Here are some of my collection of newest trends and predictions for year 2018. I have not invented those ideas what will happen next year completely myself. I have gone through many articles that have given predictions for year 2018. Then I have picked and mixed here the best part from those articles (sources listed on the end of posting) with some of my own additions to make this posting.This article contains very many quotations from those source articles (hopefully all acknowledged with link to source).
The general trend in electronics industry is that the industry growth have been driven by mobile industry. Silicon content in smartphones and other mobile devices is increasing as vendors add greater functionality. Layering on top of that are several emerging trends such as IoT, big data, AI and smart vehicles that are creating demand for greater computing power and expanding storage capacity.
Manufacturing trends
According to Foundry Challenges in 2018 article the silicon foundry business is expected to see steady growth in 2018. The growth in semiconductor manufacturing will remain steady, but there will be challenges in the manufacturing capacity and expenses to move to the next nodes. For most applications, unless you must have highest levels of performance, there may not be as compelling a business case to focus on the bleeding-edge nodes. Over the last two years, the IC industry has experienced an acute shortage of 200mm fab capacity (legacy MCU, power, sensors, 6-micron to 65nm). In 2018, 200mm capacity will remain tight. An explosion in 200mm demand has set off a frenzied search for used semiconductor manufacturing equipment that can be used at older process nodes. The problem is there is not enough used equipment available. The profit margins in manufacturing are so thin in markets served by those fabs that it’s hard to justify paying current rising equipment prices, and newcomers may have a tough time making inroads. Foundries with fully depreciated 200mm equipment and capacity already are seeing increased revenues in their 200mm business.The specialty foundry business is undergoing a renaissance, thanks to the emergence of 5G and automotive.
300mm is expected to follow a similar path for lack of capacity because 300mm fabs already produce leading-edge chips and more mainstream 300mm demand is driven by MCUs, wireless communications and storage applications. Early predictions are for solid growth in 2018, fueled by demand for memory and logic at advanced 10/7nm.
In 2017, marking the first time that the semiconductor equipment market has exceeded the previous market high of US$47.7 billion set in 2000. Fab tool vendors found themselves in the midst of an unexpected boom cycle in 2017, thanks to enormous demand for equipment in 3D NAND and, to a lesser degree, DRAM. In 2018, equipment demand looks robust, although the industry will be hard-pressed to surpass the record growth figures in 2017. In 2018, 7.5 percent growth is expected to result in sales of US$60.1 billion for the global semiconductor equipment market – another record-breaking year. Demand looks solid across the three main growth drivers for fab tool vendors—DRAM, NAND and foundry/logic.
Rising demand for chips is hitting the IC packaging supply chain, causing shortages of select manufacturing capacity, various package types, leadframes and even some equipment. Spot shortages for some IC packages began showing up in 2017, but the problem has been growing and spreading since then, so packaging customers may encounter select shortages well into 2018. Apple Watch 3 shipment growth to benefit Taiwan IC packagers in 2018.
Market for advanced packaging begins to diverge based on performance and price. Advanced Packaging is now viewed as the best way to handle large amounts of data at blazing speeds.
Moore’s law
Many recent publications say Moore’s Law is dead. Though Moore’s Law is dead may be experiencing some health challenges, it’s not time to start digging the grave for the semiconductor and electronics market yet.
Even smaller nodes are still being taken to use in high end chips. The node names are confusing. Intel’s 10nm technology is roughly equivalent to the foundry 7nm node.In 2018, Intel is expected to finally ramp up 10nm finally in the first half of 2018. In addition, GlobalFoundries, Samsung and TSMC will begin to ship their respective 7nm finFET processes. On the leading edge, GlobalFoundries, Intel, Samsung and TSMC start migrating from the 16nm/14nm to the 10nm/7nm logic nodes. It is expected that some chip-makers face some challenges on the road. Time will tell if GlobalFoundries, Samsung and TSMC will struggle at 7nm. Early predictions are for solid growth in 2018, fueled by demand for memory and logic at advanced 10/7nm. 7nm is projected to generate sales from $2.5 billion to $3.0 billion in 2018. Over time 10nm/7nm is expected to be a big and long-running node. Suppliers of FPGAs and processors are expected to jump on 10nm/7nm.
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics said it has commenced production of the second generation of its 10nm-class 8-Gb DDR4 DRAM. Devices labeled 10nm-class have feature sizes as small as 10 to 19 nanometers. With the continued need for shrinking pattern dimensions, semiconductor manufacturers continue to implement more complex patterning techniques, such as advanced multi-patterning, for the 10nm design node and beyond. They also are investing significant development effort in readying EUV lithography for production at the 7/5nm design nodes. Samsung is planning to begin transitioning to EUV for logic chips next year at the 7nm node, although it is unclear when the technology will be put into production for DRAM.
There will be talk on even smaller nodes. FinFETs will get extended to at least to 5nm, and possibly 3nm in next 5 years. The path to 5nm loks pretty clear. FinFETs will get extended at least to 5nm. It’s possible they will get extended to 3nm. EUV will be used at new nodes, followed by High NA Lithography. New smaller nodes challenges the chip design as abstractions become more difficult at 7nm and beyond. Models are becoming more difficult to develop, integrate and utilize effectively at 10/7nm and beyond as design complexity, process variation and physical effects add to the number of variables that need to be taken into account. Materials and basic structures may diverge by supplier, at 7 nm and beyond. Engineering and scientific teams at 3nm and beyond will require completely different mixes of skills than today.
Silicon is still going strong, but the hard fact is that CMOS has been running out of steam for several nodes, and that becomes more obvious at each new node. To extend into new markets and new process nodes Chipmakers Look To New Materials. There are a number of compounds in use already (generally are being confined to specific niche applications), such as gallium arsenide, gallium nitride, and silicon carbide. Silicon will be supplemented by 2D materials to extend Moore’s Law. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), a class of 2D materials derived from basic elements—principally tellurium, selenium, sulfur, and oxygen—are being widely explored by researchers. TMDCs are functioning as semiconductors in conjunction with graphene. Graphene, the wonder material rediscovered in 2004, and a host of other two-dimensional materials are gaining ground in manufacturing semiconductors as silicon’s usefulness begins to fade. Wide-bandgap semiconductor materials like gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) are anticipated to be used in many more applications in 2018. Future progress increasingly will require a mix of different materials and disciplines, but silicon will remain a key component.
Interconnect Materials need to to be improved. For decades, aluminum interconnects were the industry standard. In the late 1990s, chipmakers switched to copper. Over the years, transistors have decreased dramatically in size, so interconnects also have had to scale in size leading to roadblock known as the RC challenge. Industry is investing significant effort in developing new approaches to extend copper use and finding new metals. There’s also some investigation into improvements on the dielectric side. The era of all-silicon substrates and copper wires may be coming to an end.
Application markets
Wearables are a question mark. Demand for wearables slowed down in 2017 so much that smart speakers likely outsold wearable devices in 2017 holiday season. eMarketer is estimating that usage of wearable will grow just 11.9 percent in 2018, rising from 44.7 million adult wearable users in 2017 to 50.1 million in 2018. On the other hand market research firm IDC estimates that the shipments of wearable electronics devices are projected to more than double over the next five years as watches displace fitness trackers as the biggest sellers. IDC forecasts that wearables shipments will increase at a compound annual growth rate of 18.4 percent between 2017 and 2021, rising from 113.2 million this year to 222.3 million in 2021. At the same time fitness trackers are expected to become commodity product. Tomorrow’s wearables will become more fully featured and multi-functional.
The automotive market for semiconductors is shifting into high gear in 2018. Right now the average car has about $350 worth of semiconductor content, but that is projected to grow another 50% by 2023 as the overall automotive market for semiconductors grows from $35 billion to $54 billion. The explosion of drive-by-wire technology, combined with government mandates toward fully electric powertrains, has changed this paradigm—and it impacts more than just the automotive industry. Consider implications beyond the increasingly complex vehicle itself, including new demands on supporting infrastructure. The average car today contains up to 100 million lines of code. Self-driving car will have considerably more code in it. Software controls everything from safety critical systems like brakes and power steering, to basic vehicle controls like doors and windows. Meeting ISO 26262 Software Standards is needed but it will not make the code bug free. It’s quickly becoming common practice for embedded system developers to isolate both safety and security features on the same SoC. The shift to autonomous vehicles marks a major shift in the supply chain—and a major opportunity.
