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Update on 450mm SEMI Standards


November 13, 2013

By James Amano, senior director, International Standards, SEMI (October 23, 2013)

SEMI Standards task forces are working on encouraging the industry to collaborate on key issues like the technical parameters for 450mm silicon wafers, physical interfaces, carriers, assembly and packaging. To date, SEMI has 13 task forces working on 450mm and has published nineteen (19) 450mm standards with 14 more in the pipeline.

Here’s an update on the newly-published SEMI 450mm specifications as well as the other 450mm SEMI Standards.

450mm Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafer Specification

SEMI M1-1013 – Specifications for Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafers was revised and published in April 2013. The new edition includes a significant addition of a 450mm polished single crystal polished wafer specification and the guide for specifying 450mm wafer for 32, 22, and 16 nm technology generation.  Today, the specification requirements for 450mm diameter wafers are much more extensive that those of previous smaller diameters. Standardized parameters include edge profile, warp, conductivity, dopant, and surface conditions.

To provide some context about history, SEMI M1 was originally published in 1980s. The first wafer specification was 50mm (2 inch) or about the width of credit card. Over the years, wafers got larger and larger.  In the early 1990s, the wafer size was increased to 200mm (8 inch), and in 1997, the 300mm (12 inch) wafer was standardized. A 300mm wafer may yield 2.25 times more chips per wafer than an older 200mm wafer.  For 450mm, 5 times more chips per wafer can be squeezed out of a wafer compared to that of 200mm wafer, yet the process of making the chip takes about the same amount of time to go through the factory.  More chips are produced per wafer, which in turns reduces the cost.  Thus, wafer manufacturers and users are moving ahead to formalize a specification for 450mm wafer.  The International Polished Wafer Task Force will continue to refine associated parameters to adapt to the dynamic semiconductor industry.

Wafer Specification Standard

  • SEMI M1-1013, Specifications for Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafers

SEMI M1 provides the essential dimensional and certain other common characteristics of silicon wafers, including polished wafers as well as substrates for epitaxial and certain other kinds of silicon wafers.

Front Opening Shipping Box (FOSB) Standards

  • SEMI M80-0812, Mechanical Specification for Front-Opening Shipping Box Used to Transport and Ship 450 mm Wafers
  • SEMI E162-0912, Mechanical Interface Specification for 450mm Front-Opening Shipping Box Load Port

SEMI M80 specifies the FOSB used to ship 450mm wafers from wafer suppliers to their customers (typically IC manufacturers), while maintaining wafer quality. SEMI E162 defines the basic interface dimensions of a load port on the semiconductor manufacturing equipment, where 450mm FOSB can be loaded and unloaded. The intention of SEMI E162 is to define a set of requirement and features to enable interoperability of load ports and carriers without limiting innovative solutions.

Assembly and Packaging Standards

  • SEMI G88-0211, Specification for Tape Frame for 450mm Wafer
  • SEMI G92-0412, Specification for Tape Frame Cassette for 450mm Wafer
  • SEMI G95-0613, Mechanical Interface Specification for 450mm Load Port for Tape Frame Cassettes in the Backend Process

These Standards specify mechanical features for the 450mm wafer tape frame and cassette used between the wafer mounting process and the die-bonding process.

Guide to SEMI Standard for 450mm Wafers (Auxiliary Information)

The image below shows where 450mm standards development is taking place.

SEMI

All of the published standards in this article are available in SEMIViews. Individual standards can be purchased from the SEMI Web store using the links below.

  • SEMI M1-1013, Specifications for Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafers
  • SEMI M49-0613, Guide for Specifying Geometry Measurement Systems for Silicon Wafers for the 130nm to 16 nm Technology Generations
  • SEMI M52-0912, Guide for Specifying Scanning Surface Inspection Systems for Silicon Wafers for the 130nm to 11nm Technology Generations
  • SEMI M62-0413, Specification for Silicon Epitaxial Wafers
  • SEMI M73-1013, Test Methods for Extracting Relevant Characteristics from Measured Wafer Edge Profiles
  • SEMI M74-1108 (Reapproved 0413), Specification for 450 mm Diameter Mechanical Handling Polished Wafer
  • SEMI M76-0710, Specification for Developmental 450 mm Diameter Polished Single Crystal Wafer
  • SEMI M80-0812, Mechanical Specification for Front-Opening Shipping Box Used to Transport and Ship 450mm Wafers
  • SEMI E83-0413, Specification for PGV Mechanical Docking Flange
  • SEMI E154-0713, Mechanical Interface for 450mm Load Port
  • SEMI E156-0710, Mechanical Specification for 450mm AMHS Stocker to Transport Interface
  • SEMI E158-0912, Mechanical Specification for Fab Wafer Carrier Used to Transport and Store 450mm Wafers (450 FOUP) and Kinematic Coupling
  • SEMI E159-0912, Mechanical Specification for Multi-Application Carrier (MAC) Used to Transport and Ship 450mm Wafers
  • SEMI E162-0912, Mechanical Interface Specification for 450mm Front-Opening Shipping Box Load Port
  • SEMI E166-0513, Specification for 450mm Cluster Module Interface: Mechanical Interface and Transport Standard
  • SEMI G88-0211, Specification for Tape Frame for 450mm Wafer
  • SEMI G92-0412, Specification for Tape Frame Cassette for 450mm Wafer
  • SEMI G95-0613, Mechanical Interface Specification for 450mm Load Port for Tape Frame Cassettes in the Backend Process

