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Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment spending is projected to total $35.8 billion in 2013, a 5.5 percent decline from 2012 spending of $37.8 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner said that capital spending will decrease 3.5 percent in 2013, as major producers remain cautious in the face of market weakness.

"Weak semiconductor market conditions, which continued into the first quarter of 2013, generated downward pressure on new equipment purchases," said Bob Johnson, research vice president at Gartner. "However, semiconductor equipment quarterly revenues are beginning to improve and positive movement in the book-to-bill ratio indicates that spending for equipment will pick up later in the year. Looking beyond 2013, we expect that the current economic malaise will have worked its way through the industry and spending will follow a generally increasing pattern in all sectors throughout the rest of the forecast period."

Gartner predicts that 2014 semiconductor capital spending will increase 14.2 percent, followed by 10.1 percent growth in 2015. The next cyclical decline will be a mild drop of 3.5 percent in 2016, followed by a return to growth in 2017.

Table 1

Worldwide Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Spending Forecast, 2012-2017 (Millions of Dollars)

 

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

 

 

 

2017

Semiconductor Capital Spending ($M)

58,742.8

56,704.5

64,745.6

71,305.9

68,790.4

72,399.6

Growth

-11.9%

-3.5%

14.2%

10.1%

-3.5%

5.2%

Capital Equipment ($M)

37,833.2

35,761.6

42,591.0

47,488.8

44,712.0

48,580.9

Growth

-16.1%

-5.5%

19.1%

11.5%

-5.8%

8.7%

Wafer-Level Manufacturing Equipment ($M)

31,445.8

29,900.7

35,293.4

40,400.0

38,867.7

42,179.1

Growth

-17.8%

-4.9%

18.0%

14.5%

-3.8%

8.5%

Wafer Fab Equipment ($M)

29,644.2

27,957.3

32,831.5

37,750.5

36,344.4

39,215.4

Growth

-18.5%

-5.7%

17.4%

15.0%

-3.7%

7.9%

Wafer-Level Packaging and Assembly Equipment ($M)

1,801.6

1,943.4

2,461.9

2,649.5

2,523.3

2,963.7 

Growth

-3.1%

7.9%

26.7%

7.6%

-4.8%

17.5%

Die-Level Packaging and Assembly Equipment ($M)

3,867.3

3,503.7

4,258.9

3,922.5

3,232.1

3,548.2

Growth

-10.5%

-9.4%

21.6%

-7.9%

-17.6%

9.8%

Automated Test Equipment ($M)

2,520.0

2,357.2

3,038.7

3,166.3

2,612.2

2,853.5

Growth

0.4%

-6.5%

28.9%

4.2%

-17.5%

9.2%

Other Spending ($M)

20,909.6

20,943.0

22,143.3

23,815.1

24,401.2

24,067.9

Growth

-3.1%

0.2%

5.7%

7.6%

2.5%

-1.4%

Source: Gartner (June 2013)

Although capital spending for all products will decline in 2013, logic spending will be the strongest segment, declining only 2 percent compared with a 3.5 percent decline for the total market. This is driven by aggressive investment of the few top players, which are ramping up production at the sub-30-nanometer (nm) nodes. Memory will continue to be weak through 2013, with maintenance-level investments for DRAM and a slightly down NAND market until supply and demand balance returns. For 2014, Gartner sees capital expenditure (capex) returning to growth with an increase of 14.2 percent over 2013. The foundry segment will see an increase in spending of about 14.3 percent this year, while both integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), and semiconductor assembly and test services (SATS) providers will show spending declines. Beyond 2013, memory surges in 2014 and 2015 and a cyclical decline in 2016, while logic returns to a steady growth pattern.

The wafer fab equipment (WFE) market is seeing continuous quarter-over-quarter growth in 2013, as major manufacturers come out of a period of high inventories and a generally weak semiconductor market. Early in the year the book-to-bill ratio passed 1:1 for the first time in months, signaling that the need for new equipment is strengthening as demand for leading-edge devices is improving. Looking beyond 2013, Gartner sees growth returning to the WFE market with double-digit growth in 2014 and 2015, before a modest cyclical downturn in 2016.

