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This year again, the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, 2018 edition allowed us to discover the latest innovations in numerous fields including the microLED displays sector. “The Wall”, a 146” microLED TV powered by Samsung, has been probably the most impressive announcement. The Korea-based LED maker Lumens also proposed a 139” display, with smaller 0.8 mm pitch. In both cases, technology developed by these leaders is not strictly microLED related but confirms the attractiveness of microLEDs solutions. Yole Développement’s (Yole) analyst, Dr. Eric Virey attended the show and proposed a snapshot on i-micronews.com.

“Initial success in smartwatches could accelerate technology and supply chain maturation, making microLED competitive against OLED in high end TVs, tablets and laptops”, explains Dr. Eric Virey from Yole. “In Yole’s most optimistic scenario, the market for microLED displays could reach up to 330 million units by 2025 (1) .”

The microLED display sector has been deeply analyzed by Yole and KnowMade, both parts of Yole Group of Companies. The partners propose today a detailed patent analysis titled: Microled Displays: Intellectual Property Landscape. Under this new report, they identified key patents, technology nodes and players related to microLED technologies for display applications. This latest analysis confirms the growing interest around the microLED technologies.
Which companies own the patents? What are their major thrust areas and portfolio strength? Yole Group of Companies invites you to discover the latest insights of this dynamic industry.

Yole Group of Companies confirms the buzz: as of today close to 1,500 patents relevant to the microLED display field have been filed by 125 companies and organizations. Among these are multiple startups, display makers, OEMs , semiconductor companies, LED makers, and research institutions.

“The overall corpus is relatively young, with an average age of 3.2 years across all families”, asserts Dr. Nicolas Baron, CEO & Founder, KnowMade. The first patents were filed in 2000 – 2001, but the bulk of the activity started after 2012. Thus, only a minority of patents have been granted so far.

Pioneers include Sony, Sharp, MIT, and others, although the bulk of the initial developments were conducted by a variety of research institutions including Kansas State University, University of Hong Kong, Strathclyde University & Tyndall Institute (which spun-off mLED, InfiniLED, and X-Celeprint), University of Illinois, and startup companies like Luxvue and, later on, Playnitride and Mikro Mesa.

Yole Group of Companies’ study also reveals a number of companies that have not yet been identified as players in the microLED display field. Moreover, this study confirms the commitment of many more companies, which are not typically associated with display technology. Intel and Goertek are part of them. On the flip side, various companies known to be active in the field (i.e. Huawei) have yet to see any of their patent in the field published.

Overall, the activity is still led mostly by startups (including those such as Luxvue or eLux) acquired by larger organization) and research institutions. With the exception of Sharp and Sony, display makers and LED makers are relative latecomers. Many companies started ramping up their microLED research and development activities after Apple showed faith in microLED with its acquisition of Luxvue. As of December 2017, Apple appears to have the most complete IP portfolio, covering almost all key technology nodes. However, many of its patents pertain to the technological ecosystem developed around the company’s MEMS transfer technology. Other companies like Sony, with a smaller portfolio but which had a head start, might own more fundamental design patents with strong blocking power.

What is the status of the microLED display supply chain? Enabling large-scale microLED display manufacturing requires bringing together three major disparate technologies and supply chain bricks: LED manufacturing, backplane manufacturing, and microchip mass transfer & assembly.

“The supply chain is complex and lengthy compared to typical displays,” comments Dr. Eric Virey from Yole. “Every process is critical and it’s a challenge to effectively manage every aspect. No one company appears positioned to master and execute across a supply chain that will likely be more horizontal, compared to other established display technologies.”

The IP landscape reflects these challenges through the variety of players involved, but requirements differ from one application to another. For low-volume, high added-value applications like microdisplays for augmented/mixed reality for the enterprise, military, and medical markets, one can envision a well-funded startup with good technology efficiently managing the supply chain. However, consumer applications such as TVs and smartphones will require significant investments to unlock large scale manufacturing.

Though only a few companies have a broad IP portfolio covering all major technology nodes (transfer chip structure, display architecture, etc.), enough players have patents across many technology bricks to guarantee that complex licensing and legal battles will arise once microLED displays enter volume manufacturing and reach the market. Small companies with strong positions in various technology bricks will attempt to obtain licensing fees from larger players involved in manufacturing. Large corporations will try to block each other and prevent their competitors from entering the market. To prepare for such events, some latecomers appear to be filing large quantities of patents, sometimes with little substance.