For additional information on draft documents under development, see the Standards New Activity Report Forms (SNARFs) linked below.

  • Doc. 4812, Guide for Flatness Measurement on 450mm Wafers
  • Doc. 5069, Specification for 450mm Wafer Shipping System
  • Doc. 5070A, Revision to SEMI M76-0710, Specification for Developmental 450mm Diameter Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafers [Re: Wafer Edge Design]
  • Doc.5430A, Revision to SEMI M73-0309, Test Methods for Extracting Relevant Characteristics from Measured Wafer Edge Profiles (To include 450mm wafer edge profile parameters)
  • Doc. 5071, Revision to SEMI M76-0710, Specification for Developmental 450mm Diameter Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafers  [Re: Back Surface Contamination and Defect Requirements]
  • Doc. 5542, Line Items Revision to SEMI M62-0413, Specifications for Silicon Epitaxial Wafers (Re: Change nanotopography value to be consistent with SEMI M1)
  • Doc. 5604, Revision of SEMI M1-1013, Specification for Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafers (Re:  Addition of 450mm Notchless Wafer)
  • Doc. 5605, Revision of SEMI M1-1013, Specification for Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafers (Re:  Wafers for 16nm technology generation SFQR)
  • Doc. 5654, Revision of SEMI M49-0613, Guide for Specifying Geometry Measurements Systems for Silicon Wafers for the 130nm to 16nm Technology Generations (Re: Edge exclusion reduction from 2mm to 1.5mm  at 16nm  technology generation)
  • Doc. 5655, Revision of SEMI M1-1013, Specifications for Polished Single Crystal Silicon Wafers (Re: Update 450mm wafers edge exclusion)
  • Doc. 5524, Line Item Revisions to SEMI E156-0710, Mechanical Specification for 450mm AMHS Stocker to Transport Interface
  • Doc. 5626, Line Item Revision to SEMI E154-0713, Mechanical Interface Specification for 450mm Load Port AND to SEMI E166-0513, Specification for 450 mm Cluster Module Interface: Mechanical Interface and Transport Standard (for addition of EFEM Pocket)
  • Doc. 5628, Line Item Revisions to SEMI E158-0912, Mechanical Specification for Fab Wafer Carrier Used to Transport and Store 450mm Wafers (450 FOUP) and Kinematic Coupling And SEMI E159-0912, Mechanical Specification for Multi Application Carrier (MAC) Used to Transport and Ship 450mm Wafers
  • Doc. 5632, Specification for Signal Tower for 450mm AMHS

About the Silicon Wafer, Physical Interfaces & Carriers, and Assembly & Packaging Committees

Physical Interfaces & Carriers Committee

This committee develops specifications to enhance the manufacturing capability of the semiconductor industry, specifically addressing mechanical, electrical, and special equipment specifications; and material movement integration, including substrate support and containment structures. For more information on committee activities, please contact Michael Tran at [email protected] or Hiro’fumi Kanno at [email protected].

Silicon Wafer Committee

This committee develops international standards fulfilling the requirements for commercial silicon wafers. Silicon Wafer Committee standardization includes specifications and guides for silicon wafers, test methods for silicon wafer quality and geometry, shipping box related topics, wafer ID related topics, and business related topics to support smooth communication between silicon suppliers and customers. For more information on committee activities, please contact Kevin Nguyen at [email protected]  or Hiro’fumi Kanno at [email protected].

