By Mark LaPedus
Qualcomm has the highest market share for baseband solutions in handsets, resulting in a position far out in front of its competitors. ST-Ericsson has strong products on the market with competitive features. But one analyst at ABI Research questions why ST-Ericsson was broken up just as it finally came out with a highly competitive product, which was based on FD-SOI.

The worldwide semiconductor foundry market totaled $34.6 billion in 2012, a 16.2% increase from 2011, according to final results by Gartner. TSMC maintained the No. 1 spot in the rankings in 2012. Strong performance on 32nm yields and the availability of sub-45nm wafer capacity at the Dresden, Germany, fabs allowed GlobalFoundries to advance to the No. 2 position in 2012. UMC‘s market share decreased due to reduced wafer shipments. Driven by the wafers consumed by Apple, Samsung moved up four spots to the No. 5 position with 175.5% growth in 2012.

At this year’s Symposium on VLSI Technology, Intel will report technical details of its embedded DRAM with 22nm technology on bulk silicon wafers. Intel realized a 0.029mm2 DRAM cell capable of meeting >100us retention at 95 C. In the DC-DC converter session, Intel will present a switched capacitor step-down converter designed in a 22nm tri-gate CMOS technology. The VLSI Symposium is slated for June 11–14 in Kyoto, Japan.

At the VLSI event, STMicroelectronics and CEA-LETI will report six transistor SRAM (6T-SRAM) cells for high-density and low-voltage. The technology is fabricated at the 28nm node using FD-SOI technology for the first time.

At the VLSI Symposium, IBM and GlobalFoundries will report a SiGe channel tri-gate pFET with aggressively scaled fin width and gate length dimensions. It is fabricated using SiGe on an insulator substrate. Excellent electrostatic control down to Lg= 18nm and Wfin<18nm has been reported.

At the event, IMEC and GlobalFoundries will present the first demonstration of strained germanium channel pFETs fabricated on SiGe strain relaxed buffers, which is surrounded by STI region. Also, they introduced raised SiGe source/drain structures (Ge concentration= 75%) with an implant-free quantum well, replacement metal-gate process and germanide in contacts to solve void issues.

In addition, STMicrolectronics, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and IBM will report a 64nm pitch BEOL integration and material strategy. A self-aligned-via (SAV) approach was exploited for single pattern via extendibility, enabling via placement at CPP with a single mask.

SEMI reported that for the quarter ending Dec. 31, 2012, the worldwide photovoltaic manufacturing equipment book-to-bill ratio remained well below parity, at 0.45, for the seventh consecutive quarter. Booking levels continue to be low as PV manufacturers grapple with oversupply across the supply chain.

Khaled Juffali Company (KJC), a Saudi Arabian investment company, and Soitec, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to cooperate in driving solar industry growth in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Under the MOU, the two companies will create a joint venture to market and sell concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Hwa Chong Institution emerged as the winner of the Applied Materials Clean Tech Competition in Singapore. The project focused on utilizing calcium carbonate found in clam shells to remove toxic metal ions from waste water.

The separate hardware and software teams in companies are notorious for not being on the same page, thereby putting product development times and cost at risk. Mentor Graphics CEO Walden Rhines outlined some new and practical solutions to the problem.

Mentor Graphics announced the release of the Mentor Embedded Sourcery CodeBench Virtual Edition product, a native software environment for developing embedded systems pre- and post-silicon. The tool provides a tighter connection between hardware and software co-development, but allows software developers to use existing programming tools with extensions.

Cadence announced results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2013. Cadence also completed its previously announced acquisition of Tensilica.

Advantest will acquire W2BI, a provider of system level test automation software focusing on wireless communications.

Shipments of smart glasses may rise to as high 6.6 million units in 2016, up from just 50,000 in 2012, for a total of 9.4 million units for the five-year period, according to an upside forecast from IMS Research.

The worldwide mobile phone market grew 4% year over year in the seasonally slow first quarter of 2013 as smart phones out-shipped feature phones for the first time, according to IDC. Nokia, BlackBerry and HTC have dropped out of the top rankings.

By Mark LaPedus
The next-generation 4G wireless standard known as long-term evolution (LTE) presents some new and difficult design choices for OEMs.

One of the more difficult choices involves the less glamorous, but arguably the most critical part in a handset—the radio-frequency (RF) front-end. Typically, the RF front-end often comes in a module and includes various key components, such as the power amplifier (PA), antenna switch and filter.

The latest RF front-ends are moving towards multi-mode, multi-band PAs, based on the traditional technology for PAs—gallium arsenide (GaAs). The new PAs handle more frequencies, but it’s still difficult to support all 40 LTE bands; the RF front-end would end up being too big and costly. So for practical purposes, a 4G handset generally is configured with a different RF front-end to support various bands in a specific region, a sometimes complex and cumbersome process for OEMs and carriers alike.

But now there are some new options in the mix, which could help solve the band fragmentation problem for LTE and also turn the RF market upside down. One vendor, Peregrine Semiconductor, has been sampling a PA based on a variant of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology called silicon-on-sapphire (SOS).

And looking to accelerate the deployment of LTE, Qualcomm recently unveiled an RF front-end device, based on a mix of bulk CMOS and SOI. Instead of using an RF module, Qualcomm’s solution is housed in a package-on-package (PoP) configuration, enabling OEMs to save board space and re-configure the device more easily for a given region.

Multiple sources indicate that Qualcomm’s RF front-end incorporates the industry’s first multi-band, multi-mode PA based on SOI. Qualcomm declined to comment, saying the company isn’t ready to break out the technologies within the device. But after dissecting Qualcomm’s device, analysts said the part poses as a potential threat to GaAs-based PA suppliers, such as RF Micro Devices, Skyworks, TriQuint and others. “Qualcomm fired the first shot across the bow,” said Eric Higham, an analyst at Strategy Analytics, a research firm. “The subsystem consists of an antenna tuning IC, an envelope tracking (ET) IC for Qualcomm’s PA and a multi-mode, multi-band CMOS PA fabricated using a silicon-on-insulator substrate.”

Christopher Taylor, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, added: “This does not mean the death of GaAs, but the Qualcomm announcement undoubtedly signals faster acceptance of CMOS PAs. To stay competitive, GaAs PA suppliers will have to continue to innovate, and they may also need to offer their own CMOS PAs for the most cost-sensitive phones, as Skyworks and RFMD have already done.”