Seoul Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (KOSDAQ 046890), a developer of LED (light emitting diode) design and manufacturing, today announced 2017 fiscal year consolidated revenues of US$ 1.04 billion. The 16% rise in consolidated revenues far exceeds the industry average, which grew 2% during the same period. The growth of revenue is contributed to improvements in both general lighting sales and IT product related sales growing in the mid-teens as well as the automotive lighting business which grew more than 20%.

The rise in revenue for the general lighting segment was largely due to an increase in sales of 220V and 370V Acrich MJT products for household and industrial applications. Other notable revenue increases were reported for WICOP, an innovative product line of package-less LEDs, as well as for the Acrich NanoDriver, which incorporates step drive methods that achieve results greater than those of conventional SMPS technology. In addition to offering these differentiated technologies, Seoul expects its SunLike natural spectrum LED technology, which may offer health benefits for human eyes, to lead the future of LED lighting and become a large contributor to the future sales and profit for the company.

Researchers who won the Nobel Prize in 2017 were recognized for their new findings of the impact of light on circadian rhythm in humans. This has proven to be an important topic in our society and generated great attention for Dr. Charles Czeisler, the Harvard professor that has dedicated his research to this particular area. He is now conducting research study with NASA on how light affects the circadian rhythms of astronauts.

According to new research, myopia (near-sightedness) increased from 20% in the 1950s to 80% in 2010 among populations in Asia. Fluorescent lights and conventional LED light sources emit a strong blue light that is known to cause eye fatigue, which may later result in retinal damage. Seoul Semiconductor, together with Toshiba Materials of Japan, has jointly developed SunLike natural spectrum LED technology, which provides lighting conditions most similar to actual sun light and can be seen as a solution that helps to protect human eyes from this potential damage.

The company provided a revenue guidance of KrW 270 to 290 billion for the first quarter of 2018. This figure is in range of 5% to 13% on a year-over-year basis. Although first quarter is normally considered to be an off-season, the company is showing a positive outlook for growth from last year for this 2018 fiscal year.

Sangbum Kim, the company’s Chief Financial Officer, has stated that fiscal year 2017 sales were a result of the company’s relentless efforts to stay ahead of competition by continuously investing in R&D and strengthening global sales organizations. In order to further accelerate revenue growth into the double digit range for 2018, the company plans to further drive sales of differentiated products such as SunLike while also shifting more focus to its rapidly growing automotive lighting business.

The research team that announced the first optical rectenna in 2015 is now reporting a two-fold efficiency improvement in the devices — and a switch to air-stable diode materials. The improvements could allow the rectennas – which convert electromagnetic fields at optical frequencies directly to electrical current – to operate low-power devices such as temperature sensors.

Ultimately, the researchers believe their device design – a combination of a carbon nanotube antenna and diode rectifier – could compete with conventional photovoltaic technologies for producing electricity from sunlight and other sources. The same technology used in the rectennas could also directly convert thermal energy to electricity.

Georgia Tech researchers have developed a new higher efficiency rectenna design. Here, the device’s ability to convert blue light to electricity is tested. (Credit: Christopher Moore, Georgia Tech)

Georgia Tech researchers have developed a new higher efficiency rectenna design. Here, the device’s ability to convert blue light to electricity is tested. (Credit: Christopher Moore, Georgia Tech)

“This work takes a significant leap forward in both fundamental understanding and practical efficiency for the optical rectenna device,” said Baratunde Cola, an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It opens up this technology to many more researchers who can join forces with us to advance the optical rectenna technology to help power a range of applications, including space flight.”

The research was reported January 26 in the journal Advanced Electronic Materials. The work has been supported by the U.S. Army Research Office under the Young Investigator Program, and by the National Science Foundation.

Optical rectennas operate by coupling the light’s electromagnetic field to an antenna, in this case an array of multiwall carbon nanotubes whose ends have been opened. The electromagnetic field creates an oscillation in the antenna, producing an alternating flow of electrons. When the electron flow reaches a peak at one end of the antenna, the diode closes, trapping the electrons, then re-opens to capture the next oscillation, creating a current flow.