Assembly & Packaging Committee

This committee develops specifications to enhance the manufacturing capability of the semiconductor industry as it relates to the packaging and assembly of the semiconductor chip, including the materials, piece parts, and interconnection schemes, and unique packaging assemblies that provide for the communication link between the semiconductor chip and the next level of integration. This committee also discusses total infrastructure for Chip to Final Set system and processes such as Testing and Design Software, Transportation Tools, Reliability and Traceability issues, EHS issues, Inspection methods, etc. For more information on committee activities, please contact Paul Trio at [email protected] or Naoko Tejima at [email protected].

For general information on 450mm and SEMI Standards, contact James Amano at [email protected].

Additional info on 450 Standards: www.semi.org/node/42416

For more information on 450, visit 450 Central (www.semi.org/450).

Later this month, IC Insights’ November Update to the 2013 McClean Report will show a preliminary ranking of the top 25 semiconductor suppliers in 2013.  A preview of the top 20 companies is listed in Figure 1.  The top 20 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O-S-D—optoelectronic, discrete, and sensor) sales leaders forecast for 2013 include nine suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Japan, three in Europe, three in Taiwan, and two in South Korea.

The top-20 ranking includes three pure-play foundries (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC) and five fabless companies.  IC foundries are included in the top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking because IC Insights has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not as a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases semiconductor sales are double counted.  With many of our clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers.  Overall, the list shown in Figure 1 provides a guideline to identify which companies are the leading semiconductor suppliers, whether they are IDMs, fabless companies, or foundries. Excluding the foundries of TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC, from the top-20 ranking would bring Fujitsu ($3,524 million), Marvell ($3,205 million), and Sharp ($3,078 million) into the 18th, 19th, and 20th positions, respectively.

There are numerous changes expected within the top-20 semiconductor ranking in 2013 as compared to the top 20 ranking of 2012.  Some of the companies forecast to rise in the ranking include SK Hynix, which, despite a significant fire and production set-back at its largest memory fab in China, is taking full advantage of the surge in the DRAM market this year and is expected to move up three places and into the top 5.  Also, Broadcom is forecast to edge into the top 10, Micron is expected to move up two spots, spurred by its acquisition of Elpida in 3Q13, and MediaTek is forecast to jump up six positions to 16th place and into the top-20 ranking for the first time.  MediaTek is experiencing extremely strong demand for its devices in the booming low-end smartphone business in China and other Asia-Pacific locations.  In fact, MediaTek expects its application processor shipments for smartphones to reach over 200 million units this year, about double the 108 million units the company shipped in 2012.

In contrast to the companies moving up in the ranking, Fujitsu is expected to drop five places to fall out of the top-20 ranking in 2013, going from being ranked 16th in 2012 to 21st this year (the company sold its analog and MCU business to Spansion in August of this year).  Renesas is another “casualty” expected in the top-20 ranking and is forecast to fall to 11th place in 2013 from the 7th position it held in 2012.

bulletin20131106Fig01

Figure 1

In total, the top 20 semiconductor companies’ sales are forecast to increase by seven percent in 2013 as compared to 2012, which would be two points better than the five percent forecast for the total worldwide semiconductor market this year.  It is expected to take total semiconductor sales of over $3.7 billion to make the top-20 ranking in 2013.

As shown in Figure 2, there is expected to be a 60-percentage-point range of growth rates among the worldwide top 20 semiconductor suppliers in 2013 (from +44 percent for SK Hynix to -16 percent for Sony).  The continued success of the fabless/foundry business model and the strong growth of the memory market (especially the 29 percent DRAM market surge) this year is evident when examining the nine top-20 semiconductor suppliers that are forecast to log higher growth than the total worldwide semiconductor market (five percent).  As shown, the top nine performers in 2013 are forecast to include three memory companies (SK Hynix, Micron, and Toshiba), two fabless companies (MediaTek and Qualcomm), and two pure-play foundries (TSMC and GlobalFoundries).

bulletin20131106Fig02

Figure 2

Figure 2 illustrates that the two top-20 ranked companies that are forecast to register double-digit sales declines in 2013 are headquartered in Japan (Renesas and Sony).  As previously mentioned, Japan-based Fujitsu is also expected to register a double-digit decline (-15 percent) in 2013 and drop out of the top 20 ranking this year.  However, it should be noted that the conversion of Japanese company semiconductor sales from yen to U.S. dollars, at 96.96 yen per dollar forecast for 2013 versus the 79.70 yen per dollar rate in 2012, is expected to have a significant impact on the sales figures for the Japanese companies.  Using a constant 2012 U.S. dollar versus Japanese yen exchange rate for 2013, the forecasted 2013 semiconductor sales increases of Sony, Fujitsu, and Renesas would be four percent, three percent, and two percent, respectively.

