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Western Digital Corporation and SanDisk Corporation today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Western Digital will acquire all of the outstanding shares of SanDisk for a combination of cash and stock. The offer values SanDisk common stock at $86.50 per share or a total equity value of approximately $19 billion, using a five-day volume weighted average price ending on October 20, 2015 of $79.60 per share of Western Digital common stock. If the previously announced investment in Western Digital by Unisplendour Corporation Limited closes prior to this acquisition, Western Digital will pay $85.10 per share in cash and 0.0176 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock; and if the Unisplendour transaction has not closed or has been terminated, $67.50 in cash and 0.2387 shares of Western Digital common stock per share of SanDisk common stock. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both companies.

The combination is the next step in the transformation of Western Digital into a storage solutions company with global scale, extensive product and technology assets, and deep expertise in non-volatile memory (NVM). With this transaction, Western Digital will double its addressable market and expand its participation in higher-growth segments. SanDisk brings a 27-year history of innovation and expertise in NVM, systems solutions and manufacturing. The combination also enables Western Digital to vertically integrate into NAND, securing long-term access to solid state technology at lower cost.

The proposed combination creates significant value for both SanDisk and Western Digital shareholders. Western Digital brings a successful track record of M&A with a number of acquisitions over the last several years helping to fuel innovation, create value and strongly position the company to capture higher-growth opportunities. In addition, Western Digital’s operational excellence, coupled with the recently announced decision by China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) allowing Western Digital to integrate substantial portions of its WD and HGST businesses, is expected to generate additional cost synergies.

“This transformational acquisition aligns with our long-term strategy to be an innovative leader in the storage industry by providing compelling, high-quality products with leading technology,” said Steve Milligan, chief executive officer, Western Digital. “The combined company will be ideally positioned to capture the growth opportunities created by the rapidly evolving storage industry. I’m excited to welcome the SanDisk team as we look to create additional value for all of our stakeholders, including our customers, shareholders and employees.”

“Western Digital is globally recognized as a leading provider of storage solutions and has a 45-year legacy of developing and manufacturing cutting-edge solutions, making the company the ideal strategic partner for SanDisk,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, president and chief executive officer, SanDisk. “Importantly, this combination also creates an even stronger partner for our customers. Joining forces with Western Digital will enable the combined company to offer the broadest portfolio of industry-leading, innovative storage solutions to customers across a wide range of markets and applications.”

Western Digital and SanDisk’s complementary product lines, including hard disk drives (“HDDs”), solid-state drives (“SSDs”), cloud datacenter storage solutions and flash storage solutions, will provide the foundation for a broader set of products and technologies from consumer to datacenter. Both companies have strong R&D and engineering capabilities and a rich base of fundamental technologies with over 15,000 combined patents issued or pending worldwide.

Toshiba has been a long-term strategic partner to SanDisk for 15 years. The joint venture (JV) with Toshiba will be ongoing, enabling vertical integration through a technology partnership driven by deep collaboration across design and process capabilities. The JV provides stable NAND supply at scale through a time-tested business model and extends across NVM technologies such as 3D NAND.

Steve Milligan will continue to serve as chief executive officer of the combined company, and the company will remain headquartered in Irvine, California. Upon closing, Sanjay Mehrotra is expected to join the Western Digital Board of Directors.

Led by a seasoned management team, Western Digital has a strong track record of integrating acquisitions to create value. The company expects to achieve full annual run-rate synergies of $500 million within 18 months post-closing. The transaction is expected to be EPS accretive on a non-GAAP basis within 12 months of the transaction close. Pending the closing of the transaction, Western Digital expects to continue paying its quarterly dividend and plans to suspend its share buyback program.

The transaction will be financed by a mix of cash, new debt financing and Western Digital stock.  In connection with the transaction, Western Digital expects to enter into new debt facilities totaling $18.4 billion, including a $1.0 billion revolving credit facility. The proceeds from the new debt facilities are expected to be used to pay part of the purchase price, refinance existing debt of Western Digital and SanDisk and pay transaction related fees and expenses. If SanDisk’s cash balance falls below certain thresholds at the time of transaction close, the merger agreement provides for an adjustment to the mix of cash and stock consideration.

The transaction is subject to approval by SanDisk shareholders and, in the event that the Unisplendor transaction does not close, Western Digital shareholders, receipt of regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The transaction is expected to close in the third calendar quarter of 2016.

Slideshow: 2015 IEDM Preview


October 20, 2015
The 2015 IEDM Conference will be held in Washington DC.

The 2015 IEDM will be held in Washington DC.