Many applications have need for a long service life — for example those deployed within industrial, scientific and military industries. In these applications, the service life may exceed that of component availability. Replacing an advanced, obsolete components in a design can be very costly, potentially requiring an entire redesign of the electronic hardware and software. The use of programmable devices helps designers not only to address component obsolescence, but also to reduce the cost and complexity of the solution. Programmable logic devices are provided in a range of devices of different types, capabilities and sizes, from FPGAs to System on Chips (SoC) and Complex Programmable Logic Devices (CPLD). The obsolete function can be emulated within the device, whether it is a logic function implemented in programmable logic in a CPLD, FPGA or SoC, or a processor system implemented in an FPGA or SoC.
Become familiar with USB type C connector. USB type C connector is becoming quickly more commonplace than any other earlier interface. In the end of 2016 there were 300 million devices using a USBC connection – a big part was smartphones, but the interface was also widespread on laptops. With growth, the USBC becomes soon the most common PC and peripheral interface. Thunderbolt™ 3 on USBC connector promises to fulfill the promise of USB-C for single-cable docking and so much more.
Power electronics
The power electronics market continues to grow and gain more presence across a variety of markets. 2017 was a good year for electric vehicles and the future of this market looks very promising. In 2017, we saw also how wireless charging technology has been adopted by many consumer electronic devices- including Apple smart phones. Today’s power supplies do more than deliver clean and stable dc power on daily basis—they provide advanced capabilities that can save you time and money.
Wide-bandgap semiconductor materials like gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) are anticipated to be used in many more applications in 2018. At the moment, the number of applications for those materials is steadily increasing in the automotive and military industry. Expect to see more adoption of SiC and GaN materials in automotive market.
According to Battery Market Goes Bigger and Better in 2018 article advances in battery technologies hold the keys to continuing progress in portable electronics, robotics, military, and telecommunication applications, as well as distributed power grids. It is difficult to see lithium-ion based batteries being replaced anytime soon, so the advances in battery technology are primarily through the application of lithium-ion battery chemistries. New battery protection for portable electronics cuts manufacturing steps and costs for Lithium-ion.
Transparency Market Research analysts predict that the global lithium-ion battery market is poised to rise from $29.67 billion in 2015 to $77.42 billion in 2024 with a compound annual growth rate of 11.6 %. That growth has already spread from the now ubiquitous consumer electronics segment to automotive, grid energy, and industrial applications. Dramatic increase is expected for battery power for the transportation, consumer electronic, and stationary segments. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), the global energy-storage market will double six times between 2016 and 2030, rising to a total of 125 G/305 gigawatt-hours. In 2018, energy-storage systems will continue proliferating to provide backup power to the electric grid.
Memory
Memory business boomed in 2017 for both NAND and DRAM. The drivers for DRAM are smartphones and servers. Solid-state drives (SSDs) and smartphones are fueling the demand for NAND. Both the DRAM and NAND content in smartphones continues to grow, so memory business will do well in 2018.Fab tool vendors found themselves in the midst of an unexpected boom cycle in 2017, thanks to enormous demand for equipment in 3D NAND and, to a lesser degree, DRAM. In 2018, equipment demand looks robust, although the industry will be hard-pressed to surpass the record growth figures in 2017.
NAND Market Expected to Cool in Q1 from the crazy year 2017, but it is still growing well because there is increasing demand. The average NAND content in smartphones has been growing by roughly 50% recently, going from approximately 24 gigabytes in 2016 to approximately 38 gigabytes today.3D NAND will do the heavy memory lifting that smartphone users demand. Contract prices for NAND flash memory chips are expected to decline in during the first quarter of 2018 as a traditional lull in demand following the year-end quarter.
Lots of 3D NAND will go to solid state drives in 2018. IDC forecasts strong growth for the solid-state drive (SSD) industry as it transitions to 3D NAND. SSD industry revenue is expected to reach $33.6 billion in 2021, growing at a CAGR of 14.8%. Sizes of memory chips increase as number of layer in 3D NAND are added. We’ve already scaled up to 48 layers. Does this just keep scaling up, or are there physical limits here? Maybe we could see a path to 256 layers in few years.
Memory — particular DRAM — was largely considered a commodity business. Though that it’s really not true in 2017. DRAM memory marked had boomed in 2017 at the highest rate of expansion in 23 years, according to IC Insights. Skyrocketing prices drove the DRAM market to generate a record $72 billion in revenue, and it drove total revenue for the IC market up 22%. Though the outlook for the immediate future appears strong, a downturn in DRAM more than likely looms in the not-too-distant future. It will be seen when there are new players on the market. It is a largely unchallenged assertion that Chinese firms will in the not so distant future become a force in semiconductor memory market. Chinese government is committed to pumping more than $160 billion into the industry over a decade, with much of that ticketed for memory startups.
There is search for faster memory because modern computers, especially data-center servers that skew heavily toward in-memory databases, data-intensive analytics, and increasingly toward machine-learning and deep-neural-network training functions, depend on large amounts of high-speed, high capacity memory to keep the wheels turning. The memory speed has not increased as fast as the capacity. The access bandwidth of DRAM-based computer memory has improved by a factor of 20x over the past two decades. Capacity increased 128x during the same period. For year 2018 DRAM remains a near-universal choice when performance is the priority. There has been some attempts to very fast memory interfaces. Intel the company has introduced the market’s first FPGA chip with integrated high-speed EMBED (Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge): The Stratix 10 MX interfaces to HMB2 memory (High Memory Bandwidth) that offers about 10 times faster speed than standard DDR-type DIMM.
There is search going on for a viable replacement for DRAM. Whether it’s STT-RAM or phase-change memory or resistive RAM, none of them can match the speed or endurance of DRAM. Necessity is the mother of invention, and we see at least two more generations after 1x. XPoint is also coming up as another viable memory solution that could be inserted into the current memory architecture. It will be interesting to see how that plays out versus DRAM.
5G and IoT
5G something in it for everyone. 5G is big. 5G New Radio (NR) wireless technology will ultimately impact everyone in the electronics and telecommunications industries. Most estimates say 2020 is when we will ultimately see some real 5G deployments on a scale. In the meantime, companies are firming up their plans for whatever 5G products and services they will offer. Though test and measurement solutions will be key in the commercialization cycle. 5G is set to disrupt test processes. If 5G takes off, the technology will propel the development of new chips in both the infrastructure and the handset. Data centers require specialty semiconductors from power management to high-speed optical fiber front-ends. 5G systems will drive more complexity in RF front-ends .5G will offer increased capacity and decreased latency for some critical applications such as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications for advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and self-driving vehicles. The big question is whether 5G will disrupt the landscape or fall short of its promises.
Electronics manufacturers expect a lot from Internet of Thing. The evolution of intelligent electronic sensors is creating a revolution for IoT and Industrial IoT as companies bring new sensor-based, intelligent systems to market. The business promise is that the proliferation of smart and connected “things” in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) provides tremendous opportunities for increased performance and lower costs. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has a market forecast approaching $100 billion by 2020. Turning volumes of factory data into actionable information that has value is essential. Predictive maintenance and asset tracking are two big IoT markets to watch in 2018 because they will provide real efficiencies and improved safety. It will be about instrumenting our existing infrastructures with sensors that improve their reliability and help predict failures. It will be about tracking important assets through their lifecycles.
A new breed of designers has arrived that is leveraging inexpensive sensors to build the intelligent systems at the edge of the Internet of Things (IoT). They work in small teams, collaborate online, and they expect affordable design tools that are easy to use in order to quickly produce results. Their goal is to deliver a functioning device or a proof-of-concept to their stakeholders while spending as little money as possible to get there. We need to become multi-functional engineers who can comfortably work in the digital, RF, and system domains.
The Io edge sensor device usually needs to be cheap. Simple mathematical reasoning suggests that the average production cost per node must be small, otherwise the economics of the IoT simply are not viable. Most suppliers to the electronics industry are today working under the assumption that the bill-of-materials (BoM) cost of a node cannot exceed $5 on average. While the sensor market continues to garner billions of dollars, the average selling price of a MEMS sensor, for example, is only 60 cents.
