By Mark LaPedus

Taking another shot to displace ARM, Intel recently rolled out its new microarchitecture for its Atom processor line. In a research note, Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, said: “How many times have we heard Intel say that its next member of the Atom processor line would finally be competitive with low-power ARM implementations? Every other year, Intel carts out a new variant that will ‘finally’ do the trick.  The next (and fourth?) iteration of the family, code named Merrifield is said to be the ‘turning point’ for the company in mobile phones.  Although the 2012 launch of Medfield-based 3G phones came close, it didn’t put a dent in ARM’s market share. Merrifield will ship in 4Q13 and phones based on the SoC will be announced at MWC in February 2014. But, the application processor is only part of the solution for a successful smartphone chip offering.  Multimode LTE modems and LTE RF transceivers are also necessary.  Yes, the Infineon-heritage RF transceivers have been fielded in Motorola LTE smartphones, but we’re still waiting for Intel’s multimode LTE modem.  It’s our understanding that the Infineon-heritage multimode 2G/3G/HSPA+ (based on CEVA’s DSP cores) will be married to the Blue Wonder-heritage single-mode LTE (based on Tensilica’s DSP cores). Since the software between the two is not compatible, we expect that has led to integration problems and subsequent delays.”

Following a disappointing period in the first quarter of this year, IHS plans to lower its chip forecast to 4.8% for 2013, down from 5.6% in the previous forecast. In 2012, the IC market fell 2.2%, according to the research firm. Mike Splinter, chairman and CEO of Applied Materials, presents his forecast.

In its most recent quarter, Applied Materials generated orders of $2.27 billion, up 7%t from the prior period, with Silicon Systems Group orders up 14% from the first quarter and Display orders up 41% sequentially. Net sales were $1.97 billion, up 25% sequentially.

At SEMI’s recent Silicon Valley Lunch Forum, speakers from Applied Materials, ASML, and Intel discussed the critical challenges of 450mm and EUV.

The infrastructure in Saratoga, N.Y. can’t keep pace with the growth. One local government organization, the Saratoga County Industrial Development Agency, voted to consider issuing GlobalFoundries nearly $70 million in bonds to finance the infrastructure, according to The Saratogian.

Three companies announced RF switches based on SOI or a variant of the technology. Skyworks rolled out some new parts. Peregrine announced a product for harsh environments. And RDA’s RF switches are being used in Samsung’s smartphones.

Mentor Graphics announced that MagnaChip Semiconductor has adopted the Pyxis custom IC design platform and the Mentor process design kit (PDK) automation process.  Mentor Graphics also announced that CNH, a supplier of agricultural and construction equipment, has transitioned to the latest VeSys software platform.

Cadence Design Systems announced that it helped Yamaha reduce power consumption for its mobile consumer chips with characterization tools.

Is TranSwitch on the block? The communications chip maker has retained Needham & Co. as financial advisor to assist the board in evaluating various strategic alternatives available to the company.

Altera has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire Enpirion, a provider of high-efficiency, integrated power conversion products known as power SoCs (power system-on-chips).

The use of Wi-Fi functionality in small-cell base stations will be a game changer for cellphone service providers, according to IHS.

Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems (OS) worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 (1Q13) as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place, according to IDC.

By Mark LaPedus
About every five years or so, a new and hot market emerges in the specialty foundry business that resembles a frenetic gold rush.

The last big gold rush occurred around 2008, when more than a dozen foundries jumped into the bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCD) market to capitalize on the booming power-management sector. Now, the next gold rush is centering on an emerging technology—the radio frequency (RF) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) market.

Today, IBM, STMicroelectronics and TowerJazz offer RF SOI foundry processes for the merchant market. Over time, analysts estimate that a dozen or more foundries could offer RF SOI. Altis Semiconductor and Grace Semiconductor have announced plans to enter the RF SOI fray. Two others, Lapis Semiconductor and Silanna, have put RF SOI on their foundry roadmaps. And sources indicate that GlobalFoundries, MagnaChip and TSMC are developing RF SOI or evaluating the technology.