This year marks the 61st annual IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM). It is arguably the world’s pre-eminent forum for reporting technological breakthroughs in semiconductor and electronic device technology, design, manufacturing, physics, and modeling. The conference focuses not only on devices in silicon, compound and organic semiconductors, but also in emerging material systems.

As usual, Solid State Technology will be reporting insights from bloggers and industry partners during the conference. This slideshow provides an advance look at some of the most newsworthy topics and papers that will be presented at this year’s meeting, which will be held at the Washington, D.C. Hilton from December 7-9, 2015.

Click here to start the slideshow

Check back here for more articles and information about IEDM 2015:

Helpful conference links:

By Zvi Or-Bach, Contributor

The upcoming IEEE S3S Conference 2015 in Sonoma, CA, on October 5-8, will focus on key technologies for the IoT era. It is now accepted that the needs for the emerging IoT market are different from those that drive the high-volume PC and smart-phone market. The Gartner slide below illustrates this industry bifurcation where traditional mass products follow the ever more expensive scaling curve, while IoT devices, with their focus on cost, power, flexibility and accessibility, will seek a place near its minimum.

S3S_Gartner

The current high-volume market is focused on a few foundries and SoC vendors driving a handful of designs at extremely high development cost each, processed at the most advanced nodes, with minimal processing options. In contrast, the emerging IoT market is looking for older nodes with lower development costs and a broad range of process options, and has many more players both at the foundry side and the design side.

The key enabling technologies for the IoT market are extremely low power as enabled by SOI and sub-threshold design, integrated with multiple sensor and communication technologies that are both enabled by 3D integration. All of these combine in forming the IEEE S3S unified conference.

This year’s conference includes many exciting papers and invited talks. It starts with three plenary talks:

  • Gary Patton – CTO of Global Foundries: New Game Changing Product Applications Enabled by SOI
  • Geoffrey Yeap – VP at Qualcomm.: The Past and Future of Extreme Low Power (xLP) SoC Transistor, embedded memory and backend technology
  • Tsu-Jae King Liu – Chair of EE Division, Berkeley University: Sustaining the Silicon Revolution: From 3-D Transistors to 3-D Integration

The following forecast from BI Intelligence suggest that the semiconductor technologies that are a good fit for the future market of IoT should be of prime interest for the semiconductors professional.

S3S_BI

Jim Walker, Research VP at Gartner, argued at the “Foundry vs. SATS: The Battle for 3D Wafer Level Supremacy” market symposium that 3D ICs are the key enabler of performance and small form factor of products required for IoT.

The upcoming IEEE S3S conference provides an important opportunity to catch up and learn about these technologies.

Let me share with you some nuggets from the monolithic 3D integration part of the conference:

Prof. Joachin Burghartz of the Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart will deliver an invited talk on “Ultra‐thin Chips for Flexible Electronics and 3D ICs” which will present a process technology to fabricate flexible devices 6-20 microns thin. This process flow is currently in manufacturing in their Stuttgart fab, as depicted below:

S3S_Fig3

Another interesting discussion will be presented by NASA scientist Dr. Jin-Woo Han who will describe “Vacuum as New Element of Transistor”. These transistors are made of “nothing” and could be constructed within the metal stack, forming monolithic 3D integration with silicon-based fabric underneath.

In his invited talk “Emerging 3DVLSI: Opportunities and Challenges” Dr. Yang Du will share  Qualcomm’s views on monolithic 3D IC, which they term 3DVLSI and illustrate below, which seems very fitting for IoT applications.

S3S_Fig2

Globalfoundries will present joint work with Georgia Tech on “Power, Performance, and Cost Comparisons of Monolithic 3D ICs and TSV-based 3D ICs”. This work again shows that monolithic 3D can provide a compelling alternative to dimensional scaling as illustrated by the following chart.

S3S_Fig4

Monolithic 3D will present “Modified ELTRAN (R) – A Game Changer for Monolithic 3D” that shows a practical flow for existing fabs to process monolithic 3D devices using their exiting transistor process and equipment. This flow leverages the work done by Canon about 20 years back called ELTRAN, for Epitaxial Layer Transfer. The following slide illustrates the original ELTRAN flow.

S3S_Final

By deploying the elements of this proven process, a multilayer device could be built first by processing a multilayer transistors fabric at the front end of line, and then process the metal stacks from both top and bottom sides.

The conference includes many more interesting invited talks and papers covering the full spectrum of IoT enabling technologies. In addition, the conference offers short courses on SOI application and monolithic 3D integration, and a fundamental class on low voltage logic.