All told, there are some dramatic changes taking place in the RF front-end, where CMOS, SOI, and SOS are making inroads at the expense of GaAs. “GaAs has been displaced by SOI in the switch,” said Rodd Novak, chief marketing officer of Peregrine. “The PA is the next thing to conquer. The stranglehold that GaAs has on the power amp will start to erode.”

RF complexities for LTE
The stakes are high in the RF front-end, a $5 billion business, according to Strategy Analytics. The big market is LTE, a technology that boasts data rates of up to 100 megabits per second, which is up to 10 times faster than 3G. In total, there were 88 million connections on LTE networks in 2012, but this number is projected to jump to 322 million in 2013 and 1.6 billion by 2017, according to the firm.

LTE could grow even faster, but in many respects the technology is being held back amid a slew of challenges, namely the band-fragmentation problem. Today, there are four frequency bands in 2G cellular networks and five for 3G. “Right now, there are about 40 cellular LTE bands in total when you add 2G, 3G and 4G worldwide,” said Peter Carson, senior director of marketing for Qualcomm. “And so the challenge in terms of getting to scale in an LTE device, meaning the ability to design one device and be able to ship it anywhere, is really a function of how many bands you have in LTE.”

The problem is that many countries support their own LTE frequencies, making it difficult for handsets to provide coverage for all 40 bands. “Each country has its own frequency challenges,” said Shane Smith, vice president of mobile devices global marketing at TriQuint. “So, you are dealing with multiple bands in each country at a 3G level. This proliferates in LTE. And then with global roaming, (the bands) can’t interfere with each other. And that’s where the RF complexity is significant.”

In another example of the complexities, AT&T uses Band 17 and bought some spectrum in Band 4 for LTE. Technically, the two bands are not contiguous. But AT&T has implemented carrier aggregation techniques to make them look contiguous. “That’s the benefit and advantage of carrier aggregation, but that causes the RF architecture to change (to meet) that new requirement,” Smith said.

Generally, the 2G and 3G cell phone is relatively simple. Chipmakers ship an RF front-end, which includes a discrete PA that would support a particular band. In contrast, OEMs face some difficult choices with LTE. In theory, OEMs could build a “universal” handset that could support all LTE bands, but that could be large and expensive due in part to the RF content, screen size and other features. “You would be paying a lot of extra cost for bands that may or may not be used,” Smith said.

In a more practical scenario, OEMs can develop “regional” phones that support limited bands in a given region. But still, the question is how much RF content does a “regional” handset require? It depends on the type of handset and price point. As a rule of thumb, Smith draws the line at four bands. A handset that requires four or more bands may need multi-mode, multi-band PAs, while cheaper discrete PAs are suitable for a phone with anything less than that.

“Of all the smartphones shipped this year, the average band count is actually still less than four. Some 60% to 70% of the market would probably lean towards a more discrete solution, whether that is a discrete PA or putting two power amps in one package,” he said. “Some 30% to 40% of the market would take advantage of multi-mode, multi-band PAs. The ones shipping today would probably (support) six to seven bands. Then, on top of that, they also have discrete PAs, which can be populated or de-populated depending on the region they want to support.”

OEMs face other complex choices. To date, the PA has been dominated by GaAs. Now there are some new and emerging PAs based on CMOS, SOI and SOS, all of which promise to provide more integration and have lower power than GaAs. What’s next? “The RF antenna switch is moving from III-V materials to SOI,” said Paul Boudre, chief operating officer at Soitec. “GaAs pHEMT will not disappear, but it will remain for more specific devices.”

Soitec sees a surge in its RF business, where the company develops substrates based on bonded silicon-on-sapphire (BSOS) and high-resistivity SOI. “Our technologies’ market penetration in smartphones and other RF-based communication devices proves that our engineered substrates are competitive,” Boudre said.

GaAs is still a better solution for the PA, TriQuint’s Smith contends, but SOI still has its place. “All of the traditional RF manufacturers have SOI designers and are making many of our switches in SOI,” Smith said.  “SOI has better insertion loss and some natural linearity aspects due to the materials that GaAs pHEMT switches could not meet very easily. The SOI performance actually meets or exceeds (GaAs pHEMT). And there is a cost advantage.’’

The new contender

Leveraging the benefits of bulk CMOS and SOI, Qualcomm recently rolled out the RF360, a front-end solution that combines a PA, antenna switch, antenna matching tuner and an envelope power tracker. Supporting all seven cellular modes, the RF360 also works in conjunction with Qualcomm’s digital cell-phone chipsets.

Qualcomm integrated the PA and antenna switch into one device. “What we tried to solve here is what we call the LTE band fragmentation problem,” Qualcomm’s Carson said. “The integration of the PA and antenna switch frees up the board area so you can have enough space for the filters, duplexers and additional switches to support roaming bands, and have a single design that can be shipped to any market.”

Another key is that the device comes in a PoP package, which cuts board space by 50%. “It allows (OEMs) to have a faster development cycle,” added Steve Brown, senior director of product management at Qualcomm. “By just changing the top of the PoP package, you can actually have a different set of characteristics in bands for a given region and phone.”

The RF360 is based on both CMOS and SOI. “It’s a mix-and-match of SOI and CMOS,” Brown said. “What we’ve done is look at each of the various areas and look at the best way to get to the highest levels of integration.”

For PAs, many argue that GaAs has a huge power-added-efficiency (PAE) advantage over CMOS. Brown dismissed that notion, saying CMOS and SOI are indeed ready for LTE. “You can actually use CMOS for very complicated RF front-end solutions. For example, we have a GSM, UMTS, CDMA and LTE front-end all on one piece of silicon,” he said.

Another key to Qualcomm’s PA is a technology called envelope tracking. In this approach, the voltage is constantly adjusted to make sure the PA is operating at peak efficiency. “PA efficiency is a challenge,” Carson said. “You don’t want to waste power and generate heat. Those two things are critical to smartphone design because you want to preserve battery life. If you don’t do something like envelope tracking, you actually waste power.”

Qualcomm’s rivals are keeping a close eye on the company’s new RF solution. “Do I think it’s a competitive threat long term? Sure,” said TriQuint’s Smith. “But I also think the CMOS solutions are not superior in performance to GaAs (for the PA).”