The capital spending forecast estimates total capital spending from all forms of semiconductor manufacturers, including foundries and back-end assembly and test services companies. This is based on the industry’s requirements for new and upgraded facilities to meet the forecast demand for semiconductor production. Capital spending represents the total amount spent by the industry for equipment and new facilities.

More detailed analysis is available in the report "Forecast: Semiconductor Capital Spending, Worldwide, 2Q13 Update."

This research is produced by Gartner’s Semiconductor Manufacturing program. This research program, which is part of the overall semiconductor research group, provides a comprehensive view of the entire semiconductor industry, from manufacturing to device and application market trends.

 

A team of researchers from the Nanoengineering Research Centre (CRNE) and the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) has found a way to make the manufacture of crystalline silicon materials faster and more affordable. The results of their research have recently been published in the online version of the landmark journal Applied Physics Letters ("’Silicon millefeuille’: From a silicon wafer to multiple thin crystalline films in a single step").

Thin crystalline silicon wafers measuring around 10 µm (micres) are costly but also very sought after in the field of microelectronics, especially in view of the growing demand for 3D circuit integration with microchips. Silicon wafers also have potential photovoltaic applications in the medium term in the conversion of sunlight to electricity and the production of more affordable, more flexible and lighter solar cells.

In recent years, techniques have been developed to obtain increasingly thinner crystalline silicon wafers from monocrystalline cylindrical ingots. Layers cut from the ingots using a multithreaded saw infused with abrasive material have a minimum thickness of around 150 µm. Obtaining wafers that are any thinner is more complicated, as existing methods only allow such wafers to be obtained one at a time. Furthermore, 50 percent of the silicon is lost in the process.

The technology developed by the research team – David Hernández, Trifon Trifonov and Moisés Garín, led by Professor Ramon Alcubilla – enables a large number of crystalline layers, controlled for thickness, to be produced from a single crystalline silicon wafer in just a single step. The outcome is a kind of crystalline silicon “millefeuille” produced more efficiently, more rapidly and more affordably than by existing methods.

The methodology developed by the scientists is based on making small pores in the material and applying a high temperature during the manufacturing process. Multiple separate crystalline silicon wafers are obtained by carefully controlling the pore profiles. Precise control over diameter controls both the number of layers and their thickness. The millefeuille silicon layers are then separated by exfoliation. The resulting number of silicon layers is determined by the thickness of the layers themselves and the initial thickness of the wafer. The CRnE researchers have succeeded in creating up to 10 thin wafers (5-7mm thick) from a single 300 mm thick wafer.

Reduced costs for industry

The demand for thin and ultra-thin crystalline silicon wafers responds to the application possibilities offered by 3D circuit integration of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) with conventional microchips and also to the latest generation of photovoltaic technology. Wafer cutting for solar cell production, for example, has been steadily improving. Thickness has been reduced (350mm in the 1990s to 180mm currently) while efficiency has been enhanced, resulting in reduced manufacturing costs; nonetheless, greater reductions are likely to be difficult to achieve. It has been shown that, despite lesser thickness, the wafers retain a high capacity to absorb solar energy and convert it into electricity.

For the first time ever, no clear winner has emerged to claim top honors in the MEMS business for 2012, with Bosch of Germany and French-Italian STMicroelectronics ending up evenly splitting the title of No. 1 supplier for the year, according to a MEMS Competitive Analysis Report from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS).

With both companies just shy of the $800 million mark, Bosch and STMicroelectronics each had MEMS revenue of approximately $793 million in 2012. The two companies do not use the same exchange rates every quarter when converting their revenue from euros to the U.S. dollar, and as a difference of less than 1 percent separates the revenue levels of both, IHS found it was not possible this time to declare a clear winner as to who was No. 1 for 2012.

“With billions of dollars up for grabs, competition in the MEMS market is intense,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS & sensors at IHS. “Nowhere is the rivalry more furious than the battle for the market’s top spot. In fact, the content for number one is so closely contested that Bosch and STMicroelectronics battled each other to a draw in 2012.”

MEMS in the money

Overall, the top 20 MEMS manufacturers last year accounted for a whopping 77 percent of the industry total of some $8.3 billion, as shown in Table 1. The figure excludes foundry revenue in order to avoid double-counting of fabless and foundry takings within the same ranking. For instance, excluded is MEMS foundry revenue from STMicroelectronics for its fabrication of Hewlett-Packard inkjet print heads, or similar foundry revenue from Texas Instruments for Lexmark inkjet print heads.

top 20 mems suppliers
Table 1.