New technologies are an important part of the future of semiconductor industry, and a conference like the S3S would be a golden opportunity to step away for a moment from the silicon valley, and learn about non-silicon and silicon options that promise to shape the future.

To advance research in nanoscale science, engineering and technology, the National Science Foundation (NSF) will provide a total of $81 million over five years to support 16 sites and a coordinating office as part of a new National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI).

The NNCI sites will provide researchers from academia, government, and companies large and small with access to university user facilities with leading-edge fabrication and characterization tools, instrumentation, and expertise within all disciplines of nanoscale science, engineering and technology.

The NNCI framework builds on the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), which enabled major discoveries, innovations, and contributions to education and commerce for more than 10 years.

“NSF’s long-standing investments in nanotechnology infrastructure have helped the research community to make great progress by making research facilities available,” said Pramod Khargonekar, assistant director for engineering. “NNCI will serve as a nationwide backbone for nanoscale research, which will lead to continuing innovations and economic and societal benefits.”

The awards are up to five years and range from $500,000 to $1.6 million each per year. Nine of the sites have at least one regional partner institution. These 16 sites are located in 15 states and involve 27 universities across the nation.

Through a fiscal year 2016 competition, one of the newly awarded sites will be chosen to coordinate the facilities. This coordinating office will enhance the sites’ impact as a national nanotechnology infrastructure and establish a web portal to link the individual facilities’ websites to provide a unified entry point to the user community of overall capabilities, tools and instrumentation. The office will also help to coordinate and disseminate best practices for national-level education and outreach programs across sites.

Funding for the NNCI program is provided by all NSF directorates and the Office of International Science and Engineering.

OMRON Corporation, which is in the field of automation based on its core sensing and control technology, and Adept Technology, Inc., a provider of intelligent robots, autonomous mobile robot solutions and services, today announced that the two companies have entered into an agreement whereby OMRON will acquire Adept.

OMRON plans to acquire 100% of the outstanding shares of Adept common stock through an all-cash tender offer followed by a second-step merger. OMRON will offer Adept investors $13.00 per share of Adept common stock, which represents a 63% premium over the closing price for Adept’s common stock on September 15, 2015. This values Adept at approximately $200 million. OMRON will fund the tender offer through cash on hand.

The tender offer is expected to commence on or about September 23, 2015, and the transaction is expected to close on or about October 23, 2015. The closing of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including at least a majority of shares of Adept common stock being tendered in the offer, expiration of the applicable waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 and receipt of required foreign antitrust approvals. The transaction has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies.

Commenting on the acquisition, Yutaka Miyanaga, OMRON Industrial Automation Business Company President, said, “We are delighted Adept Technology, a world leader in robotics, has agreed to join OMRON. This acquisition is part of our strategy to enhance our automation technology and position us for long term growth. Robotics will elevate our offering of advanced automation.”

Rob Cain, President and Chief Executive Officer of Adept, added, “We are excited about the opportunity to join OMRON, a global leader in automation. Together, our products will offer new innovative solutions to customers all around the globe.”

Following the transaction, Rob Cain will continue to lead Adept and will report to Nigel Blakeway, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Omron Management Center of America, Inc., OMRON’s wholly owned United States subsidiary.

As global manufacturing comes under even more pressure to cut costs, shorten supply cycles and operate across global environments, production sites around the world strive to improve productivity. Increased use of labor-saving robots is one of the solutions. By adding the robotics technology of Adept to its current offering, OMRON will be positioned to provide manufacturers in the automotive, digital device, food and beverage, packaging, and other industries with solutions to these challenges, as well as engineering support.

Founded in 1983, Adept is listed on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol ADEP. The company recorded annual sales of $54.2 million and gross margin of 42.0% in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015. The company is a U.S. based manufacturer of industrial robots. Adept’s product lines include autonomous mobile robots, industrial robots, configurable linear modules, machine controllers for robot mechanisms and other flexible automation equipment, as well as machine vision systems and software. Adept’s strategy is to provide a broad range of highly reliable integrated products along with world-class service to allow manufacturers to maximize productivity, safety, flexibility and product quality. This acquisition is a part of the acceleration of OMRON’s “ILO+S” (Input, Logic, Output and Safety) strategy for its Industrial Automation Business, which provides automation solutions for the manufacturing industries.

The future of MEMS in the IoT


September 3, 2015

By Pete Singer, Editor-in-Chief

SEMI’s European MEMS Summit will be held on 17-18 September 2015 in Milan, Italy. Over the course of the two-day event, more than 20 keynote and invited speakers from the entire supply chain will share their perspectives and latest updates, including participation by European MEMS leaders. In addition, a focused industry exhibition will complement the conferences offering with additional networking opportunities.

