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By Douglas G. Sutherland and David W. Price

Author’s Note: This is the fourth in a series of 10 installments that explore fundamental truths about process control—defect inspection and metrology—for the semiconductor industry. Each article introduces one of the 10 fundamental truths and highlights their implications. Within this article we will use the term inspection to imply either defect inspection or a parametric measurement such as film thickness or critical dimension (CD).

Nobody likes surprises—especially the managers of $10 billion factories. In a dynamic field like advanced semiconductor IC fabrication, there will always be unknowns. However, it is critical to know what you know and know what you don’t know. Every measurement has error. The quality of the decision you make is highly dependent on the uncertainty in the data used to make that decision.

Process control spending is discretionary. Fabs will invest to the point that they believe the return on investment is favorable. It may make financial sense to sample less, skip certain measurements, or use a less capable inspection/metrology tool. However, the fab must always face facts and quantify the level of risk associated with these decisions. The stakes—missing an excursion resulting in costly yield loss—are too high to live in denial.

The fourth fundamental truth of process control for the semiconductor IC industry is: 

Always quantify your lots at risk when making changes to your process control strategy

Quantifying your lots at risk equates to understanding the uncertainty in your measurement. This is a basic concept that most factory engineers learned at some point during their education, however, it is also one of the most tedious of tasks. As a result, this portion of the analysis is skipped more often than we care to admit.

Within process control there are really only two types of risk: Alpha risk and Beta risk. Alpha risk is a false alarm; it is when your inspection tells you that the wafer measured is out of control when really there is nothing wrong with the larger process. Beta risk is the opposite of this; it is when your inspection tells you that the wafer you measured was in control but really there is a serious problem. Figure 1 summarizes the difference.

KLAT_FIGURES-1

Figure 1. Definition of Alpha risk and Beta Risk

Alpha and Beta risk arise as a result of the inability to consistently make an inspection that accurately represents the process at that point in time. The best way to reduce both types of risk is to make the process itself less variable. There are few, if any, activities in semiconductor manufacturing that are more value-added than driving variability out of the process. It is much easier to spot real changes in the process when the native lot-to-lot variation is low. However, this cannot always be easily achieved and the Alpha risk (the number of false alarms) can sometimes only be reduced by moving the control limits further from the target (raising the upper control limit and / or lowering the lower control limit). Increasing the spread between the control limits will reduce the Alpha risk but it comes at the expense of increasing the Beta risk—it makes the inspection process less sensitive to real excursions.

Just as changing the native variability in the process usually warrants reassessing where to place the control limits, any time the characteristics of the measurement itself are changed (changing the sensitivity of the recipe, changing the area of the wafer that is inspected, changing the size of the review sample, etc.) the position of the control limits also needs to be re-evaluated.

As an example, consider a defect inspection step where 100 percent of the wafer area is inspected. For a particular defect of interest (DOI) the inspection finds between 40 and 60 DOI on each wafer under normal conditions and the upper control limit (UCL) is placed at 61. If the inspection strategy is changed such that further inspections will only sample 50 percent of the wafer area, the range of normal values will change from between 40 and 60 to between 12 and 42 for 50 percent area (or 24 and 84 when normalized back to the full wafer count). The increase in range is a result of the Binomial Probability Theory that quantifies the effect that sometimes there will be a disproportionate number of DOI in the area that was inspected and sometimes there will be a disproportionate number of DOI in the area that was not inspected.

With the stroke of a pen, the decision to reduce the wafer area to 50 percent has tripled the variability in this particular part of the process from a range of 20 to a range of 60 DOI per wafer. In doing so, they have undone months of hard work by a team of engineers who worked diligently to drive the variability out of the process in the first place. The fab manager must now choose to keep the UCL at 61 and suffer many more false alarms or raise the UCL to 85 where they will have approximately the same number of false alarms but be much less sensitive to real excursions.

The impact of changing the inspected wafer area depends on several factors including the average DOI, the native variation and the size of the excursion that one is trying to detect. Figure 2 shows how the percent error changes as a function of wafer area for three different DOI counts.

KLAT_FIGURES-2

Figure 2.  Percent Error versus Wafer Area for three different DOI counts.  At 100 percent area there is no error introduced into the measurement. As the area decreases, the error increases. The error is largest for low DOI counts and is bounded by -100% on the low side and unbounded on the high side.

We have chosen the example of wafer area to illustrate the point because it is such a common practice but the same principles apply to all aspects of process control. The measurement is part of the process― when you degrade the quality of the measurement you degrade the quality of the process.

There are many ways in which process control risk manifests itself in the fab. One simple approach is to get in the habit of asking the questions: “how many lots are at risk if I do this?” and, “what are the error bars on this analysis?”

