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MEMS Industry Group (MIG) will gather the world’s leading providers of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and sensors technology for its second annual MEMS Industry Group Conference Asia in Shanghai, China on September 8-11, 2015. Held in partnership with Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT) and Shanghai Industrial Technology Research(SITRI), this four-day event blends a two-day conference focused on the challenges and opportunities for MEMS and sensors in the Internet of Things (IoT) with exclusive tours of top R&D labs and commercial companies.

“MEMS Industry Group Conference Asia merges real-world exploration with a conference and networking event to give attendees a rare inside view of MEMS/sensors innovation engines in China,” said Karen Lightman, executive director, MEMS Industry Group. “From our tours of Nanopolis and SITRI Innovation Centers to interactive salon sessions with commercial industry and R&D — as well as presentations from the world’s most successful global suppliers of MEMS/sensors — conference attendees will engage with startup companies, researchers and multinational companies to learn firsthand about MEMS/sensors in Asia. Attendees will also gain valuable insight into the skyrocketing importance of MEMS/sensors in the IoT.”

Pre-conference Tour of Nanopolis

MIG will host a pre-conference tour of Nanopolis, called “the world’s largest hub of nanotech innovation and commercialization,” on September 8, 2015. Pre-conference attendees will visit Nanopolis-based MEMS and sensors companies: China Wafer Level CSP Co., Ltd. (WLCSP), the MEMS fab at MEMSRIGHT and SINANO laboratory (Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-bionics).

The conference agenda features:

o   Moderator: George Hsu, chairman of the board, PNI Sensor

o   Panelist: David Allan, president, Virtuix

o   Panelist: Xianfeng (Sean) Ding, director of sensing – chief scientist, Huawei

o   Panelist: Andrew Kung, general manager, Colt Advance International Limited

o   Panelist: Gary Yao, advanced technology manager, HTC America

o   Moderator: Doug Sparks, executive vice president, Hanking Electronics

o   Panelist: George Liu, director, TSMC

o   Panelist: Ian Wright, marketing director, SPTS

o   Panelist: Zheng Yuan, vice president and general manager of the 200mm Equipment Product Group, Applied Materials

MIG Conference Asia also features a Dinner Cruise on September 10 with MIG, SITRI and SIMIT aboard the yacht, The Happy Captain.

Chinese Innovation Experience

On September 11, conference attendees will take an “innovation tour” of the SITRI fab and Shangahi Simgui Technology Co., Ltd as well as other SITRI facilities, including the IoT Innovation Center, QST and SITRI labs. Attendees will visit the InnoSpring Innovation Center, where they will experience demos from SITRI IoT Systems Group and SITRI Executive Information System (EIS) R-CAD.

They will also participate in salon sessions with industry/academia to discuss trends in China spanning agriculture, environment, 3D printing, automotive electronics, monitoring cameras and electronic tags.

About MEMS Industry Group Conference Asia

MEMS Industry Group Conference Asia attracts product managers, business development professionals, and product/engineering managers from the MEMS and sensors supply chain including: integrators, device manufacturers, foundries, equipment and material suppliers, researchers, developers and end-users. The majority of the audience is from Asia, with additional attendees from Europe and North America representing multinational corporations.

IC Insights’ new 185-page Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report, which will be released later this week, examines the recent surge of M&A activity, including China’s aggressive new programs aimed at bolstering its presence in the semiconductor industry.

It would be hard to characterize the huge wave of semiconductor mergers and acquisitions occurring in 2015 as anything but M&A mania, or even madness.  In just the first six months of 2015 alone, announced semiconductor acquisition agreements had a combined total value of $72.6 billion (Figure 1), which is nearly six times the annual average for M&A deals struck during the five previous years (2010-2014).

Figure 1

Figure 1

Three enormous acquisition agreements in 1H15 have already catapulted 2015 into the M&A record books.  First, NXP announced an agreement in March to buy Freescale for $11.8 billion in cash and stock.  In late May, Avago announced a deal to acquire Broadcom for about $37 billion in cash and stock, and then four days later (on June 1), Intel reported it had struck an agreement to buy Altera for $16.7 billion in cash.  Avago’s astonishing deal to buy Broadcom is by far the largest acquisition agreement ever reached in the IC industry.

In many ways, 2015 has become a perfect storm for acquisitions, mergers, and consolidation among major suppliers, which are seeing sales slow in their existing market segments and need to broaden their businesses to stay in favor with investors.  Rising costs of product development and advanced technologies are also driving the need to become bigger and grow sales at higher rates in the second half of this decade.  The emergence of the huge market potential for the Internet of Things (IoT) is causing major IC suppliers to reset their strategies and quickly fill in missing pieces in their product portfolios.  China’s ambitious goal to become self-sufficient in semiconductors and reduce imports of ICs from foreign suppliers has also launched a number of acquisitions by Chinese companies and investment groups.

