind.

“Animals have a lot to teach us and, especially as the Earth’s climate changes, there are many projects that we can undertake to study animal behavior and migration patterns,” said Prof. Dr. Ir. Willem Bouten of UvA. “STMicroelectronics is a strong partner for us in developing technologies that are suitable and adaptable to researching challenging problems that could help us address the effects of global warming and land use change.”

The tracker also contains sensors that measure both the air temperature and the internal temperature of the device. A lithium battery, charged by a high-efficient triple-junction solar cell, provides power to the system, and a ZigBee transceiver manages wireless data communication to and from the device.

Data from the trackers is currently being shared among bird-research institutes and biologists to verify computer models that predict bird behavior and migration patterns.

The bird tracking system was developed in a close collaboration of the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics and the Technology Centre both of the Faculty of Science of the University of Amsterdam.

MEMS to track birds
The tracking system weighs a little as a US quarter and is smaller than a car key.

LED market discussedWith increasing awareness of global climate change and the importance of energy conservation, more and more countries have launched LED lighting projects and subsidy policies. As a result, even though the growth of the LED market in 2012 was hampered by global economic challenges, overall demand has continued to be on the rise. To help the Taiwan LED industry tackle the increasing challenges, an in-depth analysis of LED global market opportunities and technology breakthroughs were recently provided at the 2013 LED Market and Outlook seminar held by SEMI Taiwan.

Demand for high-power white LED is now growing at a rapid pace. Yellow and natural light LEDs will both exceed 200 lumen/watt in power rating by 2015 and even surpass 250 lumen/watt by 2020. OEM bulb prices are expected to drop from US$ 23 per 1,000 lumen in 2012 to $10 per 1,000 lumen in 2015 and then down to $5 per 1,000 lumen by 2020. The next few years will therefore see strong growth in the LED lighting market.

LED lighting market continues to grow from 2011 to 2016

Daphne Kuo, an analyst with ITRI Industrial Economics & Knowledge Center, added that the global market for general lighting has an annual growth rate of between 3 and 6%. The global market is expected to be worth $114.7 Billion in 2020, with the LED lighting market reaching a compound annual growth rate of 45% between 2011 and 2016, and 15% between 2016 and 2020. The LED lighting market could therefore reach a value of $79 billion.

In terms of the LED lighting market structure, LED home lighting will be the largest market in 2020 at $32.1 billion accounting for 41 percent of the total LED lighting. The next two largest markets will be outdoor and office lighting, with both approaching $11.3 billion. The overall market will itself be divided into the new installation market and the replacement market. The relative scale of the two markets is approximately 80:20. The scale of the replacement market is however expected to begin contracting after 2015 as LED penetration increases and lighting technology improves.

Different regions show different approaches to LED market

According to Kuo, currently Western nations account for 50% of the general lighting market and the Asian market accounts for 40%, so these two large regional markets remain evenly balanced. However, future growth will be driven mainly by emerging nations, and the BRICs in particular, because of strong government support for LED lighting. China will be the largest among them and account for approximately 70% of the BRIC lighting market. The China market is estimated to account for 45% of all demand in Asia, or 18% of the global lighting market.

Nevertheless, demand for LED lighting in China mainly comes from government projects. With local firms and governments joining forces to protect their vested interests, it is very difficult for outside firms to make any headway. Any company wishing to enter the China market must pay attention to the parochial nature of the lighting market. Adopting a profit sharing model and establishing a solid partnership with regional lighting channel operators is essential when entering the LED lighting market in China.

Keys to market: Lower production cost and improve efficiency

In addition to the market challenges, there will also be a number of technological challenges in the future. EPISTAR’s Carson Hsieh noted that solving problems with thermal resistance remains the number one priority. The current trend is using Flip-Chip technology to reduce chip-level thermal resistance. Another approach is to improve light emission efficiency. Light emission efficiency is in turn governed by internal quantum efficiency and light extraction efficiency. While improvements have been made in internal quantum efficiency, factors such as material absorption, uneven current distribution, and threshold loss mean that even high internal quantum efficiency within the LED produces relatively little external light. The bottleneck in LED light extraction efficiency must therefore be overcome.

The current trend is using Patterned Sapphire Substrate (PSS) technology as it has the advantage of increasing LED light extraction efficiency. Another method, called Nano Patterned Sapphire Substrate (NPSS), not only increases light extraction efficiency but also boosts epi wafer output. Increasing light extraction efficiency will not only boost overall light emission efficiency but also reduce thermal loss, allowing LED bulbs to do away with heat sinks and reduce costs even more.