For example, how many lots are at risk if the fab:

  • Skips an inspection step?
  • Uses a less sensitive inspector or pixel size?
  • Reduces the sampling rate?
  • Use a less precise metrology tool?
  • Measure fewer features per wafer?

Changing process control strategy to reduce costs may seem like a short term solution but it is seldom if ever sustainable for one very simple reason: fab managers don’t like surprises!

References:

1)     You Can’t Fix What You Can’t Find, Solid State Technology, July 2014

2)     Sampling Matters, Semiconductor Manufacturing and Design, September 2014

3)     The Most Expensive Defect, Solid State Technology, December 2014

About the authors:

Dr. David W. Price is a Senior Director at KLA-Tencor Corp. Dr. Douglas Sutherland is a Principal Scientist at KLA-Tencor Corp. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Price and Dr. Sutherland have worked directly with over 50 semiconductor IC manufacturers to help them optimize their overall inspection strategy to achieve the lowest total cost. This series of articles attempts to summarize some of the universal lessons they have observed through these engagements.

Process Watch blog series: 

Process Watch: The 10 fundamental truths of process control for the semiconductor IC industry

Process Watch: Exploring the dark side

“The Dangerous Disappearing Defect,” “Skewing the Defect Pareto,” “Bigger and Better Wafers,” “Taming the Overlay Beast,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Reticle,” “Breaking Parametric Correlation,” “Cycle Time’s Paradoxical Relationship to Yield,” and “The Gleam of Well-Polished Sapphire.”

The semiconductor equipment and materials industry is currently enjoying a double-digit annual growth rate and good prospects looking forward to 2015.  However, there are huge challenges around the corner with the move from planar to FinFET transistors, with 193nm immersion lithography being pushed well below 14nm, and with an explosion of new materials to integrate, among others.

The SEMI International Technology Partners Conference (ITPC 2014) convened on 9-12 November on the bright and crystalline Kohala Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.  Like our industry, all looked calm and peaceful – yet just around the corner, the Kilauea Volcano was violently reshaping the landscape with rivers of molten lava in the town of Pahoa.

Living in the shadow of an active volcano and the sometimes spectacularly disruptive process of building an island – or the nano-electronics manufacturing industry in our case – was picked up in this year’s ITPC theme:  New Structures for Innovation.  Wholly new concepts for collaboration and partnerships to address the challenges and to enable innovation were discussed formally in the conference, as well as informally in the many networking opportunities.

The program included keynote presentations by driving IC manufacturers:  Intel, SMIC, SK Hynix, TSMC, and Micron to set the stage for the rest of the program by hitting the key issues:

  • Delivering density scaling benefits in an era of increased capital intensity and materials complexity (Intel and SMIC)
  • Trends in semiconductor development following changes in the mobile market (SK Hynix)
  • Limits of lithography beyond the 10nm node (TSMC)
  • Collaboration for innovation (Micron)

Each of these keynote presentations neatly distilled the related challenges and opportunities and provided richly provocative observations on what is needed to keep innovation as the fundamental enabler.

Beyond the exceptional insights and depth of these presentations, a few “fun facts” were captured below.

  • Intel’s pursuit of 450mmm has had a positive impact on 300mm productivity (Bob Bruck, Intel)
  • China’s overall two highest revenue imports are oil and ICs  (Tzu-Yin Chiu, SMIC)
  • To succeed in today’s IC manufacturing world there needs to be system-level and process-level partnership and collaboration across the extended supply chain  (Sungwook Park, SK Hynix)
  • Of the Fortune 500 companies from 30 years ago, only 15% remain today.  Large companies are often too slow to react to change (Mark Adams, Micron)
  • Facebook and Google are now among the top six server manufacturers in the world (Mark Adams, Micron)

The conference continued with an industry and market outlook segment with special attention to IoT, electric vehicles, and nanoelectronics “connecting lives to improving lives.”  This included some amazing video clips of Nissan’s autonomous driving electric vehicles in Japan traffic, and imec’s intense visualizations of next generation nano-bio applications.

Among the best appreciated sections, was the segment on new industry structure that featured speakers and panelists from Google (David Peterson), Robert Metcalfe (University of Texas), Dan Solomon (Solomon Consulting), and AlixPartners (Dan Fisher). David Peterson brought a perspective from outside of our industry which is useful to test ideas and refresh approaches. He asked the audience to start with the most difficult ideas: make the tough choices, ask the questions that no one else will, and nurture a vibrant, distinctive culture. On making the tough choice, he was specific – and it is indeed tough, “sub-optimize current performance to invest in future performance:  innovations, R&D, learning, leadership development, building an adaptable organization, experimenting with ideas and projects that may not succeed. This segment was capped by Shozo Saito (Toshiba) providing an overview on the connections of new market and industry structure by device platform development.