In advance of the event, we asked members of the conference steering committee about what’s happening in the world of MEMS. Answers came from:

  • Stefan Finkbeiner, CEO Bosch Sensortec
  • Benedetto Vigna, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Analog MEMS, and Sensors Group, STMicroelectronics
  • Christophe Zinck, Senior Application Engineering Manager, ASE Group
  • Eric Mounier, Senior Analyst MEMS, Yole Developpement
  • Martina Vogel, Officer of the Director of the Institute, Fraunhofer ENAS
  • Yann Guillou, Business Development Manager and MEMS Summit event Manager, SEMI Europe Grenoble Office

Q: What do you see as the big trends and challenges in MEMS and their applications, particularly with regard to the IoT.

“The application of MEMS sensors to the IoT-enabled markets (e.g. wearables, smart home, etc.) will require sensors to shrink further and to work even more power-efficient as in smartphones,” said Dr. Stefan Finkbeiner, CEO Bosch Sensortec. “In particular, the application side of the sensor will demand more attention. The value-add of a sensor must be convincing to become designed into a certain product,” he added.

Finkbeiner said he sees a big market pull for gas sensors such as the Bosch in-door air quality sensor, the BME680. “That trend is visible for the smartphone as well as for the IoT-enabled markets, like for example the Smart Home market,” he said.

Martina Vogel, officer of the director of the institute, Fraunhofer ENAS, said: “We see, that MEMS exist almost everywhere in our daily lives – in our homes, our cars, our workplaces – and yet they go largely unnoticed. Despite this low profile, microsystems have undergone rapid development in the last two decades, evolving from miniaturized single-function systems into increasingly complex integrated systems. From our point of view we call these complex integrated systems, smart integrated systems.

From performance point of view we distinguish between different generations of smart systems. The first and the second generation entered into diverse applications. The first generation of Smart Systems consisted of several packages of components connected on a single substrate, or printed circuit board. These devices are commercially available in medical applications such as hearing aids and pacemakers, as well as in automotive applications such as airbag systems. The best-known example of a second-generation Smart System is the ubiquitous smart phone, which has seen great commercial success.

Smart systems of the third generation are self-sufficient intelligent technical systems or subsystems with advanced functionality, which bring together sensing, actuation and data processing, informatics / communications. Therefore these systems are not only able to sense but to diagnose, describe and manage any given situation. They are highly reliable and their operation is further enhanced by their ability to mutually address, identify and work in consort with each other. Such smart systems will be the hardware basis for the internet of things (IoT).”

From technology point of view, Vogel said such systems “are not limited to silicon–based technologies but integrate polymer-based technologies, printing technologies (e.g. for printed antennas, printed sensors, displays or batteries), different nanotechnologies (e.g spintronic devices, CNT based devices or devices based on embedded nanoparticles) and even embroidering technologies for sensors.”

Benedetto Vigna, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Analog MEMS, and Sensors Group, STMicroelectronics, said: “The next wave of MEMS development is moving toward actuation and, while the ripples from these beautiful little machines have been building slowly for years, they are converging quickly with the Internet of Things (IoT). We are beginning to see new applications such as tiny mirrors that enable people to interact more naturally with technology, smaller, faster autofocus solutions for mobile phones, and new types of printheads for 3D printing — and this is just the beginning.”

Christophe Zinck, senior application engineering manager, ASE Group, said the big trends and challenges from his perspective are “form factor (especially height), co-integration (flexibility to be used in different modules/SiP (in term of packaging of course but also compatibility with different wireless standard), power consumption and, of course, cost.”

Eric Mounier, senior analyst MEMS, Yole Developpement, said: “For us, MEMS is just a technology among others that could answer the IoT’s requirements for sensors. Indeed, type of sensing required for IoT is very broad: Inertial sensing, chemical sensing , pressure sensing, light sensing … any physical event.

Sensor for the internet of things follow several requirements, Mournier says:

  • Low power consumption (Due to the integration in wireless battery powered modules)
  • Small form factor (Due to the need for small wireless sensors)
  • Low cost (As IoT large expansion lies in the availability of low cost sensors)

For now, several sensing solutions exist in different fields (inertial sensors in smartphones for example). But strong challenges still have to be overcome:

  • New sensing solutions (such as MEMS chemical sensors, etc.)
  • Low cost, highly integrated solutions (via 3D stacking, etc.)
  • Standardization; The IoT is the accumulation of thousands of different applications requiring low cost solutions, but with limited volumes. Developing one sensor per application is not possible due to development costs.