IC Insights believes that the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions, leading to fewer major IC manufacturers and suppliers, is one of major changes in the supply base that illustrate the maturing of the industry.  In addition to the monstrous M&A wave currently taking place, trends such as the lack of any new entry points for startup IC manufacturers, the strong movement to the fab-lite business model, and the declining capex as a percent of sales ratio, all promise to dramatically reshape the semiconductor industry landscape over the next five years.

By Shannon Davis, Web Editor

Fifty years of technological developments following Moore’s Law has changed our world in some phenomenal ways, but Intel’s Doug Davis believes the time has come to change the way we think about developing new solutions.

At SEMICON West 2015 on Wednesday morning, Intel’s Internet of Things Senior Vice President and General Manager challenged attendees to broaden their thinking on the potential of the IoT and examine their own roles in bringing about global change through new, innovative technology.

“The question is not how do we make these devices smart? The question becomes what are the problems that we can work together to solve?” Davis said.

Davis’ presentation addressed four complex issues the world is currently facing: an aging population, climate change, the urban boom, and how we feed the planet, offering real IoT solutions that could impact these growing concerns.

IoT and an aging population

Since 1950, the average lifespan has increase by more than 20 years. By the year 2050, more people on the planet will be over the age of 60 than under the age of 14.

“As we’re all living healthier, longer lives, we also have to reflect that as a society we’re unprepared to provide care for these kinds of numbers,” said Davis.

Even if the infrastructure were available, if you talk to seniors, they’d rather live out their lives at home, Davis pointed out. How can the IoT help us with this challenge? Davis offered up MimoCare as an example pioneering technology that addresses this.

MimoCare is an IoT technology currently available that uses analytics to provide the caregiver with a unique monitoring solution. Using a network of motion, door, and presence sensors, MimoCare will unobtrusively provide data on what is normal in the home and what changes are occurring, which allows the caregiver to make decisions if they are concerned. The result: seniors are enabled to live in the comfort of their own homes longer.

IoT and climate change

No matter where you stand on global warming, there’s no arguing that air quality is becoming a serious issue in an increasing number of cities in the world, Davis said.

He challenged his audience to also think about this problem differently, posing the question, “What if we reduced emissions at every point in the supply chain?”

Davis cited Intel’s own predictive analytics solutions, which have been used in a number of their fabs around the world.

“Engineers at one Intel fab have used this data to reduce maintenance time by 50%, parts replacement by 20%,” Davis said. “They were able to reduce non-genuine yield loss by as much as 20%.”

With this kind of increase in efficiencies, Davis said Intel believes this also helps to reduce their carbon footprint.

IoT and the urban boom

“We’re undergoing the fastest rural to urban migration in human history,” Davis explained. “City populations are growing by 65 million people per year – that’s seven new Chicagos every year.”

And there are a lot of growing concerns that go along with this boom, from traffic problems to pollution. To address these issues, Davis said Intel has pilot programs now in the UK that are beginning to capture data on traffic patterns, air quality, water supply and more, and overlaying that data with public service agencies, which would allow these agencies and eventually citizens to make real-time decisions and changes.

IoT and how we feed the planet

Davis argued that the real problem the world is facing isn’t how to feed the planet, but the amount of food wasted while so many people go hungry.

“The World Bank says that we’re currently wasting 1/4 to 1/3 of the food that’s being produced on the planet today,” said Davis. “We have to get better at distributing food.”

Davis shared one example of improved agricultural performance through IoT solutions installed in rice fields in Malaysia, where farmers used ground water and weather forecasting analytics to monitor and make decisions about crop management. In the end, Davis said, farmers were able to see water savings of up to 10% and rice production increase of 50%.

What’s possible in the next five years?

It’s hard to imagine what the world will look like after another 50 years of technological developments, so Davis concluded his presentation with market research that demonstrates the dramatic impact these Internet of Things systems can have in just five years.

According to recent studies by Juniper, he reported, the world’s healthcare systems could save $36B by implementing remote patient monitoring technologies. Predicted maintenance could have as much as 1,000 times return on investment, when we think about the total impact those solutions could deliver. Smart city traffic management could reduce cumulative global emissions by 164 million metric tons, the equivalent to taking 35 million cars off the road. Improved data collection, weather forecasting, and precision agriculture could decrease agricultural losses by as much as 25% percent.

“The genius of Moore’s Law showed us what was possible and set the pace for us,” Davis said. “Over the next 50 years, think about what’s possible – think beyond just the device and into the end-to-end solutions we can create, and we can tackle these huge challenges worldwide.”

Leti_Jean-Eric_MichalletBy Jean-Eric Michallet, Leti Vice President of Sales and Marketing

Smart devices for the Internet of Things are among the top three growth drivers for the semiconductor industry, but the IoT is a highly fragmented market where multiple applications have varying energy requirements.