The final segment focused on technology with Frits van Hout of ASML presenting the EUVL transition from R&D to industrialization. Following this a panel, moderated by Dan Hutcheson of VLSI Research, focused on frontiers of technology with panelists Paul Boudre of Soitec, David Hemker of Lam Research, Michael Liehr of CNSE, and Omkaram Nalamasu of Applied Materials.

It was a fascinating conference that both discussed the need and models for new collaboration and partnerships – and brought our industry’s thought leaders together to have opportunities to find these connections during the conference.

A few more interesting “fun facts” “fun bits” from the conference:

  • China plans to spend $100B to build a China-local IC industry that will supply up to 40% of China’s IC consumption.
  • The era of planar technology is coming to an end – and this precipitates great changes.
  • There is virtually no viable small company R&D engine model remaining in ICs and semiconductor equipment.  The model for innovation in our industry has significantly changed in the last five years.
  • Collaborations and partnerships are more essential now than ever before for developing innovation.
  • To build trust in developing partnerships, potential partners should work together and take many small risks together quickly.
  • Among the top innovations in our industry is Moore’s law and inventing SEMI – this is one of the big successes in collaboration and co-opetition.
  • A twelve week cycle from tape-out to finished wafer is too long.  This must change to keep pace with product development innovation.
  • The semiconductor industry should quickly work to define standards/platforms for IOT to ensure the pace of growth and chip consumption
  • A favorite slide was from Google that reminded the audience that to win, we have to view any customer problem as our problem:

ITPC

To participate in other strategic events, consider the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium U.S. 2015 in January or SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium Europe 2015 in February.

Murata Electronics North America, Inc. and Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation, founder of RF silicon on insulator (SOI) and pioneer of advanced RF solutions, today announce that Murata has acquired all outstanding shares of Peregrine. The cash transaction paid the holders of Peregrine common shares $12.50 per share.

Peregrine will continue to market its high-performance, integrated RF solutions under the Peregrine brand, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Murata Electronics North America, Inc. Peregrine solutions leverage the UltraCMOS technology platform, a patented, advanced form of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) that delivers the monolithic integration and superior performance necessary to solve the world’s toughest RF challenges. Peregrine will continue to offer its integrated RF solutions to markets such as communications (mobile, wireless infrastructure, land mobile radio, broadband and wireless), industrial (test and measurement, automotive, Internet of Things) and aerospace. With the close of this acquisition, Murata gains Peregrine’s strong intellectual property portfolio, which contains over 180 filed and pending patents.

“Today, we deepen our existing partnership and officially welcome Peregrine Semiconductor to the Murata family,” said Norio Nakajima, Executive Vice President, Director of Communication Business Unit of Murata. “With this acquisition, we combine Murata’s world-leading mobile RF module capabilities with Peregrine’s best-in-class RF products. We’re eager to leverage Peregrine’s innovations, such as the industry’s first reconfigurable RF front-end system UltraCMOS Global 1, and expand the Murata business into all the markets that Peregrine currently offers RF solutions. This acquisition further defines our stance as an ‘Innovator in Electronics’.”

“After years of a successful partnership, we’re happy to become a part of the Murata team, the world’s leading RF module and filter provider,” said Jim Cable, PhD, President and CEO of Peregrine Semiconductor. “Murata already has deep relationships and trust built in all of our target markets. We believe we can offer their customer base exciting new RF capabilities.  With the reach of Murata products and the power of our UltraCMOS technology, we believe we will change the course of RF history. In the case of mobile, it will speed the industry’s transition to an integrated, all-CMOS RF front-end. Together, we’re looking forward to accomplishing great things.”

Founded in 1944 in Kyoto, Japan, Murata celebrated its 70th anniversary in October. Murata has grown into a global enterprise composed of 101 companies in 23 nations. As an “Innovator in Electronics,” Murata designs, manufactures and supplies advanced electronic materials, leading-edge electronic components and multi-functional, high-density modules. Murata innovations can be found in a wide range of applications from mobile phones to home appliances, and automotive applications to energy management systems and healthcare devices.

The Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) announced the recipients honored at the 2014 GSA Awards Dinner Celebration that took place in Santa Clara, California. The commemorative event celebrated GSA’s 20th year anniversary. Over the past 20 years, the awards program has recognized the achievements of semiconductor companies in several categories ranging from outstanding leadership to financial accomplishments, as well as overall respect within the industry.

This year, in recognition of GSA’s 20 years of global collaboration, there was a special presentation honoring past Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award recipients, GSA’s most prestigious award.

GSA members identified the Most Respected Public Semiconductor Company Award winners by casting ballots for the industry’s most respected companies for its products, vision and future opportunities. Winners include the “Most Respected Emerging Public Semiconductor Company Achieving $100 million to $250 million in annual sales Award” presented to Ambarella, Inc.; “Most Respected Public Semiconductor Company achieving $251 million to $1 billion in annual sales Award” awarded to InvenSense, Inc.; and “Most Respected Public Semiconductor Company achieving greater than $1 billion in annual sales Award” received by QUALCOMM Incorporated.