Foremost among all the players were the four companies at the top, each with revenue ranging from $675 million to $800 million, and collectively well ahead of the rest of the pack.

Bosch vs. STMicroelectronics

Bosch, the No. 3 entity in 2011, enjoyed a MEMS revenue boost of 8 percent last year including a nearly 5 percent uptick in its primary automotive MEMS business, which accounted for 82 percent of overall Bosch MEMS takings. Bosch is unchallenged as the top automotive MEMS supplier with 27 percent share of the market. The company also has a growing consumer and mobile MEMS trade—up 17 percent for the year—thanks to the soaring sales of pressure sensors in handsets, compensating for slightly down revenues in accelerometers and microphones. But while the company did well in 2012, its result was impacted by an unfavorable exchange currency rate, especially in its U.S. automotive business.

STMicroelectronics, the No. 4 player in 2011, counted on a robust consumer and mobile business as its main source of MEMS revenue. While rival Bosch dominates automotive, STM leads in consumer and mobile MEMS with 32 percent of the market. STM also made inroads into automotive with $15 million in 2012, up from $10 million the year earlier. Gyroscopes were ahead of accelerometers in contributing to STM’s cache, and similar to Bosch, pressure sensors for handsets boomed because of shipments into smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S III.

Texas Instruments tumbles from the top

Falling out of the No. 1 spot was Texas Instruments, down to No. 3, with revenue down 3 percent to $751 million. While front projectors for business and education still formed the majority of its digital light processing (DLP) chip revenue, the segment was flat last year. In particular, DLP revenue in home theater and rear-projection TVs was down, especially with the exit of Mitsubishi as the last remaining rear-projection TV brand in North America. DLP revenue for pico-projectors also has not taken off as expected, with the chipset still too expensive and its adoption slow in the consumer and mobile markets.

At the No. 4 spot was Hewlett-Packard with revenue of $677 million. HP also suffered a drop in ranking, down from No. 2 in 2011, as revenue associated with its inkjet printer heads contracted 10 percent last year. This follows a 15 percent decline in the shipment of inkjet printers. Moreover, HP’s revenue from the replacement of disposable print heads has been shrinking continually as the company long ago started to move to printers with permanent print heads.

Rounding out the Top 5 but at a relatively far remove from the four other companies above it was Canon of Japan, with revenue of $377 million.

InvenSense on the rise

In all, revenue for companies from the succeeding sixth spot all the way to No. 15 each had takings between $100 million to just under $300 million.

Worth noting outside of the Top 5 was California-based InvenSense at No. 13, with revenue up 30 percent to $186 million. InvenSense is the most successful MEMS startup ever, its market breakthrough coming in 2009 thanks to its design in the Nintendo Wii Motion Plus gaming accessory. While InvenSense initially had been heavily dependent on gaming, the company wisely diversified its business and now looks to handsets and tablets as even more important sources of revenue.

InvenSense has also pioneered serial production of 6-axis inertial measurement unit comprising accelerometers and gyroscopes in a 4 x 4-millimeter package. Combo sensors last year accounted for half of the company’s revenue, and InvenSense is now producing a very small 9-axis inertial measurement unit also containing a 3-axis magnetometer that measures only 3 x 3 millimeters.

Sapphire is currently used in some exotic, luxury phones. However, the sapphire price reduction combined with the massive adoption of touch screens in smartphones have stimulated the interest of cell phone OEMS for this material. Crystal growth equipment manufacturer GTAT is leading the charge and recently created a lot of buzz around this application and on the OEM front. Apple is rumored to have conducted an extended due diligence.