Designing a well working and secure IoT system is still hard. IoT platforms are very complex distributed systems and managing these distributed systems is often an overlooked challenge. When designing for the IoT, security needs to be addressed from the Cloud down to each and every edge device. Protecting data is both a hardware and a software requirement, as more data is being stored and analyzed in edge devices and gateways.
The continued evolution of powerful embedded processors is enabling more functionality to be consolidated into single heterogeneous multicore devices. You will see more mixed criticality designs – those designs which contain both safety-critical and non-safety critical processes running on the same chip. It’s quickly becoming common practice for embedded system developers to isolate both safety and security features on the same SoC.
AI
There is clearly a lot of hype surrounding machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) fields. Over the past few years, machine learning (ML) has evolved from an interesting new approach that allows computers to beat champions at chess and Go, into one that is touted as a panacea for almost everything. Machine learning already has delivered beneficial results in certain niches, but it has potential for a bigger and longer lasting impact because of the demand for broad insights and efficiencies across industries. Also EDA companies have been investing in this technology and some results are expected to be announced.
The Battle of AI Processors Begins in 2018. Machine learning applications have a voracious appetite for compute cycles, consuming as much compute power as they can possibly scrounge up. As a result, they are invariably run on parallel hardware – often parallel heterogeneous hardware—which creates development challenges of its own. 2018 will be the start of what could be a longstanding battle between chipmakers to determine who creates the hardware that artificial intelligence lives on. Main contenders on the field at the moment are CPUs, GPUs, TPUs (tensor processing units), and FPGAs. Analysts at both Research and Markets and TechNavio have predicted the global AI chip market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of about 54% between 2017 and 2021.
Sources:
Battery Market Goes Bigger and Better in 2018
Smart speakers to outsell wearables during U.S. holidays, as demand for wearables slows
Wearables Shipments Expected to Double by 2021
The Week In Review: Manufacturing #186
Five technology trends for 2018
NI Trend Watch 2018 explores trends driving the future faster
Creating Software Separation for Mixed Criticality Systems
Isolating Safety and Security Features on the Xilinx UltraScale+ MPSoC
Meeting ISO 26262 Software Standards
DRAM Growth Projected to be Highest Since ’94
NAND Market Expected to Cool in Q1
Memory Market Forecast 2018 … with Jim Handy
3D NAND Storage Fuels New Age of Smartphone Apps
$55.9 Billion Semiconductor Equipment Forecast – New Record with Korea at Top
Advanced Packaging Is Suddenly Very Cool
Apple Watch 3 shipment growth to benefit Taiwan IC packagers in 2018
Rapid SoC Proof-of-Concept for Zero Cost
EDA Challenges Machine Learning
What Can You Expect from the New Generation of Power Supplies?
Optimizing Machine Learning Applications for Parallel Hardware
FPGA-dataa 10 kertaa nopeammin
Chipmakers Look To New Materials
What the Experts Think: Delivering the next 5 years of semiconductor technology
Programmable Logic Holds the Key to Addressing Device Obsolescence
The Battle of AI Processors Begins in 2018
For China’s Memory Firms, Legal Tests May Loom
Predictions for the New Year in Analog & Power Electronics
Lithium-ion Overcomes Limitations
Will Fab Tool Boom Cycle Last?
The Next 5 Years Of Chip Technology
Chipmakers Look To New Materials
Process Window Discovery And Control
Sensors are Fundamental to New Intelligent Systems
Industrial IoT (IIoT) – Where is Silicon Valley
Internet of things (IoT) design considerations for embedded connected devices
How efficient memory solutions can help designers of IoT nodes meet tight BoM cost targets
1,325 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why You Should Use Virtual Prototyping
https://assets.emediausa.com/research/aberdeen-report-virtual-prototyping-vs-traditional-product-development-methods-63808?lgid=3441165&mailing_id=3590162&engine_id=1&lsid=1&mailingContentID=106286&tfso=139369
Virtual prototyping is a critical tool for companies looking to successfully develop and optimize products as well as navigate product behavior complexities. In fact, virtual prototyping users saw a 13 percent decrease in overall development time.
Best-in-Class companies are using virtual prototyping to innovate and differentiate products
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Week In Review: Manufacturing
Chip M&A candidates; Bitcoin phones; smart speaker wars.
https://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-manufacturing-187/
Christopher Rolland, an analyst at Susquehanna International, expects to see more merger and acquisition activity in the IC industry heading into 2018. “M&A activity slowed in 2017, but the year is going out with a bang!” Rolland said in a recent research note. Towards the end of 2017, for example, Broadcom made a bid for Qualcomm, while Marvell announced intent to buy Cavium.
In 2017, about 10% of all semiconductor companies were acquired, according to the analyst. In comparison, 20% to 25% of all U.S. semiconductor companies were acquired in the 2015 and 2016 timeframe, he said.
What about 2018? “We assert many attractive candidates remain, and with the help of our Accretion Index, we highlight several attractive takeout candidates for 2018, including Lattice, IDT, MaxLinear, and Microsemi, whose mantra remains ‘you’re buying till you get bought,’ ” he said, noting that Knowles and MACOM are potential takeover targets.
Tomi Engdahl says:
China, Tesla Will Set Pace of EV Battery Production in 2018
https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/china-tesla-will-set-pace-ev-battery-production-2018/135544123657939?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=2647&elq_cid=876648
Worldwide EV battery production will increase by 45% in 2018, but growth could be better if Tesla’s Model 3 sells in big numbers.
Electric vehicle battery production will rise in 2018, but the degree to which it rises will depend largely on two wild card factors – China and the Tesla Model 3.
If China continues its government push to sell more electric vehicles, and if Tesla climbs out of its so-called “production hell,” the increases could be big. If neither happens, the battery industry will still see a healthy percentage growth, but one based on small overall volumes.
Lux Research, Inc. is predicting that worldwide EV battery production will jump to 35 GWh in 2018, an increase of 45% over 2017. About 87% of that total is expected to come from pure electric cars with big battery packs. The remainder will come from plug-in hybrids, the company said. “2018 is going to be the biggest year ever in terms of plug-in battery demand, as pretty much every year has been,” noted Christopher Robinson, an industry analyst for Lux.
In 2017, China will sell more than twice as many EVs as the US, totaling almost half of all EV sales around the world. And that number could grow in 2018.
“The success of the electric vehicle right now depends on whether you have top-down management or bottom-up management,” Smith said. “In regions where the government can tell you what to do, electric vehicle sales will be better. In regions where the consumer decides, you’re probably going to see a lot slower uptake of electric vehicles.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
A New Memory Contender?
FeFETs are a promising next-gen memory based on well-understood materials.
https://semiengineering.com/a-new-memory-contender/
Momentum is building for a new class of ferroelectric memories that could alter the next-generation memory landscape.
Generally, ferroelectrics are associated with a memory type called ferroelectric RAMs (FRAMs). Rolled out by several vendors in the late 1990s, FRAMs are low-power, nonvolatile devices, but they are also limited to niche applications and unable to scale beyond 130nm.
While FRAMs continue to ship, the industry has also been developing a different memory type called a ferroelectric FET (FeFET).
Still in the R&D stage, a FeFET isn’t a new device, per se.
It sounds like a simple concept, but there are several challenges, such as integration issues, data retention, reliability and cost. “(FeFETs are) promising, but it’s still early,”
Still, FeFETs and related technologies are gaining steam.
3D FeNAND, ferroelectric DRAMs and NC-FETs are still in the early stages of R&D, and it’s too soon to say if these technologies will ever make it into production.
If it flies, the FeFET joins a crowded field in the next-generation memory market. Other new memory types, such as 3D XPoint, Magnetoresistive RAM, ReRAM and even traditional FRAM, are shipping. Potentially, FeFETs will compete with some but not all of these technologies.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Researchers Create Next Generation of High-Performance Lithium-Ion Batteries
https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/50725
Batteries could extend range of electric vehicles and other machines dependent on battery power
Researchers at the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering have developed a technique to create high performance lithium-ion batteries utilizing sulfur and silicon electrodes. The batteries will extend the range of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, while also providing more power with fewer charges to personal electronic devices such as cell phones and laptops.