The switching must occur at terahertz frequencies to match the light. The junction between the antenna and diode must provide minimal resistance to electrons flowing through it while open, yet prevent leakage while closed.

“The name of the game is maximizing the number of electrons that get excited in the carbon nanotube, and then having a switch that is fast enough to capture them at their peak,” Cola explained. “The faster you switch, the more electrons you can catch on one side of the oscillation.”

To provide a low work function – ease of electron flow – the researchers initially used calcium as the metal in their oxide insulator – metal diode junction. But calcium breaks down rapidly in air, meaning the device had to be encapsulated during operation – and fabricated in a glovebox. That made the optical rectenna both impractical for most applications and difficult to fabricate.

So Cola, NSF Graduate Research Fellow Erik Anderson and Research Engineer Thomas Bougher replaced the calcium with aluminum and tried a variety of oxide materials on the carbon nanotubes before settling on a bilayer material composed of alumina (Al2O3) and hafnium dioxide (HfO2). The combination coating for the carbon nanotube junction, created through an atomic deposition process, provides the quantum mechanical electron tunneling properties required by engineering the oxide electronic properties instead of the metals, which allows air stable metals with higher work functions than calcium to be used.

Rectennas fabricated with the new combination have remained functional for as long as a year. Other metal oxides could also be used, Cola said.

The researchers also engineered the slope of the hill down which the electrons fall in the tunneling process. That also helped increase the efficiency, and allows the use of a variety of oxide materials. The new design also increased the asymmetry of the diodes, which boosted efficiency.

“By working with the oxide electron affinity, we were able to increase the asymmetry by more than ten-fold, making this diode design more attractive,” said Cola. “That’s really where we got the efficiency gain in this new version of the device.”

Optical rectennas could theoretically compete with photovoltaic materials for converting sunlight into electricity. PV materials operate using a different principle, in which photons knock electrons from the atoms of certain materials. The electrons are collected into electrical current.

In September 2015 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, Cola and Bougher reported the first optical rectenna – a device that had been proposed theoretically for more than 40 years, but never demonstrated.

The early version reported in the journal produced power at microvolt levels. The rectenna now produces power in the millivolt range and conversion efficiency has gone from 10-5 to 10-3 – still very low, but a significant gain.

“Though there still is room for significant improvement, this puts the voltage in the range where you could see optical rectennas operating low-power sensors,” Cola said. “There are a lot of device geometry steps you could take to do something useful with the optical rectenna today in voltage-driven devices that don’t require significant current.”

Cola believes the rectennas could be useful for powering internet of things devices, especially if they can be used to produce electricity from scavenged thermal energy. For converting heat to electricity, the principle is the same as for light – capturing oscillations in a field with the broadband carbon nanotube antenna.

“People have been excited about thermoelectric generators, but there are many limitations on getting a system that works effectively,” he said. “We believe that the rectenna technology will be the best approach for harvesting heat economically.”

In future work, the research team hopes to optimize the antenna operation, and improve their theoretical understanding of how the rectenna works, allowing further optimization. One day, Cola hopes the devices will help accelerate space travel, producing power for electric thrusters that will boost spacecraft.

“Our end game is to see carbon nanotube optical rectennas working on Mars and in the spacecraft that takes us to Mars,” he said.

This work was supported by the Army Research Office under the Young Investigator Program agreement W911NF-13-1-0491 and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship program under grant DGE-1650044. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring organizations.

The worldwide race to create more, better and reliable quantum processors is progressing fast, as a team of TU Delft scientists led by Professor Vandersypen has realised yet again. In a neck-and-neck race with their competitors, they showed that quantum information of an electron spin can be transported to a photon, in a silicon quantum chip. This is important in order to connect quantum bits across the chip and allowing to scale up to large numbers of qubits. Their work was published today in the journal Science.

The quantum computer of the future will be able to carry out computations far beyond the capacity of today's computers. Credit: TU Delft

The quantum computer of the future will be able to carry out computations far beyond the capacity of today’s computers. Credit: TU Delft

The quantum computer of the future will be able to carry out computations far beyond the capacity of today’s computers. Quantum superpositions and entanglement of quantum bits (qubits) make it possible to perform parallel computations. Scientists and companies worldwide are engaged in creating increasingly better quantum chips with more and more quantum bits. QuTech in Delft is working hard on several types of quantum chips.