Qualcomm already dominates the cell-phone chipset business. Many OEMs may want to differentiate their RF front-ends and not get locked into using both Qualcomm’s chipset and RF solution, Peregrine’s Novak said. In any case, Qualcomm’s solution is a step towards bringing out the long-awaited single-chip, monolithic RF front-end. But it’s unlikely that OEMs will see a single-chip RF solution anytime soon due to cost. “The RF architectures are also changing so quickly,” Novak added.

By Mark LaPedus
New research reveals that 53% of office workers with computers are opting to either fix their own computer problems, or ask a co-worker or someone else for help, instead of relying on an IT professional/helpdesk. The nationwide survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of Crucial.com, also revealed that 29% of office computer users cite computer problems (lost files, slowness, crashes, etc.) as the top reason for reduced productivity in the office. Office computer problems trumped co-workers (25%), workload (22%), management (22%) and customers/clients/vendors (15%) when it comes to negatively affecting worker productivity in the office.

Big banks may be considered too big to fail, but their size and operational complexity create performance drags that could also make them too big to succeed, according to Gartner. Bank CIOs and COOs must innovate in IT and operations to negate a problem Gartner has identified as the “law of diminishing IT returns.”

Intel announced its annual equipment and materials supplier awards. The awards provide an insight regarding the fab suppliers at Intel, which normally declines to comment about the identity of its vendors. The winners are interesting, but it’s even more interesting to see which vendors failed to make the list. Meanwhile, Intel announced the eight winners of the company’s most prestigious award for equipment and materials suppliers, the Supplier Continuous Quality Improvement (SCQI) award. In addition, Intel announced that 17 equipment and materials companies will receive the 2012 Intel Preferred Quality Supplier (PQS) award.

DARPA has achieved world record power output levels using silicon-based technologies for millimeter-wave power amplifiers. The power amp was based on a multiple-stacked, 45nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) CMOS device.

Electronic components distributor Digi-Key announced the signing of a global distribution agreement with Adesto Technologies, a developer of nonvolatile memory chips. One of Adesto’s investors is Applied Ventures, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials.

The global semiconductor materials market decreased 2% in 2012 compared to 2011, while worldwide semiconductor revenues declined 3%, according to SEMI.

For the Southeast Asia region, SEMI expects to see capital equipment investment to bottom out in the first half of 2013 and a mild pickup in the second half followed by a strong recovery in 2014. Overall front-end fab equipment spending is expected to double next year from $810 million in 2013 to $1.62 billion in 2014, according to SEMI.

Mentor Graphics announced various hardware and software solutions to accelerate the verification of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) second-generation (Gen 2) products. Using the Mentor verification solutions, designers can test their SAS Gen2 devices integrated on their SoC designs, and develop and test their software drivers and applications prior to silicon being available.

Entegris, a supplier of contamination control and materials handling solutions, has acquired the assets of Jetalon Solutions, a California-based supplier of fluid metrology products.

Avago announced the execution of a definitive agreement to acquire CyOptics, a supplier of indium phosphide (InP) optical chip and component technologies for the data communications and telecommunications markets, for an aggregate acquisition price of approximately $400 million in cash.

2012 was a miserable year for the semiconductor market, with only 8 of the top 25 chipmakers managing to eke out revenue growth. Among the top 25 suppliers, the only companies to expand revenue in 2012 were No. 2 Samsung, No. 3 Qualcomm, No. 9 Broadcom, No. 11 Sony, No. 14 NXP, No.15 nVidia, No.18 MediaTek and No. 24 LSI.

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 79.2 million units in the first quarter of 2013, a 11.2% decline from the first quarter of 2012, according to preliminary results by Gartner. Global PC shipments went below 80 million units for the first time since the second quarter of 2009.

3D printing, touted as an enabling platform for applications ranging from personalized medicine to personal drones, will grow to an $8.4 billion market in 2025, up from $777 million in 2012. However, consumer applications will have limited upside, according to Lux Research, while industrial uses generate the most value.

By Mark LaPedus
What impact will Intel have on the overall foundry business? In a research note, Weston Twigg, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, said: “Competition between Intel and the foundries, and the foundries and each other, should force high spending at the leading edge over the next two to three years. We remain bullish on equipment demand as long as Intel continues to play an aggressive role in the x86 versus ARM battle and its new foundry effort. We believe Intel is attempting to exploit its manufacturing technology advantage, which should pressure rivals TSMC and Samsung to maintain aggressive node transition plans.”

Staying in the leading-edge process technology race requires deep pockets. At 20nm and beyond, chipmakers will have to raise the CapEx ante to stay in the race. “Capital and production costs are rising faster than historic levels as logic and foundry producers migrate to 20nm and below,” Twigg said. “We expect equipment costs to rise 25% at the 22nm node and 28% at the 14nm node. New gate technologies, along with multiple-patterning steps and pitch-splitting techniques, are driving costs higher.”

GlobalFoundries has announced several milestones in the 2.5D/3D chip arena—a series of events that brings the technology one step closer to mass production.

In coordination with the National Academy of Sciences, GlobalFoundries helped host a conference titled, “New York’s Nanotechnology Model: Building the Innovation Economy” at the Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, N.Y.

Fabless ASIC house Socle Technology named Michael Noonen as its new chairman. Noonen is still the executive vice president of global sales and marketing at GlobalFoundries, which is an investor in Socle.

The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) said that the ESD Working Group of the OpenPDK Coalition has released an ESD Protection Design Flow Methodology. The ESD Working Group that developed this document included representatives from IBM, Intel, GlobalFoundries, NXP, Samsung, and STMicroelectronics.

Mentor Graphics announced availability of a comprehensive IP-to-system, UPF-based low-power verification flow.

ARM and Cadence disclosed the details behind their collaboration to implement the first ARM Cortex-A57 processor on TSMC’s 16nm finFET process.

Peregrine Semiconductor said that its UltraCMOS phase locked loop (PLL) frequency synthesizer and prescaler devices are designed into six Globalstar mobile communication satellites that were launched into orbit in February. UltraCMOS is an advanced RF silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) process.

Randhir Thakur, executive vice president and general manager of the Silicon Systems Group at Applied Materials, has been named a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

Sematech executive Raj Jammy has joined Intermolecular as senior vice president and general manager of the semiconductor group.

RF Micro Devices announced the appointment of James Clifford, a former executive at Qualcomm, as vice president of foundry services.