More details on the forecasted 2013 top 25 semiconductor suppliers, as well as IC Insights’ latest detailed forecast for the 2014 semiconductor market, will be provided in the November Update to The McClean Report.

In either a cautious or a more aggressive scenario, LED applications will certainly be the key drivers for the bulk GaN market, according to Yole Développement.

There is no doubt that LED technology will take market share over the traditional lamp and tube business. The recent announcements from LED makers (> 150 lm/W now in production) are proving that the performance roadmap is in line with expectations: LED does as well and even better than traditional bulbs and tubes.

Native bulk GaN emerges as an alternative to sapphire or silicon, allowing further improvement of LED performance. Despite potential performance benefits for UHB-LEDs, massive adoption of GaN wafers remains hypothetical. Taking into account the historical price reductions of bulk GaN substrates, a base scenario outlines where the GaN on GaN LEDs will be limited only to niche markets.

“If the GaN industry succeeds in replying to the cost pressure from LED makers and the price of four inch GaN wafers falls below the breakeven price, a more significant adoption could be forecast. We see an about three times difference in terms of market volume for LED manufacturing between the two scenarios,” explains Dr Hong Lin, Market & Technology Analyst, Compound Semiconductors, at Yole Développement.

The demand of GaN substrates for LD applications will probably decrease below 20k TIE/yr threshold in the coming years.

Blu-ray applications now represent the largest market for blue LD applications. This market will increase in the short term with the arrival of the new generation game stations. However, Yole Développement believes that this growth will not persist, as more and more people will play games and watch movies online instead.

Despite the recent rapid development of blue and green laser diodes, Yole Développement sees two scenarios for the adoption of GaN based laser diodes for the emerging projector market. The price of LDs is the essential factor to consider.

Combining all applications, the demand for two inch GaN substrates will be more than two times higher in the aggressive scenario than in the base scenario. In the best case, the demand would keep relatively stable until 2020.

In R&D, non-polar and semi polar substrates have been proposed for LD manufacturing. In principle, the semi polar approach seems to be the most promising in terms of device performance. In practice, c-plane based devices still have better performance.

More than 85% commercial GaN wafers are produced by HVPE, dominated by Japanese companies.

Today, essentially all commercial GaN wafers are produced by HVPE, but the details of the growth process and separation techniques vary from company to company – for example, ammonothermal growth at Mitsubishi Chemical, and the new acidic ammonothermeral method at Soraa. Na-flux LPE growth seems promising, but Yole Développement’s analysts have not yet seen many GaN devices based on those substrates. It will take some time to convince the device producers.

Non-polar and semi polar substrates have attracted significant attention. However, the substrate size is still very small and unsuitable for mass production.

As of today, the GaN substrates market is currently heavily concentrated with 87 percent held by Japanese companies. Non-Japanese players are currently in small volume production or in R&D stage, too early to challenge the market leaders. Without exception, Japan will continue to dominate the Bulk/FS GaN market for the coming years.

LED GaN1

GaN substrates worldwide players (Yole Développement, November 2013)

Bulk GaN substrates for power electronics applications, a very challenging mission.

The GaN power device industry probably generated less than $2.5M in revenues in 2012. However, overall GaN activity has generated extra revenues as R&D contracts, qualification tests, and sampling for qualified customers was extremely buoyant. 16 out of 20 established power electronics companies are involved or will be involved in the GaN power industry.

Among the numerous substrates proposed for GaN power devices, bulk GaN solution is definitely beneficial to the device performance. However, Yole Développement remains quite pessimistic that bulk GaN could widely penetrate the power electronics segment unless 4” bulk GaN wafers can be in the $1,500 range by 2020.

The main reason is that, GaN power devices are positioned as a cost-effective solution, between incumbent Silicon and the ramping-up SiC technologies. If the $1,500 cost cannot be reached, then Yole Développement assumes no bulk GaN substrate will penetrate this market.

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), a university-research consortium for semiconductor technologies, today launched the Semiconductor Synthetic Biology (SSB) research program on hybrid bio-semiconductor systems to provide insights and opportunities for future information and communication technologies. The program will initially fund research at six universities: MIT, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Yale, Georgia Tech, Brigham Young and the University of Washington.

