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A Portland, Oregon jury today delivered a verdict in favor of Mentor Graphics in a patent infringement trial against Synopsys, Inc., awarding Mentor Graphics $35 million in damages and royalties.

The jury in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon found that one Mentor patent – U.S. Patent No. 6,240,376 – was directly and indirectly infringed by EVE and Synopsys.  As part of the verdict, the jury awarded damages of approximately $36 million and certain royalties to be paid to Mentor Graphics.

Four other Mentor patents were dismissed from the case prior to the trial. Synopsys said it plans to appeal the jury’s verdict.

The wafer foundry market experienced a wavy development, jumping by 39.4 percent in 2010 following a 7.9 percent decline in 2009. And the growth rate first shrank to 8.7 percent in 2011, then expanded to 21.7 percent in 2012, and fell back to 6.8 percent in 2013. It is projected that the growth rate will stand at 15.6 percent in 2014 and 6.0 percent in 2015. The fluctuation in the wafer foundry market will begin to present an increasingly small growth rate, which is mainly because of the differentiation in wafer foundry industry.

Released this month, the Global and China Wafer Foundry Industry Report, 2013-2014 provides data and information on: Overview of Global Semiconductor Industry, Downstream Market of Wafer Foundry Industry, Wafer Foundry Industry, Semiconductor Industry in China as well as 13 Key Wafer Foundry Vendors.

According to the nature of the vendors, the foundry businesses can be divided into two segments, namely, IDMs offering their excess capacity to third parties and pure-play (or dedicated) foundries, with the former including Samsung, Intel, and IBM. Global Foundries can be barely included in IDMs, for it originated from AMD. These vendors have long product lines, which makes it possible to cause competition with their customers. And IDMs, in reality, are not involved in foundry businesses and could conduct foundry business only when they have excess capacity. These IDMs will not become the first choice of the customers unless special reasons.

Money and technology do not always help do well in wafer foundry industry, which has been best illustrated by IBM. Recently, IBM was willing to pay USD1 billion for the sale of its wafer foundry business to GlobalFoundries. And GlobalFoundries suggested that the payment was very small and should be expanded to USD2 billion due to the fact that the business, which generates revenue of less than USD500 million annually, caused IBM to suffer approximately USD1.5 billion loss a year. Except TSMC, most foundries have more or less bought IBM’s technology, especially Samsung, STMicroelectronics, and GlobalFoundries, which are all technologically brought up by IBM.

Over the years, the four giants-Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Global Foundries, and IBM have formed an alliance in a vain attempt to compete against TSMC. Instead, TSMC has grown stronger and stronger. After years of efforts, Samsung has won a client in wafer foundry business-Apple. Unfortunately, the order of Apple’s main products A8 was gained by TSMC in 2014, thus leading to the first loss of Samsung System LSI Division over the years.

Although Samsung’s 14nm technology seems to take the lead, this is not approved by Apple. This is mainly because the four companies-Samsung, STMicroelectronics, GlobalFoundries, and IBM all developed from IDM. And Samsung has a long product line and therefore could compete with any electronic company in the world. Previously, Apple did not choose TSMC because the company suffered capacity constraints, and as TSMC’s capacity was expanded and met Apple’s requirements, Apple lost no time in making a shift from Samsung to TSMC.

Unlike IDMs such as Samsung, TSMC is pure-play foundry and will not compete with clients, which makes it easier for the company to get orders. And Samsung, STMicroelectronics, GlobalFoundries, IBM and Intel are the second choices for the clients.

The investment of Chinese enterprises in the field of semiconductors is totally dependent on the government, resulting in a lower efficiency. In 2010, Shanghai Huali Microelectronics Corporation was established with an investment of RMB14.5 billion. Although it had been into operation for 3 years, the company’s revenue was less than RMB1.2 billion in 2013. SMIC’s major clients include Spreadtrum, RDA, Hisilicon, GalaxyCore Inc., Rockchip, Allwinner Technology, GigaDevice, HED, Fudan Microelectronics, TMC, and DMT. The last few enterprises, which are mainly relied on the government orders, are the major design houses of chips for a variety of smart cards, including social security cards, ID cards, SIM cards, Union Pay cards. Therefore, 40 percent of SMIC’s revenue came from the low-end 0.15/0.18μm technology while TSMC’s revenue from lower than 65 nm technology accounted for 71 percent of the total.