The “Most Respected Private Company Award” was voted on by GSA membership and presented to Spreadtrum Communications Inc. Other winners include “Best Financially Managed Company achieving up to $500 Million in annual sales Award” presented to Montage Technology and “Best Financially Managed Semiconductor Company achieving greater than $500 million in annual sales Award” earned by Skyworks Solutions, Inc. Both companies were recognized based on their continued demonstration of the best overall financial performance based on specific financial metrics.

GSA’s Private Awards Committee, made up of members of the Emerging Company CEO Council, venture capitalists and select industry entrepreneurs, chose the “Start-Up to Watch Award” winner by identifying a company that has demonstrated the potential to positively change its market or the industry through the innovative use of semiconductor technology or a new application for semiconductor technology. This year’s winner is Ineda Systems, Inc.

As a global organization, the GSA recognizes companies headquartered in the Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia-Pacific regions. Award winners are chosen by the leadership council of each respective region and are semiconductor companies that demonstrate the most strength when measuring products, vision, leadership and success in the marketplace. The recipient of this year’s “Outstanding Asia-Pacific Semiconductor Company Award” is MediaTek Inc. and “Outstanding EMEA Semiconductor Company Award” is Infineon Technologies AG.

Semiconductor financial analyst Rajvindra Gill from Needham & Company presented this year’s “Favorite Analyst Semiconductor Company Award.” The criteria used in selecting this year’s winner included historical as well as projected data such as per cent stock and revenue increase, net profit margin, revenue forecasts, and product performance. Needham & Company presented to Synaptics, Inc.

The Awards Dinner Celebration was made possible by title sponsor TSMC, VIP and networking reception sponsor Optimal+, as well as general sponsors Advantest, Alix Partners, Altera, AMD, Amkor, ARM, ASE Group, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Broadcom, Cadence Design Systems, CSR, eSilicon, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Jefferies Group LLC, J.P. Morgan, KPMG, Marvell, MediaTek, Mentor Graphics, Micron, Microsemi, Model N, Morgan Stanley, Needham & Co., NVIDIA, Open-Silicon, QUALCOMM, Qorvo (RFMD + TriQuint), QuickLogic, Rambus, Samsung, SanDisk, Silicon Labs, SMIC, Synopsys, UMC, VeriSilicon and Wells Fargo.

Intel announces IoT platform


December 11, 2014

Intel Corporation today announced the Intel IoT Platform, an end-to-end reference model designed to unify and simplify connectivity and security for the Internet of Things (IoT). Intel also introduced integrated hardware and software products based on the new platform and new relationships with an expanded ecosystem of system integrators that promise to move IoT from infancy to mass deployment.

The new offerings and relationships will make it easier for solution providers to move IoT from pockets of pilots to mainstream deployments with a repeatable foundation of building blocks that can be customized for limitless solutions. Data will be unlocked faster to extract meaningful information and value for consumers and businesses.

For example, Rudin Management, a New York City real estate company who developed its own system software called DiBoss, has demonstrated that it can intelligently manage energy and other systems in its buildings. In one year, in one building, the company saved nearly $1 million to its bottom line, which would translate to a savings of 50 cents for every square foot of real estate it owns and manages.

“The power of IoT on our company’s business will have significant impact,” said John Gilbert, COO, Rudin Management. “We are a real estate company that used to dabble in technology, but now because of IoT, we are a technology company that dabbles in real estate.”

Horizontal Approach to IoT
The Intel IoT Platform helps deliver innovations to market faster, reducing solution complexity, and delivering actionable intelligence faster by offering a defined, repeatable foundation for how devices will connect and deliver trusted data to the cloud.

“With this platform we are continuing to expand our IoT product family beyond silicon with enhancements to our pre-integrated solutions that make IoT more accessible to solution providers,” said Doug Davis, vice president and general manager, Internet of Things Group, Intel. “IoT is a rapidly growing market but faces scalability hurdles. By simplifying the development process and making it easier to deploy new solutions that address market needs, we can help accelerate innovation.”

Expanding IoT Ecosystem
IoT has enormous potential to drive economic value and social change, but no company can do it alone. A robust ecosystem is needed to scale. To that end, Intel announced new solutions and relationships to boost the IoT ecosystem. Accenture, Booz Allen Hamilton, Capgemini, Dell, HCL, NTT DATA, SAP, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Wipro and others are joining together with Intel to develop and deploy solutions using their building blocks on the Intel IoT Platform. These solutions will help provide a repeatable foundation for IoT and free up developers’ time to focus on building solutions that expertly address specific customer pain points.