Funded by SRC’s Global Research Collaboration (GRC), SSB concentrates on synergies between synthetic biology and semiconductor technology that can foster exploratory, multi-disciplinary, longer-term university research leading to novel, breakthrough solutions for a wide range of industries. Results from the university research, guided by semiconductor industry needs, should significantly enhance and accelerate opportunities for advancing properties, design and applications for future generations of integrated circuits.

“The role of the SSB program is to stimulate non-traditional thinking about the issues facing the semiconductor industry, and these forward-looking projects will aggressively explore new dimensions for pairing biological activities and semiconductors to benefit society,” said Dr. Steven Hillenius, executive director for SRC-GRC. “We intend to seek new collaborative initiatives with the National Science Foundation and other agencies as part of the SSB program with the goal of producing disruptive information technologies for the future.”

The first stage of the new program will support six exploratory projects in three related, but distinct, areas: (1) Cytomorphic-Semiconductor Circuit Design that applies lessons from cell biology to new chip architectures and vice versa; (2) Bio-Electric Sensors, Actuators and Energy Sources dedicated to enabling hybrid semiconductor-biological systems; and (3) Molecular-precision Additive Fabrication that creates manufacturing processes at the few-nanometer scale that are inspired by biology. Results from this Stage 1 research program will be used to guide future generations of SSB research. Approximately $2.25M will be invested by SRC-GRC for Phase 1 research.

“University researchers welcome this academia-industry partnership to do long-term research,” said Professor Rahul Sarpeshkar of MIT. “Living cells can offer ground-breaking solutions to some hard problems faced by the semiconductor industry because they solved similar problems more than a billion years ago. Controlled chemical reactions and molecular flows in cells are the ultimate miniaturization of electronics to the atomic and molecular scale.”

Specific profiles of the three areas of research are:

Cytomorphic-Semiconductor Circuit Design

Designers for semiconductor circuits and systems have begun to look to biological sciences for new approaches to analog and digital design and to circuits and system architectures, especially for minimum-energy electronic systems. The term ‘cytomorphic electronics’ refers to electronic circuits and information processing inspired by the operation of chemical circuits and information processing in cells.

Bioelectric Sensors, Actuators and Energy Sources

Biological sensors have the potential to play an important role in multi-functional semiconductor systems. SRC plans to integrate live cells with CMOS technology and thus form a hybrid bio-semiconductor system that provides high signal sensitivity and specificity at low operating energy.

Molecular-precision Additive Fabrication

As the demands continue to grow for the most exacting pattern formation for semiconductor fabrication — and feature sizes shrink to the 5 nanometer (nm) regime — molecular-based self-assembly could offer an alternative to lithographically driven manufacturing. DNA can be used as an active agent to provide information content to guide structure formation. SRC plans to pursue processes that will both improve fabrication yields and provide purification of correctly formed structures to significantly reduce the occurrence of defects in making DNA nanostructures.

Sales and unit shipments of both analog and digital ICs are forecast to post gains in 2013, but the strength of these increases will differ considerably, according to information presented in a September webcast to subscribers of The 2013 McClean Report.  Figure 1 compares market results and forecasts for the analog and digital IC markets in 2012 and 2013.  The total analog market has struggled to post meaningful sales growth over the past five years.  Things are not expected to change much in 2013 as the total analog IC market is forecast to grow only one percent.  For 2013, the market for digital ICs is forecast to grow six percent.

Figure 1

Figure 1

There was a very strong 14 percent upturn in analog unit shipments in 2Q13.  IC Insights believes this was due to general inventory rebuilding and but also from growth of portable mobile devices, which have been a catalyst for power management analog and Consumer analog IC unit growth to date.  This momentum carried into 3Q13 and well, and was forecast to result in a 9% increase in analog unit growth.  Historically, sales and unit shipments of ICs slow down in the fourth quarter of the year as the buildup to the holiday buying season ends.  For the year, analog unit shipments are forecast to exceed 100-billion devices for the first time in history.

The analog IC ASP is forecast to decline 11 percent in 2013.  IC Insights believes increased competition for design wins in medical/health applications and in portable consumer/communication systems helped drive down the total analog ASP.  In addition, many analog manufacturers have moved production to 200mm wafers (300mm wafers, in some cases), which has helped cut manufacturing costs per die and led to lower ASPs.