According to the report, the specifically Foundry has a small market size and stable sales volume, but with low costs and high returns. In contrast, Logic IC Foundry has a large market size, but with a considerable fluctuation. Most important, only the leading player in the Logic IC Foundry industry can make profit, otherwise it is easy to make a loss. Take TSMC for example, which has taken the lead in the global market since its establishment in 1987, with its market share never less than 50%. Besides, TSMC is also the wafer foundry vendor that earns the highest profit around the globe, with the gross margin never lower than 40 percent even close to 50 percent in 2014 (exceeding Apple and Qualcomm). The No.2, No.3 and No. 4 players have ever suffered losses for many years, with SMIC, for example, making profit only in 2010 during the 12 years from 2000 to 2011. And the third player, Global Foundries, has suffered losses for years, with the revenue in 2013 showing a slight growth but the operating loss expanding from AED2.217 billion to AED3.217 billion.

Foundry vendors / companies mentioned in Global and China Wafer Foundry Industry Report, 2013-2014 include TSMC, UMC, SMIC, VIS, POWERCHIP, HHGRACE, DONGBU HITEK, TOWER, X-FAB, ASMC, SAMSUNG, MAGNACHIP and GLOBALFOUNDRIES.

Last month, Yole Développement  announced the update of its technology and market analysis, LED Packaging Technology & Market Trends. Under this new report, the research market and strategy consulting company highlights the impact of advanced packaging technologies in the LED industry.

“The combination of cost reduction and advanced packaging technologies such as Flip Chip and Chip Scale Package, is changing the LED industry landscape, especially its supply chain,” Yole announced.  For example, introduction of Chip Scale Package solution clearly reduces the number of manufacturing steps: today, some LED chip manufacturers, with Chip Scale Package technology already supply their products to the LED module makers directly.

LED packaging

Flip Chip technology has step by step attracted attention from the lighting, backlighting and flash markets, becoming one the most important developing items this year. Following the LED TV crisis and with the entry of Chinese players, positioning has been reshuffled in the LED industry. The product quality of Chinese LED manufacturers has increased to a level where they are now real competitors for all players. In such a highly competitive environment, three major challenges lie ahead for the LED industry regarding the General Lighting market: efficacy improvement, cost decrease and color consistency increase.

To answer these challenges, several players have now turned to Flip Chip (FC) LED, as these components present several advantages over traditional horizontal (MESA) and vertical LEDs: they are wire-bonding free, can be driven at higher current, and have a smaller size package (…).

And although the FC LED technology has been launched for quite a long time by Lumileds, it was restricted from “popularization” due to technical / technological barriers (low yield regarding bumping / eutectic process…). Additionally, the financial investment required for packaging equipment, represented a strong barrier in an industry that was still recovering.

At middle and long term, this technology [CSP] could make chip manufacturers supply directly to module manufacturers.

But the technology has gradually attracted attention from the lighting, backlighting and flash markets, becoming one the most important developing items this year.

“Whereas Flip Chip LED represented only 11 percent of overall high power LED packaging in 2013, we expect this component to represent 34 percent by 2020. Flip Chip LED will take market share from vertical LED that will represent 27 percent of overall high power LED packages by 2020,” said Pars Mukish, Senior Market & Technology Analyst, LED, Lighting Technologies, Compound Semiconductors and OLEDs.

In addition to offering an increased “performance / cost” ratio, Flip Chip LEDs are also a key enabling technology for the development of Chip Scale Package (CSP) that could allow for further cost reduction.

CSPs are novel to the LED industry but they are the mainstay of the semiconductor industry. Development of CSPs in the Silicon ICs was driven by miniaturization, improved thermal management, higher reliability, and simply the need to connect to an ever increasing pin-count on an ever shrinking die. Chip Scale packages also enabled a reduction in device parasitic and allowed for ease of integration into Level 2 packaging (e.g.: module packaging for LED). It is therefore a natural evolution for this packaging innovation to proliferate into other industries (such as the LED industry).
Basically, a CSP represents a single chip direct mountable package that is the same size as the chip. Regarding LED devices, CSPs are made of a blue FC LED die on which a phosphor layer is coated (the main application of such package being General Lighting). CSP presents several advantages such as: miniaturized size, better thermal contact to substrate. However, eliminating several process steps of traditional LED packaging, CSPs are also having an impact on the industry structure with some LED chip manufacturers supplying their products directly to LED module manufacturers. At middle and long term, this technology could make chip manufacturers supply directly to module manufacturers.

Silicon Cloud International (SCI), a provider of secure and private cloud computing infrastructure, announced today successful pilot program launch of its semiconductor workflow platform in Singapore. The pilot program included trials by the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) on a collaborative design with remotely located researchers, using the SCI platform. The launch kickoff event was hosted by SUTD and was attended by about 50 professors, researchers, semiconductor industry leaders, and university students.