“I am pretty confident MEMS will be used for IoT, specially for gas/chemical sensing. MEMS technologies for gas sensors have many advantages compared to other technologies: Up to 50% size reduction and cost reduction, CMOS scalable technology,” Mournier said. “With cost and miniaturization to be a driving force for consumer and industrial Iot applications, it opens the way to new technologies such as MEMS.”

Q: Sensor fusion is an intriguing thought and the ultimate device might have multiple sensors integrated with energy harvesting, a thin film battery, a microprocessor/ASIC, wireless communication capability, etc. How far away from that are we? What are the big challenges? Is it cost? Integration? Packaging? Form factor? What are the leading applications?

ST’s Vigna said “We are already well on the sensor-fusion path that contains multiple sensors integrated with a thin-film battery, a microprocessor/ASIC, and wireless communication capability. The two technical challenges are low-power radio and high-efficiency (energy) harvester.”

Finkbeiner said Bosch Sensortec already provides leading edge sensor fusion SW integrated within a multi-sensor 9-axis device powered by an ARM µController. “This single package device – the BNO055 – is already available and specifically targeting at motion sensing and orientation detection applications in the IoT-enabled markets. Energy harvesting and thin film batteries might still be a bit too far away from being capable of offering enough energy for this particular use case at reasonably small size. But there’s a lot of research in this area. The challenges? Yes, cost/price is always the main driver. Small size is also important. It allows for small form factor products and better placement flexibility.”

Fraunhofer’s Vogel said there is a lot of work carried out with in ECSEL and especially EPoSS. “EPoSS the industry driven Euroean Platform on smart system integration is just working more than 10 years in this field,” she said. “Big challenges are of course packaging and integration from technology point of view. But also issues like big data handling and data security in the internet need to be solved.”

Vogel said market reports concerning IoT predict two trends:

  • Printed electronic systems that will enable – low cost sensing. Printing technologies, such as roll-to-roll (R2R) will enable extremely large volumes and low cost. Also expect disposable devices with a short lifespan.
  • Sensor “swarms” for inorganic sensing. Devices will have complete integration of sensing, processing RF, energy harvesting, on single small chip ( <1mm2).

ASE’s Zinck said he didn’t see things going that far, “but each sensor fusion is quite specific and current modules are often using custom ASIC, MEMS, etc. The next big challenge is flexibility for co-integration and this will require availability of bare die on the market, otherwise small and efficient SiPs won’t be easily available if you cannot mix best solutions available on the market (in terms of performance and cost, of course).

Zinck said there are also lots of challenges regarding packaging, including compartmental shielding to avoid parasitic between components, antenna on package (especially for wearable), and test.

Q: We’re hearing a lot about wearables and medical applications, but what about applications in the smart home, smart city, smart grid, industrial and, of course, automotive ?

Vigna said: “There are already numerous applications for MEMS in Smart Environments, Smart Driving, and Smart Things and many of ST’s customers are leading that charge by combining elements of ST’s complete portfolio. We’ve got customers using ST MEMS, MCUs, analog and power, and connectivity products in smart thermostats, smart lighting, smart meters, and Smart Driving applications. If you’re not hearing enough about these, it is only because the wearable and medical applications may be sexier.”

Finkbeiner said: The sensors for the other IoT-enabled markets like smart home, smart grid etc. are available or already being developed … what is lacking is the corresponding infrastructure, that means the upper layers for aggregating, collecting and intelligent interpretation of the vast sensor data and bringing them into the cloud. This will for example require standards how to handle sensor data at an higher, more abstract level. But that’s beyond the domain of the MEMS sensor suppliers. At Bosch we have therefore founded Bosch Connected Devices & Solutions, a business unit which develops complete solutions based upon our MEMS sensors.

Vogel said: “Just several years ago Frost and Sullivan pointed out that smart is the new green. The concept of ‘Smart Earth’ is, in fact, the in-depth application of a new generation of network and information technologies. Smart cities arise worldwide. Global concepts for smart production are under development. The Internet of Things – IoT – including smart grid, smart health, smart city, smart buildings, smart home, smart production and smart mobility provides not only big opportunities but is requesting more highly integrated smart systems from the hardware side. The total number of connected devices is expected to grow rapidly. Electronic components and systems are a pervasive key enabling technology, impacting all industrial branches and almost all aspects of life.”

Zinck said: “Wearables and medical are driving SiPs developments as low power and very aggressive from factor, at low cost are mandatory. Smart home, smart city, etc. are using a lot of MEMS and sensors, but the challenges are not exactly the same, some are similar in particular for Smart home (low power, wireless modules, etc.) but there is less pressure on form factors.”

