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The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $30.6 billion for the month of January 2017, an increase of 13.9 percent compared to the January 2016 total of $26.9 billion. Global sales in January were 1.2 percent lower than the December 2016 total of $31.0 billion, reflecting normal seasonal market trends. January marked the global market’s largest year-to-year growth since November 2010. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average.

“The global semiconductor industry is off to a strong and encouraging start to 2017, posting its highest-ever January sales and largest year-to-year sales increase in more than six years,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Sales into the China market increased by more than 20 percent year-to-year, and most other regional markets posted double-digit growth. Following the industry’s highest-ever revenue in 2016, the global market is well-positioned for a strong start to 2017.”

Year-to-year sales increased substantially across all regions: China (20.5 percent), the Americas (13.3 percent), Japan (12.3 percent), Asia Pacific/All Other (11.0 percent), and Europe (4.8 percent). Month-to-month sales increased in Europe (1.2 percent), but fell slightly in China (-0.2 percent), Japan (-1.6 percent), Asia Pacific/All Other (-1.6 percent), and the Americas (-3.1 percent).

January 2017

Billions

Month-to-Month Sales                               

Market

Last Month

Current Month

% Change

Americas

6.33

6.13

-3.1%

Europe

2.80

2.84

1.2%

Japan

2.84

2.79

-1.6%

China

10.17

10.15

-0.2%

Asia Pacific/All Other

8.86

8.72

-1.6%

Total

31.01

30.63

-1.2%

Year-to-Year Sales                          

Market

Last Year

Current Month

% Change

Americas

5.41

6.13

13.3%

Europe

2.71

2.84

4.8%

Japan

2.49

2.79

12.3%

China

8.42

10.15

20.5%

Asia Pacific/All Other

7.86

8.72

11.0%

Total

26.89

30.63

13.9%

Three-Month-Moving Average Sales

Market

Aug/Sept/Oct

Nov/Dec/Jan

% Change

Americas

6.06

6.13

1.2%

Europe

2.82

2.84

0.7%

Japan

2.89

2.79

-3.2%

China

9.78

10.15

3.7%

Asia Pacific/All Other

8.88

8.72

-1.8%

Total

30.43

30.63

0.7%

 

By Heidi Hoffman, FlexTech | SEMI

In 2016, the Nano-Bio Manufacturing Consortium (NBMC), a FlexTech-managed consortium focused on human performance monitoring technology, and funded in part by the Air Force Research Laboratories (AFRL), contracted with a broad-based team of industry and academia researchers, to develop a wearable monitor based on sweat analysis. The device is delivering excellent performance and reliable, wireless, actionable human performance data in a non-invasive nature.

The device, simply nick-named, the ‘patch,’ provides real-time feedback on sweat electrolytes and hydration status of the wearer as part of a larger project to predict fatigue and enhance individual performance. Continuous monitoring of physiological and biological parameters improves performance and medical outcomes by assessing overall health status and alerting for life-saving interventions.

patches

The NBMC patch project includes the non-invasive measurement of biomarkers in sweat including: electrolytes such as Sodium, Potassium, and stress – small molecules and proteins, such as cortisol and Orexin A. The patch seeks to exceed the capabilities of other devices on the market with its combination of wireless communications, microfluidics system, selective biochemical sensing, and, critically, its ability to be produced for health and human-performance monitoring devices. Technical challenges remain in ensuring readings are accurately and robustly assessing the total body hydration.

Wearable-Biofluid 1

The thin wireless patch device is the initial result of an on-going NBMC program entitled “Wearable Device for Dynamic Assessment of Hydration Status.” The patch program is led by GE Global Research, but is actually a highly-collaborative, multi-disciplinary, endeavor with partners from the Air Force Research Laboratory, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts-Amherst, American Semiconductor Inc., University of Arizona, UES, and Dublin City University. The project is funded by the industry and academic partners and the AFRL.

GE-Global

Devices which might leverage this technology and manufacturing capability include the next-generation of human performance monitors currently being developed by organizations as diverse as Apple, Google, and Nike. Systems encompass data acquisition, analysis, transmission, interpretation, and archiving in a secure manner.