SCI’s cloud-based environment is used to guarantee consistency of the virtual platform, the tools used, and the data generated with laser focus on IP protection and security.

SCI provides an end to end semiconductor design infrastructure that is maintenance-free and provisioned with the latest semiconductor process technologies, production grade workflows, semiconductor Intellectual Property (IP), and Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software. SCI’s common and consistent infrastructure enables global semiconductor development and research collaboration, improves time to market, and provides secure access to leading edge EDA tools, process libraries and IP cores.

“Universities have been unable to collaborate on semiconductor design due to incompatible workflows, different EDA tool environments, IP security concerns and complexity in setting up common design environments. Silicon Cloud addresses these issues with its cloud-based, secure semiconductor workflow platform”, said Mojy Chian, CEO and co-founder of Silicon Cloud International.

Professor Yeo Kiat Seng, Associate Provost (Graduate Studies and International Relations) at SUTD, said: “With the increased complexity of today’s semiconductor designs, research collaboration amongst semiconductor research groups is critical to improve design efficiency. The multi-disciplinary environment at SUTD together with its world-class faculty will help our industry partners to accelerate the pace of innovation, both technically and in terms of generating new intellectual properties targeting a broad range of applications, including system-on-chip for future smartphones, storage, tablets and computers.”

ARM and TSMC today announced a new multi-year agreement that will deliver ARMv8-A processor IP optimized for TSMC 10FinFET process technology. Because of the success in scaling from 20SoC to 16FinFET, ARM and TSMC have decided to collaborate again for 10FinFET. This early pathfinding work will provide valuable learning to enable physical design IP and methodologies in support of customers to tape-out 10FinFET designs as early as Q4 2015.

“ARM and TSMC are industry leaders in our respective fields and collectively ensure the availability of leading-edge solutions for ARM-based SoCs through our deep and long-term collaboration,” said Pete Hutton, executive vice president and president, product groups, ARM. “Our mutual commitment to providing industry leading solutions drives us to work together early in the development cycle to optimize both the processor and the process node. This joint optimization enables ARM silicon partners to design, tape-out and bring their products to market faster.”

TSMC will be applying the learnings from prior generations of 20SoC and 16FinFET in the ARM ecosystem to offer performance and power improvements at 10FinFET that will be better than previous nodes. The ARM ecosystem can also take advantage of TSMC’s Open Innovation Platform (OIP) which includes a set of ecosystem interfaces and collaborative components initiated and supported by TSMC.

“TSMC has continuously been the lead foundry to introduce advanced process technology for ARM-based SoCs,” said Dr. Cliff Hou, TSMC vice president of R&D. “Together with ARM, we proved out in silicon the high performance and low power of the big.LITTLE architecture as implemented in 16FinFET. Given the successful adoption of our previous collaborative efforts, it makes sense that we continue this fruitful partnership with ARM in future 64-bit cores and 10FinFET.”

The joint innovations from previous TSMC and ARM collaborations have enabled customers to accelerate their product development cycles and take advantage of leading-edge processes and IP. Recent benefits have included early access to ARM Artisan Physical IP and tape-outs of ARM Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 processors on 16FinFET.

Boston Semi Equipment LLC (BSE) today announced it has combined all of its automated test equipment (ATE) businesses under the Boston Semi Equipment brand name. Effective immediately, the Test Advantage Hardware and MVTS Technologies businesses will operate using the Boston Semi Equipment name. This follows the company’s announcement in July that it was integrating all sales and service for ATE, Prober and Test Handler products into the Boston Semi Equipment field sales organization.

Boston Semi Equipment has now built an organization of tester, handler and prober integration specialists to address the semiconductor industry’s need for a vendor-independent test cell solution provider. BSE can provide equipment configured to the customer’s exact requirements, deliver a complete test cell solution across all tester platforms fully utilizing the original OEM technology, and provide service and support to keep ATE at peak performance.

“We believe we have created the largest ATE-focused organization outside of the OEMs,” stated Bryan Banish, CEO of Boston Semi Equipment. “Our ATE organizations have been delivering standard ATE configurations, test services, custom equipment solutions, and service and support programs for our semiconductor ATE customers since 1994. Because we have experience on all major current generation and legacy ATE models, we can support any and all ATE-related projects to meet our customers’ test needs.”

BSE acquired Test Advantage Hardware in 2010 and has steadily expanded the company’s capabilities in current-generation ATE platforms. In June, 2014 the company also acquired MVTS Technologies (MVTS), which has extensive experience extending the life of legacy ATE, maximizing the investment of semiconductor companies in their test assets. The combined capabilities provide Boston Semi Equipment customers with an alternate source for high quality and economical ATE equipment, service, and test cell solutions. 