Speaking at a session on “Consumer & Energy Efficiency” at the LetiDays annual event in Grenoble, France, Edith Beigné, a senior scientist in the Architecture, ID Design, and Embedded Software Department at CEA-Leti, said the fragmentation presents challenges for technology providers, because it is difficult and expensive to design a single chip for one application or to provide a software or hardware platform to cover each archetype.

Leti’s new Internet of Things platform, L-IoT, is designed to overcome the challenges of fragmentation by providing a complete, flexible ultra-low power solution with adaptable analog and digital building blocks globally optimized for high energy efficiency and that “sleep” when energy-supply is low. All functionality, except the sensors, is integrated on a single chip.

L-IoT: a Flexible Platform

LetiDays 2-1

Adaptive Always-Responsive/On-Demand, according to energy levels

Known as “Elliot”, the platform includes both an “always-on” subsystem and “on-demand” subsystem. For applications such as video surveillance, secure communications, data fusion and tracking and monitoring, for example, the “on-demand” system can be woken up to provide additional data, as needed.

The application may have a variety of power sources for the “on-demand” tasks, but energy harvesting is the preferred choice, Beigné said.

Silicon Impulse

Leti also recently introduced Silicon Impulse, a comprehensive IC technology platform offering IC design, advanced intellectual property, emulator and test services and industrial multi-project wafer (MPW) shuttles. The eight-member consortium supporting the platform offers leading-edge, hardware-and-software solutions, including embedded software dedicated to geo-location and people location, for instance; subsystems such as 3D multi-core and low-power CPU modules, and a wide range of ICs: FD-SOI, RF, sensors, mixed-signal, MEMS and NEMS and 3D devices.

Caroline Arnaud, head of the Platform and Design Center Department at Leti, said the platform supports 28nm FD-SOI now, and Leti is in discussions with GLOBALFOUNDRIES for access to 22nm technology next year.

From sensor fusion to context awareness

Vivian Cattin, Leti project Manager, outlined future consumer applications that context-awareness technology can provide. She summarized Leti’s ongoing work with InvenSense, the world’s leading provider of MotionTracking sensor system-on-chip (SoC) and sound solutions for consumer electronic devices. In 2014, the company acquired the Leti spinout Movea, which was widely recognized for its advanced software for ultra-low-power location, activity tracking and context sensing.

The continuing collaboration is focused on improving context awareness by combining data from a variety of sensors, including accelerators and gyrometers, with other sources, such as WiFi beacons and the GPS systems from a person’s mobile device, to not only locate the person but estimate his or her direction or trajectory. The application also can estimate the travel time to the destination.

Cattin said a next step, called “user-adaptive processing”, would combine additional sensors, including wearable devices, software that supports machine learning, and the user’s own cloud-based information to support new uses such as personal wellness tips.

Less energy, more powerful applications for consumers

Jean-Michel Goiran, IoT business-development manager at Leti, highlighted Leti programs and projects that provide more powerful applications for consumers in the Internet of Things era, while using less power.

Connected sensor nodes typically reserve two-thirds of available power in standby mode for the microprocessor, while 13 percent is used by the sensor, 11 percent by the radio, and 10 percent by the active microprocessor. “We need an ultra-low standby-power solution for sustainable and long-living IoT devices deployment,” he said.

Non-volatile memory will be a big part of the solution for better standby-power management, because its content doesn’t require periodic refreshing. Super directivity, which refers to very small antennas directing their signals in only one direction, are another energy saver for IoT applications. Mutualizing functions on a single sensor, such as C02 detection, ventilation, presence detection and fire alarms, also can significantly lower power demand. “You need energy for sensors, so the fewer sensors the better,” Goiran said.

Wired houses for energy efficiency and security

Joël Mercelat, chief technical officer at Delta Dore, described a fully connected house that provides enhanced security and maintains residents’ preferred heating/cooling and lighting preferences, while cutting energy use. These functions are automated, but also can be controlled be hand-held devices.

Read more from CEA-Leti: 

What chipmakers will need to address growing complexity, cost of IC design and yield ramps

 

Imec and Holst Centre have developed a small NO2 sensor featuring a low power consumption in the mW range. The sensors have a low detection limit for NO2 (<10 ppb) and a fast response time. They are particularly well suited for air quality monitoring and serve as a solution to the increased demand for accurate local air quality monitoring for indoor and outdoor environments. The sensors are being tested in real-life situations, as part of an environmental monitoring platform.

While wearable technology that measures body parameters has become increasingly popular in recent years, the Intuitive Internet of Things (I2oT) is next on the horizon: connecting everybody and everything everywhere with data stored in the cloud, turning the massive amount of data in information to make the right decisions, to take the right actions exactly as we need or want. The I2oT is expected to manage the sustainability, complexity and safety of our world. It will increase our comfort and wellbeing in many ways.

Health issues resulting from poor air quality are a growing concern for consumers and accurate monitoring is becoming more and more in demand, for both outdoor and indoor environments.