NBMC continues to explore R&D and manufacturing strategies for making the next generation of life-saving wearable devices, through its relationship with NextFlex and management by SEMI | FlexTech.

“Advanced substrates are the key interconnect component of advanced packaging architectures,” says Andrej Ivankovic, Technology & Market Analyst, Advanced Packaging & Semiconductor Manufacturing at Yole Développement (Yole). Indeed advanced substrates are critical in enabling future products and markets.

To answer to technology evolution and market needs, Yole’s advanced packaging team has established a stand-alone dedicated advanced substrate activity, focused on exploring the market and technologies of PCBs, package substrates and RDLs. And today, the “More than Moore” market research and strategy consulting company announces its first report titled “Advanced Substrates Overview: From IC Package to Board”. This technology & market analysis serves as an overview of advanced substrate technologies, markets, and supply chain, to be supported by subsequent in-depth reports.

advanced substrate tech

Advanced substrates are a key enabler of future products and markets. Yole’s analysts offer you a special focus on this industry and its competitive landscape.

Today’s advanced substrates in volume are:
• FC substrates
• 2.5D/3D TSV assemblies
• And thin-film RDLs especially for FOWLP advanced packaging platform, below an L/S resolution of 15/15 um and with transition below L/S < 10/10 um.

These advanced substrates are traditionally linked to higher-end logic such as CPUs /GPUs, DSPs , etc. Driven by ICs in the latest technology nodes in the computing, networking, mobile, and high-end consumer market segments (gaming, HD /Smart TV).

Moreover, due to additional form factor and low power demands, WLP and advanced FC substrates are also widespread in majority of smartphone functions. Yole’s analysts identified: application processors, baseband, transceivers, filters, amplifiers, WiFi modules, drivers, codecs, power management, etc.

Future higher-end products will require package substrates with L/S < 10/10 um and boards with L/S < 30/30 um. These demands have given rise to three distinct competition areas:
• Board vs. IC substrate (See the image 1: green & grey zone)
• IC substrate vs. FOWLP (See the image 1: green & orange zone)
• FOWLP vs. 2.5D/3D packaging (See the image 1: yellow & orange zone)

The board vs. FC substrate area is characterized by the transition from the subtractive to the mSAP process, and competition between board and substrate manufacturers. Evaluation of “substrate-like PCBs” is already under way at OEMs, and so too the potential new integration opportunities they could bring. Furthermore, developments in FC substrate, FOWLP, and 2.5D/3D packaging have created an immense competitive arena for L/S < 10/10 um packaging, with a large variety of solutions coming from business models across the supply chain including IDMs, foundries, OSATs, WLP houses, substrate manufacturers, and EMS.

As shown in figure 2, the transition to substrates for ICs below L/S < 10/10 um has begun, led by application processors/basebands in FOWLP and advanced FC substrates, and the first GPUs in 2.5D/3D TSV configuration. The “below L/S < 10/10 um” advanced substrate roadmap is open, with intense R&D underway and each manufacturer developing strategies and targets for their respective solutions….

Yole’s advanced substrates report is an overview of the technology status and market evolution. It will be followed by further in-depth reports. Today, with this first edition, the objective is to provide an overview of board, substrate and RDL interconnects, analyze the technology trends and assess future development of the advanced substrate market. A detailed description of the report is available on i-micronews.com, Advanced Packaging reports section.

The Fan-Out platform’s excitement has clearly caught the attention of the advanced packaging industry as well as advanced substrate manufacturers. Day to day, Yole’s advanced packaging team is enlarging its know-how to understand the technical and economic issues.
Analysts are daily interacting with advanced packaging leaders to turn research results into strategies and define a long-term view of the business.
To point out its commitment towards the advanced packaging community, Yole is playing a key role within the program of the 13th International Conference and Exhibition on Device Packaging (March 6-9, 2017 – Fountain Hills, Arizona USA). The consulting company announces two presentations on March 7:
• What is driving the 3D TSV technologies business? Santosh Kumar, Sr Technology & Market Analyst, Yole
• FOWLP: market & technology trend. Jérôme Azemar, Technology & Market Analyst, Yole

