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The ConFab – an exclusive conference and networking event targeted to semiconductor manufacturing and design executives from leading device makers, OEMs, OSATs, fabs, suppliers and fabless/design companies – is proud to announce its opening Keynote speaker, the distinguished Dr. Jeffrey J. Welser from IBM Research – Almaden. Being held at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas from May 14-17, Pete Singer, The ConFab Conference Chair and Editor in Chief of Solid State Technology, will welcome Dr. Welser to the stage on May 15.

In what promises to bring the audience valuable insights, Dr. Welser will continue on the theme established at The ConFab in 2018: Artificial Intelligence. AI, which represents a market opportunity $2 trillion on top of the existing $1.5-2B information technology industry, is seen as a huge game changer in the semiconductor industry. In addition to AI chips from traditional IC companies such as Intel, IBM and Qualcomm, more than 45 start-ups are working to develop new AI chips, with VC investments of more than $1.5B. Tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, Baidu and Alibaba are also developing AI chips. Dr. Welser will describe how making AI semiconductor engines will require a wildly innovative range of new materials, equipment, and design methodologies. To get to the next level in performance/Watt, innovations being researched at the AI chip level – at IBM and elsewhere — include: low precision computing, analog computing and resistive computing.

“Dr. Welser has great insight into how AI will be used to analyze the vast amounts of unstructured data being generated today, the various approaches to AI, and the kinds of innovations that will be needed at the chip level,” said Pete Singer. “We did a deep dive into AI in 2018 with speakers from IBM, Google, Nvidia, HERE Technologies, Silicon Catalyst, TechInsights, Siemens and Qorvo, among others. We’re delighted that Dr. Welser will build upon that in 2019 with his kickoff keynote.”

As Vice President and Lab Director at IBM Research – Almaden, Dr. Welser oversees exploratory and applied research. Home of the relational database and the world’s first hard disk drive, Almaden today continues its legacy of advancing data technology and analytics for Cloud and AI systems and software, and is increasingly focused on advanced computing technologies for AI, neuromorphic devices and quantum computing. After joining IBM Research in 1995, Dr. Welser has worked on a broad range of technologies, including novel silicon devices, high performance CMOS and SOI device design, and next generation system components. He has directed teams in both development and research as well as running industrial, academic and government consortiums, including the SRI Nanoelectronics Research Initiative.

Additional industry experts adding to The ConFab 2019 Agenda will be announced soon.

MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (“MagnaChip”) (NYSE: MX), a designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, announced today that it will hold a Foundry Technology Symposium at the Shangri-La in Shenzhen, China, on November 27, 2018. After holding a successful Foundry Technology symposium in Shenzhen, China in 2015, this second technology symposium in Shenzhen is part of MagnaChip’s global foundry targeted geographic strategy to increase MagnaChip’s brand awareness in China.

Major topics to be discussed are MagnaChip’s current Foundry service offerings and future business roadmap, specialty technology processes, target applications and end-markets. This symposium is being conducted as a direct response to the increased interest and demand from current fabless customers in China for advanced analog and mixed-signal specialized foundry technologies.

During the symposium in Shenzhen, MagnaChip will highlight its technology portfolio along with discussions focused on mixed-signal, low-power technologies in the Internet of Things (IoT) sector, Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) for high-performance analog and power management applications, Ultra-High Voltage (UHV) and Non-Volatile Memory (NVM). In addition, MagnaChip will present technologies used in applications including smartphones, tablet PCs, automotive, LED lighting, consumer wearables and IoT.

“We hope that this Foundry Technology Symposium in Shenzhen will better position us to understand our customers’ needs in China,” said YJ Kim, Chief Executive Officer of MagnaChip. “With our technology symposiums held in United States, Taiwan and now in Shenzhen, China, we strongly believe that we will be able to better serve our global customers with our long history of providing successful foundry services and with our deep technological expertise.”

A multitude of fabless companies, IDMs (Integrated Device Manufacturers) and other semiconductor companies are expected to attend MagnaChip’s Shenzhen technology symposium.

To sign up for the event, and to receive more detailed information regarding the symposium, please visit www.magnachip.com or ifoundry.magnachip.com.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.24 billion in billings worldwide in August 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the August Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI. The billings figure is 5.9 percent lower than the final July 2018 level of $2.38 billion, and is 2.5 percent higher than the August 2017 billings level of $2.18 billion.