By using GaN LED on Si technology to grow the epi layers on large silicon wafers, it will also be possible to adopt a production process that is compatible with semiconductor production lines and significantly reduce overall costs as well. However, GaN has a far higher thermal expansion coefficient than silicon so this may lead to technical problems such as epitaxial film rupture or wafer warping that will need to be overcome in the future.

Technology breakthroughs lead to further reductions in LED costs. This will in turn increase market acceptance and usher in of the era of high growth for the LED lighting market.

MEMs industry revenue forecastA strong uptake in consumer and mobile devices will power the market for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to solid revenue growth in 2013, with breakthroughs in new sensor applications also expected this year, according to insights from the IHS iSuppli MEMS service at information and analytics provider IHS.

Overall revenue in 2013 for MEMS sensors and actuators is forecast to reach $9.09 billion, up 8.1 percent from $8.41 billion last year. This year’s expansion is perceptibly higher than the 6.1 percent increase of 2012, and growth during the next two years will be even more robust, at double-digit increases. By 2017, MEMS revenue will amount to some $12.21 billion, up more than 50 percent from 2011 levels.

The growth rate for MEMS is highly positive compared to figures reported for the overall semiconductor industry, which declined by 2.3 percent last year. But the sizable gains in MEMS are typical for an industry that sees the healthy exposure of its products in a great number of consumer and mobile devices. And among all MEMS segments including automotive, military/aerospace and medical electronics, the consumer and mobile segment is the largest MEMS sector of all.

To date, MEMS sensors like accelerometers, gyroscopes, pressure sensors and microphones can be found in an enormous array of gadgets, including smartphones and tablets, gaming consoles and handheld players, camera phones and toys. But new applications this year are also making their way into the market, helping to propel industry growth, IHS iSuppli believes.

MEMS in handsets rule

The breakthrough applications for MEMS sensors this year have mostly to do with mobile handsets and camera phones, boosting functionality and performance.

For instance, MEMS actuators will figure significantly in the auto focus and zoom features of cellphone camera modules via suppliers such as PoLight, but also aided by California-based Tessera Technologies joining the fray this year, using technology Tessera gained when it acquired Siimpel Corp. Siimpel, also from California, had originally developed the MEMS technology for camera phones. The driver here will be smartphones with imaging capabilities of more than 8 megapixels—a market worth $20 million this year but soaring to $200 million by 2016.

Good opportunities will also come about for dedicated 2-axis gyroscopes, intended for image stabilization in camera phones. Companies that will benefit include InvenSense from California, Panasonic of Japan, and Italian-French entity STMicroelectronics. Linear Hall sensors will likewise share the limelight—a boon for companies such as Allegro Microsystems from Massachusetts, Infineon of Germany, Belgian-based Melexis, Micronas of Switzerland and AKM of Japan.

Another new application for MEMS this year will take the form of pressure sensors for mobile handsets, with Samsung—not Apple—leading the way this time via its top Galaxy S III and Note II smartphones. The use case is ostensibly for height measurement in buildings to support indoor navigation, even though the infrastructure is not completely in place yet. The question for pressure sensor suppliers such as STMicroelectronics and German firm Bosch is whether Samsung will sustain its use of the function for phones—and if others will follow Samsung’s example. A cautiously positive scenario is likely, IHS iSuppli expects, with this market doubling in 2013 to $100 million.

Other MEMS areas also to thrive, but WSS could suffer

Also joining the MEMS mainstream this year will be the timing market, which has continued to grow from a small base during the last two years. Especially in the key mobile handset space, temperature-compensated crystal oscillators or TCXOs—which perform better than incumbent quartz equivalents—will come to the fore in the baseband processor/GPS chipset. Housed in extremely compact designs, the oscillators ensure high-quality data communication by reducing noise in high-speed, high-capacity wireless communications typical in smartphones. Companies like California-based SiTime Corp. and Sand 9 from Massachusetts are propelling development.

Similarly, varactors and switches used for radio-frequency (RF) antenna tuning will begin to experience some market traction in 2013, even though other technologies like gallium arsenide and ferroelectric BST are still well-placed.

In what could be a blow to the optical MEMS market, however, a new trend suggests that liquid crystal-on-silicon alternatives may be replacing MEMS-based wavelength selective switches (WSS).

How this scenario develops could have a significant negative impact on this part of the MEMS market this year, especially as WSS is currently forecast to amount to more than 50 percent of the optical MEMS space for telecoms.