The findings were published in an article titled, “Advanced Sulfur-Silicon Full Cell Architecture for Lithium Ion Batteries,” in the journal, Nature Scientific Reports.
Silicon is the most promising anode candidate, storing up to 10 times the capacity of graphite anodes. Sulfur is the most promising cathode candidate, with up to six times the capacity of cathodes.
ulfur-silicon lithium-ion full cells, utilizing silicon as the anode and sulfur as the cathode, are one of the highest-capacity potential systems that have been studied. However, the practice of building sulfur-silicon full cells is challenged by the limitations in materials and equipment.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Year’s Resolution: Return to Cyber Security Essentials
http://www.securityweek.com/new-years-resolution-return-cyber-security-essentials
When it Comes to Information Security, 100 Percent Protection is Unattainabl
According to Gartner, worldwide security spending will reach $96 billion in 2018, up 8% from the 2017 spend of $89 billion. Meanwhile we’re experiencing a continuous increase in security incidents, which raises doubts about the effectiveness of these investments. When conducting post-mortem analysis of the data breaches that occurred in 2017, it becomes apparent that many of these big breaches can be attributed to a longstanding failure to implement basic cyber security measures (e.g., multi-factor authentication), botched usage of existing security tools to streamline the mitigation of known vulnerabilities, and lack of security measures for protecting sensitive data.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI Silicon Gets Mixed Report Card
Chips may shift software toward CNNs
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332799
A leading researcher in deep learning praised some of the latest accelerator chips. He also indicated some shortcomings both of the silicon and the software they are supposed to speed up.
The results came, in part, from tests using DeepBench, an open source benchmark for training neural networks using 32-bit floating point math. Baidu, the Google of China, released DeepBench in September 2016 and updated it in June to cover inference jobs and use of 16-bit math.
On some low-level operations such as matrix multiplication, chips with dedicated hardware such as the tensor cores on Nvidia’s Volta GPU can deliver “hundreds of TeraFlops…several factors faster than the previous generation at 5-10 TFlops,” said Greg Daimos, a senior researcher at Baidu’s Silicon Valley AI Lab.
However, some low-level operations “used in real apps don’t have enough [data] locality to get full use of these specialized processors, so we either have to live with moderate speed ups or change the algorithms,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eye-Catching Innovations In Display Subsystems
https://semiengineering.com/eye-catching-innovations-in-display-subsystems/
Prompted by a number of trends, mobile display technologies are now a major selling point for new devices.
prompted by a number of trends:
Virtual reality
VR headsets require displays that are close to the eyes, so to maintain the perceived quality of these images, we need more pixels in the same area. In addition, rates of up to 120 frames per second (fps) are now needed to reduce the overall latency and achieve lower persistence on LCD VR panels.
High Dynamic Range (HDR)
HDR is an essential step on the road to improved picture fidelity.
Multi-window
Multi-window mode, previously the preserve of desktop, allows multiple activities to be seen on the screen, all at the same time. The windows are resizable and reconfigurable depending on limitations defined by both the app and system controls.
Panel variety
The variety of panels and interfaces that need to be supported by display technology continues to grow.
4K120 performance—guaranteed
Premium mobile display requirements are on the rise. 4K+ resolutions and higher frame rates are creating system performance issues, requiring a strong need for an optimized display processor.
Secure, efficient data flow
Ultimately, these new mobile display challenges are really about data management.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How long should T&M gear be supported?
https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/benchtalk/4459570/How-long-should-T-M-gear-be-supported-
Since the MDO4k’s debut, Tek has succeeded it with the “B” & “C” versions. Fortunate owners of those continue to receive updated firmware, but for how much longer?
Having not been on intimate terms with similar gear from manufacturers like R&S, LeCroy, and AgiXXXHPXXXKeysight, I can’t say whether the grass is any greener in those fields. But I can say I’m very disappointed with this state of affairs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building a Power Supply Fit for Industrial Demands
http://www.powerelectronics.com/power-management/building-power-supply-fit-industrial-demands?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20180103_ED-003_873&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=14745&utm_medium=email&elq2=eb08b2b4a72a435da21e2c56f751a6a9
The drive to improve efficiency in low to medium power ac-dc mains power supplies is continuous. To address this, Power Integrations has introduced the InnoSwitch3 range of offline isolated ac-dc switching regulators.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Global semiconductor sector might grow 8% this year
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2018/01/04/2003685129
The global semiconductor industry will likely see its revenue increase by 8 percent this year on the back of increasing shipments of memory chips, statistics released yesterday by trade group SEMI showed.
The global industry last year saw its revenue rise 20 percent annually to more than US$400 billion for the first time in history, the statistics showed.
“We are optimistic about this year’s growth prospects. Revenue growth will range from 4 to 8 percent year-on-year, based on the projected figures we compiled, which is an above-average growth,” Taipei-based SEMI analyst Clerk Tseng
Tomi Engdahl says:
Global smartphone AP shipments to grow 5.1% in 2018, says Digitimes Research
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180104PD205.html
Global smartphone AP shipments are expected to increase 5.1% on year in 2018, with Qualcomm to continue to serve as the top vendor, followed by MediaTek, according to Digitimes Research.
On the other hand, smartphone solutions developed by Apple, Samsung Electronics and HiSilicon Technologies together will account for over 30% of the global smartphone AP shipments in 2018, Digitimes Research estimates.
Qualcomm is expected to see its smartphone AP shipments decline 1.2% in 2018, as in-house developed APs by Apple and Huawei for their own-brand smartphones will continue to squeeze the third-party AP market.
Cortex-A53 will remain the mainstream architecture for smartphone AP in 2018. While 28nm will continue to be the primary process for the production of smartphone APs, the ratios of 7nm, 10nm and 12nm APs in flagship models will increase and the ratios of 14nm and 16nm products will drift downward. With regard to baseband technology, APs supporting 2G and 3G technologies will remain the niche market in 2018.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IEDM 2017 Looks Way Beyond Moore’s Law
https://www.3dincites.com/2018/01/iedm-2017-looks-way-beyond-moores-law/
The International Electronic Device Manufacturing Conference (IEDM) has always focused on device scaling, successfully guiding our industry for several decades along the challenging paths of Moore’s Law and the ITRS Roadmap. Both were primarily focused on digital functions. However, we all must agree that the real world around us is analog. To allow our electronic devices to better assist us in living comfortably in this analog world, we need to enable them to interact with all the analog signals around us. Because of this digital to analog shift in market requirements, the semiconductor industry stopped updating the ITRS roadmap in 2016 and formed a team of industry experts to focus on developing a Heterogeneous Integration Roadmap (HIR).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung topples Intel as semiconductor top dog, but lead ‘literally built on sand’
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/samsung_intel_memory_revenue_gartner_2017/
Gartner beancounters say price rises driven by memory shortages propelled Samsung into the lead based on semiconductor vendor revenue, vaulting past Intel and its CPUs.
Gartner research VP Andrew Norwood said: “The largest memory supplier, Samsung Electronics, gained the most market share and took the No. 1 position from Intel – the first time Intel has been toppled since 1992. Memory accounted for more than two-thirds of all semiconductor revenue growth in 2017, and became the largest semiconductor category.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Chip Sales Continue Rising
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332797
Semiconductor sales continued the upward trend that characterized the market for all of 2017, setting an another all-time sales record in November and putting the industry on a firm track to notch to break the $400 billion mark for the year, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) trade group.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Smartphone Production Projected to Increase 5%
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332801
The global production of smartphones increased 6.5 percent in 2017 to roughly 1.46 billion units as Chinese smartphone brands continued their aggressive push, according to market research firm Trendforce. The firm expects smartphone production to increase by another 5 percent in 2018 to reach 1.53 billion units.
TrendForce (Taipei) also said that smartphone makers will face heavier cost pressure in 2018 as the prices of key components continue to rise.