Air quality is typically measured on just a few distinct locations per city, with specialized equipment. Many current gas sensors are large in size, have high power consumption and are too cost prohibitive to be implemented on a large scale for I2oT applications. Imec and Holst Centre have developed small, simple, low power and high quality autonomous sensors that wirelessly communicate with the environment and the cloud.

Imec and Holst Centre’s NO2 sensors were integrated in the Aireas air quality network, a multiple sensor network in the city center of Eindhoven (the Netherlands). The purpose was to test -in actual outdoor conditions and long term- the stability of the sensors, and benchmark them against established reference sensors. The sensors are operational since early May 2015 and contribute with valuable outdoor sensor data since then. During traffic rush hours, the sensors detect a significant increase of NO2 concentration up to the health safety limits.

Imec and Holst Centre are currently deploying a similar sensor network inside the Holst Centre building in Eindhoven to test the sensors for indoor air quality monitoring. This environmental monitoring platform today includes it proprietary NO2 sensor and commercial sensors for temperature, relative humidity and CO2. The measured levels can be monitored live, over the internet. In a next step, proprietary low-cost low-power sensors will be added for CO2, VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds), Ozone, and particle matter.

The generated sensor data are transferred to the cloud, stored in a database and immediately available on (mobile) applications, explained Kathleen Philips, director of imec’s perceptive systems for the intuitive internet of things R&D program.

“Data fusion methodology and advanced algorithms enable us to combine data from different sensors such as temperature, several gasses, humidity, human presence detection and to derive contextual knowledge. This information contributes to a correct interpretation of the situation and helps us to take adequate actions to solve the problem. In this way, we have developed a context-aware intuitive sensing system.”

Companies interested in early application validation and development for distributed IoT networks and/or in the innovative technology and circuits to realize them are invited to become a partner in our R&D program. IP can also be licensed.

Photo: NO2 sensor + network hardware for wireless sensor network

Photo: NO2 sensor + network hardware for wireless sensor network

From connectivity to globalization and sustainability, the “Law” created by Gordon Moore’s prediction for the pace of semiconductor technology advances has set the stage for global technology innovation and contribution for 50 years. The exponential advances predicted by Moore’s Law have transformed the world we live in. The ongoing innovation, invention and investment in technology and the effects that arise from it are likely to enable continued advances along this same path in the future, according to a new report from IHS Inc. Titled “Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Moore’s Law,” the report describes how the activity predicted by Moore’s Law not only drives technological change, but has also created huge economic value and driven social advancement.

In April of 1965, Fairchild Semiconductor’s Research and Development Director, Gordon Moore, who later founded Intel, penned an article that led with the observation that transistors would decrease in cost and increase in performance at an exponential rate. More specifically, Moore posited that the quantity of transistors that can be incorporated into a single chip would approximately double every 18 to 24 months. This seminal observation was later dubbed “Moore’s Law.”

“Fifty years ago today, Moore defined the trajectory of the semiconductor industry, with profound consequences that continue to touch every aspect of our day-to-day lives,” said Dale Ford, vice president and chief analyst for IHS Technology. “In fact, Moore’s Law forecast a period of explosive growth in innovation that has transformed life as we know it.”

The IHS Technology report, which is available as a free download, finds that an estimated $3 trillion of additional value has been added to the global gross domestic product (GDP), plus another $9 trillion of indirect value in the last 20 years, due to the pace of innovation predicted by Moore’s Law. The total value is more than the combined GDP of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

If the cadence of Moore’s Law had slowed to every three years, rather than two years, technology would have only advanced to 1998 levels: smart phones would be nine years away, the commercial Internet in its infancy (five years old) and social media would not yet have skyrocketed.

“Moore’s Law has proven to be the most effective predictive tool of the last half-century of technological innovation, economic advancement, and by association, social and cultural change,” Ford said. “It has implications for connectivity and the way we interact, as evidenced by the way social relationships now span the globe. It also provides insight into globalization and economic growth, as technology continues to transform entire industries and economies. Finally it reveals the importance of how sustainability affects life on Earth, as we continue to transform our physical world in both positive and negative ways.”

Moores Law full

The Moore’s Law Era: Explosive Economic and Societal Change

The consequences of Moore’s Law has fueled multifactor productivity growth. The activity forecast by the law has contributed a full percentage point to real GDP growth, including both direct and indirect impact, every year between 1995 and 2011, representing 37 percent of global economic impact.

“Not even Gordon Moore himself predicted the blistering pace of change for the modern world,” Ford said. “While it is true most people have never seen a microprocessor, every day we benefit from experiences that are all made possible by the exponential growth in technologies that underpin modern life.”