Familiar material

The core of the quantum chips is made of silicon. “This is a material that we are very familiar with,” explains Professor Lieven Vandersypen of QuTech and the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, “Silicon is widely used in transistors and so can be found in all electronic devices.” But silicon is also a very promising material for quantum technology. PhD candidate Guoji Zheng: “We can use electrical fields to capture single electrons in silicon for use as quantum bits (qubits). This is an attractive material as it ensures the information in the qubit can be stored for a long time.”

Large systems

Making useful computations requires large numbers of qubits and it is this upscaling to large numbers that is providing a challenge worldwide. “To use a lot of qubits at the same time, they need to be connected to each other; there needs to be good communication”, explains researcher Nodar Samkharadze. At present the electrons that are captured as qubits in silicon can only make direct contact with their immediate neighbours. Nodar: “That makes it tricky to scale up to large numbers of qubits.”

Neck-and-neck race

Other quantum systems use photons for long-distance interactions. For years, this was also a major goal for silicon. Only in recent years have various scientists made progress on this. The Delft scientists have now shown that a single electron spin and a single photon can be coupled on a silicon chip. This coupling makes it possible in principle to transfer quantum information between a spin and a photon. Guoji Zheng: “This is important to connect distant quantum bits on a silicon chip, thereby paving the way to upscaling quantum bits on silicon chips.”

On to the next step

Vandersypen is proud of his team: “My team achieved this result in a relatively short time and under great pressure from worldwide competition.” It is a true Delft breakthrough: “The substrate is made in Delft, the chip created in the Delft cleanrooms, and all measurements carried out at QuTech,” adds Nodar Samkharadze. The scientists are now working hard on the next steps. Vandersypen: “The goal now is to transfer the information via a photon from on electron spin to another.”

By Jay Chittooran, Manager, Public Policy, SEMI

International trade is one of the best tools to spur growth and create high-skill and high-paying jobs. Over 40 million American jobs rely on trade, and this is particularly true in the semiconductor supply chain. Over the past three decades, the semiconductor industry has averaged nearly double-digit growth rates in revenue and, by 2030, the semiconductor supply chain is forecast to reach $1 trillion. Trade paves the way for this growth.

Unfortunately, despite its importance to the industry, trade has been transformed from an economic issue into a political one, raising many new trade challenges to companies throughout the semiconductor industry.

GHz-ChinaChina’s investments in the industry will continue to anchor the country as a major force in the semiconductor supply chain. China’s outsized spending has spawned concern among other countries about the implications of these investments. According to SEMI’s World Fab Forecast, 20 fabs are being built in China – and construction on 14 more is rumored to begin in the near term – compared to the 10 fabs under construction in the rest of the world. China is clearly outpacing the pack.

The Trump Administration has levied intense criticism of China, citing unfair trade practices, especially related to intellectual property issues. The U.S. Trade Representative has launched a Section 301 investigation into whether China’s practice of forced technology transfer has discriminated against U.S. consumers. Even as the probe unfolds, expectations are growing that the United States will take action against China, raising fears of not only possible retaliation in time but rising animosity between two trading partners that rely deeply on each other.

A number of other open investigations also cloud the future. The Administration launched two separate Section 232 investigations into steel and aluminum industry practices by China, claiming Chinese overproduction of both items are a threat to national security. The findings from these investigations will be submitted to the President, who, in the coming weeks, will decide an appropriate response, which could include imposing tariffs and quotas.

Another high priority area is Korea. While U.S. threats to withdraw from the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) reached a fever pitch in August, rhetoric has since tempered. Informal discussions between the countries on how best to amend the trade deal are ongoing. The number of KORUS implementation issues aside, continued engagement with Korea – instead of scrapping a comprehensive, bilateral trade deal – will be critically important for the industry.

Lastly, negotiations to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will continue this year. The United States wants to conclude talks by the end of March, but with the deadline fast approaching and the promise of resolution waning, tensions are running high. Notably, the outcome of the NAFTA talks will inform and set the tone for other trade action.

What’s more, a number of other actions on trade will take place this year. As we wrote recently, Congress has moved to reform the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a government body designed to review sales and transfer of ownership of U.S. companies to foreign entities. Efforts have also started to revise the export control regime – a key component to improving global market access and making international trade more equitable.