Some of the strongest analog IC unit growth in the first half of 2013 came from power management devices, which help extend useful battery life and operation of battery-powered, portable and mobile systems (Figure 2).  In the application-specific segment, very strong unit growth for Communications and Industrial analog devices offset significant declines in Consumer and Computer analog shipments in the first half of the year. IC Insights believes rising sales of personal and portable medical/health electronics contributed to the uptick in Industrial analog shipments.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Silicon Labs, a developer of high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs, today introduced the industry’s most energy-friendly 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) based on the ARM Cortex-M0+ processor. The EFM32 Zero Gecko MCU family is designed to achieve the lowest system energy consumption for a wide range of battery-powered applications such as mobile health and fitness products, smart watches, activity trackers, smart meters, security systems and wireless sensor nodes, as well as battery-less systems powered by harvested energy. The new Zero Gecko family is the latest addition to the EFM32 Gecko portfolio pioneered by Energy Micro. The family includes 16 MCU products designed from the ground up to enable the lowest possible energy consumption for connected devices enabling the Internet of Things (IoT).

Read more: The Internet of Things is poised to change everything, says IDC

The EFM32 Zero Gecko MCUs feature an energy management system with five energy modes that enable applications to remain in an energy-optimal state, spending as little time as possible in the energy-hungry active mode. In deep-sleep mode, Zero Gecko MCUs have 0.9 μA standby current consumption with a 32.768 kHz RTC, RAM/CPU state retention, brown-out detector and power-on-reset circuitry active. Active-mode power consumption scales down to 110 µA/MHz at 24 MHz with real-world code (prime number search algorithm) executed from flash. Current consumption is less than 20 nA in shut-off mode. The EFM32 MCUs further reduce power consumption with a 2-microsecond wakeup time from standby mode.

Like all EFM32 Gecko products, the Zero Gecko MCUs include an energy-saving feature called the Peripheral Reflex System (PRS) that significantly enhances system-level energy efficiency. The PRS monitors complex system-level events and allows different MCU peripherals to communicate directly with each other and autonomously without involving the CPU. An EFM32 MCU can watch for a series of specific events to occur before waking the CPU, thereby keeping the Cortex-M0+ processor core in an energy-saving standby mode as long as possible and reducing overall system power consumption.

The EFM32 Zero Gecko MCUs feature many of the same power-saving precision analog peripherals included in Silicon Labs’ popular Tiny Gecko, Giant Gecko and Wonder Gecko devices. These low-energy peripherals include an analog comparator, a supply voltage comparator, an on-chip temperature sensor and a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with 350 μA current consumption at a 1 MHz sample rate.

The EFM32 Zero Gecko devices are the only Cortex-M0+ MCUs on the market that integrate a programmable current digital-to-analog converter (IDAC). This on-chip precision-analog IDAC generates a biasing current from 0.05-64 µA with only 10 nA overhead. The IDAC provides an accurate bias and/or control capability for companion ICs and other external circuits including amplifiers, sensors, Wheatstone bridges and resistor ladders, eliminating the need for external power amplifier components for many cost-sensitive applications.

The Zero Gecko devices are also the only Cortex-M0+ MCUs containing a 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) hardware block. With this built-in hardware AES encryption acceleration support, the Zero Gecko MCUs provide an ideal companion for RF transmitters and transceivers used in connected device applications for the Internet of Things.

“The Internet of Things is a huge and exciting market made possible by low-cost, battery-powered connected devices and wireless sensor nodes that sip nanoamps of energy,” said Geir Førre, senior vice president and general manager of Silicon Labs’ microcontroller products. “The IoT market requires battery-friendly Cortex-M0+ based MCUs that save both energy and system cost. Our new EFM32 Zero Gecko MCUs – shipping now at very cost-competitive prices – enable developers to create embedded systems that are four times more energy-efficient than possible with other Cortex-M0/0+ MCUs.”

The EFM32 Zero Gecko family is pin- and software-compatible with Silicon Labs’ broad portfolio of nearly 250 EFM32 Gecko MCU products.

Customers in the Americas region (primarily the U.S.) are expected to account for nearly two-thirds of pure-play foundry sales in 2013, a slight increase from 2012.  IC Insights forecasts that Americas region will represent 70 percent of TSMC’s sales, 67 percent of sales from GlobalFoundries, and 47 percent of sales from both UMC and SMIC (Figure 1).  The Americas region is forecast to account for $22.4 billion of the $36.3 billion worldwide pure-play foundry market in 2013, which is up from $19.2 billion (61 percent) of the total $31.7 billion pure-play foundry market in 2012.  The Asia-Pacific region is forecast to represent $10.7 billion (29 percent) of pure-play foundry sales in 2013; and Europe, $2.5 billion (seven percent).  Japan is by far the smallest market for pure-play foundry sales and is forecast to hold only a two percent share in 2013, with its foundry market expected to be worth less than $1.0 billion, which is one reason that UMC closed its Japanese foundry fabrication facility earlier this year.