More than one quarter of installed wafer capacity worldwide is dedicated to producing IC devices using process geometries smaller than 40nm, according to IC Insights.

In 2012, Intel retained the No. 1 market share position for the 21st year in a row, according to Gartner. Qualcomm climbed from No. 6 in 2011 to No. 3, and now trails only Intel and Samsung. Texas Instruments retained its fourth-place ranking, although Toshiba slipped to fifth place.

By Mark LaPedus
Has Apple finally hit the wall after years of sizzling growth? “Relatively soft sales of large-format iPads and iPhones are likely to drive FQ2 revenue to $41.1 billion and FQ3 revenue to $33.5 billion, both of which are below the Street estimates of $42.8 billion and $40.0 billion, respectively,” according to a research note from Pacific Crest Securities. “Among them, we consider the reduction to our large-format iPad estimates to be the most significant, as this appears likely to be a sustained trend as tablet demand shifts to smaller and less expensive models. The shifts to our iPhone estimates are largely related to the product cycle, which we consider to be a transitory issue. However, we continue to believe sell-through evidence supports our view that the high end of the smartphone market is quickly becoming saturated.”

The semiconductor equipment market continues to consolidate. Hitachi High-Technologies has completed its acquisition of SII NanoTechnology from Seiko Instruments. SII, a supplier of photomask repair tools, has been placed into a new subsidiary called Hitachi High-Tech Science. The move also propels Hitachi High-Tech into the mask repair equipment business.

The European Commission is funding yet another 450mm program. The project, called Enable450, includes Intel and fab tool vendors. It is aimed at 450mm wafer processing, specifically targeting European material and equipment companies. The group also consists of U.S. tool vendors, as well. ASM International is the coordinator of the group. Other members are Applied Materials Israel, ASML, CEA-LETI, Fraunhofer, Future Horizons, IMEC, RECIF, SEMI, Soitec, among others. At present, there is no news to report beyond the formation of this group. Stay tuned.

IC Insights has released its top-50 semiconductor supplier rankings. In the rankings, Qualcomm registered a 34% surge in sales and moved up three positions to replace TI as the fourth-largest semiconductor supplier in 2012. GlobalFoundries registered better than 30% growth last year, moving from 21st place in the rankings in 2011 to 15th last year.

Taiwan DRAM maker ProMOS Technologies has agreed to sell its 300mm wafer fab and equipment to GlobalFoundries, according to Reuters.

Peregrine Semiconductor has filed a new suit, alleging the infringement of its RF silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology by RF Micro Devices. This new legal action is in addition to an existing suit filed by Peregrine against RFMD in February 2012. That case is still pending.

In a blog, Applied Materials’ venture capital arm discusses the lessons it has learned to ensure the mutual success of a startup company and a corporate investor.

In another blog, Applied Materials talks about the evolution of the semiconductor service model. Instead of just repairing the equipment as in the past model, the new idea is to make fab tools work better, with higher output and lower cost of ownership.

SEMI Europe honored four industry leaders for their accomplishments in developing standards for the photovoltaics (PV) industry. The SEMI Standards awards were recently announced at the SEMI PV Fab Manager Forum 2013.

Why is there a need for “best practices” in mixed-signal SoC verification, and what are some of those practices? Cadence provides some insights in a video.

Mentor Graphics said that its FloEFD computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation solution helped Skeleton Bobsleigh World Championship winner Shelley Rudman of Great Britain to her first world championship win on Feb. 1 in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Analog Devices announced that CEO Jerald Fishman passed away suddenly from an apparent heart attack. ADI President Vincent Roche has been appointed CEO on an interim basis by ADI’s board. In a research note, Doug Freedman, an analyst with RBC, said: ”If Jerry Fishman did not touch your life personally, his work and that of ADI have surely touched your life. I had the pleasure of competing against ADI for 12 years, and writing investment research about ADI for another 11 years. While Jerry was given a great company to run he did so much more than could be expected. ADI has been the envy of the analog IC industry for as long as I can remember. In Silicon Valley, we watched ADI build and maintain a data convertor and amplifier franchise that is unmatched in our industry. All the while, competitors tried extremely hard to take away the market share ADI had, and at every turn Jerry, and his east coast based team, turned away the efforts from Silicon Valley and Texas. In one instance, a competitor hired a team of engineers away from ADI and was able to get a foot hold into a market. Jerry fought back and won, not just in the market but in the courts having found patents that were violated. The far reaching impact of Jerry and the work at ADI is being felt in the areas of driver safety, medical imaging, and mobile communication (none of which would be as advanced as they are today without Jerry and his team of analog engineers). In recent years he had turned his attention on making the best better, not just technically but financially. The path he sought was always clear and easy to see, for all those that wished to follow him. I always enjoyed my interactions with him and will miss his conviction, thoughts and guidance. Jerry, Your legacy lives on in your family and ADI.”

China’s move to corner the market for rare-earth minerals (REMs) has prompted manufacturers of low-voltage industrial motors to adopt alternative technologies that reduce or eliminate the use of these materials, spurring new growth in the motors market, according to IHS.

By Mark LaPedus
Altera has entered into an agreement for the future manufacturing of its FPGAs based on Intel’s 14nm tri-gate transistor technology. Intel will provide foundry services for the FPGA giant. That puts the processor giant on a collision course in the foundry business against the likes of GlobalFoundries, Samsung, TSMC and UMC

The Altera-Intel deal could change the landscape in the foundry business, in which Intel will likely become a much bigger player in the arena. But does Intel have staying power to remain in the foundry business? Added John Vinh, an analyst from Pacific Crest Securities: Altera’s “foundry agreement with Intel is exclusive for the foreseeable future. We believe Altera will have exclusive access versus Xilinx at 14nm and effectively have the right of first refusal at 10nm. Strategically, we believe this is likely the most significant aspect of this agreement in that it prevents Xilinx from having access.”

At SPIE, ASML Holding disclosed various milestones with its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. ASML’s EUV production tool, dubbed the NXE:3300B, has demonstrated resolutions of 13nm for lines and spaces and 18nm contact holes. In addition, ASML demonstrated a 40-Watt source with dose control and under good collector protection conditions in six 1-hour runs. It also demonstrated a 55-Watt source in a 1 hour run. But that’s a far cry from the eventual goal. By 2015, ASML hopes to deliver a 250-Watt source for the NXE:3300B, thereby enabling a throughput of 126 wafers an hour.