SEMI will continue its work on behalf of its members around the globe to open up new markets and lessen the burden of regulations on cross-border trade and commerce. In addition, SEMI will continue to educate policymakers on the critical importance of unobstructed trade in continuing to push the rapid advance of semiconductors and the emerging technologies they enable into the future. If you are interested in more information on trade, or how to be involved in SEMI’s public policy program, please contact Jay Chittooran, Manager, Public Policy, at [email protected].

Year End Wow!


January 24, 2018

By Walt Custer, Custer Consulting Group

Strong year-end 2017 electronic equipment sales

2017 ended on a high note from an end market perspective thanks to:

  • Geographically broad economic strength and new products
  • Record high December electronic equipment production and shipments in China/Taiwan
  • Peak electronic equipment production in the Eurozone in November
  • A 4Q upturn in U.S. bookings and shipments of electronic equipment

Custer1-World-Electronic-Equipment-Monthly-Shipments

Based upon preliminary data, mobile phones including the Apple iPhone X were major contributors to the fourth-quarter 2017 strength in Asia/Pacific. Foxconn registered all-time record sales in December.

By comparison, personal computer sales were flat when adjusted for normal seasonality.

Early information indicates that December global equipment revenues were up almost 24 percent over December 2016 and up 3 percent sequentially over November 2017.

Resilient semiconductor supply chain

Semiconductors and SEMI equipment have a strong growth in this current business cycle (Chart 2), mainly due to strong memory demand and price increases for chips, and also robust capital equipment spending to increase memory chip capacity.

Custer2-World-Semiconductor-SEMI-Equipement-Shipments

 

By November this sales growth appeared to be plateauing (but at record levels).

On a 3/12 basis (Chart 3) world growth was:

Semiconductors +21.5% November
SEMI equipment +28.4% November
Taiwan Chip Foundries +6.1% December
Electronic Equipment +4.9% September

Custer3-Supply-Chain-Dynamics
Despite a likely moderation of the current SEMI equipment and chip growth rates, this current business cycle has been robust and prolonged. End market electronic equipment demand remains strong and new volume markets are emerging. However SEMI equipment and semiconductor sales are much more volatile than electronic equipment, so the current landscape could change quickly.

Looking forward

The global PMI is an excellent short-term leading indicator. It was at an all-time record high in December, pointing to an unseasonably strong first quarter of 2018. Keep watching the business cycles for any signs of abrupt change. Currently we are on a high plateau but conditions could change quickly.

Custer4-Purchasing-Managers-Index

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

Technavio market research analysts forecast the global reset IC market to grow at a CAGR of close to 12% during the forecast period, according to their latest report.

The report further segments the global reset IC market by end-user (consumer electronics, telecommunication, automotive, industrial, and healthcare), by type (1-5 V, 5-12 V, and above 10 V), and by geography (the Americas, APAC, and EMEA).

Technavio analysts highlight the following three market drivers that are contributing to the growth of the global reset IC market:

  • Growth of smart grid technology
  • Increasing need for external brownout protection
  • Growth of IoT

Growth of smart grid technology

Due to their reliability and real-time information, smart grids have become an important trend in the energy industry. A smart grid is an electricity supply network integrated with digital communications technology to detect and react to local changes in the consumption of electricity and it is equipped with computational intelligence and network capabilities.

According to a senior analyst at Technavio for embedded systems research, “Smart grids are developed to improved operations and the maintenance of electric grids by allowing smooth exchange of data between various components. Transmission lines, generators, transformers, smart meters, smart appliances, and energy-efficient devices are components of a smart grid.”

Increasing need for external brownout protection

Restriction or reduction in the availability of electrical power in an area or locality is known as brownout. Voltage is limited or regulated in a brownout, unlike a blackout where the supply of voltage is completely removed for a period of time. Voltage overload on power grid and aging electrical system are some of the causes of brownouts. A reset IC sometimes integrates a brownout detector (BOD). It helps in preventing a reset if the voltage drops unexpectedly for a short duration of time.

Growth of IoT

The significant growth of IoT proved to be a major driver for the global reset IC market. IOT is a system of interrelated computing devices, machines, objects, and people, which are provided with unique identifiers. Without the need for any human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction, IoT allows the transfer of data over a network. IoT is also driving the demand for connected devices, which has significantly increased the bandwidth requirements. Vendors in the market are working together to satisfy the need for connecting several products, including gateways, home appliances, entertainment systems for smart homes, by a common networking standard that provides interoperability with a wide range of smart devices.

