Silicon Foundries Eye Power Management Arena
By Mark LaPedus, SemiMD senior editor
Leading-edge semiconductor companies tend to grab the headlines, as several high-profile vendors are racing to stay on Moore’s Law.
But another race is quietly taking place in the low-profile power management segment, where many foundry vendors are bringing out their latest 0.18-micron processes for a range of new and fragmented applications. The processes include analog-oriented technologies, bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) schemes, among others.
Power management refers to a broad category of products, chips and processes that address energy efficiency, which is a huge problem today. In just one of a multitude of examples, as much as 10 percent of a residential bill is spent on standby power — or the power used while products are turned off — due to inefficient power supplies and chargers, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). That represents over $5 billion in waste for electricity a year in the United States alone, according to LBNL.
X-Fab CEO Rudi De Winter
For this and other reasons, there is a pressing need for “energy-efficient chips and systems,” said Rudi De Winter, co-chief executive for Germany’s X-Fab Silicon Foundries, a specialty foundry vendor.
Purakh Raj Verma, director of the 200mm business unit technology development at GlobalFoundries Inc., said: “As technological progress continues its frantic pace, a design criterion that has moved to the center of the radar screen is power conservation.”
ADI, IR, Linear, Maxim, On Semi, TI and other analog chip makers have been developing power management ICs for some time. The foundries, including Dongbu, GlobalFoundries, MagnaChip, TowerJazz, TSMC, Vanguard, X-Fab and others, have developed various specialty processes in the arena.
On the manufacturing front, the big development occurred in 2009, when Texas Instruments Inc. opened the world’s first 300mm analog fab. Compared to 200mm plants, the Richardson, Texas-based 300mm fab enables TI to “see cost and margin benefits on its highest-volume analog chips, allowing it to make fatter margins,” said Craig Berger, an analyst with FBR, in a recent report.
On Semi's Hans Stork
Despite the shift to 300mm in the analog world, most analog and power management ICs are still using trailing-edge processes. Most analog fabs are 200mm plants and below.
For most power management applications, “0.35-micron has been the workhorse technology,” said Hans Stork, senior vice president and chief technology officer at On Semiconductor Inc., an analog and mixed-signal chip maker. ”In the next five years, this will move to” smaller geometries.
In any case, power management processes are fast becoming “essential technologies. They allow circuit designers with the option to raise the logic densities,’’ he said.
Andy Brown, vice president of sales for South Korea’s MagnaChip Semiconductor Inc., a company that provides foundry services and standard IC products, said: “ I still have people at 0.6-micron. For us, we’ve been talking to people about 0.18-micron. I don’t see a huge rush to 0.18-micron. There is very little production, but there is some design activity.”
One of the main reasons to stay at mature 0.35-micron processes is clear. “0.35-micron is going to be cheaper,” Brown said. Another reason is that the analog and power portions of a design do not “shrink well” at 0.18-micron, thereby providing a limited benefit, he said.
“The analog piece doesn’t shrink. The power piece doesn’t shrink. (In this case), it makes sense to stay at 0.35-micron,” he said. “But if you have a need for more logic — say some sort of signal processing — then you need to go to 0.18-micron. It depends how much logic you need.”
0.18-micron race
Still, seeking to get a jump on next-generation designs, many foundries are touting their new 0.18-micron power management processes. The latest vendor to jump on the 0.18-micron bandwagon is X-Fab, which has rolled out a modular process that combines digital, analog and high-voltage features with embedded flash.
This 0.18-micron process enables system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices requiring up to 60-Volt operating voltage and 5-Volt power supply to be combined with embedded non-volatile memory. The process requires fewer than 30 mask steps, enabling lower cost products, said Thomas Hartung, vice president of marketing for X-Fab.
The process will enable a new class of voltage regulators and discretes, such as diodes, IGBTs, MOSFETs, rectifiers, and others. The process is also suited for automotive applications.
X-Fab sees two types of applications in the segment: power monitoring and distribution. Power monitoring, including smart meters, power management, lighting control and battery management, falls into the 1.8- to 18-Volt and 5- to 20-Watt range. Power distribution, including power-over-Ethernet, line drivers, motor control, and power management, falls into the 24- to 60-Volt and 50- to 1,000-Watt range.
“We developed the XP018 technology to address what our customers need — a cost-effective way to design smart systems-on-chip that combine the 60V capability with flash-based embedded microcontrollers for the next generation of power management applications,” X-Fab’s De Winter said.
The process topology comes with a wide range of nonvolitle options including poly fuse, OTP, EEPROM and flash, all of which will be available in 2012 for fully qualified PDK support. The XP018 technology is available now for tape-ins, including pre-released IP for the memory options. Full qualification will follow in 2012.
In a separate move, X-Fab recently rolled out XA035, a high-temperature 0.35-micron process that supports operating voltages up to 100-Volt and operating temperatures of 175 degrees Celsius. It is suited for charge balancing applications such as in batteries for hybrid and electric vehicles. All devices in the XA035 process will be delivered in line with the quality standard defined by the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC) AEC-Q100.
Analog and digital worlds enable different apps (Source: X-Fab)
Others are also jumping on the 0.18-micron bandwagon. In August, South Korea’s Dongbu HiTek rolled out two 0.18-micron processes. The HP180 analog CMOS process makes use of active and passive components for use in data converters. The BD180X BCDMOS process supports operating voltages over the 40- to 60-Volt ranges for industrial and automotive uses.
Last month, GlobalFoundries jumped into the market by offering BCDlite, a 0.18-micron foundry technology optimized for automotive applications such as power management devices, audio amplifiers, displays and LED driver integrated circuits.
BCDlite is based on the company’s ultra-low-leakage CMOS process. “It is a cost-effective alternative to the traditional BCD processes,” according to the company. “This cost-effectiveness is derived from its ability to reuse base logic IPs. This reusability results in faster cycle time and facilitates a faster time to silicon for subsequent products.”
It requires fewer mask steps than traditional BCD, and no in-process epitaxial growth, according to the company. It features one-time programmable and multi-time programmable memory solutions.
Tags: Power Management, TSMC
November 7th, 2011 at 7:39 pm
When I glanced at the subject line, my first thoughts were “Oh, they misplaced a decimal point…”, eg they really meant 0.018micron which is 18nm, or perhaps I was reading something that spent 10 years in a time-warp…which was the last time I taped-out a 0.18micron design.
Seriously, though, I’m glad that people still see a long-life in this process space as it doesn’t have all of the ugly problems with leakage and bizarre layout rules that get worse with each generation since 130nm.
We used to joke about IC’s that could plug directly onto the 120VAC mains, but I see it coming, and it’s going to be another revolution in power-saving ideas (goodbye transformers and bulky electrolytics….)