 

TU DresdenTechnische Universität (TU) Dresden announced Monday the successful initial operation of a low-power test chip featuring a Tensilica Xtensa LX4 DSP equipped with RacyICs power management IP implemented in GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ advanced 28nm Super Low Power, or SLP, technology. The chip is able to operate in a wide voltage and frequency range from 0.7V to 1.1V and 90 MHz to 1 GHz. Within that range, the optimal voltage/frequency combination is determined adaptively based on a new hardware performance monitor concept. The complete baseline IP was developed by the university team, who also did logic synthesis, place and route and sign-off of the test chip.

"Our ability to successfully realize microchips in advanced technologies is a result of a long-term strategy to build an experienced team, which covers all aspects of analog, digital and mixed-signal IC design," stated Professor René Schüffny, TU Dresden. "This accumulated engineering competence is one key enabler for TU Dresden’s leading-edge research in the field of complex systems based on advanced electronics."

The chip has been developed within the frame of the CoolRF28 project. This project is part of the Leading-Edge Cluster "Cool Silicon," which is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, or BMBF, within the scope of its Leading-Edge Cluster Competition. In the "Cool Silicon" cluster, universities, research institutes, small and medium enterprises, or SMEs, and big corporations closely cooperate in numerous projects on the next generation of energy-efficient electronics.

"We’re very impressed by the high research and engineering competence of the TU Dresden team," stated Frank Dresig, GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ European Field Engineering Manager. "The chip directly shows the capabilities of our advanced 28nm SLP process for implementation of ultra low-power SoCs for consumer applications."

The test chip’s power management is based on an IP for adaptive voltage and frequency scaling provided by RacyICs, a start-up company offering design and implementation services.

"The close cooperation with TU Dresden and GLOBALFOUNDRIES helps us to develop world-class services and IP products in advanced technology nodes," stated Holger Eisenreich, RacyICs’ Managing Director. "Because of high risks and costs, it is almost impossible for SMEs to enter this market without such cooperation."

With assistance from Tensilica, the university team integrated an Xtensa LX4 DSP core to demonstrate the overall power reduction benefits from the combination of a 28nm low-power technology, adaptive power management and an advanced processor IP core.

"Tensilica has had a long-standing relationship with the researchers at TU Dresden and congratulates them on this successful design effort," stated Chris Rowen, Tensilca’s CTO. "Tensilica’s Xtensa processor is a fundamental building block in TU Dresden’s wireless communications architecture, and we are working together to proliferate know-how on configurable architectures to the worldwide design community."

Technische Universität Dresden, founded in 1828, is a full-scale university with 14 faculties, covering a wide range of fields in science and engineering, humanities, social sciences and medicine. TU Dresden has about 36,500 students and almost 5,319 employees with 507 professors among them, and is the largest university in Saxony today. 

Integration is a feature we all look for in our electronic devices. Information readily available on our smart phones is integrated with web-based services and with our personal data on our home computer.  This interoperability that we take for granted is thanks to common software and hardware platforms that are shared by all the elements of this system. Platforms surround us everywhere in our daily lives – the specific model of the car we drive is built on a platform, the electrical systems in our house are on a platform: 110/220V with universal plugs. Platforms?! So I got curious and looked up a more formal definition on Wikipedia:

Platform technology is a term for technology that enables the creation of products and processes that support present or future development.

Why has the concept of platforms been on my mind? Because I hear it more and more often from engineers in the trenches of the post-tapeout flow – people who develop the data preparation sequences that ready their design for manufacturing. They say it is getting increasingly complicated to accommodate all the functional requirements and still meet the TAT (turn-around-time) requirements.  The 20nm node adds additional complexity to this flow – beyond retargeting, etch correction, fill insertion, insertion of assist features and the application of optical proximity correction– now decomposition-induced steps are required and replicate some of the steps for both layers.  Industry standards like the OASIS format enable the communication between independent standalone tools, but are not enough to enable extension in new functional areas and maintain a steady overall runtime performance. Users have to be familiar with all the features and conventions for each tool – not an efficient way to scale up an operation.

The oldest and most versatile platform in computational lithography is Calibre. It started with a powerful geometry processing engine and a hierarchical data base and is accessed through an integrated scripting environment using the Tcl-based  standard verification rule format (SVRF) and the Tcl verification format (TVF). As the requirements for making a design manufacturable with available lithography tools has grown, so has the scope of functionality available to lithographers and recipe developers. APIs have expanded the programming capabilities: the Calibre API provides access to the data base, the lithography API provides access to the simulation engine, the metrology API enables advanced programming of measurement site selection and characterization, the fracture API enables custom fracture (Figure 1). All of these functions let you both build data processing flows that meet manufacturing needs and encode your very own ideas for the most efficient data processing approach. The additional benefit of a unified platform is that it also enables the seamless interaction and integration of tools in a data processing flow. If you can cover the full flow within one platform, rather than transferring giant post-tapeout files between point tools, you will realize a much faster turn-around time.