Adoption of sapphire in mobile display covers represents the single largest opportunity. It remains, however, uncertain. Yole Développement sees four major challenges: technology, supply chain, cost and market acceptance. Crystal growth and finishing technologies still need to be optimized in order to guarantee stable performance and reduce the price gap with chemically strengthened glass like Corning’s Gorilla. Yole Développement’s analyst estimates that the current cost of manufacturing a sapphire display cover is around $22 but could drop to $12 and ultimately below $10. It remains to be seen if the bill of material increase vs. the $3 glass display cover will be absorbed by the OEM in exchange for increased market share or if the consumer will value the increased durability brought in by the sapphire cover and accept paying a premium.

sapphire substrate use

It is difficult to predict the success of sapphire in this application. However, Yole Développement expects that some OEMs will probe the market and introduce some models featuring sapphire by late 2013 – early 2014. Initial customer reaction will have a strong influence on the future of the technology. If successful, strong market traction could ease the funding for the more than $1.5 billion in capex needed to serve this industry and set up the supply chain to serve this application.

Glass cover lens manufacturers might seize the opportunity. Because of their vast existing glass finishing capacity that could be converted to process sapphire and their privileged access to leading smartphone OEMs, those companies could beat established sapphire finishing companies into this market. However, another scenario would see collaborations between some leading sapphire and cover lens makers in order to pool technical knowledge, capacity and customer access under the push of some smartphone OEMs.

In any case, if this opportunity materializes, it will transform the sapphire industry with new players emerging, and overall production capacity increasing by a factor of more than 7x.

Defense semiconductor and other applications represent 25% of the sapphire industry revenue

“These applications will bring in revenue of $240 million in 2013 and, excluding the display cover opportunity, will increase at a nine percent CAGR to US$366 million in 2018. Watch windows are currently the single largest application with revenue of US$120 million in 2012. Most applications are fairly mature with relatively low growth opportunity with the exception of the emerging mobile device camera lens cover and the aerospace market, driven by the F-35 jet fighter program and the emergence of sapphire-based transparent armors,” explains Eric Virey, senior analyst, Compound Semiconductors, at Yole Développement.

Most applications have their own “eco-systems” with preferred material vendors, finishing companies, growth technologies and barrier of entrance. The defense market, for example, is characterized by strong technical barriers in both growth and finishing, combined with export restrictions and national preferences. The semiconductor market is also fairly concentrated with two companies, Saint-Gobain Crystals and Gavish which both hold the bulk of the market due to their technology for growing the large sapphire tubes used in many plasma tools. However, competition is increasing on simpler parts like viewports and lift pins.

Industry transformation could open the door for new applications

Driven by the promise of large volumes for the LED industry, sapphire crystal growth and manufacturing capacity has increased by more than 8x in the last five years. In just the last two years, more than 80 companies have announced their intention to enter the industry, bringing the potential number of players to 130+ with more than 50 of these potential new entrants located in China.

The entrance of aggressive new players with large idle capacity is likely to challenge established players in many applications. Yole Développement expects those players to initially enter domestic and international markets with low barrier of entrance and later expand their reach as their technology matures.

Excess capacity and increased competition have created a challenging environment for sapphire makers. However, they also drove prices down dramatically and stimulated technology improvements to further reduce cost and improve capability (crystal sizes, shapes …). Yole Développement expects that ultimately, this will be favorable for the industry: lower price and improved crystal growth and finishing capabilities will open the door to a large gamut of new applications where sapphire has been considered for its performance but never adopted because of its cost.

The smartphone is a subset of the total cellphone handset marketplace. One basic difference between an enhanced cellphone and a smartphone is the ability of the smartphone to incorporate third-party applications. Smartphones also typically connect to leading-edge cellular network services and are at the forefront of the convergence of data, telecom, and consumer-oriented functions (such as video games, camera, music player, mobile TV, etc.) in a single handheld device.  Most smartphones include touchscreens with built-in wireless modems and GPS/GNSS, and are capable of Web browsing, sending and receiving e-mail, voice recognition, video and audio streaming, running office applications, and over-the-air synching with a PC.

Many in the cellphone industry believe new smartphone designs are reaching the point where they have enough performance to become the primary computing device for many consumers.  If so, the market could be on the verge of entering into “the post-PC era,” as previously identified by the late Steve Jobs, who stirred up controversy with his provocative prediction in June 2010.

The new consumer/Web emphasis in the cellphone market has been a challenge for a number of top-ranked smartphone suppliers (e.g., RIM, Nokia, etc.), which have struggled to refocus their handset designs, software platforms, and business strategies to address the current phase of the fast-growing smartphone segment.