Six of the 10 largest fabless/fab-lite semiconductor companies in the world—Qualcomm, AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, Marvell, and LSI—are headquartered in the Americas region.  Each is a customer of TSMC.  Apple will soon be another significant customer for TSMC.  GlobalFoundries also counts Qualcomm, AMD, Broadcom, and LSI among its major customers.

In the next five years, IC Insights expects an increasing share of pure-play foundries sales to come from the Asia-Pac region as Taiwanese and Chinese IC design houses continue to advance.  Among the four large pure-play foundries, only China-based SMIC counts the Asia-Pac region as its largest market.

IC Insights believes that the Japanese market for pure-play foundry services also will increase in the future. The fabless IC company infrastructure in Japan is very small and not expected to increase much over the next five years.  Most of the increase in foundry demand in Japan is expected to be due to a greater number of Japanese IDMs (e.g., Renesas, Toshiba, Sony, etc.) utilizing leading-edge IC foundry services.

The number of semiconductor manufacturers in Europe has slowly eroded over the years.  Three large Europe companies—ST, NXP, and Infineon—have employed a fab-lite business model for some time.  Other significant fabless semiconductor suppliers in Europe include CSR, Dialog, and Lantiq.  IC Insights does not foresee Europe representing more than five to seven percent of pure-play foundry sales in the near future.

Figure 1

Figure 1

All of the increase in pure-play foundry sales in 2013 is expected to be due to ≤28nm feature size device sales. IC Insights continues to believe that the more profitable (i.e., successful) major pure-play foundries, which include TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, and SMIC, will be those that keep at the leading edge of the process technology roadmap.

MICRON DRAMMicron Technology, Inc. announced today that it is shipping 2GB Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) engineering samples. HMC represents a dramatic step forward in memory technology, and these engineering samples are the world’s first HMC devices to be shared broadly with lead customers. HMC is designed for applications requiring high-bandwidth access to memory, including data packet processing, data packet buffering or storage, and computing applications such as processor accelerators. Micron expects future generations of HMC to migrate to consumer applications within three to five years.

Read more: Inside the Hybrid Memory Cube

HMC uses advanced through-silicon vias (TSVs)–vertical conduits that electrically connect a stack of individual chips–to combine high-performance logic with Micron’s DRAM. Micron’s HMC features a 2GB memory cube that is composed of a stack of four 4Gb DRAM die. The solution provides an unprecedented 160 GB/s of memory bandwidth while using up to 70 percent less energy per bit than existing technologies, which dramatically lowers customers’ total cost of ownership (TCO).

“The Hybrid Memory Cube is a smart fix that breaks with the industry’s past approaches and opens up new possibilities,” said Jim Handy, a memory analyst at Objective Analysis. “Although DRAM internal bandwidth has been increasing exponentially, along with logic’s thirst for data, current options offer limited processor-to-memory bandwidth and consume significant power. HMC is an exciting alternative.”

HMC’s abstracted memory enables designers to devote more time to leveraging HMC’s revolutionary features and performance and less time to navigating the multitude of memory parameters required to implement basic functions. It also manages error correction, resiliency, refresh, and other parameters exacerbated by memory process variation.

“System designers are looking for new memory system designs to support increased demand for bandwidth, density, and power efficiency,” said Brian Shirley, vice president of Micron’s DRAM Solutions Group. “HMC represents the new standard in memory performance.”

Read more: After 43 years, DRAM market finally reaches maturity

HMC has been recognized by industry leaders and influencers as the long-awaited answer to the growing gap between the performance improvement rate of DRAM and processor data consumption rates.

Micron expects 4GB HMC engineering samples to be available in early 2014 with volume production of both the 2GB and 4GB HMC devices beginning later in 2014.

Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment spending is projected to total $34.6 billion in 2013, an 8.5 percent decline from 2012 spending of $37.8 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. Gartner said that capital spending will decrease 6.8 percent in 2013, due to diminishing 28nm investment from a softening in the mobile phone market.

“Weak semiconductor market conditions that continued into the first quarter of 2013 generated downward pressure on new equipment purchases,” said Dean Freeman, research vice president at Gartner. “However, semiconductor equipment quarterly revenue is beginning to improve, and positive movement in the book-to-bill ratio indicated that spending for equipment will pick up in the remainder of 2013. 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.”