With the help of self-aligned double patterning (SADP), sometimes called spacer, ASML’s NXE:3300B also demonstrated the ability to print lines and spaces down to 9nm. The work was done in conjunction with ASML, Applied Materials and Imec.

At the International Semiconductor Strategy Symposium in Europe (ISS Europe) on Feb. 24-26, the European semiconductor industry discussed 450mm fabs and other chip topics. In addition, European Commissioner Neelie Kroes floated the idea of creating an “Airbus for chips,” a European initiative for the semiconductor industry comparable to the launch of the Airbus in the aviation industry.

Also at ISS Europe, Malcolm Penn, chairman and CEO of Future Horizons, said that the decline of the major European chip makers has been a result of a defeatist attitude, not necessarily fundamental structural issues. He suggests European chip makers should build a 450mm fab jointly and operate it as a foundry.

SEMI has announced the release of “Global Trade War and Peace: Unified Approaches to a Global Solar Energy Solution,” a white paper containing recommendations to move beyond trade litigation and encourage an accelerated path towards dispute resolution.

In case your calendar has turned into a blur, take note: Semicon is near! SEMI, in collaboration with leading investment groups, has announced the Silicon Innovation Forum (SIF). The forum will bridge funding gaps for new and early-stage companies with manufacturing and technology solutions. SIF will be held in conjunction with Semicon West, on July 9 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Peregrine Semiconductor rolled out its latest version of its UltraCMOS process technology, dubbed Semiconductor Technology Platform 8 (STeP8). UltraCMOS is a variant of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology called silicon-on-sapphire (SoS).

Also in Spain, Skyworks Solutions said it is ramping several antenna-tuning products with leading smartphone manufacturers. The tuning devices are based on SOI technology.

The RATP Group, the fifth-largest urban transport operator worldwide, has awarded Soitec and Philips/Step an LED lighting contract for its metro and network stations.

Soitec and Medina College of Technology have signed a cooperative agreement for concentrating photovoltaic technology in Saudi Arabia.

GT Advanced Technologies has entered into a development and licensing agreement with Soitec to develop and commercialize a hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) system for producing GaN template substrates.

Mentor Graphics announced record financial results for the company’s fiscal fourth quarter and year ended Jan. 31.

During a conference call, Walden Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor, said the quarter was an all-time revenue and EPS record. Rhines also has a mixed forecast for the overall IC industry in 2013. “For next year, the analysts project mid-single-digit growth, but the general attitude is less positive,” he said.

Mentor Graphics rolled out the Kronos Cell Characterization and Analysis platform.

A blogger discusses Applied Materials, saying the company is at the cyclical trough and its prospects should improve with an increase in equipment spending.

Applied Materials announced that Bob Halliday has been named senior vice president and chief financial officer. Halliday previously was executive vice president and chief financial officer of Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates prior to Applied’s acquisition of the company in November 2011.

Micron Technology announced the Tokyo District Court’s issuance of an order approving Elpida’s plan of reorganization. Elpida’s plan of reorganization calls for Micron to acquire Elpida. In addition, mixed-signal foundry specialist LFoundry has acquired Micron’s fab in Italy.

Whatever happened to Conexant Systems? The chipmaker recently went private to avoid a takeover. Now, the company this week implemented a restructuring agreement. As part of the plan, Conexant voluntarily filed protection under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code.

Photomask maker Photronics has announced its intent to acquire the shares of its majority-owned Taiwan subsidiary, PSMC.

After a loss and a proxy battle, Aetrium is considering options that may include a sale or other disposition of one or both of its reliability test and test handler product groups.

According to IHS, the competitive landscape of the cell-phone integrated circuits business has completely transformed over the past five years, with Qualcomm and Samsung capitalizing on the rise of smartphones and 4G.

By Mark LaPedus
Is China set to bail out a U.S. government technology darling? Two Chinese automotive companies, Geely and Dongfeng Motor, are reported to have bid between $200 million and $350 million for a majority stake in Fisker, the maker of plug-in hybrid cars. If that happens Fisker—which has $192 million in U.S. federal government loan guarantees—could be headed to China, according to Lux Research.

Over the years, Apple has moved deeper into IC design. In an e-mail newsletter, Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, indicated that Apple could be expanding its efforts in wireless ICs, a move that might impact Broadcom, Qualcomm and others. “There is a rumor published in Israel that Apple will be designing its own baseband and Wi-Fi chips,” Strauss said. “When Texas Instruments dropped out of the cell-phone business, within a week about 100 of the former TI engineers in Israel were hired by Apple. Of course, Apple once hired a bunch of former VLSI Technology wireless engineers, but I understand that that operation came to naught. So, maybe Apple just wanted more engineering talent.”

In a separate research note, Doug Freedman, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said: “After talks with management dating back from CES to today (Feb. 25), we believe that Intel is becoming increasingly closer to inking a material foundry design win(s).” Intel is in consideration to be a potential foundry partner for Apple. “Intel’s foundry aspirations may come to light soon,” he said. Apple is also supposedly doing a 20nm foundry deal with TSMC.

Taking the process technology lead in the FPGA market, Achronix Semiconductor is shipping the first in a family of devices based on Intel’s 22nm finFET technology. Achronix’ FPGAs are built using Intel’s foundry services. Achronix says that it has a two- to three-year lead over Altera and Xilinx, which are still shipping 28nm planar devices. The event has prompted two questions. First, will Altera and Xilinx turn up the heat on their FPGA foundry partner, TSMC, to accelerate its finFET efforts? Or second, will Altera and Xilinx turn to Intel over time?

CEA-Leti will coordinate a four-year project aimed at building a European-based supply chain in silicon photonics and speeding up the industrialization of the technology. Mentor Graphics, PhoeniX BV and Si2 will work together to develop a common reference platform. STMicroelectronics, Tyndall-UCC, Aifotec and others are also part of the group.

Mentor Graphics has expanded its automotive business unit by purchasing certain assets from MontaVista. This establishes Mentor as a bigger commercial provider of Linux-based automotive in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) solutions.

Mentor announced the 10.2 release of the Questa functional verification platform. In addition, Tesla Motors has standardized on Mentor’s Capital toolset for 12-volt electrical systems design.

With FD-SOI, STMicroelectronics said that application processors manufactured at its fab are capable of operating at 3 GHz.