Foundries are jumping on the RF SOI bandwagon amid a boom for select parts, particularly within the RF front-end for the latest smartphones and tablets. Typically, the RF front-end consists of power amplifiers (PAs), RF switches, tunable capacitors and filters. Generally, the PA and switch are based on gallium arsenide (GaAs), while the tunable capacitors and filters use various technologies.

RF SOI and its variant, silicon-on-sapphire (SOS), recently have made inroads for the RF switch—at the expense of GaAs. Most PAs are still based on GaAs, but the tide is slowly turning. For example, Peregrine Semiconductor is developing an SOS-based PA for a future smartphone at Apple, according to RBC Capital Markets.

Generally, RF chipmakers make GaAs-based devices in their own fabs. Chips based on RF CMOS, RF SOI and SOS generally are outsourced to the foundries. RF SOI is not a difficult technology to develop, but the real issue is that the sector could meet the same fate as BCD. As it turned out, the BCD market was not big enough to support a dozen foundries, prompting a shakeout in the arena.

In all likelihood, there is room for only a handful of RF SOI foundry players. “I would say IBM and TSMC are the only ones that have the economies of scale (in RF SOI),” said Doug Freedman, an analyst at RBC. “IBM is the leader in RF SOI right now, with TSMC trying to play catch-up. There are some other vendors like TowerJazz in the market, as well.”

From a supply/demand perspective, there is already ample RF SOI capacity to meet demand right now. “I have heard that capacity in RF SOI is adequate,” said Christopher Taylor, an analyst with Strategy Analytics. “I would have my doubts about the prospects of serious shortages barring compelling information to the contrary. Also, in light of the fact that RF SOI does not really push into the CMOS, small-node frontier, there is potentially quite a bit of capacity available from older fabs and foundries at the higher nodes.”

Rushing into RF SOI
The stakes are high, especially as RF content continues to increase in the latest mobile devices. In total, the PA market is expected to grow from $1.7 billion in 2008 to $3.8 billion by 2015, according to RBC. The multi-throw RF switch market is projected to grow from $262 million in 2008 to $1.2 billion by 2015, according to RBC. And the tunable capacitor market is expected to reach $500 million by 2016, it said.

“Driving this growth is rising handset and tablet units, which requires a greater amount of PA ICs,” RBC’s Freedman said. “Principally driving (RF switch) growth is rising radio bands. Driving (tunable capacitor) growth is the wider frequency range of bands and the need to reduce antenna size without performance trade-off.”

There is also an increase in design complexity amid a transition from 3G networks to the next-generation, 4G/LTE wireless standard. “LTE and carrier aggregation are thorny problems even in the best of situations,” said Michael Noonen, executive vice present of global sales, marketing, quality and design at GlobalFoundries. “You also want to be as Spartan as possible in the RF front-end design from a battery consumption standpoint.”

GlobalFoundries, which has been expanding its RF process offerings, is “very much interested” in RF SOI, Noonen said. “We have a lot of experience with SOI, but there are also other approaches in RF,” he said.

Indeed, OEMs face a series of complex device and process choices. For years, GaAs has dominated the RF landscape. GaAs has a larger energy gap and is faster than silicon, but it is more expensive to manufacture. RF CMOS, RF SOI, SOS and silicon-germanium (SiGe) are also in the mix. The RF version of SOI combines CMOS with a highly-resistive, thick-film SOI substrate.

RF SOI is an alternative to GaAs, with equivalent insertion loss and noise isolation characteristics. RF SOI also enables OEMs to integrate various chips on the same die. Another technology, SOS, makes use of an insulating sapphire substrate. And SiGe is built with silicon transistors to create RF circuits.
Meanwhile, after years of promises, RF SOI and its variants are finally cracking the RF front-end. OEMs are moving from GaAs pHEMT to RF SOI and SOS for the RF switch, said Paul Boudre, chief operating officer at Soitec, an SOI wafer supplier. “GaAs pHEMT will not disappear, but it will remain for more specific devices,” Boudre said.