As well as a panel discussion titled “The Fan-Out Breakout” moderated by Jérôme Azemar. Fan-Out is the most dynamic solution in the advanced packaging playground at the moment. Make sure you will get an up-to-date vision of the market and debate with brilliant panelists including:

• Rich Rice, Sr. VP of Business Development, ASE Global
• Islam Salama, Director, Pathfinding Department, Substrate and Packaging Technology Development at Intel
• Johannes Lodermeyer, Wafer Level Technology Development Responsible, Infineon Technologies
• Vinayak Pandey, Product and Technology Marketing Director / Scott Sikorski, Product Technology Marketing Vice-President at JCET / STATS ChipPAC
• And Santosh Kumar, Sr Technology & Market Analyst, Yole

Survey results that will be posted in the March Update to the 20th anniversary 2017 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report show that eleven companies are forecast to have semiconductor capital expenditure budgets greater than $1.0 billion in 2017, and account for 78% of total worldwide semiconductor industry capital spending this year (Figure 1). By comparison, there were eight companies in 2013 with capital spending in excess of $1.0 billion. As shown in the figure, three of the top 11 major capital spenders (Intel, GlobalFoundries, and ST) are forecast to increase their semiconductor spending outlays by 25% or more in 2017.

The biggest percentage increase in spending by a major spender in 2016 came from the China-based pure-play foundry SMIC, which ran its fabrication facilities at ≥95% utilization rate for much of last year. SMIC initially set its 2016 capital expenditure budget at $2.1 billion. However, in November, the company raised its spending budget to $2.6 billion, which resulted in outlays that were 87% greater than in 2015.

In contrast to the surge of spending at SMIC last year, the weak DRAM market spurred both Samsung and SK Hynix to reduce their total 2016 capital spending by 13% and 14%, respectively. Although their total outlays declined, both companies increased their spending for 3D NAND flash in 2016. As shown, Micron is forecast to cut its spending by 13% in 2017, even after including Inotera, which was acquired by Micron in December of last year.

In 2016, GlobalFoundries had plenty of capacity available. As a result, the company cut its capital expenditures by a steep 62%. As shown, the company is forecast to increase its spending this year by 33%, the second-largest increase expected among the major spenders (though its 2017 spending total is still expected to be about half of what the company spent in 2015). It is assumed that almost all of the spending increase this year will be targeted at installing advanced processing technology (the company announced that it is focusing its efforts on developing 7nm technology and will skip the 10nm node).

Figure 1

Figure 1

After spending about $1.06 billion last year, Sony is expected to drop out of the major spender listing in 2017 as it winds down its outlays for capacity additions for its image sensor business and its spending drops below $1.0 billion. As shown in Figure 1, ST is expected to replace Sony in the major spender listing this year by increasing its spending by 73% to $1.05 billion.  It should be noted that ST has stated that this surge in outlays is expected to be a one year event, after which it will revert back to limiting its capital spending to ≤10% of its sales.

BOE, a Chinese display maker, takes top position in terms of large TFT-LCD display unit shipments in January 2017, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO). For the first time ever, a Chinese display maker, taking a total share of 22.3 percent in unit shipments, is displacing South Korea’s display makers, the historical leaders in shipment volumes.

large display shipment

“BOE has been aggressively attacking the IT display market in shipment volumes at a time when top-tier panel makers started to turn focus away from this segment,” said Robin Wu, principal analyst of large display at IHS Markit.

BOE now takes number one position in larger-than-9-inch displays for tablets, notebook PCs and monitors in terms of unit shipment. In particular, notebook PC displays showed BOE taking a 29 percent share further widening the gap with the number two supplier Innolux, which took a 20 percent share. Meanwhile, the number one supplier for TV application is still LG Display with 21.4 percent followed by Innolux with 16.3 percent and BOE with 15.9 percent.

However, the South Korean panel makers are still holding their lead in terms of area shipment with LG display taking top position with 24.8 percent share followed by Samsung Display and Innolux, according to the latest Large Area Display Market Tracker by IHS Markit.

“South Korean panel makers still retain their advantage in large-sized TVs, a higher-demand segment that has benefited from increasing UHD TV penetration and consumer migration to TVs with larger screens. IHS Markit expects South Korean panel makers, known for their operational and technical strengths in large-size TV display manufacturing, will stay ahead of their Chinese competitors in terms of area shipments for the time being,” Wu said.