Figure 1 shows that total smartphone shipments grew 47% in 2012 to 712 million units, after surging by 67% to 485 million in 2011.  Moreover, smartphone shipments are forecast to grow by another 37% in 2013 and fall only 25 million units shy of 1.0 billion.  Smartphones are expected to account for over 50% of quarterly shipments for the first time ever in 2Q13.  In fact, smartphone shipments are forecast to reach 300 million units in 4Q13 and represent 60% of total cellphones shipped that quarter.  Smartphones are expected to surpass the 50% penetration level on an annual basis this year and hold 85% of total cellphone shipments in 2016.

In contrast to smartphones, total cellphone unit shipments grew only 1% in 2012 and are forecast to grow only 3% in 2013 (Figure 2).  As shown, non-smartphone cellphone sales were flat in 2011 but showed a 17% decline in 2012.  Moreover, IC Insights expects another 20% drop in non-smartphone handset sales in 2013.

 

Between 2011 and 2016, smartphone shipments are expected to rise at a very strong CAGR of 29% to 1,760 million units in the final year of the forecast period (the 2011-2016 CAGR for non-smartphone unit shipments is -24%).  Overall, the smartphone 2011-2016 unit shipment CAGR is greater than 7x the expected CAGR for total cellphone unit shipments in that same five-year timeframe (4%).

Competition in smartphones intensified in 2012 as suppliers rolled out new handset designs with larger touch-screen displays, more powerful processors, better operating systems, higher-resolution cameras, and new radio-modem connections to the faster “4G” cellular networks, which were quickly spreading in the U.S., South Korea, Europe, and Japan.  In the next few years, new high-speed “4G” networks are planned for China, India, Brazil, the Middle East, and other fast-growing developing markets.

Samsung and Apple dominated the smartphone market in 2012 and are expected to do so again in 2013.  In total, these two companies shipped 354 million smartphones (218 million for Samsung and 136 million for Apple) and held a combined 50% share of the total smartphone market last year.  For 2013, these two companies are forecast to ship 480 million smartphones (300 million for Samsung and 180 million for Apple) and see their combined smartphone unit marketshare slip only one percentage point to 49%.

In 2012, smartphone sales from China-based ZTE, Lenovo, and Huawei surged.  Combined, the three top-10 China-based smartphone suppliers shipped about 80 million smartphones in 2012, more than a 3x increase from the 24 million smartphones these three companies shipped in 2011.  Moreover, these three companies are forecast to ship 142 million smartphones in 2013 and together hold a 15% share of the worldwide smartphone market.  In contrast to the success of the large China-based smartphone suppliers, IC Insights expects RIM and HTC to continue to struggle in the smartphone marketplace in 2013 with both companies forecast to show a double-digit decline in smartphone unit shipments as compared to 2012.

Smartphone suppliers under pressure include Nokia, RIM, and HTC, each of which registered steep double-digit year-over-year declines in smartphone sales in 2012.  Until several years ago, Nokia held a 50% marketshare in smartphones, but in 2008 and 2009, the company saw its share fall below 40% due to increased competition from suppliers targeting consumers with interactive touch-screen handsets that are capable of running multimedia applications.  In 2012, Nokia’s smartphone shipments declined by 55% (to only 35 million units) and represented only a 5% share of the total smartphone market.  Other smartphone producers that have fallen on hard times recently include RIM and HTC.  While each of these companies had about a 10% share of the 2011 smartphone market, IC Insights forecasts that each of them will have only about a 3% share of the 2013 smartphone market.

 Report Details:  IC Market Drivers 2013

IC Market Drivers 2013—A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits examines the largest, existing system opportunities for ICs and evaluates the potential for new applications that are expected to help fuel the market for ICs.

IC Market Drivers is divided into two parts.  Part 1 provides a detailed forecast of the IC industry by system type, by region, and by IC product type through 2016.  In Part 2, the IC Market Drivers report examines and evaluates key existing and emerging end-use applications that will support and propel the IC industry through 2016.  Some of these applications include the automotive market, cellular phones (including smartphones), personal/mobile computing (including tablets and Ultrabooks), wireless networks, digital imaging, and a review of many applications to watch—those that may potentially provide significant opportunity for IC suppliers later this decade.  The 2013 IC Market Drivers report is priced at $3,190 for an individual-user license and $6,290 for a multi-user corporate license.

