June 4, 2012 — Displaybank published a 2009-2014 analysis of light-emitting diode (LED)packages, the finished LED components used in various applications. While LED package units will grow steadily through the forecast period, revenues will remain mostly flat from 2010 to 2013.
Figure. LED package sector growth by units shipped and by revenue through 2014. SOURCE: LED Industry Outlook – Package (2009~2014), Displaybank.
LEDs are achieving near 100% penetration in mobile device displays, emerging as a major segment of lighting, and replacing CCFLs in television backlights. Market penetration is increasing for internal and external automotive lights, as well as signage applications.
LED light sources can offer higher performance and lower power consumption than traditional technologies. The technology is also considered more environmentally friendly, and can reduce costs for some applications.
Currently, EUV source suppliers are working on increasing source power for EUVL scanners. The ASML 3300 Series scanners, designed for high-volume manufacturing, are scheduled for delivery later this year. Most probably, high power sources will not be quite ready in 2012 to support HVM requirements, and will need to be upgraded on site. So the questions still needing to be answered are:
When will these HVM-level EUVL scanners be used to make products?
What will trigger the industry-wide insertion of EUV scanners in HVM production lines?
Will it be a certain source power level, throughput, yield, or cost that raises the confidence of users?
Who will be the first users of EUVL in HVM, and for what products and which node?
Similar questions can be posed for EUVL mask defect metrology tools. With scanners, we have an approximate throughput model that is widely known, so we can estimate throughput and cost of ownership at a given source power level. This is not quite so for mask defection inspection tools, as they are still being designed and need brighter EUV sources. The leading option for sources for defect metrology tools (and the only one for a 24 x 7 operation) is the Energetiq Xe discharge-produced plasma (DPP) source. However, current performance levels for this source allow only development of prototypes.
In my opinion, memory makers probably will be the first adopters of EUVL technology. Throughput as high as 40 wafers per hour (WPH) will convince chip-makers that EUVL is a viable technology, and sales of EUVL scanners and associated tools and products will start soaring. Mask defect metrology tools will remain unready for HVM until a brighter source becomes available. We can expect a déjà vu: low throughout metrology tools waiting to be upgraded.
In the case of high-power sources, we have three major suppliers with the commitment and resources to continue development. Not so for metrology sources, and the end customers will have only themselves to blame this time. I have read that end users are spending up to $150 million on metrology tool development, but not a dime on developing EUV sources for metrology. A source supplier told me that promises of support for metrology source development have not materialized, even though EUV sources for metrology are the weakest link in the chain. With virtually all of the money going to engineering development of tools and none to this weakest link, the results are very predictable.
As the industry Roadmap moves to smaller nodes of resolution (10 nm and below), will we choose EUVL with double patterning, or change the wavelength once again and move toward Beyond EUV (BEUV)? Gadolinium (Gd) at 6.8 nm is the current leading option for BEUV source material, as we saw from the latest development results on source and optics in last year’s EUVL Source Workshop. Increased optical proximity correction (OPC), off-axis illumination (OAI), and double patterning may require more power at these nodes than 13.5 nm sources can provide, so it might make sense to move to BEUV. For BEUV, we have a leading source material for multilayer (ML) optics and resist development has already started. We also can apply lessons learned from 13.5 nm to BEUV tools, although more infrastructure work will be required.
These and related topics will debated by panelists from Intel, GlobalFoundries, Toshiba and Applied Materials (AMAT) at the 2012 EUVL Workshop being held June 4-8 in Maui, Hawaii. The panel will be moderated by Sushil Padiyar of AMAT. The Workshop also will feature many papers on BEUV and EUVL R&D from some of the world’s leading researchers. I will be blogging here about these new developments after the EUVL Workshop.
May 31, 2012 – PRNewswire — Xilinx Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) began shipping a 3D heterogeneous all-programmable FPGA, the Virtex-7 H580T FPGA, using its stacked silicon interconnect (SSI) technology to reach up to 16 28Gbps and 72 13.1Gbps transceiver bandwidth.
May 30, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — AGC (TOKYO:5201), glass, chemicals and high-tech materials manufacturer, has developed 0.5mm carrier glass for handling and transport of its 0.1mm-thick ultra-thin glass during display manufacturing processes. The carrier glass enables display manufacturers to use ultra-thin AGC glass without altering their existing production facilities.