“That said, 2017 could be the year the Chinese display makers begin focusing on enriching their product portfolio, and make a play into the Korea’s strong hold for large-size TV displays,” he said.

According to latest IHS Markit Large Area Display Market Tracker, shipments of large-area TV panels decreased by 11 percent month-on-month (m/m), but increased by 4 percent year-on-year (y/y) to 51.7 million units in January 2017.

Unit shipments for applications in January 2017 were as follows:

  • For larger-than-9-inch tablet panels, shipments decreased by 20 percent m/m and 9 percent y/y.
  • For notebook PC panels, shipments declined 8 percent m/m but increased by 20 percent y/y.
  • For monitor panels, shipments dropped 6 percent m/m and kept flat y/y.
  • For TV panels, shipments were down 6 percent m/m and 3 percent y/y.

On an area basis, large panel shipments decreased by 8 percent m/m, but increased by 11 percent y/y in January 2017. Shipment area for LCD TV panels declined 7 percent m/m, due to seasonality but rose 11 percent y/y.

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), a supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, and Intersil Corporation (NASDAQ: ISIL), a provider of innovative power management and precision analog solutions, today announced the completion of Renesas’ acquisition of Intersil Corporation. The transaction brings together the advanced technology and deep end-market expertise of the two companies, and solidifies Renesas’ position as a leading global supplier delivering advanced embedded systems to customers.

“I am excited to welcome the Intersil employees into the Renesas Group and look forward to building a robust organization that will bring the capabilities of both companies to bear to proactively address changing market dynamics and customer needs,” said Bunsei Kure, Representative Director, President and CEO of Renesas Electronics Corporation. “With the close of this acquisition, Renesas has transformed into an industry powerhouse with one of the most comprehensive set of advanced embedded solutions. We believe that this compelling and complementary combination will enable significant synergies and cross-selling opportunities and contribute to creating superior value for our customers and stakeholders.”

In connection with the closing of the transaction today, Intersil becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renesas. Dr. Necip Sayinerjoined Renesas’ executive team, as of February 24, 2017, as Executive Vice President and will continue to lead Intersil as the President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director.

Renesas will focus its efforts on achieving a smooth integration of the two companies and intends to continue technical support and future product development for Intersil’s industry-leading power management and precision analog solutions.

Renesas also plans to continue operations at Intersil’s production facility in Palm Bay, Florida, U.S. and Intersil’s home office in Milpitas, California, U.S., as well as the design centers and sales and support organizations serving Intersil customers globally.

As previously announced in September 2016, Renesas anticipates that near- and long-term revenue expansion opportunities combined with the modest anticipated cost efficiencies associated with greater scale will eventually generate synergies of US$170 million(approximately 17 billion yen at an exchange rate of 100 yen to the dollar). The transaction is expected to immediately increase Renesas’ gross and operating margins and be accretive to Renesas’ non-GAAP earnings per share and free cash flows after closing.

IC Insights recently released its new Global Wafer Capacity 2017-2021 report that provides in-depth detail, analyses, and forecasts for IC industry capacity by wafer size, by process geometry, by region, and by product type through 2021.  Figure 1 splits the world’s installed monthly wafer production capacity by geographic region (or country) as of December 2016.  Each regional number is the total installed monthly capacity of fabs located in that region regardless of the headquarters location for the companies that own the fabs.  For example, the wafer capacity that South Korea-based Samsung has installed in the U.S. is counted in the North America capacity total, not in the South Korea capacity total.  The ROW “region” consists primarily of Singapore, Israel, and Malaysia, but also includes countries/regions such as Russia, Belarus, and Australia.

Figure 1

Figure 1

As shown, Taiwan led all regions/countries in wafer capacity with 21.3% share, a slight decrease from 21.7% in 2015 when the country first became the global wafer capacity leader.  Taiwan was only slightly ahead of South Korea, which was in second place.  The Global Wafer Capacity report shows that South Korea accounted for 20.9% of global wafer capacity in 2016, slightly more than the 20.5% share it held in 2015.  Two companies in Taiwan and two in South Korea accounted for the vast share of wafer fab capacity in each country.  In Taiwan, TSMC and UMC held 73% of the country’s capacity while in South Korea, Samsung and SK Hynix represented 93% of the IC wafer capacity installed in 2016.