IoT will drive the need for enabler technologies which will have an impact on semiconductor foundries. An enabler technology can be classified as an invention, product, or technology which can provide a radical change in a user or an application. IoT shows great potential in several applications, which will drive the market.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $451 billion in 2018, an increase of 7.5 percent from $419 billion in 2017, according to Gartner, Inc. This represents a near doubling of Gartner’s previous estimate of 4 percent growth for 2018.

“Favorable market conditions for memory sectors that gained momentum in the second half of 2016 prevailed through 2017 and look set to continue in 2018, providing a significant boost to semiconductor revenue,” said Ben Lee, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Gartner has increased the outlook for 2018 by $23.6 billion compared with the previous forecast, of which the memory market accounts for $19.5 billion. Price increases for both DRAM and NAND flash memory are raising the outlook for the overall semiconductor market.”

However, these price increases will put pressure on margins for system vendors of key semiconductor demand drivers, including smartphones, PCs and servers. Gartner predicts that component shortages, a rising bill of materials (BOM) and the resulting prospect of having to raise average selling prices (ASPs) will create a volatile market through 2018.

Despite the upward revision for 2018, the quarterly growth profile for 2018 is expected to fall back to a more normal pattern with a mid-single-digit sequential decline in the first quarter of the year, followed by a recovery and buildup in both the second and third quarters of 2018, and a slight decline in the fourth quarter.

On January 3, a security vulnerability that spans all microprocessor vendors was revealed, impacting nearly all types of personal and data center computing devices. While this is an obscure security vulnerability that is difficult to achieve, the potential of a high-impact security issue cannot be ignored and must be mitigated.

“The current mitigation solution is via firmware and software updates, and has a potential processor performance impact. This may result in an increased demand for high-performance data center processors in the short term, but Gartner expects that in the longer term, microprocessor architectures will be redesigned, reducing the performance impact of the software mitigations and limiting the long-term forecast impact,” said Alan Priestley, research director at Gartner.

Taking the memory sectors out of the equation, the semiconductor market is forecast to grow 4.6 percent in 2018 (compared with 9.4 percent in 2017) with field-programmable gate array (FPGA), optoelectronics, application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and nonoptical sensors leading the semiconductor device categories.

The other significant device category driving the 2018 forecast higher is application-specific standard products (ASSPs). The predicted growth in ASSPs was influenced by an improved outlook for graphics cards used in gaming PCs and high-performance computing applications, a broad increase in automotive content and a stronger wired communications forecast.

The mixed fortunes of semiconductor vendors in recent years serves as a reminder of the fickleness of the memory market,” said Mr. Lee. “After growing by 22.2 percent in 2017, worldwide semiconductor revenue will revert back to single-figure growth in 2018 before a correction in the memory market results in revenue declining slightly in 2019.”

Silicon photonics is still a small market today, with sales at die level estimated to be US$30 million in 2016. However, it has big promise, with a 2025 market value of US$560 million at chip level and almost US$4 billion at transceiver level.

illus_si_photonics_applications_range_yole_jan2018

According to Yole Développement (Yole), silicon photonics technology will grow from a few percent of total optical transceiver market value in 2016 to 35% of the market in 2025, mostly for intra-data center communication. The market research & strategy consulting company explains: the strongest demand is for 400G. In parallel, 200G could be only an intermediate step between 100G and 400G. “The next evolution is to develop a 400G optical port over a single fiber across 500m at less than $1 per gigabit and with power <5mW/Gb”, explains Dr. Eric Mounier, Senior Technology & Market Analyst at Yole. One terabit per second rates should follow. Although the wafer area this accounts for will be a minute part of the worldwide SOI market, it will represent significant value because of the SOI wafer high price.

Yole releases this month, the technology & market report titled “Silicon Photonics”. Dr Eric Mounier from Yole and Jean-Louis Malinge, former CEO of Kotura, now at ARCH Venture Partners combined their expertise to perform a comprehensive analysis of the silicon photonics industry. Both experts propose today the status of the market: it is a comprehensive overview of the Silicon photonics industry including technology roadmap, market trends and related figures, competitive landscape and more. The 2018 report gives a detailed description of the supply chain, with player status. It also provides updated market share numbers for the players. In this new study, Yole’s analysts reveal the current status and future challenges for data centers. They also explain why silicon photonics is the answer to future DC needs and other possible applications…

Silicon photonics technology has clearly reached its tipping point, with transceivers shipping in volume, announces the consulting company. Market evolution, competitive landscape, technology innovation, business opportunities: discover today what has been changed within the latest two years.