Common workflow
Figure 1: All tools in the Calibre platform are programmed using the SVRF language and tcl extensions and can be customized via a number of APIs – maintaining a common and integrated workflow.

A platform like Calibre is uniformly used in both the physical verification of the design and in manufacturing, so that innovation entering the verification space flows freely over to the manufacturing side without rework and qualification. Examples include the smart fill applications and the decomposition and compliance checks for double-patterning (DP).

The benefits to using a unified software platform in the post-tapeout flow, illustrated in Figure 2, are also leveraged by the EDA vendor—our software developers use the common software architecture in the platform for very fast and efficient development of new tools and features. This reduces the response time to customer enhancement requests. New technology, like model-based fracture and self-aligned double patterning (SADP) decomposition, were rapidly prototyped based on that.

Calibre workflow
Figure 2: Benefit and scope of a platform solution and the support level provided by Calibre.  

 

A platform not only provides the integration and efficient operation at the work-flow level, but it also enables efficiency at the data-center level, considering the simultaneous and sequential execution of many different designs and computational tasks. The tapeout manufacturing system is a complex infrastructure of databases, planning, and tracking mechanisms to manage the entire operation. Common interfaces into the tools used –which are guaranteed by a platform solution–let you track data and information associated with each run and manage interactions and feedback across different jobs.  This leads, for example, to an improved utilization of the computer system overall as well as better demand and delivery forecasting. Operating a manufacturing system requires a different level of support than single tool solutions and the necessary infrastructure has evolved with the development of the components.

Once you start using a unified platform in your post-tapeout flow, you will see how the platform expands and grows. For today’s sub-nanometer technologies, a powerful and flexible platform for computational lithography is part of a successful business strategy.

Author biography

Dr. Steffen Schulze is the Product Management Director for the Mentor Graphics’ Calibre Semiconductor Solutions. He can be reached at [email protected].

ISMI to partner with Araca


February 6, 2013

SEMATECH announced today that Araca Inc., a leading provider of products and services for chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) research and development, and the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI) are partnering to deliver CMP processing and productivity solutions to help chip manufacturers increase yields, reduce equipment downtime and lower consumables costs.

“Leading-edge device designs and materials are introducing more complexity into planarization processing for manufacturers. This is increasing wafer costs and impacting die yields,” said Dr. Ara Philipossian, president and founder of Araca, Inc. "Partnering with ISMI allows us to validate our CMP Slurry Injector System (SIS-x) and other innovations in high-volume manufacturing facilities across the industry. This technical collaboration with the industry’s leading device manufacturers is vital to our success as we develop and commercialize high-performing and cost-effective CMP solutions.”

As a part of ISMI’s Manufacturing Technology program, Araca and ISMI will evaluate Araca’s CMP SIS-x system on varying consumable set-ups on select types of CMP equipment at ISMI members’ manufacturing locations to help increase removal rates while reducing polishing defects and slurry consumption for CMP processes.

“Cost and productivity are major obstacles in CMP, in addition to eliminating process variables that arise from equipment generated variation. While this applies equally to new and legacy processes, this is especially true for sub-20 nm high-volume manufacturing,” said Boyd Finlay, ISMI project manager.

ISMI is working cooperatively with the semiconductor industry to provide solutions to common high-volume productivity and cost detractors. ISMI’s Manufacturing Technology Program leads various equipment productivity improvement projects including CVD/PVD/etch particle elimination, CVD pump failures and chamber dusting prevention, electrostatic chuck cost-of -ownership, equipment variation and control, and defect source and root cause analysis.

ISMI also provides industry leadership through the ESH Technology Center, focusing on sustainability and green initiatives, addressing regulatory issues, and resource conservation in manufacturing operations.

ISMI membership is open to all semiconductor manufacturers and suppliers. ISMI and its members collaborate with a broad network of companies, consortia, universities, national laboratories, and associations from around the world to tackle manufacturing and ESH technology challenges.

Microchip Technology Inc. introduced three new SPI Flash memory devices yesterday. The devices, named the SST25PF020B, SST25PF040B and SST25PF080B, offer two, four and eight Mbit of memory and are manufactured with Microchip’s high-performance SuperFlash technology, a split-gate, NOR Flash design with thick-oxide tunneling injector for superior quality and reliability.