Growth in 2017 was driven to a large extent by subsidies of monthly 4G fees provided by Chinese telecom operators, according to TrendForce. However, the firm expects the smartphone growth trend in China to plateau in 2018 despite the performance of Chinese brands.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Expanding Ecosystem Drives Auto Chip Gold Rush
What’s behind the buzz, and at which process nodes?
https://semiengineering.com/expanding-ecosystem-drives-auto-chip-gold-rush/
Semiconductor chips designed to support automotive applications have been around for more than 40 years, which is a very long time in the technology business. These chips have been developed by semiconductor integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), which control every step of the design, manufacturing, test, qualification, reliability and quality aspects of these automotive chips.
Special semiconductor processes are necessary to realize some of these chips. For example, a high-voltage process is needed for electronics that must survive a load dump and high-temperature operations inside the engine compartment. In addition, various locations in the chassis require chips that can work reliably up to 150°C ambient temperature (~175°C junction). Classic products include Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs) for high-current switching, engine control units (ECUs) for emission controls, and embedded memory in microcontrollers for anti-lock braking systems (ABS), etc.
So why the hoopla about automotive SoCs in the past two or three years? The reasons are multifaceted and compelling: Tesla and artificial intelligence, vision processing and image recognition, miniaturization of sensors and in-vehicle networking, applications processors and in-vehicle infotainment, and active noise “manipulation” in modern high-end vehicles.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mixed-Signal Issues Worse At 10/7nm
https://semiengineering.com/mixed-signal-issues-worse-at-10-7nm/
Putting as much functionality into digital circuitry helps, but it’s becoming more difficult for these two worlds to exist on a single die at each new node.
Despite increasingly difficulty in scaling digital logic to 10/7nm, not all designs at the leading edge are digital. In fact, there are mixed-signal components in designs at almost all nodes down to 10/7nm.
This may seem surprising because analog scaling has been an issue since about 90nm, but these are not traditional analog components. Analog IP increasingly includes highly integrated, mixed-signal type of circuits, such as PLLs.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Magnetic System Transforms Heat into Motion for Next-Gen Storage, Sensor Devices
https://www.designnews.com/materials-assembly/magnetic-system-transforms-heat-motion-next-gen-storage-sensor-devices/208685611957967?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=2701&elq_cid=876648
Researchers have developed a new material that turns heat into motion in nano-scale systems that has applications for future designs in data storage, medical devices, and sensors.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nmat5007
Tomi Engdahl says:
Demand for IoT Edge Processors Will Continue to Grow in 2018
Factories, farms, and smart homes will all need low-cost MCUs with on-board connectivity.
https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/demand-iot-edge-processors-will-continue-grow-2018/160450071057973?ADTRK=UBM&elq_mid=2701&elq_cid=876648
Microcontrollers (MCUs) will get a fresh look in 2018, as chipmakers meet a growing need for “edge intelligence” on the Internet of Things (IoT).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Startup tapes out MRAM-based MCU demo for IoT
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332803
A semiconductor intellectual-property startup in Grenoble, France, has taped out a magnetoresistive RAM (MRAM)-based microcontroller targeting battery-powered Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices.
The startup, eVaderis, provides CMOS-compatible nonvolatile-memory-based IP products such as memory blocks, logic cells, and memory and processor subsystems. The company says it has successfully demonstrated a fully functioning design platform, including software, system, and memory IP, for an ultralow-power MCU in Beyond Semiconductor’s BA2x product line.
Tomi Engdahl says:
RF/Microwave Industry Trends to Watch in 2018
Here are three areas of note to keep an eye on this year.
http://www.mwrf.com/community/rfmicrowave-industry-trends-watch-2018?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20180104_MWRF-001_542&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=14739&utm_medium=email&elq2=332f7d0a6b3a4b9182b48f9acc88371f
1. Millimeter-Wave Frequencies for Cellular Communications
Millimeter-wave frequencies at 28 and 39 GHz for cellular communications present significant economic and performance challenges for the wireless community.
The critical question for the industry in 2018 is this: Can the transmit/receive modules be monolithically incorporated into the beamformer or transceivers? Or will they need to be in a different technology? The answer will become clear when link budgets, cost, and size tradeoffs are better understood. 5G will elevate the capabilities of the industry to address future needs in communication and other emerging millimeter-wave applications.
2. Making an Impact in 2018 and Beyond
The RF/microwave space was dominated for a long time by simple-function gallium-arsenide (GaAs) heterojunction-bipolar-transistor (HBT) and pseudomorphic-high-electron-mobility-transistor (pHEMT) monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). But the emergence of silicon-germanium (SiGe) and fine-line CMOS quickly displaced many of these functions in the cellular range
3. Defense Electronics Continues to Drive RF/Microwave Growth
One of the key drivers of RF/microwave is the defense electronics sector—and this trend will absolutely continue in 2018.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung’s semiconductor business braces for fiercer competition in 2018
http://www.theinvestor.co.kr/view.php?ud=20180102000867
Kim Ki-nam, chief executive officer of Samsung Electronics’ semiconductor business, is bracing for fiercer competition in the global market for chips this year — a critical time for the industry’s growth.
Cautiously forecasting the chip industry for the next 12 months, Kim said in a short New Year’s message to local media that the industry is in a grave situation, hinting at difficulties in innovating technologies and concerns about a looming oversupply.
“Amid an unprecedented boom, the semiconductor industry is facing a stark reality,” Kim said. “Due to rapidly changing technologies, it is very difficult to predict how the industry landscape will change.”
Market researchers project that the global chip market will continue thriving this year, but the growth pace is expected to slow compared to last year.
According to data from IHS Markit, the world DRAM market expanded by 72 percent to $72.2 billion in 2017 from a year earlier, but it is estimated to be $84.4 billion this year, a 16.9 percent growth from last year.
Samsung’s biggest profit source is dynamic random access memory.
Predicting tightness in supply and demand of DRAM chips due to rising demand from data center businesses, Samsung is currently expanding its DRAM production
Samsung plans to seek innovation in its flagship 3-D NAND flash memory by allocating 60 percent of its annual investment amount for NAND, according to the company’s conference call on its third quarter earnings.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IoT and 5G Test Will Make or Break Leaders
http://www.mwrf.com/test-measurement/iot-and-5g-test-will-make-or-break-leaders?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20171228_MWRF-001_355&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=14695&utm_medium=email&elq2=22b2f9645cf647e9b0762ae4e3c6e767
IoT and 5G test is challenging the status quo for leadership as cost, flexibility, ease of use, performance, and time-to-market acceleration demands increase.
How equipment vendors and users respond to the conflicting dynamics in the next few years will affect who stays at the top of a test and measurement industry that MarketandMarkets expects will grow at a CAGR of 3.55% from $23.51 billion in 2017 to $28.98 billion in 2023. The end applications driving this growth include healthcare, IT and telecommunications, and automotive. However, the specific mix of trends and technologies that are stressing both equipment vendors and users include the Internet of Things (IoT), the accelerating shift to 5G, the massive amount of testing required for “the connected car” and autonomous vehicles.
Further upstream, in the datacenter, where all the generated data eventually comes to rest, they are wrestling with 100- and 400-gigabit-per-second Ethernet (GbE) data transfers and related power integrity, channel characterization, and signaling issues.
Another interesting dynamic from the vendors’ perspective is the consolidation of the semiconductor market, which narrows their potential customer base, and is pushing an emphasis on excelling in manufacturing and production test. All told, the changes and pressures hint at a reshuffling of leaders, with a more flexible approach to test clearly coming to the fore.
Tomi Engdahl says:
eSilicon’s Mike Gianfagna predicts that in 2018 there will be a lot more advanced ASICs targeting high-performance computing, deep learning and 5G infrastructure.
https://semiengineering.com/whats-next/
Tomi Engdahl says:
EUV Lithography Finally Ready for Chip Manufacturing
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/nanotechnology/euv-lithography-finally-ready-for-chip-manufacturing
The laser system takes up 15 to 20 square meters out of perhaps 80 square meters of the floor space required for a single machine.
The giant machine garnering all this attention is an extreme ultraviolet lithography tool. For more than a decade, the semiconductor-manufacturing industry has been alternately hoping EUV can save Moore’s Law and despairing that the technology will never arrive. But it’s finally here, and none too soon.