“Global billings of North American equipment suppliers declined in August when compared to July, although they remain above August 2017 billings,” said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. “Industry spending remains solid and we expect equipment expenditures in North America, China, Japan, and Taiwan to increase over their respective levels relative to the first half of the year.”

The SEMI Billings report uses three-month moving averages of worldwide billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.
Billings
(3-mo. avg.)
Year-Over-Year
March 2018
$2,431.8
16.9%
April 2018
$2,689.9
25.9%
May 2018
$2,702.3
19.0%
June 2018
$2,484.3
8.0%
July 2018 (final)
$2,377.9
4.8%
August 2018 (prelim)
$2,236.6
2.5%

Source: SEMI (www.semi.org), September 2018

Lam Research Corporation (Nasdaq: LRCX), a global supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry, today announced the recipients of its 2018 Supplier Excellence Awards. Selected from Lam’s extensive list of preferred global suppliers, the companies were recognized for their outstanding performance, strategic services, and critical collaboration.

During Lam’s 2018 Supplier Day held on September 19th, the following six companies were presented with an award for Overall Supplier Excellence:

  • Fujikin Incorporated
  • HORIBA, LTD.
  • Texon Co., LTD.
  • TOTO, LTD.
  • Watlow Electric Manufacturing Co.
  • Wonik QnC Corporation

“Our top suppliers make it possible for us to provide exceptional, industry-leading products and services to our customers,” said Tim Archer, president and chief operating officer of Lam Research. “Close collaboration with these top performing suppliers has proven critical to delivering innovative, high-quality solutions for some of the industry’s most difficult challenges. We welcome the opportunity to honor their achievements and extend our sincere congratulations to each recipient of our 2018 Supplier Excellence Award.”

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) announced today that the company has appointed Mike Bokan as senior vice president of Worldwide Sales, effective Oct. 1, 2018. Bokan succeeds Steve Thorsen, who is retiring from Micron after 30 years with the company but will remain as an adviser through early November 2018 to ensure a smooth transition. Bokan is being promoted to senior vice president and will report directly to Micron President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra.

“On behalf of the company, I want to thank Steve for his dedication to Micron’s success over the last three decades,” Mehrotra said. “He has been instrumental to the company’s tremendous growth over the years. During his tenure as head of Worldwide Sales, the company has enjoyed record sales, culminating in fiscal year 2018 revenue of over $30 billion. We wish Steve the very best in this next chapter of his life.”

“I am proud of my long career at Micron and have enjoyed building strong relationships with our customers around the world,” Thorsen said. “Mike and I have worked closely for many years, and I am confident he will be highly successful in taking on the leadership of the Worldwide Sales organization.”

Bokan is currently corporate vice president of Worldwide Sales at Micron. He joined the company in 1996 and held various sales management positions before moving to Micron’s Crucial division, where he eventually became general manager. In 2003, Bokan took on the role of director of Sales for Micron Technology. In 2007 he was promoted to senior director of Sales before becoming vice president of Worldwide OEM Sales in 2008 and corporate vice president of Worldwide Sales in 2018.

“Mike has been a great part of our sales leadership team,” Mehrotra said. “He has developed deep and trusted relationships with our OEM and hyperscale customers, as well as with our distribution partners. This is a natural next step for him, and we look forward to his leadership in driving our sales organization.”

“I am honored to follow in Steve’s footsteps and continue to broaden our market reach as memory and storage become increasingly critical to our customers,” Bokan said. “Micron is very well-positioned to take advantage of the growing demand for our products and solutions. I look forward to helping lead the company to the next level.”

Bokan earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Colorado State University.

NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI) today announced that on September 19, 2018 (the “Closing Date”) its subsidiaries NXP B.V and NXP Funding LLC (the “Borrowers”), the lenders party thereto and Barclays Bank Plc, as administrative agent, entered into a US$1,000,000,000 senior unsecured bridge term credit facility agreement (the “Bridge Term Credit Agreement”).  On the Closing Date, an aggregate principal amount of US$1,000,000,000 of term loans (the “Term Loans”) were borrowed under the Bridge Term Credit Agreement.  The Term Loans mature 364 days following the Closing Date and bear interest, at the option of the Borrowers, at either (a) a LIBOR rate plus an applicable margin of 1.5 percent or (b) a base rate plus an applicable margin of 0.5 percent.