Automotive is a different topic, says Zinck. “The trend we can see is to go smaller for sure, but for the moment it implies move away from leaded packages to leadless, with specific technology developments like wettable flank QFN.  Also for automotive two categories have to be clearly distinguished:

  • Non-safety applications (like Infotainment):  basically similar trend as consumer MEMS, with more and more sensors in the cabin (uphones, pressure, etc.)
  • Safety applications: very robust have to be used, but some “intelligent SiPs” are already available like QFN 7×7 TPMS (featuring an accelerometer + ASIC + pressure sensor).

Q: Europe in general is very strong in MEMS for various reasons. Why does it make sense to have the MEMS Summit in Europe?

SEMI’s Yann Guillou said Europe is home to several strong IDMs in MEMS, and most notably home to Bosch and STMicroelectronics. “These MEMS leaders are often identified as the industry’s ‘Titans’. These IDMs have contributed enormously to the European industry, but they have also benefited from a strong value chain in the region: RTOs, equipment and materials companies, foundries, etc. Having such leaders in the region is definitively a differentiating factor for Europe in a MEMS and sensor industry that is facing mounting competition. With the IoT, many new business opportunities may arise and increase the competition. This might shake up the current state of the industry,” he said.

Organizing such event in Europe was pretty straightforward. We took this decision more than 1 year ago and it looks like this decision was right. Today more than 200 people are already registered for this event and we expect to go beyond. I see lot of non-European companies planning to attend, including many US and Asian companies. Interest is strong in Asia for this event. People from Korea, Taiwan and China will be attending. As an example, we will be pleased to receive the visit of a Chinese delegation interested to develop business and technology partnerships with European companies.

Knowm Inc., a start-up pioneering next-generation advanced computing architectures and technology, today announced they are the first to develop and make commercially-available memristors with bi-directional incremental learning capability. The device was developed through research from Boise State University’s Dr. Kris Campbell, and this new data unequivocally confirms Knowm’s memristors are capable of bi-directional incremental learning. This has been previously deemed impossible in filamentary devices by Knowm’s competitors, including IBM, despite significant investment in materials, research and development. With this advancement, Knowm delivers the first commercial memristors that can adjust resistance in incremental steps in both direction rather than only one direction with an all-or-nothing ‘erase’. This advancement opens the gateway to extremely efficient and powerful machine learning and artificial intelligence applications.

“Having commercially-available memristors with bi-directional voltage-dependent incremental capability is a huge step forward for the field of machine learning and, particularly, AHaH Computing,” said Alex Nugent, CEO and co-founder of Knowm. “We have been dreaming about this device and developing the theory for how to apply them to best maximize their potential for more than a decade, but the lack of capability confirmation had been holding us back. This data is truly a monumental technical milestone and it will serve as a springboard to catapult Knowm and AHaH Computing forward.”

Memristors with the bi-directional incremental resistance change property are the foundation for developing learning hardware such as Knowm Inc.’s recently announced Thermodynamic RAM (kT-RAM) and help realize the full potential of AHaH Computing. The availability of kT-RAM will have the largest impact in fields that require higher computational power for machine learning tasks like autonomous robotics, big-data analysis and intelligent Internet assistants. kT-RAM radically increases the efficiency of synaptic integration and adaptation operations by reducing them to physically adaptive ‘analog’ memristor-based circuits. Synaptic integration and adaptation are the core operations behind tasks such as pattern recognition and inference. Knowm Inc. is the first company in the world to bring this technology to market.

Knowm is ushering in the next phase of computing with the first general-purpose neuromemristive processor specification. Earlier this year the company announced the commercial availability of the first products in support of the kT-RAM technology stack. These include the sale of discrete memristor chips, a Back End of Line (BEOL) CMOS+memristor service, the SENSE and Application Servers and their first application named “Knowm Anomaly”, the first application built based on the theory of AHaH Computing and kT-RAM architecture. Knowm also simultaneously announced the company’s visionary developer program for organizations and individual developers. This includes the Knowm API, which serves as development hardware and training resources for co-developing the Knowm technology stack.