“Accenture is focused on helping clients realize the business value of the IoT as quickly and easily as possible,” said Mike Sutcliff, group chief executive, Accenture Digital. “Our combined capabilities can help us achieve that, and can also help clients get around some of the biggest roadblocks to IoT adoption by offering a simpler, faster way to roll out end to end IoT solutions than currently exists. Together, we can enable clients to define a clear value strategy for the IoT, and by using Accenture’s industry experience and digital assets to complement Intel’s IoT platform, we can create robust, end-to-end frameworks designed to overcome challenges associated with security, scalability and interoperability in IoT implementations.”

Integrated Hardware and Software
Intel is also delivering a roadmap of integrated hardware and software products to support the Intel IoT Platform. Spanning from edge devices out to the cloud, the roadmap includes API management and service creation software, edge-to-cloud connectivity and analytics, intelligent gateways, and a full line of scalable IA processors. Security is fundamental to the roadmap with both dedicated security products and security features embedded into hardware and software products.

Intel is evolving and optimizing this product roadmap to work seamlessly together with building blocks from the ecosystem to address the key challenges solution providers are facing when implementing IoT, including interoperability, security and connectivity.

The new products from Intel include:

  • Wind River Edge Management System provides cloud connectivity to facilitate device configuration, file transfers, data capture and rules-based data analysis and response. This pre-integrated technology stack enables customers to quickly build industry-specific IoT solutions and integrate disparate enterprise IT systems, utilizing API management. The cloud-based middleware runs from the embedded device up through the cloud to reduce time to market and total cost of ownership.
  • The latest Intel® IoT Gateway will integrate the Wind River Edge Management System via an available agent so gateways can be rapidly deployed, provisioned and managed throughout the life cycle of a system to reduce costs and time to market. In addition, the gateway includes performance improvements, support for lower cost memory options and a broader selection of available communication options. Intel IoT Gateways are currently available from seven ODMs with 13 more releasing systems in early 2015.
  • To get value out of the data generated in deployments using the Intel® IoT Platform, developers need a powerful yet easy-to-use approach to big data analytics. Intel is expanding its cloud analytics support for IoT Developer Kits to include the Intel® IoT Gateway series, in addition to Intel® Galileo boards and Intel® Edison Modules. Cloud analytics enables IoT application developers to detect trends and anomalies in time series at big data scale.
  • McAfee, a part of Intel Security, announced Enhanced Security for Intel IoT Gateways in support of the Intel IoT Platform. This pre-validated solution adds advanced security management for gateway devices.
  • Intel Security also announced that its Enhanced Privacy Identity (EPID) technology will be promoted to other silicon vendors. EPID has anonymity properties, in addition to hardware-enforced integrity, and is included in ISO and TCG standards. The EPID technology provides an on-ramp for other devices to securely connect to the Intel IoT Platform.
  • The Intel API and Traffic Management solution utilizes Intel Mashery solutions to enable creation of building blocks that make it easy to build new software applications. Customers of the Intel IoT Platform today have access to the Intel Mashery API management tools to create data APIs that can be shared internally, externally with partners or monetized as revenue-generating data services for customers.
INTEL_01_scalingiot-01

Intel is working to create a robust, scalable IoT ecosystem.

SEMI today reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$ 8.82 billion in the third quarter of 2014. The billings figure is 8 percent lower than the second quarter of 2014 and 15 percent higher than the same quarter a year ago. The data is gathered jointly with the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ) from over 100 global equipment companies that provide data on a monthly basis.

Worldwide semiconductor equipment bookings were $9.32 billion in the third quarter of 2014. The figure is 4 percent higher than the same quarter a year ago and 6 percent lower than the bookings figure for the second quarter of 2014.

The quarterly billings data by region in billions of U.S. dollars, quarter-over-quarter growth and year-over-year rates by region are as follows:


Region


3Q2014


2Q2014


3Q2013

3Q14/2Q14
(Q-o-Q)

3Q14/3Q13
(Y-o-Y)
Taiwan

2.30

2.48

2.24

-7%

3%
North America

2.16

2.32

1.22

-7%

77%
Japan

1.10

1.00

0.83

10%

32%
Korea

1.00

1.73

1.50

-42%

-34%
China

0.96

1.03

0.60

-7%

59%
Europe

0.66

0.57

0.60

16%

9%
ROW

0.64

0.50

0.64

28%

1%
Total

8.82

9.62

7.64

-8%

15%

Source: SEMI/SEAJ December 2014;Note: Figures may not add due to rounding.

The Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) from SEMI provides comprehensive market data for the global semiconductor equipment market.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $29.7 billion for the month of October 2014, an increase of 9.6 percent from the October 2013 total of $27.1 billion and an uptick of 1.5 percent compared to last month’s total of $29.2 billion.

Sales in the Americas increased 12.2 percent year-over-year in October, leading all regions. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average. Additionally, a new WSTS industry forecast projects substantial growth for 2014 and moderate growth for 2015 and 2016.