The proceeds of the Loans hereunder shall be used for general corporate purposes of the Borrower as well as to finance parts of the announced equity buy-back program.

All present and future obligations of the Borrowers arising under and pursuant to the terms of the Bridge Term Credit Agreement are guaranteed pursuant to a guaranty agreement dated as of the Closing Date (the “Guaranty Agreement”) and made by NXP Semiconductors Netherlands B.V., Freescale Semiconductor Holdings V, Inc., and NXP USA, Inc., in favor of Barclays Bank Plc, as administrative agent.

SEMI announced today the September 18 deadline for presenters to submit abstracts for the annual SEMI Flexible Hybrid Electronics (FLEX) and MEMS and Sensors Technical Conference (MSTC). The co-located gathering, February 18-21, 2019, in Monterey, California, will feature technical presentations of more than 135 peer-reviewed manuscripts covering leading materials and methods that can enhance an expanding range of markets for microelectronics.

FLEX 2019 sessions will feature demonstrations of flexible hybrid and printed electronics products, equipment, and materials, as well as the unique electronics applications they enable.

MSTC 2019 sessions will address wearables, point of care medical devices, food delivery, and agriculture platforms, remote monitoring systems and other trending applications.

Both events will present opening day keynotes and a panel discussion, networking events, technical sessions on emerging and advanced electronics, tech courses and the annual FLEXI Awards Ceremony.  The conference will feature a special student poster session to highlight student projects related to either flexible electronics or MEMS and sensors and will conclude with an awards ceremony.

NextFlex, The Flex Group, Nano Bio Manufacturing Consortium and MEMS & Sensors Industry Group will hold several leadership meetings throughout the week in Monterey.

Selected FLEX and MSTC speakers will present to more than 700 executives, product marketing managers, business development professionals, researchers and engineers from the flexible, hybrid and printed electronics value chain, as well as the MEMS and Sensors industries; 400 companies, universities, R&D labs and government agencies; and, leading industry analysts and media from around the world. Technical abstracts are due September 28, 2018, and can be submitted here for FLEX and here for MSTC. Submissions are FREE and notifications of acceptance will be issued October 19.

FLEX 2019 will cover the following topics:

1. Application market segments and IOT for:

  • Agriculture
  • Consumer Electronics and Agriculture
  • Consumer Electronics: Appliances, Wearables & Textiles
  • Smart Infrastructure: Buildings, Surfaces & Lighting
  • Smart Manufacturing
  • Smart MedTech: Health and Wellness & Human Performance Monitoring
  • Smart Transportation: Automotive, Aircraft & Public Transit

2. Flexible electrical components for:

  • Advanced Packaging
  • Batteries & Energy Sources
  • Flexible Displays
  • Lighting
  • Other Hybrid Devices
  • Sensors
  • TFTs, Memory & Logic
  • User Interface

3. Materials for:

  • Barrier Films
  • Conductors, Insulators & Semiconductors
  • Electronic Fibers & Fabrics
  • Functional Inks
  • ITO & ITO Replacements
  • Substrates & Substrate Treatments

4. Processes and manufacturing for:

  • Equipment & Metrology
  • Failure & Lifetime Reliability
  • Hybrid Printing Processes
  • Integrated Manufacturing
  • Integration of Hybrid Devices
  • Multi-layer Additive Printing
  • Roll to Roll & Web Processing
  • System Interconnects
  • Testing

5. Standards for:

  • Design & Modeling File Format
  • Processes & Manufacturing
  • Reliability & Qualifications

MSTC 2019 will cover wearables, point-of-care medical devices, food delivery and agriculture platforms and remote monitoring systems such as environmental, weather, energy, industrial IoT and more. The conference will focus on the technical aspects of system-level solutions for these areas incorporating MEMS/Sensor and Actuators, Unique Applications and Innovative Technologies.

The co-location of FLEX and MSTC is organized by SEMI Americas to connect more than 2,000 member companies and 1.3 million professionals worldwide to advance the technology and business of flexible electronics and MEMS and Sensors.

Leti, a research institute of CEA Tech, and EFI Automotive, an international supplier of sensors, actuators and embedded smart modules for the automotive industry, today announced a project to dramatically improve reliability and response time of low-cost automotive components by equipping the devices with sophisticated model predictive control techniques.