Bosch has reached a significant manufacturing milestone. Since the start of production in 1995, the company has manufactured well in excess of three billion MEMS sensors. It took Bosch 13 years to manufacture the first billion, another three years to reach two billion, and only a further 18 months to cross the three-billion mark. In 2012, some 600 million sensors emerged from its wafer fab in Reutlingen, Germany – or 2.4 million each working day.

Bosch supplies sensors for a wide range of applications in the consumer electronics and automotive industries. These sensors measure pressure, acceleration, rotary motion, mass flow, and the earth’s magnetic field. Bosch has been at the forefront of MEMS technology since it first emerged, and today it generates more sales in the extremely dynamic MEMS sensor market than any other supplier.

“It’s no longer possible to imagine automotive or consumer electronics without MEMS sensors. In the future, they will act as the eyes and ears for systems and objects connected via the internet of things and services,” says Klaus Meder, president of the Bosch Automotive Electronics division.

The first application for MEMS sensors was in automotive electronics and Bosch has been producing these precision sensors for use in vehicles since 1995. A yaw-rate sensor that records the rotary movements of the car around its vertical axis is at the heart of ESP, for example, and today each modern vehicle is home to up to 50 MEMS sensors. In an automotive context, the key considerations for MEMS are their reliability and robustness, as the sensors have a direct impact on the safety of road users. Size and energy consumption are much less important factors.

But the picture is quite different when it comes to smartphones or games consoles, which is why Bosch shrunk its sensors over the years to just one fiftieth of their former size. The latest generation of these sensors unites a host of functions in a casing measuring just a few square millimeters. Meanwhile the sensors’ energy consumption has been reduced by a factor of 100. Of all the suppliers in the market, Bosch claims to be the only one producing sensor types for so many different applications. The company holds or has applied for a total of well over 1,000 patents.

Bosch Sensortec GmbH in Reutlingen was founded in 2005. This Bosch subsidiary recently brought the world’s first 9-axis sensor to market. The BMX055 is capable of measuring acceleration, yaw rate, and the earth’s magnetic field in all three spatial directions at the same time, which makes it suitable for a whole range of potential applications. The sensor can be put to work wherever there is a need to pinpoint a mobile device’s spatial location and position – or its orientation relative to the earth’s magnetic field – and can be integrated into even the smallest devices.

ATIC logoThe Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) today launched the ATIC-SRC Center of Excellence for Energy Efficient Electronic Systems (ACE4S), to be hosted jointly in Abu Dhabi by Khalifa University of Science, Technology and Research, and Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. ATIC will dedicate over AED 17.5 million to the project over the next three years, which will be matched collectively by Masdar Institute and Khalifa University for a total budget of more than AED 35 million. This funding will drive innovation in next-generation electronic systems ranging in applications from smart phones and medical devices to the Internet of Things.

“This center is a significant research milestone for Abu Dhabi, the UAE and the region,” said Sami Issa, Executive Director at ATIC. “ACE4S is a critical building block of our ecosystem strategy to help enable the development of homegrown talent in key areas of science and technology. Such talent development is essential as Abu Dhabi transitions into an innovation-based society as per the 2030 vision.”

SRC logo“Over the past 30 years, SRC has successfully helped establish numerous university research centers and distributed more than $2 billion dollars in research funds in the United States; ACE4S role as our first international center reflects significantly on the quality of research we pursue,” said SRC President Larry Sumney. “The ACE4S Center has been established with valuable industry guidance from companies such as GLOBALFOUNDRIES, AMD, Applied Materials, Freescale, IBM, Intel, Mentor Graphics, Texas Instruments and Tokyo Electron (TEL) and will build on SRC-sponsored university research supporting 15 individual researchers in the UAE. Top semiconductor industry experts will oversee and serve as liaisons for each research task, and SRC will productively guide the overall research while also promoting strong student engagement—enabling us to identify areas of greatest need and foster the move of innovations from lab to market.”

The center will be overseen by a steering committee of high-level ATIC, SRC, Khalifa University and Masdar Institute representatives and will be directed jointly by Professors Mohammed Ismail of Khalifa University, and Ibrahim Elfadel of Masdar Institute. The directors will oversee research across five targeted areas and work closely with a Technology Advisory Board (TAB) of representatives from industry-leading companies.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES will serve a special role on the TAB, assigning Mohamed Lakehal as an Abu Dhabi-based industrial liaison to oversee design tape-outs to fabrication in GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ facilities worldwide. The liaison will also support design enablement, deploying design-for-manufacture tools and raising the level of local semiconductor expertise.