“Year-over-year global semiconductor sales increased for the eighteenth straight month in October, and the industry is well-positioned for a strong close to 2014,” said Brian Toohey, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Sales continue to be strong across the board, with nearly all regions and product categories exhibiting increases. We expect nearly double-digit growth in 2014, followed by moderate growth in 2015 and 2016.”

Regionally, sequential monthly sales increased in the Americas (5.8 percent) and remained roughly flat in Asia Pacific (up 0.7 percent), Europe (down 0.1 percent), and Japan (down 0.6 percent). Compared to October 2013, sales increased in the Americas (12.2 percent) as noted above, Asia Pacific (12.1 percent), and Europe(5.2 percent), but decreased in Japan (-3 percent).

Additionally, SIA today endorsed the WSTS Autumn 2014 global semiconductor sales forecast, which projects the industry’s worldwide sales will reach $333.2 billion in 2014, a 9 percent increase from the 2013 sales total. WSTS predicts year-over-year increases for 2014 in Asia Pacific (11.4 percent), Europe (8.7 percent), the Americas (6.9 percent), and Japan (1.3 percent).

Beyond 2014, the industry is expected to grow steadily and moderately across all regions, according to the WSTS forecast. WSTS predicts 3.4 percent growth globally for 2015 ($344.5 billion in total sales) and 3.1 percent growth for 2016 ($355.3 billion). WSTS tabulates its semi-annual industry forecast by convening an extensive group of global semiconductor companies that provide accurate and timely indicators of semiconductor trends.

October 2014
Billions
Month-to-Month Sales
Market Last Month Current Month % Change
Americas 6.06 6.41 5.8%
Europe 3.21 3.21 -0.1%
Japan 3.03 3.01 -0.6%
Asia Pacific 16.93 17.05 0.7%
Total 29.23 29.69 1.5%
Year-to-Year Sales
Market Last Year Current Month % Change
Americas 5.71 6.41 12.2%
Europe 3.05 3.21 5.2%
Japan 3.11 3.01 -3.0%
Asia Pacific 15.22 17.05 12.1%
Total 27.09 29.69 9.6%
Three-Month-Moving Average Sales
Market May/Jun/Jul Aug/Sep/Oct % Change
Americas 5.47 6.41 17.2%
Europe 3.24 3.21 -1.1%
Japan 3.04 3.01 -0.9%
Asia Pacific 16.38 17.05 4.1%
Total 28.13 29.69 5.5%

WSTS Autumn 2014 Forecast

Autumn 2014 Amounts in US$M Year on Year Growth in %
2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016
Americas 61,496 65,763 69,274 71,432 13.1 6.9 5.3 3.1
Europe 34,883 37,923 38,491 39,732 5.2 8.7 1.5 3.2
Japan 34,795 35,239 35,133 35,452 15.2 1.3 -0.3 0.9
Asia Pacific 174,410 194,226 201,648 208,656 7.0 11.4 3.8 3.5
Total World – $M 305,584 333,151 344,547 355,272 4.8 9.0 3.4 3.1
Discrete Semiconductors 18,201 20,441 21,347 21,980 -4.9 12.3 4.4 3.0
Optoelectronics 27,571 29,498 30,958 31,983 5.3 7.0 4.9 3.3
Sensors 8,036 8,627 9,151 9,624 0.3 7.4 6.1 5.2
Integrated Circuits 251,776 274,586 283,090 291,685 5.7 9.1 3.1 3.0
Analog 40,117 44,217 47,429 49,175 2.1 10.2 7.3 3.7
Micro 58,688 62,211 63,144 64,240 -2.6 6.0 1.5 1.7
Logic 85,928 89,547 91,488 93,927 5.2 4.2 2.2 2.7
Memory 67,043 78,611 81,029 84,343 17.6 17.3 3.1 4.1
Total Products – $M 305,584 333,151 344,547 355,272 4.8 9.0 3.4 3.1

The semiconductor industry directly employs nearly a quarter of a million people in the United States. In 2013, U.S. semiconductor company sales totaled $155 billion, and semiconductors make the global trillion dollar electronics industry possible. Founded in 1977 by five microelectronics pioneers, SIA unites companies that account for 80 percent of America’s semiconductor production.

​SEMATECH announced today that promising progress has been made in qualifying outgassing specifications for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. As the first to certify a resist family using witness sample-based resist outgas testing, this achievement has the potential to realize substantial cost savings by significantly improving the resist learning cycle.

​The reduction of EUV resist outgassing to minimize or prevent possible contamination of EUV exposure tools is critical to the development of EUV resists. Therefore, it is vital that resist chemistries meet stringent outgassing specifications before being used in an EUV scanner. Today, however, the resist learning cycle is excessively long and inefficient due in part to the lengthy outgas tests that resist material formulations must undergo before being subjected to exposure in a production EUV scanner.