According to the “Moore’s Law Impact Report,” the repercussions of Moore’s Law have contributed to an improved quality of life, because of the advances made possible in healthcare, sustainability and other industries. The results of advanced digital technology include the following:

  • Forty percent of the world’s households now have high-speed connections, compared to less than 0.1 percent in 1991
  • Up to 150 billion incremental barrels of oil could potentially be extracted from discovered global oil fields
  • Researchers can perform 1.5 million high-speed screening tests per week (up from 180 in 1997), allowing for the development of new material, such as bio-fuels and feedstock’s for plant-based chemicals

Moore’s Law: Reflecting the Pace of Change

Moore’s Law is not a law but an unspoken agreement between the electronics industry and the world economy that inspires engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs to think about what may be possible.

“Whatever has been done, can be outdone,” said Gordon Moore. “The industry has been phenomenally creative in continuing to increase the complexity of chips. It’s hard to believe – at least it’s hard for me to believe – that now we talk in terms of billions of transistors on a chip rather than tens, hundreds or thousands.”

Moore’s observation has transformed computing from a rare, expensive capability into an affordable, pervasive and powerful force – the foundation for Internet, social media, modern data analytics and more. “Moore’s Law has helped inspire invention, giving the world more powerful computers and devices that enable us to connect to each other, to be creative, to be productive, to learn and stay informed, to manage health and finances, and to be entertained,” Ford said.

Millennials: The Stewards of Moore’s Law

From the changing shape and feel of how humans communicate to the delivery of healthcare, changing modes of transportation, cities of the future, harvesting energy resources, classroom learning and more – technology innovations that spring from Moore’s Law likely will remain a foundational force for growth into the next decade.

From data sharing, self-driving cars and drones to smart cities, smart homes and smart agriculture, Moore’s Law will enable people to continuously shrink technology and make it more power efficient, allowing creators, engineers and makers to rethink where – and in what situations – computing is possible and desirable.

Computing may disappear into the objects and spaces that we interact with – even the fabric of our clothes or ingestible tracking devices in our bodies. New devices may be created with powerful, inexpensive technology and combining this with the ability to pool and share more information, new experiences become possible.

Fairchild, a supplier of high-performance semiconductor solutions, today launched the FIS1100 6-axis MEMS Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), the company’s first MEMS product stemming from its strategic investments in MEMS and motion tracking. The FIS1100 IMU integrates a proprietary AttitudeEngine motion processor with best-in-class 9-axis sensor fusion algorithms to provide designers with an easy to implement, system-level solution for superior user experiences with up to ten times lower processing power consumption in a wide range of motion enabled, battery-powered applications.

Fairchild's FIS1100 Intelligent IMU is an easy-to-implement, system-level motion tracking solution that can reduce processor power consumption by as much as 10x. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Fairchild’s FIS1100 Intelligent IMU is an easy-to-implement, system-level motion tracking solution that can reduce processor power consumption by as much as 10x. (Graphic: Business Wire)

“The launch of Fairchild’s first MEMS product is a key milestone for the company as we take our unique design and manufacturing expertise and apply it towards system-level solutions that go beyond power,” said Fairchild Chairman & CEO Mark Thompson. “The advanced algorithms and deep applications know-how from the Xsens acquisition position us well in enabling our customers to develop advanced motion solutions in diverse, quickly growing segments within markets such as consumer, industrial, and health.”

The FIS1100 IMU, with its built in AttitudeEngine motion processor and XKF3 senor fusion, is a low power, highly accurate system solution that provides customers with the always-on sensor technology required for a range of application such as wearable sensors for sports, fitness, and health; pedestrian navigation; autonomous robots; and virtual and augmented reality.

“Motion tracking in consumer devices has expanded rapidly from game interfaces and smartphones into many new Internet of Moving Things applications,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst, MEMS & Sensors, at IHS. “As designers look to differentiate their products with motion, the availability of an IMU with an integrated motion processor and a complete software solution, accelerates time to market while ensuring the best trade-off between competing goals such as small size, long battery life and motion tracking accuracy.”

The AttitudeEngine processes 6-axis inertial data at a high rate internally and outputs to the host processor at a lower rate matching the application needs, eliminating the necessity for high-frequency interrupts. This allows the system processor to remain in sleep-mode longer, providing consumers longer battery life without any compromises in functionality or accuracy. The bundled XKF3 high-performance 9-axis sensor fusion algorithms combine inertial sensor data from the on-chip gyroscopes and accelerometers and data from an external magnetometer. The sensor fusion also includes background auto calibration that enables excellent performance in terms of accuracy, consistency, and fluidity. When combined with the XKF3 sensor fusion algorithms, the FIS1100 is the world’s first complete consumer inertial measurement unit with orientation (quaternion) specifications, featuring pitch and roll accuracy of ±3° and yaw accuracy of ±5°.

The FIS1100 uses Fairchild’s proprietary MEMS process, designed specifically for inertial sensors. The process features several design elements for optimal performance, size and robustness. These include a 60µm device layer with high-aspect ratio, through silicon via (TSV) interconnects and vertical electrodes, as well as a single die gyroscope and accelerometer with a unique dual vacuum design.