“With their extended voltage, smaller footprint and low power consumption, this SST25PFXXXB SPI Flash family provides designers with even simpler, more economical and more innovative memory solutions for their embedded designs.”

With their extended operating voltage range from 2.3 to 3.6V, extremely low power consumption, small-footprint packaging, and fixed super-fast program and erase times, these SPI Flash memory devices excel in a variety of applications. The memory is partitioned into uniform 4 Kbyte sectors, and 32 and 64 Kbyte blocks, offering flexible erase capabilities and seamless partitioning for program and data code in the same memory block. All three devices enable designers to reduce their overall product design cycles and total system costs while improving product performance. The extended voltage range provides designers with a wider set of options on the power-supply voltage for their chipsets and board designs, and reduces overall power consumption, making these memory devices especially well-suited for battery-operated accessories, sensors and equipment.

The SST25PF020B, SST25PF040B and SST25PF080B SPI Flash devices offer flexible erase and program performance, including erasing sectors and blocks as fast as 18 ms, erasing the entire Flash memory chip in 35 ms, and a word-programming time of 7 µs using Auto Address Increment (AAI). The devices also offer superior reliability of 100,000 endurance cycles, typical, and greater than 100 years of data retention. The active read current of these devices is only 10 mA, typical, at 80 MHz, and standby current is only 10 µA, typical.

All three devices excel in a broad range of applications, including those in the consumer-electronics and industrial markets. Examples of ideal end applications include smart meters, wireless products for sports/fitness/health monitoring, digital radios, low-power Wi-Fi® products, GPS, and a wide array of battery-operated products. Additionally, these SPI Flash memory devices are well suited for use in medical applications, such as glucose meters, hearing aids and wireless sensors.

“Newer designs requiring greater mobility, along with more compact form factors, are driving lower-power and extended-voltage requirements,” said Randy Drwinga, vice president of Microchip’s SuperFlash Memory Division. “With their extended voltage, smaller footprint and low power consumption, this SST25PFXXXB SPI Flash family provides designers with even simpler, more economical and more innovative memory solutions for their embedded designs.”

Pricing & Availability

The SST25PF020B starts at $0.53 each, in 8-lead 150 mil SOIC, 8-contact USON (3×2 mm), or 8-contact WSON (6×5 mm) packages, in 10,000-unit quantities. The SST25PF040B starts at $0.66 each, in 8-lead 150 mil SOIC, 8-lead 200 mil SOIC, or 8-contact WSON (6×5 mm) packages, in 10,000-unit quantities. The SST25PF080B starts at $0.81 each, in 8-lead 150 mil SOIC, 8-lead 200 mil SOIC, or 8-contact WSON (6×5 mm) packages, in 10,000-unit quantities.

Agilent Technologies Inc. announced yesterday the intent to donate $90 million in software to Georgia Institute of Technology, the largest in-kind software donation ever in its longstanding relationship with the university.

“Georgia Tech is among the best research universities in the world, offering the largest, most diverse electrical and computer engineering program in the United States and regularly turning out the largest number of engineers in America,” said Steve McLaughlin, chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Maintaining that position requires the best teachers and facilities and, increasingly, key partnerships with companies like Agilent. Thanks to Agilent’s support, our students now have access to the industry’s leading software and hardware tools.”

Last year, Georgia Tech dedicated a new laboratory to Agilent after the company made a substantial donation to the university’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

Agilent’s latest in-kind donation is valued at approximately $90 million over three years and will comprise Agilent EDA software, support and training. The donation is being given as part of the Agilent EEsof EDA University Alliance program. It includes a tailored, three-year custom license program that provides member companies of ECE’s Georgia Electronic Design Center with access to Agilent’s EEsof EDA solutions.

“This is one of the largest academic donations of Agilent EEsof products to a single institution and the largest software gift Georgia Tech has ever received,” said Todd Cutler, general manager with Agilent EEsof EDA. “We realize that universities and start-up incubator programs play a crucial role in pushing the limits of EDA tools; feedback from our partnership with Georgia Tech helps us target our development investments to make sure our products support leading-edge technology development.”

Academic uses of Agilent EDA software will focus on Agilent EEsof’s Advanced Design System and SystemVue solutions. ADS is the world’s leading electronic design automation software for RF, microwave and high-speed digital applications, pioneering innovative and commercially successful technologies such as X-parameters and 3-D electromagnetic simulators. SystemVue is Agilent’s premier platform for designing communications systems. It enables system architects and algorithm developers to innovate the physical layer of wireless and aerospace/defense communications systems and provides unique value to RF, DSP, and FPGA/ASIC implementers.