Ultra-thin glass offers excellent transparency, heat resistance, and electrical insulation. It is laminated to the carrier glass during processing. The thin form enables flexible displays, lighting applications, and other end products. It is designed to be processed in roll-to-roll (R2R) production lines.
To use ultra-thin glass in traditional sheet-to-sheet display manufacturing lines, substantial alteration is required to equipment and handling tooling. With carrier glass, the same tools and equipment can be used, enabling low-risk adoption.
The 0.5mm carrier glass is bonded to the 0.1mm glass via a special layer that protects the substrate from heat and chemicals. The carrier glass prevents the ultra-thin glass from coming into direct contact with processing equipment, avoiding scratches and other defects. The materials are easily delaminated after processing.
A sample of carrier glass technology will be exhibited at AGC’s booth at the Society for Information Display (SID) exhibition in Boston, MA, June 3-7.
The AGC Group, with Tokyo-based Asahi Glass Co. Ltd. at its core, supplies flat, automotive and display glass, chemicals and other high-tech materials and components. For more information, please visit www.agc-group.com/en.
Karen Lightman, MEMS Industry Group (MIG), lets us in on the real meaning of MEMS new product development. MEMS are micro electro mechanical systems.
May 30, 2012 — What do you think of when I say the words “MEMS new product development?” Do you envision new categories of newly discovered MEMS hatching somewhere in a university lab? If your answer is “yes,” perhaps you should rethink that — because MEMS isn’t new. If we are to grow this $9 billion/year industry to a hundred-billion or even trillion dollar industry as some predict, we need to think of new MEMS in terms of how the “regular, everyday” MEMS we have right now are used in development of new end products. Whether these new MEMS-enabled products come from a combination of market pull and/or technology push, there are challenges and hurdles that the industry must come together to address, now!
That is why we focused the MEMS Industry Group (MIG) Member-to-Member (M2M) Forum® on MEMS “New Product Development” earlier in May — because it is so time-critical for the MEMS industry to come together and address these barriers and challenges to commercialization that are hindering growth. Barriers that I like to call the “stickiness of MEMS,” which include the “S” word of MEMS — “Standards” for things such as testing, packaging…not the sexy, shiny, bright things that are hatched in the lab and then probably never make it to the market.
I invited Len Sheynblat of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) to give the keynote, “Sensor Systems Integration Challenges,” which spelled out in very specific terms what the MEMS industry needs to do, specifically, Sensor API Standardization. He shared QCT’s commonly requested sensor vendors: 18+! With 26+ sensor product lines! And on top of this, there are numerous handset and tablet OEMS with different ecosystems: Android, Windows, RIM (which used to be Palm), etc. They all want to be loved, and this makes developing with MEMS just a smidge complex.
Sounds a bit nightmarish, don’t you think? I sure do, and MIG will be working with our members and strategic partners, including the MIPI Alliance, to address these challenges and issues of the stickiness of MEMS. I urge you to contact me and become active and involved in our M2M Action Item Task Forces.
That’s also why the MIG Technology Advisory Committee (MIG TAC) chose Mary Ann Maher, CEO of SoftMEMS, as the winner of our first-ever white paper competition, because she discussed the important issue of co-design and yes, standards. And because Mary Ann was the evening speaker, she also made the presentation into a drinking game. (Every time she said “co-design,” you were to take a sip; I gave up after the 15th time.)
And as we have every year, since MIG began with DARPA funding, we also had working groups to dive deeper into the conference topic. Our working group leaders (Jim Knutti of Acuity, Mike Mignardi of TI, Jason Tauscher of MicroVision and Valerie Marty of HP) did a fantastic job of moderating the rich discussions we had in the working group breakout groups on “Market Pull vs. Technology Push” and “MEMS Technology Development.” I encourage you to check out the MIG resource library to see the body of knowledge and case studies we’ve gathered; and MIG action item task forces will be forming soon to carry out several of the recommendations.
M2M Forum also featured a panel of speakers expressing diverse opinions and perspectives on new product commercialization — from those involved heavily and not so heavily with MEMS. The panel included: Anne Schneiderman of Harris Beach, an expert in IP law; Stefan Finkbeiner, a MEMS device manufacturing veteran with Bosch/Akustica; Matt Apanius with SMART Commercialization Center for Microsystems, who is well versed in tech transfer from lab to fab; and Ivo Stivoric with BodyMedia, someone who embodies a MEMS supplier’s dream of an end-user company.