Soitec and Sumitomo Electric have signed a licensing and technology-transfer agreement. Sumitomo will use Soitec’s Smart Cut technology to manufacture engineered gallium nitride (GaN) substrates. GaN substrates are used in high-performance light-emitting diode (LED) lighting applications.

GlobalFoundries announced enhancements to its 55nm Low-Power Enhanced (LPe) process technology platform. The so-called 55nm LPe 1V has been qualified with next-generation memory and logic IP solutions from ARM.

Are happy days here again for fab tool vendors? The book-to-bill ratio is above parity for the first time in recent memory. North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 1.14 in January, according to SEMI. This compares to a ratio of 0.92 in December.

Intersil cut its global work force by approximately 18%. This comes on the heels of the resignation of the company’s CEO.

Sony introduced the PlayStation 4, which is based on AMD’s single-chip, eight-core custom processor. The x86 processor, dubbed Jaguar, is a 28nm device built by TSMC.

Five IC suppliers are expected to hold one-third of 300mm wafer capacity in 2013, according to IC Insights. Samsung was by far the leader in 2012, having about 61% more 300mm capacity than second-place SK Hynix. Intel was the only other company that held a double-digit share of 300mm capacity at the end of 2012.

Qualcomm dominated the LTE cell-phone modem market with a staggering 86% share in 2012, according to Forward Concepts. In total, Qualcomm shipped 47 million FDD-LTE cell-phone modems last year. Samsung followed with 9% of the shipments in 2012, while GCT Semiconductor managed to grab 3% of the market, primarily through LG handsets, according to the firm. Renesas Mobile and Nvidia-Icera each garnered 1% market shares.

The number of China Mobile 4G subscribers is forecast to reach 228.8 million in 2017, representing 52 percent of China’s 439.9 million total 4G users, according to IHS. In comparison, 4G users from China Unicom and China Telecom, the country’s two other major telecommunications operators, will number 114.4 million and 96.8 million, respectively.

By Mark LaPedus

The recent Nano Job Fair in New York exceeded the 800 registrant capacity. Due to the overwhelming response, and the need to fill an additional 300 jobs, another job fair will be scheduled in the next few months. The fair itself filled more than 300 current and future openings at the CNSE, including positions with the Global 450mm Wafer Consortium (G450C).

China’s transition from a low-cost manufacturing hub to an innovation hotspot with growing foreign ambitions represents both a threat and an opportunity, according to Lux Research. Foreign acquisitions worth $28 billion are just the beginning of China’s global ambitions, according to the firm.

The Chinese IC market is forecast to have a 2012 to 2017 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13%, five points higher than the 8% CAGR forecast for the total IC market during this same time period, according to IC Insights. By 2017, China is expected to represent 38% of the worldwide IC market, up from 23% in 2007, according to the firm.

Skyworks announced its results for the quarter. The company has also garnered some RF antenna tuning design wins, some of which are based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology, said David Aldrich, president and CEO of the RF chip maker, on the Seeking Alpha Web site.

STMicroelectronics announced its results for the quarter. During a conference call, Carlo Bozotti, president and CEO of ST, said the company is developing ASICs for various applications using FD-SOI technology. ST also is looking at strategic options for ST-Ericsson, the cell-phone chip venture with Ericsson, he said. The venture recently rolled out a chip based on FD-SOI.

Following the announcement of STMicroelectronics’ intention to exit as a shareholder of ST-Ericsson, Ericsson is also exploring various strategic options for the venture.

Kilopass, a provider of semiconductor intellectual property (IP), will demonstrate its one-time programmable (OTP) memory IP on IBM’s 45nm, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology at the Common Platform Technology Forum. The event, which is on Feb. 5, will take place in Santa Clara, Calif.

Mentor Graphics announced the latest release of its HyperLynx product for superior high-speed design and analysis.

Chipmakers must explore, and embrace, new design methodologies to cut costs and boost cycle times. One way to bolster the design flow is to rethink the register-transfer level (RTL) synthesis process.

Applied Materials said that George Davis, executive vice president and chief financial officer, will depart the company effective March 8. The company expects to name a successor in the coming weeks. Davis will become CFO for Qualcomm.

SEMI and the U.S. Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium (PVMC) announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to enhance their cooperation in the areas of standards and roadmap activities for the solar thin film industry.

Renesas continues to cut costs. The company has sold its backend operations to J-Devices.

American Semiconductor has a process that transforms standard silicon wafers into flexible wafers. The technology is now available on TowerJazz’ CMOS foundry process.

Worldwide tablet shipments outpaced predictions, reaching a record total of 52.5 million units worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to IDC. Samsung is gaining ground on Apple, according to the firm.

VLSI Research says the IC industry will grow 10.1% in 2013. “We expect (the IC industry) to be an ASP-driven upturn,” according to the firm. “Even though the Chinese New Year is still weeks away, chipmakers are becoming more optimistic about 2013. This is driven in part by a modest improvement that is taking place at the macro level. The visibility for the U.S. economy has improved considerably. China’s macro data has also been positive and the European debt crisis appears to be fading.”

Chip inventory held by semiconductor suppliers reached alarmingly high levels in the third quarter of 2012 amid weak market conditions, according to IHS iSuppli.

By Mark LaPedus
The rapid shift towards smartphones and tablets is driving the need for new and low-power chips at finer geometries.

Today, the latest application processors, integrated basebands and other digital cell-phone chips are 28nm planar devices. And it won’t be long before OEMs incorporate 20nm planar and finFET devices in their systems as a means to reduce power and extend battery life.

The mobile revolution is also having a profound impact on radio frequency (RF) designs, processes and packaging. For example, there were four frequency bands in 2G cellular networks and five or so for 3G. In comparison, the next-generation, 4G wireless standard known as long-term evolution (LTE), ultimately could support 43 bands at multiple frequencies.

To support all 4G/LTE and legacy bands worldwide, the smartphone would incorporate a gigantic, power-hungry and expensive RF front-end. So, it’s difficult to envision a “world smartphone” that supports all 4G/LTE bands in every country. Instead, consumers may settle for “regional” smartphones that support some but not all 4G/LTE bands.

“The big challenge is to cover as many bands as possible in a region with an easy-to-use and low-cost system,” said Christopher Taylor, an analyst with Strategy Analytics, a market research house. “As long as the industry moves toward more bands and faster data rates, it puts more stress on the component guys.”