In a joint collaboration with the JSR Corporation, SEMATECH has experimentally proven an improved evaluation method that reduces the amount of testing of commercial EUV resists from every formulation to just three samples per family. The results confirm that the concentration of the major components in a resist can be varied without the need for requalification, which can result in a potential savings of few hundred outgas tests for each resist family.

“In mutual effort to develop leading-edge resists and materials, and accelerate optimized processes for EUV high-volume manufacturing, JSR and SEMATECH have made significant progress in identifying solutions for key outgassing issues,” said Tooru Kimura, General Manager of Semiconductor Materials Laboratory at JSR. “Through sophisticated process capabilities, the goal of our work is to discover new materials for the next generation EUV exposure tools that further stimulates resist development by enabling a more efficient way for outgas testing.”

“In order to ensure the affordable evolution of state-of-the-art lithography technologies, it is critical to predict a material’s outgassing level and understand the link between performance and resist outgassing,” said Kevin Cummings, SEMATECH’s Director of Lithography. “SEMATECH has been working with JSR over the last several months to make sure all test procedures meet industry guidelines for outgas testing. Now we are able to reduce the sample tests per each resist family for all resist suppliers, further enabling the infrastructure that will afford cost-effective EUV manufacturing.”

Over the past decade, SEMATECH has reduced resist and materials development cycle time by providing the industry access to successive generations of small field exposure tools. SEMATECH’s projects have succeeded in measuring the outgassing characteristics in hundreds of EUV resists and materials formulations, and delivering thousands of EUV exposure shifts to member companies to evaluate tens of thousands of materials formulations.

With the recent Samsung announcement of mass production of 64 GB DDR4 DIMMs that use TSV technology for enterprise servers and cloud-based applications, all three of the major DRAM memory manufactures, Samsung, Hynix and Micron, have now announced the commercialization of TSV based memory architectures.

The challenges for DRAM are to reduce power consumption, satisfy required bandwidth and satisfy density (miniaturization) requirements all the while maintaining low cost.

Many expect current DDR, both the compute variety (DDR3 / DDR4) and the mobile variety (LPDDR3/LPDDR4) to reach the end of their road soon, as the DDR interface reportedly cannot run at data rates higher than 3.2 Gbps in a traditional computer main memory environment. Thus several new DRAM memory architectures based on 3D layer stacking and TSV have evolved to carry memory technology forward.

The challenges for DRAM are to reduce power consumption, satisfy required bandwidth and satisfy density (miniaturization) requirements all the while maintaining low cost. Applications are evolving with different demands on these basic requirements. For example, graphics in a smartphone may require bandwidth of 15GB/sec while a networking router may require 300GB/sec.

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Memory is also known to be the biggest user of power in server farms, thus there is a requirement in both portable devices and networking and server applications for low power memory solutions.

Hynix has announced the release of multiple memory solutions over the next 2 years.
Emerging DRAM technologies such as wide IO, HMC and HBM are being optimized for different applications and present different approaches to address bandwidth, power, and area challenges. The common element to HMC, HBM and Wide IO are 3D technologies.

Wide I/O 2: supporting 3D-IC packaging for PC and server applications

Wide I/O increases the bandwidth between memory and its driver IC logic by increasing the IO data bus between the two circuits. Wide I/O typically uses TSVs, interposers and 3D stacking technologies.

The 2014 Wide I/O 2 standard JESD229-2 from JEDEC, is designed for high-end mobile applications that require high bandwidth at the lowest possible power. Wide I/O 2 provides up to 68GBps bandwidth, at lower power consumption (better bandwidth/Watt) with 1.1V supply voltage. From a packaging standpoint, the Wide I/O 2 is optimized to stack on top of a system on chip (SOC) to minimize power consumption and footprint. This standard trades a significantly larger I/O pin count for a lower operating frequency. Stacking reduces interconnect length and capacitance. The overall effect is to reduce I/O power while enabling higher bandwidth.

In the 2.5D-stacked configuration, cooling solutions can be placed on top of the two dies. With the 3D-stacked form of Wide I/O 2, heat dissipation can be an issue since there is no standard way to cool stacked die. The Hybrid Memory Cube is a specialized form of the wide I/O architecture.
The Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) developed by Micron and IBM is expected to be in mass production in 2014. This architecture consists of 3D stacked DRAM layers on top of a controller logic layer. For example, 4 DRAM die are divided into 16 “cores” and then stacked. The logic base is at the bottom has 16 different logic segments, each controlling the four DRAMs cores that sit directly on top of it . This type of memory architecture supports a very large number of I/O pins between the logic and DRAM cores, which deliver bandwidths as high as 400GB/s. According to the Hybrid Memory Cube Consortium, a single HMC can deliver more than 15x the performance of a DDR3 module and consume 70 per cent less energy per bit than DDR3.