New “thermodynamic RAM” (kT-RAM) artificial neural network (ANN) architecture from Knowm is inherent adaptive, and built with memristors capable of bi-directional incremental resistance changes for efficient learning. (Source: Knowm)

New “thermodynamic RAM” (kT-RAM) artificial neural network (ANN) architecture from Knowm is inherent adaptive, and built with memristors capable of bi-directional incremental resistance changes for efficient learning. (Source: Knowm)

“Three device types are expected to successfully reach the market: smartwatch, smart glasses/HUD, and smart clothing,” announced Yole Développement (Yole) in its Sensors for Wearable Electronics & Mobile Healthcare report released in July. Yole’s analysts explain wearable is, without doubts, a promising industry. But, who will take benefit of this attracting market, growing from US$22 billion in 2015 to more than US$ 90 billion by 2020?

“Smart glasses and HUD are expected to hit the market with high volumes around 2019. Specific to the consumer market, it’s evolved with two device types,” said Guillaume Girardin, Technology & Market Analyst at Yole. “The first type are wrist-worn devices that target the healthcare and consumer markets,” he added.

It started many years ago, with wrist-worn devices from players like Polar, Suunto, and Garmin, operating in a niche market: sports. Another wave of smart bands appeared in 2008, fueled by new players like Fitbit and Jawbone; this new generation mimics the smartphone approach in that they use MEMS technologies to reduce size, increase performance and decrease power consumption. These smart devices were only able to track and digitalize the body’s real time activity via an accelerometer, which delivered little added value to the customer.

Moreover, some technical and reliability issues led to a chaotic experience for the first batch of customers. Recently, a new tech wave occurred three years ago with players like Samsung and Pebble pushing the smartwatch market, but they failed to reach a mass market due to a one-sided technological approach.

”Apple, the latest entrant in the wearable landscape with its Apple watch, is expected to sell between 16 and 20 million units this year,” said Guillaume from Yole. “Apple’s production would quadruple the total number of devices that its competitors sold last year: 4.7 million units in 2014.”

Why could the Apple watch achieve success? In its wearable electronics report, Yole’s experts identified and analyzed the main factors: mature technology, ecosystem, and marketing.

Regarding the industrial market, Yole’s believes that smart glasses/HUD and smart clothing will be well-suited for industrial and military applications. Virtual reality HUD and smart clothing will enhance workers’ and soldiers’ capabilities, increasing productivity and security. Such a market is evaluated at around $4 billion by 2020, according to Yole.

Smart glasses and HUD are expected to hit the market with high volumes around 2019

Fig 1

Fig 1

Wearable is certainly a promising industry – but who will profit? Wearable electronics’ market value is likely to grow from $22 billion in 2015 to more than $90 billion by 2020, with a CAGR of 28 percent. All these evolutions will probably lead to a mass market adoption, here Yole expects more than 134 million, smartwatches by 2020, along with 1.3 million smart glasses/HUD by 2018. In this report, Yole analyzes the current wearable industry, what the landscape is like, who the key players, and how the industry will evolve.

The wearable industry greatly interests big companies seeking a new revenue source once the smartphone business levels off. “Sensors for Wearable Electronics & Mobile Healthcare” report from Yole highlights the expected sensors as of today, and the upcoming technologies which can sustain such developments.

Startups and small electronics companies spent $78.3 billion on semiconductors in 2014, representing 23 percent of the total market, compelling semiconductor companies to revisit their sales strategy to focus on the large number of smaller organizations than relying on big deals from large customers, research firm Gartner said.

Gartner estimates that there are more than 165,000 companies that buy semiconductor chips around the world: The top 10 spend nearly 40 percent of the total semiconductor revenue; the top 11 to 100 spend about 30 percent; and the remainder spend 30 percent.

Despite the top 10 accounting for such a large percentage of the market, some of the largest customers have decreased orders in the past five years, challenging the semiconductor vendors that mainly supplied to them.

While Samsung and Apple have significantly increased orders in the same period due to success in the smartphone market, semiconductor vendors are concerned about the risk of relying on large customers such as these.

“The industry has seen some fairly significant disruption in recent years, which has highlighted the risks associated with semiconductor vendors putting all of their focus on a limited number of large customers, when small companies offer highly profitable and stable growth,” said Masatsune Yamaji, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner. “To overcome the risk, some semiconductor vendors have tried to increase their business with small customers, while others are also realizing that they should adjust their strategies to do this.”

China is the fastest-growing among the major small-customer regions, with spending by these organizations on semiconductors growing from US$7.5 billion in 2007 to US$14.9 billion in 2014; growth in the smartphone and media tablet markets has been strong. In the Americas, EMEA and Japan, revenue from each customer is small, but the total market size of small customers is big due to the large number of such customers.

Gartner maintains that the number of customers will significantly increase after 2017, due to future growth of the electronics market and the increase in the number of Internet of Things solutions. It is anticipated that the maker movement, which creates and markets products that are recreated and assembled using unused, discarded or broken products from computer-related devices, will drive the foundation of startups and growth of small customers.