Actually, the buzz started when Apple incorporated Peregrine’s SOS-based RF switches in the iPhone 5. Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and other smartphones are also using SOS-based switches, according to RBC. SOS is a proprietary technology that is only offered by Peregrine. Its SOS chips are made on a foundry basis by Lapis, MagnaChip and Silanna.

Rodd Novak, chief marketing officer of Peregrine, said SOS has better insulating properties than RF SOI. SOS also uses sapphire wafers, making it a more expensive than RF SOI. But the overall cost for SOS is declining. This is because sapphire wafers are ramping up in high-volume markets like LEDs, which will impact the cost of SOS, Novak said.

Peregrine recently rolled out a new version of SOS, based on 0.35-micron technology. “Before, we grew an epi (layer) on top of our sapphire process,” Novak said. “Now, we are taking a very clean silicon substrate and bonding that to the sapphire. That process enables better performance.”

Apple to drive SOI?
The fact that Apple and other OEMs have adopted SOS and RF SOI for the RF switch has given the technology some credence. It also has caused a stampede of foundry players looking to enter the RF SOI sweepstakes.

Now, with help from the foundries, RF chipmakers are looking to displace SOS-based switches with traditional and less-expensive RF SOI technology. “RF switches are typically based on GaAs pHEMT, SOS and SOI, with SOI gaining more and more market share away from the other and more expensive technologies,” said Marco Racanelli, senior vice president and general manager at TowerJazz.

In addition to cost, OEMs are also interested in capacity. In one effort to ensure supply, IBM recently signed a second-source foundry deal for its 0.18-micron, RF SOI process with Altis.

Besides the RF switch, the next big market for RF SOI and SOS could be the PA, with Apple emerging as the possible driving force. “We believe that Peregrine is developing a unique integrated PA solution that is targeting the next generation of Apple’s PA product needs,” said RBC’s Freedman. “(This) could add approximately $1.25 in content, assuming (Apple integrates) five to six single PAs in 3G smartphones. We note that in 4G, PA content opportunity rises to approximately $3.00 due to rising single chip PAs per device.”

In another example, Qualcomm recently rolled out the RF360, an RF front-end that includes a PA based on SOI. Today, however, the jury is still out for PAs based on RF SOI and SOS. For the PA, GaAs still has a higher power-efficiency over CMOS.

Still, the handwriting is on the wall for GaAs. “For the PA, SiGe BiCMOS has strong market share in WiFi, while GaAs HBT has strong market share in cellular. RF CMOS is relegated to the very low-end 2G/2.5G cellular space,” TowerJazz’ Racanelli said. “SOI for the PA is only in R&D and may not deliver the best performance by itself. But combined with switches and other functions, (SOI-based PAs) could become relevant as new architectures are adopted. Our view is that SiGe has the best tradeoff in performance. The cost structure is closer to CMOS/SOI. SiGe is likely to gain more ground in the future.”

Also in the RF front-end, there is a tunable capacitor, which tunes the antennae to boost efficiencies. Peregrine is selling SOS-based tunable devices. Paratek and STMicroelectronics are selling components based on barium strontium titanate (BST). And WiSpry is offering a MEMS solution.

“There are two vectors worth exploring here,” GlobalFoundries’ Noonen said. “If you can do something in CMOS, it will be done in CMOS. We will see other ways to approach the problem. Using a tunable capacitor based on MEMs, for instance, you can attack the problem from an entirely different angle.”

Indeed, in the RF front-end, there is no one-size-fits-all technology; OEMs likely will adopt several types of chips and processes. “We will also see more functionality in the RF subsystem,” Noonen said. “The idea is to bring RF into more of a mainstream technology.”

Soitec’s Steve Longoria talks with Semiconductor Manufacturing and Design about what’s changing at the leading edge of Moore’s Law and why those changes are necessary.

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 Jeff Chappell
There may have been a time when AMD founder Jerry Sanders famous quote: “real men (i.e., real companies) have their own fabs” rang true, but in today’s business climate it seems quaint at best.