Boston Semi Equipment LLC is a semiconductor equipment company that has established a reputation as a reliable source for affordable back end test equipment, fab tools and service solutions for semiconductor manufacturers and OSATs worldwide.

Today, SEMI opens registration for the SEMICON Japan 2014 exposition and programs through its website at www.semiconjapan.org. SEMICON Japan 2014, Japan’s largest exhibition for the microelectronics manufacturing supply chain, will take place at Tokyo Big Sight in the Tokyo metropolitan area on December 3-5. For the first time, SEMICON Japan will feature a show-within-a-show  “World of IoT” to showcase applications and technologies of companies enabling the IoT revolution, including Toyota Motor, Intel, IBM, Toshiba and Cisco.

“Japan is a key region for the semiconductor industry, with the largest installed fab capacity globally, according to the recent SEMI Fab Forecast report,” said Osamu Nakamura, president of SEMI Japan. “With more than fifty 200mm production fabs for MCU, MEMS, analog and power devices, and with a strong supply chain producing over 50 percent of global semiconductor materials and approximately 35 percent of the global semiconductor equipment, Japan is at the forefront of semiconductor technology. Japan is a major platform for the promising new Internet of Things (IoT) technology, leveraging its strength that will help drive our industry’s growth over the next decade.”

While IoT technologies have begun to emerge in the market, the most exciting technologies are yet to come, but will require collaboration across the electronics supply chain to make them a reality. World of IoT will facilitate the communication across the IoT ecosystem from silicon to applications. The growth of IoT applications presents new opportunities for existing fabs, as well as materials, metrology, secondary equipment, productivity solutions, components and sub-systems, test, and packaging technologies.

SEMICON Japan 2014 will also expand its programming for visitors with four stages on the show floor — TechSTAGE North and South,TechXPOT East and West, and SEMICON Japan SuperTHEATER in the conference tower — to provide more than 100 hours of technical and business sessions.  The sessions on the stages and the theater are free for pre-registered SEMICON Japan 2014 exposition attendees.

Programs on SEMICON Japan SuperTHEATER will include:

  • Semiconductor Executive Forum – Toshiba and Applied Materials will present their perspectives on technology and business innovations.
  • IT Forum – Microsoft, Line and Google will discuss the future in terms of big data and IoT.
  • IoT Forum – CISCO, Sony and Intel will present their business and technology strategies for the IoT era.
  • 2.5D/3D IC Forum – ASE, Xilinx and Toshiba will discuss the 2.5D/3D architectures.
  • Manufacturing Innovation Forum – Intel, IBM and NGR will discuss the innovations required for sub-10nm chip manufacturing.

Japanese-English simultaneous translation will be available for the sessions on SEMICON Japan SuperTHEATER.

SEMICON Japan 2014 is the place for the latest industry insights and networking opportunities. SEMICON Japan 2014 also provides exhibitors an excellent opportunity to meet major device and equipment companies —  Advantest, Ebara, Dainippon Screen Mfg., Disco, Tokyo Electron, Nikon, Texas Instruments, Hitachi High-Tech, Murata Machinery and TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor — through the Supplier Search Program.

On January 19-21, 2015, SEMI will hold its 3rd edition of the European 3D TSV Summit in Grenoble, France.  After the last successful edition that brought over 330 participants from over 21 countries in January 2014, SEMI will renew the Summit in 2015 with the theme: “Enabling Smarter Systems,” focusing on the critical chip integration that 3D through silicon vias (TSV) now play in business strategies and the latest technology advancements.

After a long period of development, disruptive TSV technology is now transitioning to the commercialization stage and delivering higher performance, lower power consumption and reduced footprint products to enable overall smarter system integration. Companies like SK Hynix, Micron or Samsung are manufacturing engineering samples and some are even ramping up the production of stacked memories with TSV. Bosch, a MEMS company, is proposing 3-axis accelerometers with TSV. Sony is manufacturing 3D stacked backside illuminated Image Sensors with TSV in the logic die. Xilinx, pioneer of TSV with its VIRTEX 7 in 28nm, announced their next generation FPGA products Kintex and Virtex Ultra Scale in 20 and 16nm stacked die on interposer. These examples of recent product launches and announcements from major semiconductor companies make it more relevant than ever to attend this year’s TSV Summit to learn about future opportunities.