Samsung was the first to claim it will be ready to produce chips for customers using EUV tools, saying that will happen in the second half of 2018. But its competitors GlobalFoundries, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), and Intel are clearly on track to do the same within a quarter or two.
Intel won’t reveal anything about its road map, saying through a spokesperson, “We are committed to bringing EUV into production as soon as the technology is ready at an effective cost.” But VLSI Research analyst G. Dan Hutcheson points out that Intel has purchased more EUV tools than any other company.
GlobalFoundries, Samsung, and TSMC have been more forthcoming, and they seem to be following the same playbook. They are each introducing EUV in a second iteration of a 7-nanometer manufacturing process—the 7-nm node, as it’s called—which they will have run for as long as a year using the pre-EUV technology.
Today’s state-of-the-art process is called 193-nm immersion lithography. As the name implies, light with a wavelength of 193 nm shines through a patterned surface called a photomask.
The problem is that light can’t directly define features smaller than its own wavelength. And 193 nm is so much longer than the size of the features modern chips need. These days it takes a host of optical tricks and work-arounds to make up the difference. The most costly of these is the use of as many as three or four different photomasks to produce a single pattern on a chip. With today’s most complex processors, that means a wafer could need some 80 trips though the lithography tool.
EUV lithography’s reason for being is that it uses 13.5-nm light, which is much closer to the size of the final features to be printed. With it, manufacturers can turn three or four lithography steps into one. For its 7-nm EUV process, GlobalFoundries will replace 15 steps with just 5.
While that will make the work at 7 nm faster and cheaper, it’s the nodes beyond where EUV will be absolutely crucial. “If you didn’t use EUV for 5 nm, it’d be more than 100 [lithographic steps],” says Patton. “That’d be insane.”
Throughout most of EUV’s history, the main problem has been the light source, and considering its complexity, that’s not surprising. In a vacuum chamber at one end of the machine, microscopic droplets of molten tin are fired in a stream as two laser blasts strike each of them sequentially. The first one hits the droplets so precisely that they flatten into misty discs. The second blasts them with so much power that they become little balls of plasma shining with EUV light.
One source capable of outputting 205 watts of light is ready to ship, and ASML has demonstrated 250 W in the lab. “We are confident that ASML will achieve 250 W in the field in 2018,” says TSMC’s Lin.
Even though most of the light is lost on its multireflector trip through the machine, that wattage will work even for the 5 nm node. But for 3 nm, analysts think that chipmakers will need 500 W, and maybe 1,000 W a couple generations further on for 1 nm.
The EUV tool and its associated drive lasers and other equipment I saw at GlobalFoundries draw about 1 megawatt to ultimately deliver just a few tens of watts of light power to the wafer.
The more serious problem is that there’s still no good way to inspect a photomask for defects.
All chipmakers have right now is a handful of stopgap measures. One is to use existing tools that rely on 193-nm light. But at the 7-nm technology node, using such an outsize wavelength is like trying to read braille with your elbow: It kind of works, but you’ll probably miss something. Electron-beam inspection tools have the resolution but can be slow. ASML shipped its first electron-beam inspection tool recently.
Chipmakers can also use what they call a “print check.” That is, they stick the mask in the EUV lithography tool, producing a patterned silicon wafer, and inspect that wafer itself, a more time-consuming and expensive process than they’d like
Tomi Engdahl says:
Samsung Elec on track for record fourth quarter earnings
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-results-preview/samsung-elec-on-track-for-record-fourth-quarter-earnings-idUSKBN1ET2IQ
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) is expected on Tuesday to forecast a record quarterly profit in the fourth quarter, as a world hungry for processing power and high-tech smartphones snaps up its semiconductors and screens.
While a stronger won and falling NAND chip prices could take some shine off the performance
Tomi Engdahl says:
Fabless IC Company Sales Top $100 Billion for First Time Ever
http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/Fabless-IC-Company-Sales-Top-100-Billion-For-First-Time-Ever/
Two Chinese companies—HiSilicon and Unigroup—are among the top 10 fabless IC sales leaders.
Two China-based fabless companies made the top 10 ranking last year—HiSilicon, which sells most of its devices as internal transfers to smartphone supplier Huawei, and Unigroup, which includes the IC sales of both Spreadtrum and RDA. Fabless company IC sales are estimated to have exceeded $100 billion in 2017, the first time this milestone has been reached.
Top 10:
1. Qualcomm
2. Broadcom Ltd.
3. Nvidia
4. MediaTek
5. Apple (custom ICs from foundaries for internal use)
6. AMD
7. HiSilicon
8. Xilinx
9. Marvell
10. Unigroup (includes Spreadtrum and RDA)
Tomi Engdahl says:
EUV Lithography Finally Ready for Chip Manufacturing
This long-awaited technology will extend the life of Moore’s Law
https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/nanotechnology/euv-lithography-finally-ready-for-chip-manufacturing
Tomi Engdahl says:
Packaging Challenges For 2018
https://semiengineering.com/packaging-challenges-for-2018/
Shortages, pricing pressures, rising investments and more packaging options add up to an interesting year for OSATs.
The outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) industry, which provides third-party packaging and test services, has been consolidating for some time. So while sales rising, the number of companies is falling. In late 2017, for example, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE), the world’s largest OSAT, moved one step closer toward acquiring Siliconware Precision Industries (SPIL), the fourth largest OSAT. In addition, Amkor, JCET and other OSATs recently made acquisitions.
This bodes well for the remaining OSATs, which are coming off a robust year in 2017. The overall outlook for IC packaging is tied to the demand picture in the semiconductor industry. In total, the IC industry is projected to reach $376.9 billion in 2018, up 7.8% over 2017, according to VLSI Research.
That growth will be tempered somewhat, at least for the next few months. Rising demand for chips caused select shortages of manufacturing capacity, various package types, leadframes and equipment. Still, based on the IC forecasts, OSATs are relatively upbeat.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Auto Chip Test Issues Grow
https://semiengineering.com/auto-chip-test-issues-grow/
Semiconductors used in cars have higher quality and reliability requirements than most chips, but they have the same cost and time-to-market pressures.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Advanced Packaging Still Not So Simple
https://semiengineering.com/advanced-packaging-still-not-so-simple/
While different packaging approaches do improve performance with less power, they still require a lot of advanced engineering.
The promise of advanced packaging comes in multiple areas, but no single packaging approach addresses all of them. This is why there is still no clear winner in the packaging world.
There are clear performance benefits, because the distance between two chips in a package can be significantly shorter than the distance that signals have to travel from one side of a die to another. Moreover, with advanced packaging, those signals can be channeled through hundreds or even thousands of through-silicon vias rather than skinny wires that have been shrunk alongside all of the other components in a 10/7nm chip.
By adding an expensive interposer—or a low-cost bridge, which is what a number of vendors are leaning toward—the performance improvements can be sizeable. That affects the power budget, as well, because it takes less energy to drive a signal over shorter distances. Moreover, because there are more and bigger conduits for electrons, that can be accomplished with less resistance over standard copper. This is why most of the 2.5D chip architectures so far are being used in high-performance computing or networking, where the extra design costs are insignificant compared to the overall system.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Getting Serious About Chiplets
Issues involving known good die and test still remain, but this approach is getting a lot of interest.
https://semiengineering.com/getting-serious-about-chiplets/
Demand for increasingly complex computation, more features, lower power, and shorter lifecycles are prompting chipmakers to examine how standardized hard IP can be used to quickly assemble systems for specific applications.
The idea of using chiplets, with or without a package, has been circulating for at least a half-dozen years, and they can trace their origin back to IBM’s packaging scheme in the 1960s. It is now picking up steam, both commercially and for military purposes, as the need for low-cost semi-customized solutions spreads across a number of new market opportunities.
As with any new approach, though, there are technical and ecosystem issues that need to be ironed out. For chiplets, there are several issues. One is how to verify and test the various pieces, both individually and in the context of other chiplets. A second is who takes responsibility for the chiplets once they are manufactured and handed off to the integrator or packaging house, which is the familiar known good die issue. And third, the chiplet approach raises a variety of competitive issues that could well upset the status quo.
“If you look at where things are going, soon it will be down to four or five companies that can even do 7nm design with any expectation of getting it to work and making money,”
As a startup, if I can sell a 100X improvement and still have the underlying performance because I’m smart, whether I implement it in 22nm and give up 30% or 40% performance doesn’t matter. I’m still ahead.