Model predictive control (MPC) is an advanced method of process control that makes use of a model of the system to predict its behavior. The control law is based on an optimization technique that computes the system inputs, taking into account the reference that the system output has to follow, together with the effort (energy) that is applied on the system inputs and some constraints that may exist within the system, typically saturation of the system inputs.

MPC also allows electronics equipment to perform at levels that are not possible with standard control laws, e.g. proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers. But this sophisticated technique is rarely used on low-cost, low-capability computing units, because it requires solving optimization problems under constraints, which is a complex computational task.

Leti and EFI Automotive are evaluating the implementation of MPC on low-cost, low-computational-capability computing platforms, such as microcontrollers or low-cost digital signal processors (DSPs). The goal is to improve the dynamics of the systems considered, because automotive certification is easier when the control law is implemented on a DSP or a microcontroller. An example of EFI Automotive product, which will benefit from the MPC implementation, is the Air Loop Actuator (Figure 1).

Figure 1: EFI Air Loop Actuator Prototype (200ms response time). Numerical command and power stage integrated

“The control community, including academic researchers and process control experts in industry, is trying to make MPC available for these systems by resolving the underlying optimization problem on a low computational-capability computing platform,” said Marie-Sophie Masselot, business development manager, Leti. “This shortcoming usually leads to suboptimal performance for the controlled system. Our project with EFI Automotive will take into account specifics to offset the drop in performance, or response time, introduced when solving the model predictive control problem on this low computational-capability computing platform.”

In addition to transferring its expertise in MPC to EFI Automotive, Leti will develop software-automation tools dedicated to a given problem as a feasibility demonstration for the MPC project, and then make the tools easily expandable to similar control challenges.

For example, Leti and EFI will develop an MPC law for a given system and, with its increased expertise, EFI will expand this control technique to other systems.

“By combining Leti’s MPC expertise with our know-how in real-time processing on low-cost, low-computational capability computing units, we expect to dramatically improve the response time and reliability of our devices that are key to operating today’s complex vehicles,” said Vincent Liebart, innovation engineer at EFI Automotive.

 

Amid rapid custom silicon growth and innovation, Open-Silicon today announced the appointment of semiconductor industry veteran Anand Bariya as VP of engineering. Anand will be responsible for managing the physical implementation of silicon, and facilitating the delivery of reliable parts with predictable schedules. He will be instrumental in the strategic planning of silicon engineering, from RTL to working silicon, and will oversee Open-Silicon’s physical design teams. Anand will report to Shafy Eltoukhy, SVP of Operations and GM of Open-Silicon, a SiFive company.

“I’m proud to join the team at Open-Silicon,” said Anand. “The company is a proven leader with a strong record of providing custom silicon solutions. I look forward to working closely with customers and partners to develop innovative, full turnkey custom solutions that not only meet the highest quality and reliability expectations, but are delivered with predictable schedules.”

Anand has over 25 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, both in Silicon Valley and in India. Prior to joining Open-Silicon, he served as senior director at Broadcom in India, where he managed engineering operations. Prior to that, he spent over six years at NetLogic Microsystems (later acquired by Broadcom), where he served as vice president and managing director. Before joining NetLogic, he managed the ASIC Design Center at Toshiba America. He has also held management positions at Vitesse Semiconductor, Cadence Design Systems and National Semiconductor. Anand earned a PhD in chemical and electrical engineering at Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

“Anand brings extensive leadership and a deep understanding of the engineering required for complex SoC design and delivery,” said Shafy Eltoukhy, SVP of Operations and GM of Open-Silicon, a SiFive company. “His proven leadership and track record of execution and delivery will be instrumental in building on Open-Silicon’s momentum in custom SoCs.”

TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry, today provided further details on its 13th annual U.S. Technical Global Symposium (TGS) to be held on November 7, 2018 at the Hilton Santa Clara, CA. During TGS, the company will share its vision on industry megatrends: “Wireless Everything, Smart Everything, Green Everything” – and the means by which its analog specialty portfolio helps customers to differentiate their technology solutions.

The event will commence with TowerJazz CEO, Russell Ellwanger, who will share plans with respect to the Company’s focus on “full circle value creation,” including strategic growth, technology leadership, and capacity expansion. TowerJazz executives will then share the latest technology roadmap developments of the Company’s RF/high performance analog, CMOS image sensors, power management, and aerospace & defense offerings, in addition to its industry-leading design enablement capabilities.

To view the agenda, focus areas for the technical sessions, and/or register for the event, please visit here.