Suppliers of MEMS-based devices rode a safety sensing wave in 2014 to reach record turnover in automotive applications, according to analysis from IHS, the global source of critical information and insight.

Mandated safety systems such as Electronic Stability Control (ESC) and Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) – which attained full implementation in new vehicles in major automotive markets last year – are currently driving revenues for MEMS sensors. Those players with strong positions in gyroscopes, accelerometers and pressure sensors needed in these systems grew as well, while companies in established areas like high-g accelerometers for frontal airbags and pressure sensors for side airbags also saw success.

Major suppliers of pressure sensors to engines similarly blossomed – for staple functions like manifold absolute air intake and altitude sensing – but also for fast-growing applications like vacuum brake boosting, gasoline direct injection and fuel system vapor pressure sensing.

Bosch was the overall number one MEMS supplier with US$790 million of devices sold last year, close to three times that of its nearest competitor, Sensata (US$268 million). Bosch has a portfolio of MEMS devices covering pressure, flow, accelerometers and gyroscopes, and also has a leading position in more than 10 key applications. The company grew strongly in ESC and roll-over detection applications, and key engine measurements like manifold absolute pressure (MAP) and mass air flow on the air intake, vacuum brake booster pressure sensing and common rail diesel pressure measurement.

Compared to 2013, Sensata jumped to second place in 2014 ahead of Denso and Freescale, largely on strength in both safety and powertrain pressure sensors, but also through its acquisition of Schrader Electronics, which provides Sensata with a leading position among tire pressure-monitoring sensor suppliers.

While Sensata is dominant in TPMS and ESC pressure sensors, it also leads in harsh applications like exhaust gas pressure measurement. Freescale, on the other hand, is second to Bosch in airbag sensors and has made great strides in its supply of pressure sensors for TPMS applications.

Despite good results in 2014, Denso dropped two places compared to its overall second place in 2013, largely as a result of the weakened Yen. Denso excelled in MAP and barometric pressure measurement in 2014, but also ESC pressure and accelerometers. Denso has leadership in MEMS-based air conditioning sensing and pressure sensors for continuous variable transmission systems, and is also a supplier of exhaust pressure sensors to a major European OEM.

Secure in its fifth place, Analog Devices was again well positioned with its high-g accelerometers and gyroscopes in safety sensing, e.g. for airbag and ESC vehicle dynamics systems, respectively.

The next three players in the top 10, in order, Infineon, Murata and Panasonic, likewise have key sensors to offer for safety. Infineon is among the leading suppliers of pressure sensors to TPMS systems, while Murata and Panasonic serve ESC with gyroscope and accelerometers to major Tier Ones.

The top 10 represents 78 percent of the automotive MEMS market volume, which reached $2.6 billion in 2014. By 2021, this market will grow to $3.4 billion, a CAGR of 3.4 percent, given expected growth for four main sensors — pressure, flow, gyroscopes and accelerometers.  In addition, night-vision microbolometers from FLIR and ULIS and humidity sensors from companies like Sensirion and E+E Elektronik for window defogging will also add to the diversity of the mix in 2021.

Auto_MEMS_H1_2015_Graphic

DLP chips from Texas Instruments for advanced infotainment displays will similarly bolster the market further in future. More details can be found in the IHS Technology H1 2015 report on Automotive MEMS.

Read more: 

What’s next for MEMS?

Growing in maturity, the MEMS industry is getting its second wind

SEMI today announced the update of its World Fab Forecast report for 2015 and 2016. The report projects that semiconductor fab equipment spending (new, used, for Front End facilities) is expected to increase 11 percent (US$38.7 billion) in 2015 and another 5 percent ($40.7 billion) in 2016. Since February 2015, SEMI has made 282 updates to its detailed World Fab Forecast report, which tracks fab spending for construction and equipment, as well as capacity changes, and technology nodes transitions and product type changes by fab.   

Capital expenditure (capex without fabless and backend) by device manufacturers is forecast to increase almost 6 percent in 2015 and over 2 percent in 2016. Fab equipment spending is forecast to depart from the typical historic trend over the past 15 years of two years of spending growth followed by one of decline.  For the first time, equipment spending could grow every year for three years in a row: 2014, 2015, and 2016.

The SEMI World Fab Forecast Report, a “bottoms up” company-by-company and fab-by-fab approach, lists over 48 facilities making DRAM products and 32 facilities making NAND products. The report also monitors 36 construction projects with investments totaling over $5.6 billion in 2015 and 20 construction projects with investments of over $7.5 billion in 2016.  

According to the SEMI report, fab equipment spending in 2015 will be driven by Memory and Foundry ─ with Taiwan and Korea projected to become the largest markets for fab equipment at $10.6 billion and $9.3 billion, respectively. The market in the Americas is forecast to reach $6.1 billion, with Japan and China following at $4.5 and $4.4 billion, respectively. Europe/Mideast is predicted to invest $2.6 billion. The fab equipment market in South East Asia is expected to total $1.2 billion in 2015.