Japan remained firmly in third place with just over 17% of global wafer fab capacity.  Micron’s purchase of Elpida several years ago and other recent major changes in manufacturing strategies of companies in Japan, including Panasonic spinning off some of its fabs into separate companies, means that the top two companies (Toshiba and Renesas) accounted for 64% of that country’s wafer fab capacity in 2016.

China showed the largest increase in global wafer capacity in 2016, rising 1.1 percentage points to 10.8% from 9.7% in 2015. China’s gained marketshare came mostly at the expense of North America’s share, which slipped 0.9 percentage points in 2016. With a lot of buzz circulating about new ventures and wafer fabs in China in the coming years, it will be interesting to watch how quickly China’s installed wafer capacity grows.  It is worth noting that China first became a larger wafer capacity holder than Europe in 2010.  The two companies with the largest portion of wafer fab capacity in China were SMIC and HuaHong Grace (including shares from joint ventures).

In total, the top five wafer capacity leaders accounted for more than half of the IC industry’s wafer fab capacity, having increased from 2009, when the top five wafer capacity leaders accounted for approximately a third of global capacity.

GlobalFoundries_Ajit_ManochSEMI, the global association connecting and representing the worldwide electronics manufacturing supply chain, today announced the appointment of Ajit Manocha as its president and CEO. He will succeed Denny McGuirk, who announced his intention to retire last October. The SEMI International Board of Directors conducted a comprehensive search process, selecting Manocha, an industry leader with over 35 years of global experience in the semiconductor industry.  Manocha will begin his new role on March 1 at SEMI’s new Milpitas headquarter offices.

“Ajit has a deep understanding of our industry’s dynamics and the interdependence of the electronics manufacturing supply chain,” said Y.H. Lee, chairman of SEMI’s board of directors. “From his early days developing dry etch processes at AT&T Bell Labs, to running global manufacturing for Philips/NXP, Spansion, and, as CEO of GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Ajit has been formative to our industry’s growth. Ajit is the ideal choice to drive our SEMI 2020 plan and beyond, ensuring that SEMI provides industry stewardship and engages its members to advance the interests of the global electronics manufacturing supply chain.”

“Beyond his experience leading some of our industry’s top fabs, Ajit has long been active at SEMI and has served on boards of several global associations and consortia,” said Denny McGuirk, retiring president and CEO of SEMI. “Ajit’s experience in technology, manufacturing, and industry stewardship is a powerful combination. I’m very excited to be passing the baton to Ajit as he will continue to advance the growth and prosperity of SEMI’s members.”

“I have tremendous respect for the work SEMI does on behalf of the industry,” said Ajit Manocha, incoming president and CEO of SEMI. “I am excited to be joining SEMI at a time when our ecosystem is rapidly expanding due to extensive innovation on several fronts.  From applications based on the Internet and the growth of mobile devices to artificial intelligence/machine learning, autonomous vehicles, and the Internet of Things, there is a much broader scope for SEMI to foster heterogeneous collaboration and fuel growth today than ever before.  I am looking forward to leading the global SEMI organization as we strive to maximize value for our members across this extended global ecosystem.”

Manocha was formerly CEO at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, during which he also served as vice chairman and chairman of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).  Earlier, Manocha served as EVP of worldwide operations at Spansion. Prior to Spansion, he was EVP and chief manufacturing officer at Philips/NXP Semiconductors. Manocha also held senior management positions within AT&T Microelectronics. He began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a research scientist where he was granted several patents related to microelectronics manufacturing. Manocha holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delhi and a master’s degree in physical chemistry from Kansas State University.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced the availability of its 45nm RF SOI (45RFSOI) technology offering, making GF the first foundry to announce an advanced, 300mm RF silicon solution to support next generation millimeter-wave (mmWave) beam forming applications in future 5G base stations and smartphones.