Responding to the demands, RF chipmakers are rolling out a new class of multi-mode, multi-band power amplifiers for 4G/LTE, based on traditional gallium arsenide (GaAs) technology. And suppliers also are ramping up new power amps based on CMOS and a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) variant called silicon-on-sapphire (SOS).

Other changes are taking place in the RF front-end. “The RF antenna switch is moving from III-V materials to SOI,” said Paul Boudre, chief operating officer at SOI wafer specialist Soitec. “GaAs pHEMT will not disappear, but it will remain for more specific devices.”

In 4G/LTE, there is also a need for a new class of diversity switches and tunable capacitors. All told, RF chipmakers are moving toward integrated RF front-end solutions in an effort to boost power efficiencies and battery life at lower costs.

Sea of RF change
In total, RF component sales are expected to grow from $22 billion in 2011 to more than $30 billion in 2016, according to Strategy Analytics. One of the big drivers for digital and analog chip makers is 4G/LTE, a technology that boasts data rates of up to 100-megabits-per-second, up to 10 times faster than 3G.

4G/LTE smartphone shipments are projected to triple from 90.9 million units in 2012 to 275 million in 2013, according to Strategy Analytics. However, the complexity of 4G/LTE smartphones is expected to come at the expense of power and battery life, thereby requiring a new class of low-power, multicore chipsets.

Broadcom, Intel, MediaTek, Qualcomm and others are shipping cell-phone chips based on bulk CMOS. Taking another approach to the problem, ST-Ericsson has rolled out an integrated cell-phone chipset based on 28nm, fully-depleted SOI (FD-SOI). The FD-SOI part is 30% faster than bulk devices, said Joel Hartmann, executive vice president of front-end manufacturing and process R&D at STMicroelectronics. “We have demonstrated a 50% power reduction,” he said.

The next breakthrough could occur by year’s end, when Intel hopes to ship its first 22nm finFET device for the mobile market. The foundries will enter the finFET market at 14nm. “Going to 14nm finFETs will help with the battery life,” said Ajit Manocha, chief executive of GlobalFoundries.

Like the digital market, there are also challenges for the RF front-end in 4G/LTE. “The current challenge is handling many of the worldwide LTE bands. The second challenge is MIMO involving multiple carriers. The third is handling the smart antennas for all bands and multiple input/output streams,” said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, a research firm.

The classic RF front-end in cell phones includes three main parts: the power amplifier, antenna switch and filter. For years, the cell-phone power amp has incorporated GaAs-based heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBTs) technology. The power amp amplifies RF signals in the phone.

Typically, the RF front end is separate from the digital modem and transceiver, which are based on 28nm and 65nm/40nm CMOS or other processes, respectively. The interaction between the RF and digital blocks present some major challenges, including the ability to maintain the isolation between the frequency bands, said Thomas Richter, senior marketing director at RF specialist Skyworks Solutions.

Generally, a 2G or 3G cell phone required separate and discrete power amps to support the various bands. In 4G/LTE, cell phones must not only support LTE, but also the existing GSM, EDGE and WCDMA standards. To date, there are 17 bands in place for 4G/LTE worldwide. That list could grow to 43.

In any case, it’s impractical and too expensive to build a cell-phone that supports all 17 bands. “I don’t think anybody will fit 17 power amps in a phone,” Richter said.

The solution to the problem is the advent of a multi-band power amp, which is a single device that supports a wider frequency range. Multi-band power amps, however, suffer from a power-added-efficiency (PAE) drop, as compared to a discrete device. “Multi-band power amps make for cheaper RF solutions, but no current power amps can handle all the bands,” Forward Concepts’ Strauss said. “There are multi-band power amps in the market, but only for a few bands. Smartphones still require multiple power amp chips.”

In 4G/LTE, a smartphone may incorporate a mix-and-match of devices, possibly six discrete power amps and one multi-band power amp in the same system. Taking another approach to the problem, Skyworks recently rolled out SkyOne. This technology can combine several discrete devices, such as multi-band power amplifiers, switches, filters, and duplexing functions, in a small system-in-package (SIP). The power amp is based on GaAs, while the switch uses SOI. “With SkyOne, you can condense your PCB,” said Skyworks’ Richter.

Skyworks, RF Micro and others are also fielding CMOS-based power amps, which claim to have lower power consumptions than GaAs. “GaAs is still favored,” Forward Concepts’ Strauss said. “The only CMOS power amps have been used in low-end GSM phones in China. CMOS has not proved to be sufficient for high-performance power amps.”

The wild card is Peregrine Semiconductor, which is sampling a power amp based on its silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) technology. Peregrine’s 0.35-micron process, dubbed UltraCMOS, is a variant of SOI that makes use of an insulating dielectric sapphire substrate. SOI wafer provider Soitec provides the bonded silicon-on-sapphire (BSOS) substrates to Peregrine. “The challenge (for SOS) is getting the heat out of a power amp,” said Strategy Analytics’ Taylor.

Soitec itself is also offering a separate RF SOI technology, dubbed Wave, which are high-resistivity substrates. “These engineered substrates enable more functionality on smaller chips and lower power usage for longer battery life in portable electronics,” said Soitec’s Boudre.

Dialing up switches and tunable capacitors
IBM, TowerJazz and others provide RF SOI processes, as well. Generally, SOI, and its variants like SOS, promise the long-awaited integration of the RF front-end. But at least in the near term, however, the RF front-end will remain a collection of discrete devices.

“If you look at the front-end, you see an explosion of components,” said Rodd Novak, chief marketing officer of Peregrine. “The area for the RF front-end is shrinking. OEMs want to put more and more battery content in the system. Integration is really the driving force, as opposed to just price erosion. That’s a big change.”

Peregrine and others provide another key part of the RF front-end: the RF switch. RF switches route signals between the antenna and the handset core, through one or more signal paths. As the design of the mobile device becomes more complex, more signal paths are required.

The RF switch was once dominated by GaAs. As of late, Peregrine’s SOS technology has been winning RF switch sockets at the expense of GaAs. In response, the GaAs suppliers, RF Micro and Skyworks, are now pushing RF switches based on SOI. “We’ve displaced GaAs,” Novak said. “Now, the GaAs guys are using a highly insulated SOI substrate. But we believe sapphire is the highest insulating substrate.”