My favorite part of the panel was when Ivo described the challenges in understanding/analyzing the “white space in the market.” He warned that as a consumer of MEMS, he oftentimes doesn’t need a new device; he just needs a tweak or two and then wants the device manufacturer to “just go away” so he can go back to his customers. Amen, brother. I want that for you, too. Because the truth is that MEMS isn’t new, and so we need to find the solutions to these challenges to commercialization, and then move on to conquer the other white space in the market.
Contact Karen Lightman, managing director of MEMS Industry Group at [email protected], 412-390-1644. Read her other blogs:
May 29, 2012 — Rudolph Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: RTEC), back-end macro defect inspection tool supplier, will deliver 14 NSX Series 320 inspection systems to a large outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) provider.
The inspection tools will be installed in Q2, at multiple steps in wafer-level chip-scale packaging (WLCSP) production.
The packaging house chose to order NSX 320 systems following a competitive evaluation, in which they noted its high speed and efficient, easy-to-use operating procedures.
This is a new product for Rudolph. The NSX320 System performs defect inspection and 2D bump metrology, and acquires on-the-fly defect images at production speeds. WLCSP lines require flexibility for handling substrates in various formats while collecting detailed defect and 2D metrology information during the inspection process, said Nathan Little, vice president and general manager of Rudolph
May 29, 2012 — Semiconductor assembly and test services (SATS) provider Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Incorporated (ASE, TAIEX:2311, NYSE:ASX) opened its Phase 3 manufacturing facility in Weihai, Shangdong province, China, boosting discrete packaging and test capacity.
The 5,120sq.m. building offers 30,560sq.m. of floor space, and will require an additionally 2,000 employees in engineering, development, and operations at ASE. Weihai
May 25, 2012 – PRNewswire — Flash memory chip maker Spansion Inc. (NYSE:CODE) debuted its first family of single-level cell (SLC) NAND products using 4Xnm floating-gate technology.
The chips are available in 1-8Gb densities in 3.0V and 1.8V families. They meet reliability requirements with a 1-bit error correction code (ECC). The current generation SLC NAND components use floating-gate process technology and boast a temperature range of -40°C to +85°C; 100k cycle endurance; and 25μs random access, 25ns sequential access, and up to 200μs programming. It is packaged in a standard 48-pin TSOP.
The products suit embedded data storage in automotive, networking, and consumer applications, which are increasingly transitioning to the NAND architecture, said Touhid Raza, director of marketing for NAND, Spansion, in a recent interview with Solid State Technology. Spansion offers a broad non-volatile memory (NVM) architecture portfolio, said Raza. Parallel and serial NOR Flash enable designs with high-performance code execution and data storage requirements. The NAND segment of Flash memory has grown rapidly, he said, with densities increasing to keep pace with applications. SLC NAND can address data storage needs. In general terms, NOR offers faster initial access, while NAND brings faster repeat access and higher bandwidth.
The 1-8Gb SLC NAND products will be manufactured on 4Xnm technology currently, 3Xnm technology by end of 2012, and 2Xnm in 2014. Because the embedded memory market has long design cycles, Spansion is supporting each node design into 2017 and further, Raza explained.
The embedded segment requires long-term product support and reliability, said Russell Crane, product marketing manager, Sitara ARM processors, Texas Instruments, adding that his company is broadening its collaboration beyond parallel and serial Flash memory to include Spansion SLC NAND.
Spansion (NYSE: CODE) provides Flash memory technology. For more information, visit http://www.spansion.com.
May 24, 2012 — The market for power management semiconductors grew for 7 quarters before declining grossly in Q4 2011, flattened in Q1 2012, and is now “on its way to discernible growth in Q2,” reports IHS. Revenue for power management semiconductors will reach $8.0 billion in Q2, up 6.7% sequentially (see the figure), according to an IHS iSuppli Power Management Market Tracker report.
The rise in power management chips is driven primarily by expansion in consumer and industrial sectors.
Figure. Worldwide power management semiconductor revenue by quarter. SOURCE: IHS iSuppli Research, May 2012.
Q1 ‘11
Q2 ’11
Q3 ’11
Q4 ’11
Q1 ’12
Q2 ’12
$ Billion
$7.9
$8.1
$8.4
$7.5
$7.5
$8.0
The trend toward higher revenues in power management semiconductors will continue in H2 2012, IHS predicts. Total power management semiconductor revenue for 2012 should reach $32.8 billion, up 2.8% from $31.9 billion in 2011. This does not approach the strong growth seen in 2009 and 2010, however.