“As a research-oriented institution, we are proud to be part of the ACE4S leadership and offer our expertise and research capabilities,” said Dr. Fred Moavenzadeh, President, Masdar Institute. “Our faculty will aim to develop microelectronic technologies with healthcare applications individually and in collaboration with their peers within the initial period of the center’s operation. These innovative products will include biosensor applications, wearable devices and self-powered wireless body area networks (WBAN). We believe these applications will have a wide impact because of their energy efficiency and novel designs.”

“This partnership will transform the way we conduct research in nano-scale energy efficient systems-on-chips as it will help us educate and train a highly skilled workforce with relevant skills. This is a key element in driving innovation and entrepreneurship in the UAE’s semiconductor sector in line with the Abu Dhabi 2030 vision,” said Dr. Tod A. Larsen, President of Khalifa University. “The involvement of the SRC and its member companies in center development will help create a world-leading institution with a sustainable university/industry collaborative research environment conducive to high-tech job creation and direct local and foreign investment.”

The center will focus on energy efficient devices with research in energy harvesting, power management, sensor technologies and wireless communications networks. The research will be conducted primarily at Khalifa University and Masdar Institute but with important involvement from UAE University, American University of Sharjah and New York University, Abu Dhabi.  Within the first three years, ACE4S will seek to produce integrated prototypes with healthcare applications as well as knowledge and research relevant to safety and security, aerospace, water quality and the environment.

Supporting the transition of innovations to market, the center will develop an aggressive Intellectual Property Management Plan (IPMP). The IPMP will include early identification of interconnected families of innovation arising from technical themes, placing special emphasis on the integrated systems selected for demonstration at the end of year three.

ACE4S is a continuation of ATIC’s broader focus on cultivating a technology research ecosystem within Abu Dhabi. Additional programs supported in this vein include: the Twin-Labs research center, a collaboration between Masdar Institute and Technical University of Dresden with support from the State of Saxony, ATIC and GLOBALFOUNDRIES; the ATIC professorship chairs at UAEU and Khalifa University;  the Masters in Microsystems degree in collaboration with Masdar Institute; and ongoing MEES research grants in collaboration with the SRC.

Driven by falling prices and a major initiative from Intel Corp., shipments of touch-enabled mobile PCs are expected to enjoy rapid growth in 2013 and the coming years, rising to about 25 percent of all notebooks by 2016.

Global shipments of touchscreen-equipped notebook PCs will rise to 78 million units in 2016, up from just 4.6 million in 2012, according to the Notebook Touch Panel Shipment Database from information and analytics provider IHS. By 2016, touch notebooks will represent 24.6 percent of all global PC notebook shipments, as presented in the figure below. This year is expected to represent a major threshold for market growth, with shipments expected to surge to 24 million, up more than 400 percent—the highest rate of growth the market is anticipated to achieve for the next four years.

touch notebook shipments

The year 2013 will be a banner year for touch notebooks because prices for low-end 14-inch capacitive touchscreen display panels fall to $35—down dramatically from $60 to $70 in 2012. The $35 price will help spur widespread market acceptance, enabling the production of more affordable touchscreen mobile PCs.

This pricing breakthrough, combined with Intel’s supply-chain muscle, will boost market growth this year and beyond.

“Touch displays are reinventing the PC market and there is a substantial growth opportunity in this area,” said Zane Ball, Intel vice president and general manager, Global Ecosystem Development. “At Intel, we have adopted a strategy that touch should be everywhere. We believe that as touch moves into the PC space, it will be a transformative product and will unlock new demand.”

Ball addressed his comments here Monday to a large audience at the Society for Information Display (SID) IHS/SID 2013 Business Conference.

Ball said that new mobile PC designs based on the company’s new Haswell processor are well underway in 2013. These designs combine touchscreen displays with innovative form factors.

In addition to Haswell, Intel is taking steps to ensure the stable supply of inexpensive touchscreens. The company also had to do some evangelizing to convince sometimes doubtful members of PC supply chain of the merits of touchscreen technology.