4G/LTE is also propelling a new and emerging component–tunable capacitors. These components tune the antennae to boost efficiencies. Peregrine is selling components based on SOS. Paratek, a subsidiary of Research in Motion (RIM), and STMicroelectronics, are selling components based on barium strontium titanate (BST). Another vendor, WiSpry, is offering a MEMS solution.

“There is such a huge amount of bandwidth to cover with a small antenna (in LTE),” Peregrine’s Novak said. “In fact, the industry is looking for multiple antennae now. We are trying to prevent those antennae from cross correlating. It’s almost impossible to do that without some level of tunability. ”

Tunable capacitors are now being integrated into the transceiver block. “In 2013, we are also going to see the entry of tunable networks. You will see up to three tunable components to provide a greater tuning range,” Novak said.

What’s next in RF? Some are looking at software-defined power amps. And in the distant future, tunable capacitors may end up being integrated in the power amp. “People are trying to develop multi-mode and multi-band power amps. But to do that efficiently, you need a tunable output match with tunable components,” he added.

By Mark LaPedus
Get ready for the 2012 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco. At the event, slated for today through Wednesday, GlobalFoundries CEO Ajit Manocha will give a keynote, entitled: “Is the Fabless/Foundry Model Dead? We Don’t Think So. Long Live Foundry 2.0!”

Here are some of the papers and events at the IEDM event:

*A team led by IBM will report on the world’s first high-performance hybrid-channel ETSOI CMOS device. Researchers have integrated a PFET having a thin, uniform strained SiGe channel, with an NFET having a Si channel, at 22nm.

*IBM will describe a fully-integrated SOI SRAM at 22nm.

*In a separate paper, CEA-LETI, STMicroelectronics, IBM, GlobalFoundries and Renesas will discuss FD-SOI for the 20nm node and beyond.

*STMicroelectronics will describe the performance of ultra-thin box and body technology. The SOI technology will provide a total power reduction of 30% to 40% at identical speed with respect to bulk thanks to back side gate biasing efficiency.

*National Chiao Tung University will discuss a high-performance Ge CMOS finFETs on a thin SOI wafer.

*Imec, GlobalFoundries and Samsung will talk about stress enhanced mobility for n- and p-FinFETs with both Si and Ge channels for the 14nm node and beyond.

*Applied Materials and Synopsys will present a paper entitled, “Is strain engineering scalable in FinFET era?”

*SuVolta, a developer of low-power CMOS technologies, announced the results that demonstrate the performance and power advantages of its Deeply Depleted Channel (DDC) technology.

*The SOI Industry Consortium has organized a symposium that will address the world of fully depleted SOI. The symposium will be held at the San Francisco Hilton Hotel today, concurrent with the IEDM 2012 Conference.

*The 14nm node is expected to be an inflection point for the chip industry, beyond which the resistivity of copper interconnects will increase exponentially and may become a limiting factor in chip design. Tomorrow, Applied Materials will host a forum in San Francisco to explore the subject.

Intel’s push in the foundry business has the industry talking. Can the chip giant give the traditional foundries a run for their money? Some say no. In a report, Hans Mosesmann, an analyst with Raymond James, said: “The chatter that Intel should become a foundry for Apple/Qualcomm as a positive for the company is amusing to us given that foundries are the low-end of the semiconductor manufacturing totem-pole. Does it make sense for Intel to build $10 billion shiny new fabs for foundry work? We think not for 45-50% gross margins, and ask IBM how the foundry investment turned out. Intel’s fabs are not meant for the fragmented nature of foundries and truth be known, Intel is a laggard in SoC manufacturing anyway (at least today). Regardless, a formalized foundry strategy would be an acknowledgment by Intel that its model isn’t working and a negative for gross margins.”

Thanks to investments from Intel, Samsung and TSMC, ASML is developing a 450mm EUV scanner. But EUV remains delayed. So the industry is hedging its bets. In an announcement at Semicon Japan, Kazuo Ushida, president of Nikon, said that the company plans to ship 450mm, 193nm lithography tools in 2017 through a joint development effort with Intel. Nikon plans to have 450mm-enabled ArF immersion prototype tools in 2015-16.

In a video on SEMI’s site, Paul Farrar, general manager of the Global 450mm Consortium (G450C), discussed the progress and impact of the G450C.

AMD has amended its wafer supply agreement with GlobalFoundries. As part of the plan, AMD will reduce its procurement of wafers from GlobalFoundries.

International Rectifier introduced a series of high-current, ultra-low dropout hybrid linear voltage regulators based on SOI.

A team of ST and CEA-LETI received the 2012 Général Ferrié Award. They were honored for their work on FD-SOI technology.

ST has taken the decision to exit ST-Ericsson after a transition period and is currently in negotiations on exit options. This disengagement process has started, with the transition expected to end during the third quarter of 2013.  ST will continue to support ST-Ericsson as its supply-chain partner, advanced process-technology partner (FD-SOI) and application-processor IP provider.

Soitec will hold a grand opening celebration of its North American solar headquarters and manufacturing facility in San Diego on Dec. 19.

The Center for Science Teaching and Learning (CSTL) and Applied Materials announced a new clean tech competition challenge that addresses the global problem of access to clean water. The program, which now includes students from Singapore, as well as Xi’an, China, and California’s San Francisco Bay Area, was created last year to inspire the next generation of leaders and innovators in clean technology.

As a result of an equity investment, Qualcomm will become a minority shareholder in Sharp.

Axcelis will exit the dry-strip business to focus on the ion implanter market. Axcelis will sell its dry-strip business to Lam Research.

CyberOptics announced the completion of a restructuring and staff reduction totaling approximately 10% of its global workforce.

Signetics will double its capacity for flip chip package assembly within its factory in Paju, South Korea.

For most of the last two decades personal computers have accounted for a third or more of annual IC sales, but standard PCs are now on the brink of being replaced as the largest end-use product category for integrated circuits, according to IC Insights.

Amid weak economic conditions, IHS is downgrading its forecast for the global semiconductor market in 2012, with revenue now expected to decline by 2.3% for the year.

Sony next year is expected to purchase $8.4 billion worth of semiconductors, up nearly 5% from $8.0 billion in 2012, according to HIS. Meanwhile, Toshiba’s spending will increase 2.0% to $6.1 billion in 2013, up from $6.0 billion in 2012. In contrast, spending at the other major Japanese consumer electronics OEMs, Panasonic and Sharp, will decline in 2013 and 2014.