According to Gartner, big deals are not confined to large organizations, with many successful vendors having success in the small-customer market by leveraging distributors. Limited sales resources can be compensated for by aligning with good sales partners. Strong adherence to direct sales restricts the opportunities with small customers, especially among general-purpose semiconductor vendors. In fact, semiconductor distributors earn a large part of their revenue from general-purpose semiconductors.

“Semiconductor vendors should focus more on the high-tier customers and outsource sales activities with small customers to distributors,” said Yamaji. “Distributors can bring various products to market at the same time, so this outsourcing will reduce the load, not just for semiconductor vendors, but also for customers. Some distributors offer end-of-life product delivery services, so vendors should partner with these distributors to help small customers avoid having to order excessive loads.”

Gartner recommends that vendors need to evaluate how much revenue can be expected, compared with the large customers. The importance of the small customers for each vendor differs by its product type and its target sales region, so vendors need to have their own unique goals in the small-customer market.

“Before jumping in, semiconductor vendors also need to be aware of the risks associated with the small-company market, which is prone to shrinking when the macro economy weakens,” said Yamaji. “Revenue can also shrink even faster than large customers in many cases, so it is important to be aware of risk levels regarding any revenue decline. Vendors can reduce the risks by diversifying their customer base, which can spread the liability to allow for lost orders.”

By Bettina Weiss, VP, Business Development and Product Management, SEMI

Leading industry experts participated in the joint SEMI-MEMS Industry Group (MIG) workshop during SEMICON West 2015 to discuss industry challenges – and potential solutions and collaborative approaches – in the MEMS, sensors and semiconductor industries. The group discussed commonalities, lessons learned, and tried-and-true solutions such as standardization, best known methods (BKMs) and other pre- or non-competitive platforms to tackle some of the more vexing technology challenges in MEMS, sensors, and semiconductors. Disucssions covered heterogeneous integration, system-level packaging and a likely  move to 300mm wafers for MEMS devices.

The joint workshop was a direct result of a survey from both SEMI and MIG, conducted in parallel among their respective members in the spring.  SEMI and MIG members were asked to respond to and rank issues and challenges they see coming in the next 5-10 years, from product development and ramping to testing, packaging, and the need for Standards and broader platforms for collaboration. As an example, the chart below shows a strong indication on both the semiconductor as well as the MEMS/sensor side for the importance of higher integration devices, which makes it a natural topic for SEMI and MIG members to collaborate.

Alissa Fitzgerald of AM Fitzgerald & Associates, Dave Thomas of STPS Technologies, and Michael Nagib of Si-Ware Systems kicked off the workshop with presentations highlighting their perspective of overarching industry challenges and how innovative solutions create smarter products. Fitzgerald spoke specifically to “The Business Case for MEMS Standardization,” providing concrete examples – SOI wafer specifications and DRIE test pattern and recipe performance ─ where Standards could provide immediate benefits to the MEMS industry. She encouraged executives to study the financial benefits derived from standards and to send their engineers to actively contribute to new standards development.

The panel discussion following the presentations provided substance for the subsequent Q&A and open discussion. Moderated by Steve Whalley of MEMS Industry Group, Mike Rosa of Applied Materials, Bill Chen of ASE Group, Nim Tea of InvenSense, Inc. and Claire Troadec of Yole Developpment discussed “Manufacturing for the Internet of Things” from their vantage points and then participated in the open discussion. MEMS, sensors and semiconductor devices are headed to the Internet of Things – and that means the IoT will also require Standards. Participants talked about a variety of topics where Standards can be beneficial, from specifications for thin wafer handling and novel materials to FOLWP, monolithic integration between CMOS and MEMS and optimization of volume production processes.

Are supply chain stakeholders really collaborating, though, to leverage existing Standards, as well as jointly prioritize the need for new specifications and test methods? Are there other platforms for achieving shared objectives aside from Standards? How can we drive solutions with speed and agility? SEMI and MIG will take up these issues with the formation of a Joint Task Force to address these and other critical issues. And as a first step, both organizations will put together a landscape document of Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) and a list of available Standards for each one, to assess what Standards already exists, which ones are applicable to both the MEMS/sensor and semiconductor industries, and then identify gaps and opportunities for new, industry-wide solutions. This is an exciting time. Become part of this activity and help shape the future!

For more information, please contact Bettina Weiss at [email protected]. Upcoming MEMS events include: SEMI European MEMS Summit and MEMS Executive Congress US 2015