“We’re glad we’ve made this investment because now there’s little doubt there’s demand for touch in any number of PC form factors,” Ball said.

Ball noted that Intel’s touch ambitions are much larger than the mobile PC space. He outlined Intel’s vision for touch-enabled all-in-one PCs, including devices that are portable and battery powered.

Bringing an end to a full year of declines, global flat-panel television shipments rose slightly in the first quarter, paving the way for marginal growth in 2013, according to the “Monthly Worldwide FPD TV Shipment Data Report” from the IHS TV Systems Intelligence Service at information and analytics provider IHS.

Global shipments of flat-panel televisions comprising liquid-crystal display (LCD) and plasma sets amounted to 47.6 million units in the first quarter, up 0.4 percent from 47.5 million during the same period one year earlier. This represented the first year-over-year quarterly growth for the market since the fourth quarter of 2011, as shown in the figure below.

global flat-panel tv growth

“While a less than 1 percent increase in the first quarter may not seem like much, it’s a major achievement for a TV market that was stuck in the doldrums throughout 2012,” said Jusy Hong, senior analyst, television research, for IHS. “Just one year earlier, in the first quarter of 2012, shipments fell by 5 percent—and then continued to decline by 3.5 percent, 0.3 percent and 2.4 during the next three quarters. Even with weak results in February and March, the rise for the entire first quarter sets the stage for the global flat-panel TV market to return to growth this year, with a slight 0.4 percent increase expected in 2013.”

An up-and-down quarter

Global flat-panel television shipments started the year with a bang, rising by 11 percent in January compared to the same month in 2012 because of strong seasonal Lunar New Year demand. However, shipments declined 9 percent in February and 3 percent in March as demand plunged following the Lunar New Year buying season, according to the latest IHS figures. The strong performance in January was just high enough to offset the declines during the next two months.

The market is now showing signs of rebounding, with estimated year-over-year growth of 10 percent in April and another 9 percent increase forecast in May.

LCDs grow—and grow their sales

LCD TVs are leading the growth for the overall market, with a 2 percent expansion in shipments in the first quarter compared to a year earlier. Shipments of LCD TVs amounted to 45.2 million units, up from 44.3 million.

Sales of LCD TVs are being boosted by 50-inch and larger sets, whose share doubled to 10 percent in February this year, up from 5 percent during the same time last year.

“LCD TV brands are aggressively increasing their super-larger-sized TV lineup and shipments in order to improve profitability,” Hong said. “Panel makers are following suit. This is resulting in declining prices for the larger sets, attracting more consumer interest.”

Plasma plunges

In contrast to the strong performance of LCDs, plasma sales are dropping like a rock, constraining the growth of the overall flat-panel market. Global plasma TV set shipments declined to 2.5 million in the first quarter, down a gut-wrenching 22 percent from 3.2 million one year earlier.

“Plasma shipments are declining because they are losing ground to LCDs in the market for super-sized TVs, especially in the 50-inch segment,” Hong said.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the industry’s first 45nm embedded flash logic process development called eFlash. Samsung successfully implemented the new process into the smart card test chip, which means that this process technology fulfills the stringent quality requirements of the security solution market and can be successfully deployed on a commercial scale.

Samsung logo

“Samsung’s 45nm eFlash logic process has the potential to be broadly adopted into various components for security solutions and mobile devices, including smart card IC, NFC IC, eSE [embedded secure element] and TPM [trusted platform module],” said Taehoon Kim, vice president of marketing, System LSI Business, Samsung Electronics.

The smart card IC based on Samsung’s 45nm eFlash logic process guarantees high reliability and endurance of one million cycles per flash memory cell. The performance results are the industry’s best class and superior to any other solutions currently on the market, generally rated for 500,000 cycles.

Through the improvement in both flash cell structure and operating scheme, the test chip features random access time to read memory that is 50 percent faster and the power efficiency is enhanced by 25 percent over previous products built on the 80nm eFlash logic process.

Samsung said in its official release that its 45nm eFlash logic technology is suited for consumer microcontrollers and automotive chips that require higher speed, larger memory capacity and higher power efficiency.

Initial smart card IC samples for commercialization using this 45nm eFlash logic technology are expected to be available in the second half of 2014.