Power management semiconductors are used in wide-ranging products: cellphones, computers, energy systems, to name a few, said Marijana Vukicevic, senior principal analyst for power management at IHS. Increased demand for power-sensitive portable electronics — tablet PCs and smartphones, etc. — will increase sales of power management semiconductors, which improve heat dissipation, weight and size of such products.
Q4 is a period of seasonal decline for power semis, but the scale of the Q4 2011 drop was “a serious indication of an especially depressed market for these semiconductors,” IHS asserts. Consumer spending slowed, and subsidies and other government programs stopped. In addition, disruptions to manufacturing after the 3/11 Japan earthquake-tsunami disaster and floods in Thailand in October changed buying patterns.
Strong growth in consumer demand during Q2 and beyond will benefit power management device makers, as will improvements in industrial electronics and alternative energy (wind, solar and geothermal) control electronics.
Look for insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules (industrial) and power management integrated circuits (consumer) to drive growth.
Projections for the next 5 years show overall positive growth for power management semiconductors, with revenue increasing by 6.6%. Thank media tablets like Apple Inc’s iPad for driving this trend, as well as digital set-top boxes, building and home control, enterprise voice networks, mobile handsets, mobile infrastructures, and network switches.
IGBT modules represent the main growth area for these sectors, followed by low-voltage and high-voltage metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (LV and HV MOSFETs).
IHS (NYSE: IHS) is a leading source of information, insight and analytics in critical areas that shape today’s business landscape. For more information, visit www.ihs.com.
May 24, 2012 — Bosch Sensortec, the consumer electronics sensor arm of Bosch, has integrated two triaxial micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS) sensors in 1 package, claiming the smallest inertial measurement unit (IMU) to date. An optional geomagnetic sensor creates a 3DoF module. Solid State Technology spoke with Leopold Beer, director of global marketing at Bosch Sensortec, about MEMS integration and the sensor fusion software element of sensing.
The BMI055 combines an acceleration sensor and a gyroscope for advanced consumer electronics applications with six degrees of freedom (6DoF), such as gaming applications in smartphones, tablets, consoles, etc. It is packaged in a 3.0 x 4.5 x 0.95mm LGA.
The BMI055 is enabled by continuing miniaturization of MEMS, Beer noted, adding that Bosch fabs all of its MEMS chips in house with high-volume and high-reliability production.
Power is also important for the 2 MEMS package. The accelerometer and higher-power-consuming gyroscope can operate independently, when sensor fusion is not required.
“The MEMS are full-performance sensors in their own right, because customers are used to a certain set of functionality from accelerometers and gyroscopes,” Beer said, “that cannot be compromised for small form factor.”
The accelerometer features flexible interrupt functionality and integrated FIFO buffer. The gyroscope features an integrated interrupt engine, integrated FIFO buffer, and 4 offset compensation modes. For greater design flexibility, the measurement range of the sensors is programmable: ±125°/s to ±2000°/s for the gyroscope, and ±2g to ±16g for the accelerometer. The latter also shows a low zero-g offset of typically 70 milli-g. The gyroscope has a 16 bit resolution; the accelerometer’s is 12 bit. The gyroscope boasts stable operation with good TCO and offset compensation. The package offers good signal to noise ratio. I2C and SPI digital interfaces offer versatile communication options.
The BMI055 IMU is released concurrently with Bosch’s custom sensor fusion software BSX2.0 FusionLib that optimizes sensing by combining input from the gyroscope and accelerometer. MEMS manufacturers know the functionality and performance of each type of MEMS sensor best, Beer said. Therefore, MEMS makers are the ideal designers of MEMS sensor fusion software. “The algorithms in MEMS software do more than just drive the chip, they integrate abilities from each MEMS to improve calibration, interference filtering, and more.” Sensor fusion, for example, combines the good angular resolution but high drift of gyroscope MEMS with the slower eCompass, improving accuracy. BSX2.0 FusionLib works with all stand-alone or integrated Bosch Sensortec MEMS devices.
Bosch Sensortec makes MEMS devices for consumer applications, as a division of Bosch. Learn more at www.bosch-sensortec.com.