Learn more about the SEMI World Fab Forecast and plan to attend the SEMI/Gartner Market Symposium at SEMICON West 2015 on Monday, July 13 for an update on the semiconductor supply chain market outlook. In addition to presentations from Gartner analysts, Christian Dieseldorff of SEMI will present on “Trends and Outlook for Fabs and Fab Capacity” and Lara Chamness will present on “Semiconductor Wafer Fab Materials Market and Year-to-Date Front-End Equipment Trends.”   

Fab Equipment Spending
(for Front-End Facilities, includes new, used, in-house)

 

2014

(US$B)

2015

(US$B)

Year-over-Year
Americas

7.8

6.1

-22%
China

4.1

4.4

10%
Europe and Mideast

2.2

2.6

18%
Japan

3.8

4.5

17%
Korea

7.4

9.3

27%
SE Asia

1.1

1.2

2%
Taiwan

8.5

10.6

25%
Total

34.9

38.7

11%
Source: SEMI World Fab Forecast Reports (May 2015)Totals may not add due to rounding

By Paula Doe, SEMI

Ever growing volumes of data to be stored and accessed, and advancing process technologies for sophisticated control of deposition and etch in complex stacks of new materials, are creating a window of opportunity for an emerging variety of next-generation non-volatile memory technologies.  While flash memory goes vertical for  higher densities, resistive RAM and spin-transfer magnetic RAM  technologies are moving towards commercial manufacture for  initial applications in niches that demand a different mix of speed,  power and endurance than  flash or SRAM. This article delves into some of the topics that will be addressed at SEMICON West 2015.

Micron: Memory Needs to go Vertical

“Memory is going through a transformation, making it an exciting time to be in the sector, with both emerging opportunities and new challenges,” notes Naga Chandrasekaran, Micron Technology VP of process R&D, who will keynote the next-generation memory program at SEMICON West 2015.  As new applications in the connected world drive demand for increased storage, bandwidth, and smart memory, and as conventional planar memory scaling faces more challenges, memory suppliers across the industry face a transformation, requiring new emerging memory types and a transition from planar to vertical technology.

“Memory needs to go vertical to meet growing demands placed on performance, and that means a new set of process and equipment requirements,” says Chandrasekaran.  Scaling the vertical 3DNAND structures is no longer limited by the lithography, but instead is driven by the capability of the etch, film and characterization processes.  “Metrology and structure/defect characterization is a holdup for the entire sector, which is slowing down the cycle time for development,” he notes. “In addition, there are challenges in materials, structural scaling, equipment technology, and manufacturability on the new roadmap that need to be resolved.”

Everspin Targets ST-RAM on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 40nm 300mm Process in a Year

Everspin Technologies’ recently introduced 64Mb spin transfer torque MRAM makes a big jump in density over the company’s earlier 16Mb device, as switching the magnetization by a current of electrons of aligned spin allows much better selectivity than applying a magnetic field.  Manufacturing these spin-transfer devices has traditionally been a challenge, but the company claims it sees a clear roadmap to continue to increase the density. “We’re squeezing a 64Mb device on 90nm silicon out of the quarter-micron process equipment in our fab,” says VP of manufacturing Sanjeev Aggarwal, who will give an update on the technology at SEMICON West.  The company is in the process of transferring the technology to a 40nm process on 300mm wafers at partner GLOBALFOUNDRIES in the next year, to significantly reduce the cell size and spacing.

Aggarwal notes that the layers in the magnetic stack of the spin-transfer torque device (ST RAM) are similar in thickness to those of the earlier magnetic-field switched MRAM devices, which have already shipped some  50 million units. In the 28nm version of the ST-RAM, targeted for a couple of years out, the company plans to switch from an in-plane to a perpendicular structure, which will significantly improve efficiency to cut power consumption by an order of magnitude, though the material stack and processing will remain very similar.

Current deposition tools can provide the layer uniformity required for the many ultrathin layers of these magnetic stacks, and etching technology being developed with a vendor for cleanly removing these non-volatile magnetic material looks promising for 40nm, says Aggarwal. Key is the company’s IP for depositing the tunnel barrier MgO and for stopping the etch uniformly on the tunnel barrier when etching the magnetic stack. “These deposition and etch technologies should extend to 1Gb without much change, though at 16Gb we may need something new,” he adds. “In the next several years we will need help from vendors on better ways to clean up the etch residue, such as by ion milling after RIE, or encapsulating the stack to protect it before the next round of etching.”

Demand for the 64Mb ST-RAM is coming from buffer storage applications, such as high-end enterprise-class solid state drives, where an array of the fast-writing, non-volatile chips holds the data until it can be more permanently filed and stored, and where the high volumes of data require better endurance than flash,  reports Terry Hulett,  Evergreen VP Systems Engineering and GM Storage Solutions.  “As our products increase in density, we expect to serve the same function for bigger storage systems, like a whole rack of solid state drives,” he projects. The company also targets applications for potential power savings for the instant-on persistent memory, such as powering off the display buffer between every refresh cycles for mobile devices, or shutting down the server between operations.