“We believe we are only at the very beginning as there is massive ongoing development worldwide for further integration”, asserts Dr. Mounier. And he adds: “The recent involvement of large integrated circuit foundries, such as TSMC’s relationship with Luxtera, and GlobalFoundries with Ayar Labs, are very encouraging signs showing the big promise for silicon photonics.”

The “Zero-Change” processes currently in development, manufacturing optical components without making any changes to a CMOS process, are targeting future inter-chip optical interconnects that could represent huge market volumes. Silicon photonics is at the maturity level of the electronics industry in the 1980s and there are still challenges to overcome. For all these challenges, technical breakthroughs will be necessary and are detailed in Yole’s silicon photonics roadmap:

•  Laser source integration: lasers are still in competition with VCSELs for low distance and developments of Si-based lasers are no longer progressing. Quantum dot lasers could be a solution in long term as they are less temperature sensitive.
•  Modulators: smaller size modulators are required and silicon photonics offers modulator integration advantage.
•  Assembly and testing: more advancements in lower cost packaging and wafer level testing are needed.
•  Design and software: specific software are required for photonics with pre-defined models.
•  Supply chain maturation similar to the semiconductor supply chain.
•  New manufacturing solutions: for example, a new trend is to have a zero-change approach on CMOS lines.
•  Higher distance transmission.

The historic flood of merger and acquisition agreements that swept through the semiconductor industry in 2015 and 2016 slowed significantly in 2017, but the total value of M&A deals reached in the year was still more than twice the annual average in the first half of this decade, according to IC Insights’ new 2018 McClean Report, which becomes available this month.  Subscribers to The McClean Report can attend one of the upcoming half-day seminars (January 23 in Scottsdale, AZ; January 25 in Sunnyvale, CA; and January 30 in Boston, MA) that discuss the highlights of the report free of charge.

In 2017, about two dozen acquisition agreements were reached for semiconductor companies, business units, product lines, and related assets with a combined value of $27.7 billion compared to the record-high $107.3 billion set in 2015 and the $99.8 billion total in 2016 (Figure 1).  Prior to the explosion of semiconductor acquisitions that erupted several years ago, M&A agreements in the chip industry had a total annual average value of about $12.6 billion between 2010 and 2015.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Two large acquisition agreements accounted for 87% of the M&A total in 2017, and without them, the year would have been subpar in terms of the typical annual value of announced transactions.  The falloff in the value of semiconductor acquisition agreements in 2017 suggests that the feverish pace of M&A deals is finally cooling off.  M&A mania erupted in 2015 when semiconductor acquisitions accelerated because a growing number of companies began buying other chip businesses to offset slow growth rates in major end-use applications (such as smartphones, PCs, and tablets) and to expand their reach into huge new market opportunities, like the Internet of Things (IoT), wearable systems, and highly “intelligent” embedded electronics, including the growing amount of automated driver-assist capabilities in new cars and fully autonomous vehicles in the not-so-distant future.

With the number of acquisition targets shrinking and the task of merging operations together growing, industry consolidation through M&A transactions decelerated in 2017.  Regulatory reviews of planned mergers by government agencies in Europe, the U.S., and China have also slowed the pace of large semiconductor acquisitions.

One of the big differences between semiconductor M&A in 2017 and the two prior years was that far fewer megadeals were announced.  In 2017, only two acquisition agreements exceeded $1 billion in value (the $18 billion deal for Toshiba’s memory business and Marvell’s planned $6 billion purchase of Cavium).  Ten semiconductor acquisition agreements in 2015 exceeded $1 billion and seven in 2016 were valued over $1 billion.  The two large acquisition agreements in 2017 pushed the average value of semiconductor M&A pacts to $1.3 billion.  Without those megadeals, the average would have been just $185 million last year. The average value of 22 semiconductor acquisition agreements struck in 2015 was $4.9 billion.  In 2016, the average for 29 M&A agreements was $3.4 billion, based on data compiled by IC Insights.