The event will be the platform for over 20 invited speakers from design houses, IDMs, OSATs, as well as from equipment and materials suppliers to share their views during plenary presentations and panel discussions. Executives and experts from leading global companies will address the latest business and technological issues pressing the industry ,—including cost of ownership, business models, supply chain, manufacturability and other technological aspects.

The European 3D TSV Summit will address the most relevant and controversial issues related to 2.5 and 3D manufacturing. Companies will also have the opportunity to showcase their products and services in the exhibition zone. In addition to the exhibit and conference, attendees will have the opportunity to schedule on-site business meetings through the event’s online business meeting platform and to visit the CEA-Leti 300mm TSV-capable clean room.

This year’s European 3D TSV Summit Steering Committee includes executives from: ams AG, BESI, CEA-Leti, EV Group, Fraunhofer-IZM, imec,  Oerlikon Systems, Scint-X,  SPTS, STMicroelectronics, and SUSS Microtec.

Please visit www.semi.org/european3DTSVSummit to register as an attendee or to exhibit at the event. Sponsorship packages are also available. Early-bird pricing will be available until 31 October. For additional information, contact Yann Guillou, SEMI Europe Grenoble Office ([email protected]).

Tessera Technologies, Inc. today announced it has named Craig Mitchell as chief technology officer for Tessera and president of Invensas Corporation, effective immediately. Mr. Mitchell assumes these roles from Simon McElrea, who is leaving the company for a new opportunity.

Mr. Mitchell, who was most recently the senior vice president of business development, joined the company in 1992 and has held a variety of senior roles in technology development, marketing, and licensing. He was a central figure in the development, licensing and technology transfer of the company’s flagship microBGA packaging technology to leading semiconductor manufacturers. Mr. Mitchell is also the named inventor on more than 60 U.S. patents.

In his new role, Mr. Mitchell will drive the development and commercialization of xFD, BVA, and 2.5D/3D interconnect technologies as well as efforts to expand the Invensas portfolio of interconnect technologies.

“Although I have been with the company for over 20 years, I am more excited than ever. The Company’s approach to technical collaboration and partnerships is consistent with our goal of driving enabling technologies, such as xFD and BVA, into high volume production with our customers. I look forward to working with our highly talented technology team to deliver the next generation of game-changing technologies to our customers,” said Mr. Mitchell.

“We are thrilled to have someone of Craig’s experience and abilities assume this important role within the company. Craig has a deep understanding of technology development combined with a collaborative approach to creating value for our customers. His leadership will be instrumental in achieving our future growth initiatives,” said Tom Lacey, Tessera’s CEO. “I would also like to thank Simon for his many contributions to the Company over the past four years. We wish him the very best in his new endeavors.”

Tessera Technologies, Inc. and its subsidiaries generate revenue from licensing to manufacturers and other implementers that use the Company’s technology in areas such as mobile computing and communications, memory and data storage, and 3-D IC technologies.

Printed, flexible and organic electronic (PFOE) sensors can offer flexible form factors, larger area, lower cost, lower power, and better disposability compared to conventional sensors, key attributes for wearable applications. These attributes will allow them to grow into a $244 million market in wearables, according to Lux Research.

“With players from Apple to Intel to Kickstarter-funded start-ups launching devices, wearables are getting hot, but they still need to add functionality while trimming cost and size to really go mainstream,” said Jonathan Melnick, Lux Research Senior Analyst and lead author of the report titled, “Dial-Up Sensors: Printed, Flexible and Organic Sensors for the Things in the Internet of Things.”

“Printed, flexible, and organic electronic sensors can play a key enabling role for wearables — though many technology developers still need to improve performance, reliability and lifetime,” he added.

Lux Researchers analyzed the market for PFOE sensors across a wide variety of connected applications on the “Internet of Things” (IoT), include wearables, retail, transportation, and buildings. Among their findings:

  • Wearable, retail sensors drive growth. Wearable sensors, particularly for health and fitness, will be the biggest segment for PFOE sensors, but retail sensors — with a $117 million market in 2024 — will clock the fastest growth, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 50% through the next decade.
  • Transportation, buildings remain small. Automotive and buildings, which have accounted for a lot of IoT hype, will be a bust for most PFOE sensors due to performance and reliability disadvantages and a limited addressable market.
  • PFOE sensors face opportunities and challenges. Six types of IoT sensors may be suited for PFOE technologies: motion, pressure, gas, temperature, electromagnetic and optical. For each, the value proposition comes down to manufacturing, form factor or size in each target application.

The report, titled “Dial-Up Sensors: Printed, Flexible and Organic Sensors for the Things in the Internet of Things,” is part of the Lux Research Printed, Flexible, and Organic Electronics Intelligence service.