Chiplets potentially can provide that lower cost of entry, particularly at the most advanced nodes where currently there are not a lot of players due to the cost of developing chips. That has garnered a lot of attention lately as these end markets gain footing and new ones spring up.
“The interesting thing with chiplets that’s a bit different from a monolithic device is that you’re packaging up multiple chiplets typically with one ASIC,”
“What you get into with chiplets is that, let’s say every chiplet has 98% yield, which sounds like a high number. But all of a sudden, you put 10 of them sitting next to the ASIC, and the cumulative yield on those 10 chiplets is .98 to the 10th power.
Then, the chiplet and the interface between the ASIC and chiplet must be tested, which is another area of consideration when you’re designing the whole system,
Tomi Engdahl says:
Taking Steps to Boost Power Amp Efficiency
http://www.mwrf.com/components/taking-steps-boost-power-amp-efficiency?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20180109_MWRF-001_537&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=14818&utm_medium=email&elq2=7221f4916b1f44cfbc8a1b9f86c23475
High efficiency in a power amplifier depends on the types of input waveforms to be boosted and typically comes at the cost of other amplifier performance parameters, such as linearity or output power.
Efficiency is often the difference between a power amplifier (PA) being selected or rejected for a particular application. Because higher-power PAs can require large amounts of bias energy to achieve a target output-power level, a difference in efficiency of just a few percent can mean a difference in the size and cost of a power supply for a particular PA. A basic overview of PA efficiency can also help to better understand how that efficiency can impact the overall performance of a system, as well as the performance of other PA parameters (notably linearity).
An amplifier with high efficiency uses power-supply energy more effectively than an amplifier with lower efficiency. At lower efficiency levels, wasted power-supply energy is typically converted into heat at the amplifier’s active devices, which are increasingly gallium-nitride (GaN) transistors for RF/microwave PAs. GaN high-electron-mobility-transistor (HEMT) devices are noteworthy for a number of features that enable high-efficiency PAs at microwave frequencies
Theoretically, the highest efficiency of 100% would result in an amplifier in which all of the applied DC bias energy is converted into the increase in signal waveform power. For a truly linear amplifier, the output signal waveforms would exactly resemble the input signal waveforms, with the increase in power level.
some applied power-supply energy is lost as heat
In addition, amplifier linearity usually suffers as a result of increased efficiency
Over time, many different circuit formats have been developed with one or more active devices in attempts to achieve PAs with high efficiency and linearity, while also delivering as much output power and amplifier signal gain as possible. The circuit formats are known as Class A, B, C, D, E, and F configurations, with different biasing arrangements which provide different combinations of optimized key amplifier parameters.
An ideal Class A amplifier has 50% efficiency when delivering peak envelope power (PEP)
In a Class B amplifier, with as much as 78.5% efficiency at PEP. But it is less linear than a Class A amplifier
A Class AB amplifier combines the two approaches
As a result, it yields efficiency that is between 50% and 78.5% at PEP.
In a Class C amplifier
This biasing scheme results in efficiency that can approach 85%
the linearity suffers. This amplifier class is effective for signals that turn on and off
Class D and E amplifiers use multiple or single transistors, respectively, as switches to produce square-wave output-signal waveforms with high efficiency but poor linearity.
In general, however, most suppliers do provide the amplifier class, typically, with Class A designs meant for high linearity and Class AB, C, or higher meant to provide higher efficiency. Practical performance levels are far from theoretical, with the PAE for many commercial Class AB amplifiers considered good when reaching or exceeding 25%.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Taiwan IC backend service firms to face increasing competition from China in 2018
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20180108PD209.html
While expecting to benefit from increasing demand for IC solutions from the IoT, AI and 5G sectors in 2018, Taiwan-based IC testing and packaging service providers are also expected to face increasing price competition from China-based rivals in the year, according to industry sources.
China-based major OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and test) players, including Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technology (JCET), Tongfu Microelectronics and Tianshui Huatian Electronic Group, have managed to secure IC testing and packaging orders from Taiwan’s IC-design houses due to their competitive pricing, said the sources.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Future Of AI Is In Materials
https://semiengineering.com/the-future-of-ai-is-in-materials/
Why materials engineering is so critical to unlocking artificial intelligence’s commercial value.
Tomi Engdahl says:
New materials for spintronics
The Swiss EPFL Spintronic Research Team uses new materials to further explore the many features of electrons. The researchers measured the quantum properties of electrons in two-dimensional semiconductors at the end of last year. This work in the spintronics industry could one day lead to smaller and less heat-generating circuit structures.
Professor Andras Kisin, a research team at the Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structures (LANES), was able to investigate quantum properties for a two-dimensional semiconductor component called transition metal calcium or TMDC.
Research projects confirm that materials such as graphene, molybdenum (MoS2) and tungsten diseleenide (WSe2) offer – either alone or by combining some of their features – new perspectives on the electronics industry.
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/7369-uusia-materiaaleja-spintroniikkaan
Tomi Engdahl says:
Intel, Micron to Shelve NAND Flash Partnership
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332826
Intel and Micron plan to pull the plug on their long-running partnership around NAND flash memory by early next year, the companies said.
In a joint statement issued Monday (Jan. 8), Intel and Micron said they would “work independently” on future 3D NAND after completing development of their third generation of 3D NAND late this year and into 2019. The companies said they would continue to work together to develop and manufacture 3D XPoint non-volatile memory.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Electronic Design For Reliable Autonomous Driving
Current design processes are not keeping up with the ambitious demands of the automotive industry.
https://semiengineering.com/electronic-design-for-reliable-autonomous-driving/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sockets for High Speed Applications
http://www.ironwoodelectronics.com/products/sockets/silver_button_sockets.cfm?acctid=5311
BGA sockets and QFN sockets using GT contact technology provide >75GHz signal speed in a smallest footprint for prototype and test applications. These sockets support pitches from 0.3mm to 1.27mm. Standard sizes typically ship within 5 days ARO.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Transistor-promo-896896854
Technologies>Power
Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Transistor
http://www.electronicdesign.com/power/celebrating-70th-anniversary-transistor?NL=ED-003&Issue=ED-003_20180112_ED-003_225&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=14905&utm_medium=email&elq2=b2dfafb6a32140809d4e9659a837f2da
We take a look back at a device that overwhelmingly changed the electronics industry and our lives.
As of Dec. 23, 2017, the transistor was officially 70 years old. The invention of the transistor may have been the greatest technology development of the 20th century. It has given us the integrated circuit and its progeny computers, TVs, smartphones, and all the other electronic stuff we use every day. We probably all owe our jobs to the invention of the transistor. So let’s take a moment to think about and celebrate this one monumental discovery.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A New Way to Defrost Food
This novel “smart” solution overcomes the drawbacks associated with traditional methods of defrosting.
http://www.mwrf.com/semiconductors/new-way-defrost-food?NL=MWRF-001&Issue=MWRF-001_20180111_MWRF-001_377&sfvc4enews=42&cl=article_1_b&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=14881&utm_medium=email&elq2=103e2fda165d4c09ab78459db47f0ec3
But using a microwave oven has its drawbacks, as it can result in food with hot and cold spots.
Now there’s another option. NXP Semiconductors believes it has developed a more effective solution for defrosting food—an automated frozen-food defrosting and thawing reference design. Known as the smart defrost solution, it is intended for consumer and commercial applications. In its own words, NXP says it can “enable healthier frozen-food options for consumers without sacrificing convenience.
The smart defrost solution is based on NXP’s LDMOS (laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor) technology. “What we’ve done is taken our solid-state RF power devices and built a solution to create warming energy for food,”
The smart tuning unit (STU) can intelligently adjust operation for properties of the food within the defrost chamber. Electrodes then deliver energy into the defrost cavity, which is a shielded, enclosed space for defrosting frozen food.
NXP asserts that the smart defrost solution offers several benefits. For one, it defrosts food in minutes as opposed to hours. A wide range of RF power levels is available. The defrost solution can also penetrate food without developing hot or cold spots, retaining moisture and food quality. Another benefit is automatic single button operation that can intelligently stop at the targeted temperature.