GF’s 45RFSOI offering is the company’s most advanced RF SOI technology. The technology is optimized for beam forming front-end modules (FEMs), with back-end-of-line (BEOL) features including thick copper and dielectrics that enable improved RF performance for LNAs, switches and power amplifiers. The intrinsic characteristics of SOI combined with RF-centric features enable next-generation RF and mmWave applications, including internet broadband low earth orbit (LEO) satellites and 5G FEMs.

The fast emerging 5G and mmWave markets will require innovations in radio technologies, including low power, integrated mmWave radio front ends, antenna phased array subsystems, and high performance radio transceivers. As OEMs integrate more RF content into their smartphones and new high-speed network standards are introduced, state-of-the-art equipment will require additional RF circuitry to support newer modes of operation. This includes chips that support low latency, higher EIRP, and high resolution antenna scanning for ubiquitous coverage and continuous connectivity.

For improved power-handling benefits for devices operating in the GHz frequency range, 45RFSOI incorporates a substrate resistivity of greater than 40 ohm-cm that maximizes the quality factor for passive devices, reduces parasitic capacitances and minimizes disparity in phase and voltage swing. The technology supports operation in mmWave spectrum from 24GHz to 100GHz band, 5x more than 4G operating frequencies.

“Skyworks is pleased to be collaborating with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to drive innovation in millimeter wave solutions,” said Peter Gammel, chief technology officer for Skyworks Solutions, Inc. “GF’s leadership in advanced foundry technology, as exemplified by the 45RFSOI process, is enabling Skyworks to create RF solutions that will revolutionize emerging 5G markets and further advance the deployment of highly integrated RF front-ends for evolving mmWave applications.”

“5G is expected to become the dominant worldwide mobile communications standard of the next decade and will usher in a new paradigm in mobility, multi-GBps data rates, security, low latency, network availability and high quality of service (QoS),” said Bami Bastani, senior vice president of RF Business Unit at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “Utilizing our long history of SOI leadership and high-volume manufacturing, we are excited to release our most advanced RF SOI technology that will help play a critical role in bringing 5G devices and networks to reality.”

GF’s 45RFSOI technology leverages a partially-depleted SOI technology base that has been in high-volume production since 2008. The advanced 45RFSOI technology is manufactured at the GF’s 300mm production line in East Fishkill, N.Y. and will provide the industry ample capacity to address this high growth market.

Process design kits are available now. Customers can now start optimizing their chip designs to develop differentiated solutions for customers seeking high performance in the RF front end of 5G and mmWave phased array applications.

By Paula Doe, SEMI

The explosive growth in demand for internet bandwidth and cloud computing capacity brings a new set of technology challenges and opportunities for the semiconductor supply chain. “Azure grew by 2X last year, but we can’t pull more performance out of the existing architecture,” noted Kushagra Vaid, Microsoft’s GM Hardware Engineering, Cloud & Enterprise, at last week’s Linley Cloud Hardware Conference in Santa Clara, Calif.  “We are at a junction point where we have to evolve the architecture of the last 20-30 years.” He stressed that the traditional way of designing chips and systems to optimize for particular workloads isn’t working anymore. “We can’t design for a workload so huge and diverse. It’s not clear what part of it runs on any one machine,” he noted. “How do you know what to optimize? Past benchmarks are completely irrelevant.”

Explosive growth in demand for data storage and processing in the cloud means change across the chip world. Source: Cisco VNI Global IP Traffic Forecast

Explosive growth in demand for data storage and processing in the cloud means change across the chip world. Source: Cisco VNI Global IP Traffic Forecast

Roadmap accelerates for networking chips 

Look for accelerating change in the networking chip market. Now that merchant chip suppliers have taken over 75 percent of the networking chip market from the proprietary suppliers, intense competition has meant astonishing improvements in reducing size and power, and two-year technology cycles, reported keynote speaker Andreas Bechtolsheim, Arista Networks Chief Development Officer and Chairman.  “The cloud is accelerating transitions, as the big data centers demand low cost,” he noted, explaining that new technologies no longer see gradual adoption through different applications. They have to start out cheaper to get any traction at all, but then ramp sharply to high volume in six months as high-volume data centers convert.