Both Sanjeev Aggarwal (Everspin) and Naga Chandrasekaran (Micron Technology) will update SEMICON West attendees on the state of these emerging memory technologies in a TechXPOT.   In addition, Wei D. Lu (Crossbar), Robert Patti (Tezzaron), and Jim Handy (Objective Analysis) will provide analysis and updates at the July 14 event in San Francisco:

Crossbar Aims for Embedded ReRAM IP Blocks from Foundry by End of Year

ReRAM suppliers, meanwhile, argue that their technology potentially offers better prospects for scaling and lower costs than either flash or spin-based MRAM, although it is still a ways from a commercial volume process.   Crossbar Co-founder and chief scientist Wei Lu, who will also speak at SEMICON West, says the company plans to deliver its ReRAM technology to strategic partners as an IP block for embedded non-volatile memory on logic chips from a leading-edge manufacturing foundry by the end of the year.  The company’s approach stores data by changing the resistance by forming a conductive metallic bridge through a resistive layer of amorphous silicon sandwiched between two electrode layers.

Lu says the devices are being made with two-mask steps on top of the CMOS transistors in a leading foundry.  Key to improving performance to commercial levels and achieving very dense crossbar arrays, he notes, is the addition of a high speed selector device on top of the memory layer.  This layer blocks unwanted sneak currents at low voltages and turns on at the threshold level to enable formation of the conduction bridge. “It’s like a volatile RAM stacked on top of the ReRAM, with nanosecond recovery time,” he explains. “This brings the on/off selectivity up to 108.”

Initial target market is chip makers who want to embed nonvolatile memory directly in the logic fab, for low-power applications like the IoT, with faster speed and higher endurance than flash.  But ultimately the company targets the bigger market of stand-alone enterprise data storage with lower read and write latencies.  “We expect to offer Gigabit-level density at faster speed than NAND flash by around 2017,” claims Lu.  He figures ReRAM and STT RAM will both find their place in the more diverse memory market of the future, with SST RAM offering better endurance, and ReRAM offering higher density and lower cost.

Tezzaron Reports High ReRAM Yields from Repair and Remapping through Multilayer Stack

Tezzaron Semiconductor takes a different approach to ReRAM, storing data by moving oxygen vacancies instead of metal ions across the thin layers to change resistance.  CTO Robert Patti, another SEMICON West speaker, credits the Tezzaron fab’s ALD technology for the tight control of layer uniformity required to build its 16-tiers of ReRAM cells on top of a CMOS transistor tier from another foundry.  Controlling the chemistry of the layering and the reaction is a challenge, but the tiers allow dynamic repair and remapping of defective cells, which Patti claims can enable yields of up to 98%.  “The possibility to repair across the vertical structure makes defect density less of an issue, and lets us deal with materials and processes that are less mature,” he notes.

Patti says his company’s aerospace/military customers, who need a non-volatile option with better endurance than flash memory, will likely move to ReRAM within a couple of years.  Server makers are also starting to look at the potential for adding a new intermediate level of memory, between the solid state disk and the DRAM, which could potentially significantly improve server performance in analyzing big data by holding big chunks of data for faster access at lower power. It might also reduce system-level costs, although it will require changes in operating system architecture to use it effectively, and sophisticated programming algorithms to manage the memory to limit wear.  Demands on the intermediate storage memory should be limited enough that the ReRAM target endurance of 109 cycles should be sufficient, though it remains lower than DRAM’s 1015.  If ReRAM endurance reaches 1012 cycles, the nonvolatile, instant-on memory could become a viable replacement for mobile memory, Patti suggests.

“Vertical NAND is appealing because it’s more familiar, which has probably delayed interest in ReRAM.  But ReRAM has a smaller cell size so may ultimately be easier to scale and more cost effective,” argues Patti.

Costs Remain the Challenge

“The only thing that ultimately matters in memory is cost,” argues Objective Analysis analyst Jim Handy, another speaker, pointing out that the target aerospace and enterprise storage applications remain small markets, and volumes are not high enough yet to build up deep understanding of the new materials used, so there will be bumps in the road to come.  But as costs come down as MRAM and ReRAM scale to higher densities, he expects them to gradually take over more mainstream applications, starting with the highest cost memories, so first SRAM (especially SRAM with battery backup), then NOR flash, DRAM and finally NAND flash — perhaps by ~2023.  “We have been predicting that 2017 is the earliest we’ll see significant penetration of 3D NAND into the planar NAND market,” he notes. “And now that some suppliers are saying it will be 2017, it makes me think it may be longer.”

On July 14, all of these industry leaders will present at SEMICON West at the emerging memory technologies TechXPOT (www.semiconwest.org/node/13781). Register now and save $100 off registration.