In addition to Micron and IBM, the HMC architecture developer members include Samsung, Hynix, ARM, Open Silicon, Altera, and Xilinx (HMC specs).

High bandwidth memory (HBM)
The 2013 JEDEC HBM memory standard, JESD235 was developed for high end graphics and gaming applications. HBM consisting of stacked DRAM die, built with Wide I/O and TSV, supports 128GB/s to 256GB/s bandwidths. TSMC has recently compared these different memory architectures in terms of bandwidth, power and price.

Architecture choice depends on application
Different applications will have different requirements in terms of bandwidth, power consumption, and footprint.
• Because thermal characteristics are critical in high end smartphones, the industry consensus is that Wide I/O 2 is probably the best choice. Wide I/O 2 meets heat dissipation, power, bandwidth, and density requirements. However, it is more costly than LPDDR4.
• Given its lower silicon cost, LPDDR4 is probably better suited for tablets and low end smart phones, less cost-sensitive mobile markets.
• For high-end computer graphics processing, which are less constrained by cost then mobile devices, HBM memory may be the best choice.
• High performance computing (HPC) or a networking router requiring 300GBps BW is probably best matched to the HMC.
The properties of these standardized memory architectures and the applications they appear best suited for are compared below.
As we move into 2015 several industry segments have announced applications using the new memory stacks.
• Intel recently announced that their Xenon Phi processor “Knights Landing” which will debut in 2015 will use 16GB of Micron HMC stacked DRAM on-package, providing up to 500GB/sec of memory bandwidth for high performance computing applications.
• AMD and Nvidia have also announced the use of HBM in their next generation graphics modules like the Nvidia Pascal due out in 2016.

Yole Développement has been studying 2.5/3DIC technology and commercial adoption for nearly a decade.

The above described advances and all the rest of the latest 3DIC happenings can be found in Yole Développement’s new report “3DIC & 2.5D TSV Interconnect for Advanced Packaging – 2014 Business Update”. More information on www.i-micronews.com, advanced packaging reports section.

Continuing strength in China and a resurgent U.S. economy are combining to drive accelerated growth in the worldwide market for semiconductors used in industrial applications this year, according to IHS Technology.

Global market revenue for industrial semiconductors is expected to rise by 12.9 percent in 2014, reaching $38.5 billion, up from $34.0 billion in 2013. This represents an even larger increase in market growth compared to an 11.4 percent expansion in 2013.

The United States and China, the world’s two largest markets for industrial semiconductors, are propelling global growth this year, with revenue increases of 13 percent and 17 percent, respectively, as presented in the figure below. The two regions were responsible for strong market increases in the second quarter, compensating for a decline in Europe.

The surge in in the second quarter was thanks in particular to three sectors: factory automation; building and home control; and commercial aircraft. Expansion in the economies of the US and China overcame a contraction in the European market region during the April through June period. Following a seasonally slow first quarter, the strong second quarter expansion of nearly 7 percent kept the global market for industrial semiconductors on a strong ascendant path for the year.

“Rising demand for industrial semiconductors in the United States is being driven by a wide range of positive economic factors that are boosting the manufacturing sector,” said Robbie Galoso, principal analyst for IHS.

“At the same time, the Chinese government’s generous stimulus programs in several product markets are promoting broad-based strength for various industrial electronics areas. The robust performance in both countries kept spending on industrial semiconductors on track in the second quarter and set the stage for accelerated growth for the entire year of 2014.”

For more information, see the report entitled “Robust Q2 supports 2014 double-digit growth forecast” from the IHS Semiconductors & Components service.

Industrial juggernauts

The growth in the U.S. is driven by a plethora of factors, including a more stable housing market, improved consumer finances, and credit and increased capital spending. This will cause annual growth in the U.S. industrial semiconductor market to rise by about 2 percentage points in 2014 compared to 2013.

With 30.5 percent of total revenue in 2013, the United States is the No. 1 purchaser of industrial semiconductors in the world and has market share dominance across several industrial markets.

Meanwhile for China, that country’s economic growth is cooling somewhat, with the impact of government stimulus programs reverberating through the country’s various market segments. This is resulting in strong spending on microchips in industrial areas including manufacturing and process automation, test and measurement, building and home control, and security and video surveillance.

China is the second largest purchaser of industrial semiconductors in the world with 14.1 percent of total revenues in 2013.

LEDs light up the industrial chip sector

Among the fastest growing product sectors within the industrial semiconductor market will be optical light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which will attain 12.4 percent growth. The use of LEDs for general-lighting applications is propelling expansion of this area. Demand for general-lighting LEDs is so strong that as lighting outperformed other applications like televisions, some LEDs originally intended for TVs are being sold to the general-lighting market.

Other fast-growing segments include transistors and thyristors, which will grow 14.2 percent this year.