Data center networks expect transition to 400G to start in 2018. Source: MACOM

Data center networks expect transition to 400G to start in 2018. Source: MACOM

Bechtolsheim said the majority of the network link market will convert from 40G to 100G this year, and to 400G in 2019.  For 800G two years later, chip design will have to start this year. Luckily there’s a clear path for scaling on the chip side, from the current generation’s 28nm technology down to 16nm and 7nm.  But it could be a push for some of the ecosystem. “It’s pushing the packaging vendors, as 1.0mm solder balls are about the limit,” said Bechtolsheim. Companies are also forming a group to speed the standards process by making the 800G standard simply 2X that for 400G, as the 400B standard took eight years.

The 40G chips at the server layer are moving to pulse amplitude modulation (PAM4) to send and receive four signals at once, which will require moving to digital signal processing. Moving from analog bipolar to digital CMOS technology also enables significant scaling of chip size and power, with significant reduction in die area (~50 percent) and power (~40 percent) with 16nm FinFET compared to 28nm, noted MACOM’s Chris Collins, director of Marketing. The company plans 7nm 800G devices next year.

New layers and new types of memory

One likely change is new types and new placement for memory, for higher speeds, different levels of non-volatile cache, and designs and accelerator subsystems that limit the need to move large amounts of data back and forth over limited pipelines. “Data is doubling every 2-2.5 years, but DRAM bandwidth is only doubling every 5 years. It’s not keeping up,” noted Steven Woo, Rambus VP, Systems and Solutions. “We’ll see the addition of more tiers of memory over the next few years.” He suggested the emerging challenge would be what data to place where, using what technology, and how to move memory in general closer to the processing. Racks may become the basic unit instead of servers, so each can be optimized with more memory or more processors as needed.

Handling big data in the cloud means more opportunity for new memory technologies in an emerging tier between DRAM and solid state drives. Source: Rambus

Handling big data in the cloud means more opportunity for new memory technologies in an emerging tier between DRAM and solid state drives. Source: Rambus

Specialized accelerators speed particular applications

Another emerging solution is specialized chips or subsystem boards to accelerate particular types of cloud processing by taking over some jobs from the CPU cores, typically with different types of processors and lots of localized memory. Google and Wave Computing have their accelerator chips optimized for neural network processing. Mellanox offers offload adopter cards based on ASICs, FPGAs or RISC, with increasingly complex functions, claiming the potential to offload as much as of 80 percent of the overhead function of the CPU, to get a 2.7X increase in throughput per server.  MoSys proposes replacing conventional content addressable memory with a programmable search engine, based on an FPGA, a lot of SRAM, and software to search and route with different strategies for different types of applications to significantly increase speeds. Chelsio offers a module to handle encryption and decryption off the CPU without having to shuttle information back and forth to memory. Amazon even is renting FPGAs in its cloud so users can design their own accelerators for their particular workloads. But Microsoft’s Vaid remained skeptical that a proliferation of solutions for particular applications would be the best approach for the general use in the cloud.

300mm production and passive fiber alignment improve silicon photonics

Silicon photonics technology continues to make progress, and may find application in the market for very high bandwidth, mid to long haul transmission (30 meters to 80 kilometer), where spectral efficiency is the key driver, suggested Ted Letavic, Global Foundries, Senior Fellow. “4.5 and 5G communications will use photonics solutions similar to those needed in the data center, for volume that will drive down cost,” he noted. The foundry has now transferred its monolithic process to 300mm wafers, where the immersion lithography enables better overlay and line edge roughness, to reduce losses by 3X.  The company has an automated, passive solution to attach the optical fiber to the edge of the chip, pushing ribbons of multiple fibers into MEMS groves in the chip with an automated pick and place tool.  Letavic said the edge coupling process was in production for a telecommunications application.

Array of optical fibers are passively aligned by sliding into MEMS grooves at the side of the chip for 100Gpbs x 12 = 1.2Tb interconnect in flat form factor. Source: Global Foundries

Array of optical fibers are passively aligned by sliding into MEMS grooves at the side of the chip for 100Gpbs x 12 = 1.2Tb interconnect in flat form factor. Source: Global Foundries

For more information about SEMI, visit www.semi.org. SEMI also offers many events covering electronics manufacturing supply chain issues; for a full list of SEMI events, visit www.semi.org/en/events. SEMI is on LinkedIn and Twitter.