Tomi Engdahl says:
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Solving smart clothing design challenges with printed flexible sensor technology
https://www.edn.com/design/sensors/4459081/Solving-smart-clothing-design-challenges-with-printed–flexible-sensor-technology-
From fitness trackers and smart watches to virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) headgear, wearable devices now permeate the everyday lives of consumers worldwide. People have come to rely on wearables to monitor their health and well-being, keep them connected to the outside world, and provide endless opportunities for engagement. Analysts predict that the wearable technology market will reach US$51.60 billion by 2022, driven by these consumer preferences for sophisticated gadgets, the growing incorporation of next-generation displays in wearables, and their intersection with the rapidly rising popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT) and other connected devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Beijing issues policy supporting chip industry
http://www.china.org.cn/china/2018-01/11/content_50215331.htm
Beijing’s semiconductor industry is on the rise thanks to the close collaboration of domestic companies and organizations along the whole industry chain as well as the supportive policies of the Chinese capital.
Semiconductor makes the essential components of smartphones and high-resolution TV sets. China sees the industry as one of its strategic industries, while Beijing intends to lend it support as one of the city’s 10 high-end industries. The country currently imports semiconductors worth US$200 billion every year.
Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), the largest chipmaker on the Chinese mainland
NAURA Technology Group, a semiconductor equipment maker, moved to E-Town partly because of the need to have closer collaboration with other enterprises in the industry
Beijing issued a guideline on the development of the semiconductor industry on Dec. 26, 2017, which has encouraged the city’s numerous chip makers.
“As it involves a huge investment, the semiconductor industry across the world requires the guidance and support of government policies,” commented an executive at a chip startup.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is MEMS Packaging and Test the Next Opportunity for OSATs?
https://www.3dincites.com/2018/01/mems-packaging-test-next-opportunity-osats/
More than half of microelectromechanical systems MEMS packaging today is done by outsourced semiconductor and test services providers (OSATs) and Yole Développement (Yole) estimates OSATs’ market share will continue to grow in the next five years. The MEMS volume augmentation, especially for radio frequency (RF) applications, is making the MEMS business more and more attractive for OSATs, which have started to offer a wider range of packaging solutions and tests, accordingly to automotive standards.
In the era of smart devices, sensing is essential as devices become substitutes for human beings. People are surrounded by sensors, relying on them for safety, entertainment, food production, transportation… Whether sensors are used in smartphones, in cars or in aircraft, there are two major challenges beyond their original function: integration and reliability.
MEMS technologies have enabled performant, miniaturized, cost-effective and reliable sensors, some of them withstanding high temperatures and harsh environments. The diversity of MEMS devices and the different technologies involved in their manufacture have led to a complex but sustainable supply chain from design to testing involving foundries, OSATs and MEMS vendors. The MEMS packaging business is organized around five main families: inertial MEMS, environmental MEMS, optical MEMS, acoustic MEMS and RF MEMS.
If the land grid array (LGA) package remains the most commonly used platform, the trend towards sensor fusion and the aggregation of several sensors in one device stresses the interest in using systems-in-package (SiP) and hybrid package platforms alike; like the recent launch from Invensense/TDK of a 7-axis sensor combining accelerometer, gyroscope and pressure sensor.
The market research and strategy consulting company Yole estimates that the MEMS packaging market will grow from a market value of US$2.56 billion in 2016 to US$6.46 billion in 2022 – a 16.7% CAGR over this period, including MEMS-based RF devices
The question remains whether the same trend will be followed in MEMS testing, as tests can represent between 30-90% of final component price depending on the end application.
The automotive market, which is currently undergoing a revolution with the development of smart vehicles, is a playground for sensors vendors but also presents a new challenge. The lifetime of automotive sensors is expected to be 10 years as against three to four years for smartphones. Whilst there can be a trade-off between reliability and cost for infotainment devices in cars, this is not the case for safety devices, which require more testing, burn-in testing and finished package inspection. Equipment suppliers, MEMS and MEMS package designers and OSATs are working closely to enable cost-effective testing solutions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Week In Review: Manufacturing
https://semiengineering.com/the-week-in-review-manufacturing-189/
Intel and Micron have ended their long-running NAND joint development partnership. The companies will continue to develop NAND, but they will work independently on future generations of 3D NAND.
Micron and Intel Announce Update to NAND Memory Joint Development Program
http://investors.micron.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1053616
BOISE, Idaho and SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 08, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Micron and Intel today announced an update to their successful NAND joint development partnership that has helped the companies develop and deliver industry-leading NAND technologies to market.
The announcement involves the companies’ mutual agreement to work independently on future generations of 3D NAND. The companies have agreed to complete development of their third generation of 3D NAND technology, which will be delivered toward the end of this year and extending into early 2019. Beyond that technology node, both companies will develop 3D NAND independently in order to better optimize the technology and products for their individual business needs.
Micron and Intel expect no change in the cadence of their respective 3D NAND technology development of future nodes. The two companies are currently ramping products based on their second generation of 3D NAND (64 layer) technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analog IC Market Forecast With Strongest Annual Growth Through 2022
Power management, signal conversion, and automotive-specific analog markets drive expansion.
http://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/Analog-IC-Market-Forecast-With-Strongest-Annual-Growth-Through-2022/
Sales of analog ICs are expected to show the strongest growth rate among major integrated circuit market categories during the next five years, according to IC Insights’ new 2018 McClean Report, which becomes available this month. The McClean Report forecasts that revenues for analog products—including both general purpose and application-specific devices—will increase by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6% to $74.8 billion in 2022 from $54.5 billion in 2017.
Analog ICs, the fastest growing major product category in the forecast, are a necessity within both very advanced systems and low-budget applications. Components like power management analog devices help regulate power usage to keep devices running cooler and ultimately to help extend battery life in cellphones and other mobile/battery operated systems. The power management market is forecast to grow 8% in 2018 after increasing 12% in 2017.
In 2018, the automotive—application-specific analog market is forecast to increase 15% to be the fastest growing analog IC category, and the third-fastest growing of 33 IC product categories classified by WSTS.
After an extraordinary 58% sales spike in 2017, the memory market is forecast to return to more “normal” growth through the forecast. The memory market is forecast to increase by a CAGR of 5.2% through 2022.
Tomi Engdahl says:
UMC Files Countersuit Against Micron
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332844
United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) said it filed a lawsuit against Micron Technology subsidiaries in China for patent infringements that are part of a growing wrangle related to memory chips.
The countersuit comes nearly a month after Micron filed suit against UMC in the U.S.
As China seeks to establish a domestic semiconductor industry to offset the billions of dollars of chips that it imports annually, legal skirmishes between the U.S. and China have started in the memory segment, where China aims to grab a slice of the business that’s dominated by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron
Tomi Engdahl says:
Analog Seen as Fastest-Growing Chip Segment
https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332848
The analog chip segment, buoyed by expansion in power management and automotive, is expected to be the fastest growing segment of the broader semiconductor market over the next five years, according to market research firm IC Insights.
Sales of analog chips — including both general purpose and application-specific devices — are forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6 percent from 2017 to 2022, rising to $74.8 billion from $54.5 billion, according to the 2018 edition of IC Insights’ annual McClean Report.
The broader IC market is projected to grow at a 5.1 percent CAGR over the same period, according to the report.
Tomi Engdahl says:
End of a chip boom? Memory chip price drop spooks investors
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-chips-outlook-analysis/end-of-a-chip-boom-memory-chip-price-drop-spooks-investors-idUSKBN1F406U
After a blistering year-and-a-half long surge, a sudden drop in some memory prices, followed by Samsung Electronics Co’s disappointing profit estimate, is causing jitters among investors who had bet the chip boom would last at least another year.
Amid news that the market has started losing some steam – prices of high-end flash memory chips, which are widely used in smartphones, dropped nearly 5 percent in the fourth quarter – some analysts now expect the industry’s growth rate will fall by more than half this year to 30 percent.
That led shares in Samsung to dip 7.5 percent last week, while its home rival SK Hynix fell 6.2 percent. But analysts say that there is unlikely to be a sudden crash, and that 2018 should be a relatively stable year for chipmakers.