Logic spending has been the key driver of capital spending in 2013; however, a softening in the mobile phone markets has dampened investment in 28nm during the third quarter, and this is projected to continue into the fourth quarter of 2013. Memory spending has picked up some of the slack and the total spending in the second half of 2013 should outpace the first half of the year.

Gartner said that capital spending is highly concentrated among a handful of companies. The top three companies (Intel, TSMC and Samsung) account for more than half of 2013 spending. Spending by the top five semiconductor manufacturers exceeds 65 percent of total 2013 spending, with the top 10 accounting for 76 percent of the total. 2013 spending will be back-half-loaded, with capacity increases occurring as memory market conditions improve, and Intel prepares for initial 14nm production late in the year.

Gartner predicts that 2014 semiconductor capital spending will increase 14.1 percent, followed by 13.8 percent growth in 2015. The next cyclical decline will be a mild drop of 2.8 percent in 2016, followed by a return to growth in 2017 (see Table 1).

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

54,768.2

62,485.5

71,107.8

69,134.8

74,637.4
Growth

-11.9

-6.8

14.1

13,8

-2.8

8.0
Capital Equipment ($M)

37,833.2

34,631.4

40,119.0

46,948.4

44,436.1

49,129.4
Growth

-16.1

-8.5

15.8

17.0

-5.4

10.6
Wafer Fab Equipment ($M)

29,644.2

26,953.7

30,979.7

37,049.2

35,982.0

39,606.5
Growth

-18.5

-9.1

14.9

19.6

-2.9

10.1
Electronic Equipment Production ($M)

1,474,834.0

1,512,256.2

1,576,024.1

1,646,942.1

1,714,129.4

1,781,194.9
Growth

3.6

2.5

4.2

4.5

4.1

3.9
Semiconductor Revenue (excluding solar) ($M)

299,912.4

315,392.8

332,998.9

343,764.0

362,508.7

382,516.0
Growth

-2.6

5.2

5.6

3.2

5.5

5.5

Source: Gartner (September 2013)

“In 2013, the wafer fab equipment (WFE) picture is one of continuous quarter-over-quarter growth as major manufacturers come out of a period of high inventories and a generally weak semiconductor market,” said Mr. Freeman. “Early in the year, the book-to-bill ratio passed 1-to-1 for the first time in months, signaling that the need for new equipment is strengthening because demand for leading-edge devices is improving.”

Gartner predicts that wafer fab manufacturing capacity utilization will hover in the high-70 percent to low-80 percent range during the first half of 2013 and building to the mid-80 percent range at the beginning of 2014. Leading-edge utilization will move into the low-90 percent range by the end of 2013, providing for a positive capital investment environment.

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.

The WFE forecast estimates market revenue based on future global sales of the equipment needed to produce the wafers on which semiconductor devices are fabricated. WFE demand is a function of the number of fabs in operation, capacity utilization, their size and their technology profile.

More detailed analysis is available in the report ” Forecast: Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment, Worldwide, 3Q13 Update.” The report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2591324.

The worldwide semiconductor market is expected to grow three percent from 2012 to 2013. There has been sequential market growth from 1Q13 to 2Q13 and the vast majority of the top 20 vendors are expecting 3Q13 to grow revenues again.

“It has been a tough few years for the semiconductor industry. While we haven’t seen a dramatic decline in overall revenues since the 2008/2009 period the market has been pretty stagnant since 2010,” comments Peter Cooney, practice director. “We will see some growth in 2013 as the wider economic environment improves but major market growth is not expected until later in 2014/early 2015.”

Consolidation continues to be rife in the industry: a number of major mergers and acquisitions are expected to take place in the second half of 2013. These include the merger of Fujitsu and Panasonic semiconductor divisions and the acquisition of Elpida by Micron. There have also been many smaller M&A transactions such as Intel’s acquisition of ST-Ericsson GPS business and Broadcom’s acquisition of Renesas Mobile’s LTE assets as major vendors exit the mobile device semiconductor market.

“As the semiconductor market has been squeezed we have seen an increase in consolidation amongst the major players,” adds Cooney. “Margins are falling and the competitive environment is tough—especially in the mobile device market—this is driving vendors to re-evaluate their overall strategy and pull out of some of their once major markets. We have seen a number of major vendors exit the mobile device market – Freescale, TI, STMicroelectronics, and Renesas and we expect there are more to come.”

ABI Research’s new “Worldwide Semiconductor Market – 2Q13” Market Data provides semiconductor vendors with an updated top level view of the worldwide semiconductor market and tracks market shares for the top 20 suppliers.