Fabless or fab-lite business models are more popular than ever today, while some IDMs have turned back the clock, so to speak, looking to improve capacity utilization and revenues by offering foundry services—Intel and Samsung among them. Then there is the fact that the third-largest chipmaker in 2012, in terms of revenue, was a pure-play foundry.

As the 28nm node capacity ramp continues in the foundry market in 2013, following unexpected demand and capacity bottlenecks in 2012, today’s foundry market is the end result of market trends and forces with old roots. But those trends and forces have been compounded in modern times by extreme financial and market necessities, not to mention technology.

In one sense, however, at its core, the foundry market hasn’t changed since Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) launched as the industry’s first pure-play foundry in 1987: Chip companies look to foundries, either as a customer or as a provider, to maximize productivity and thereby minimize costs. That part of the game hasn’t changed, whether it involves a component supplier designing power modules with 0.18-micron design rules for manufacturing on 200mm wafers, or one of the two GPU giants producing their next-generation graphics processors based on the latest technology.

The trend for years now has been fabless or fab-lite; even Sanders’ own AMD spun out its manufacturing arm several years ago to create one of the world’s largest pure-play foundries, GlobalFoundries. This has naturally in turn spawned the growth of the pure-play foundry market from its birth some 26 years ago.

Indeed, last year the overall foundry market enjoyed revenues of $29.6 billion, managing year-over-year growth of 12%, which is three times that of the chip industry over all in 2012. That growth caught everyone by surprise including the foundries themselves; 28nm capacity was tight for much of the year, even as yields improved dramatically—so much so that it reportedly impacted some capital equipment purchases, in spite of tight foundry capacity.

But that illustrates the biggest and most obvious change in the foundry industry in modern times: The foundries themselves are involved directly with developing leading-edge semiconductor technology. In fact, with the industry looking at the end of planar CMOS at the leading edge for some devices with the advent of 3D transistor architectures and the high-k materials they require, leading foundries no longer can rely on a mix of conventional scaling, publicly available data and equipment and process technology suppliers to get their jobs done. Research and development now must be within their purview, at least for those playing at the leading edge.

“Historically foundries don’t do R&D, their clients do it,” noted Dean Freeman, a research vice president at Gartner Research. That’s not so, today.

Nothing illustrates that fact better than TSMC’s R&D budget. In 2012 the company spent 33.8 billion NT, or about $1.13 billion, on R&D—a quarter of its revenue. This year the company plans to spend 40.4 billion NT, or about $1.35 billion, which includes adding some 500 people to its employee headcount, bolstering its R&D staff from 3,400 people to 3,900.

Indeed, leading foundries have joined the leading IDMs and technology consortia as purveyors of—not just manufacturers of—advanced technology.

While TSMC and its foundry brethren in the first tier of the pure-play market—Globalfoundries and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC)—continue to build out 28nm capacity, they are also hard at work on the 20nm node and the subsequent hybrid 14/16nm finFET based on a 20nm back-end of line process. In fact, TSMC just announced first tapeouts of an ARM A-57 processor, based on the 64-bit ARMv8 processor series and built with 16nm transistor technology, including finFETs. This followed their rival’s announcement of a few months earlier. In February, GlobalFoundries announced a “first implementation” of a dual-core ARM A9 processor using the company’s 14nm-XM FinFET transistor architecture.

Follow the money
Being on the very leading edge of technology is driving growth among the first-tier foundries.

Like many others in the industry, TSMC and its chairman and CEO, Morris Chang, are quite bullish on the continued demand for 28nm technology as well as the development of 20nm technology. In general, 28nm designs, with their combination of lower power consumption and speedier transistors, have consequently proven cost-effective for a chip industry currently driven by mobile devices—smartphones, tablets and ultra lightweight notebooks. During TSMC’s review of its 2012 results earlier this year, Chang said the company will continue to aggressively grow its 28nm capacity and output; 2013 capacity and output will triple that of 2012, he said.

“It’s all about lower power with functionality and no sacrifice on the power requirements,” observed Kathryn Ta, managing director of strategic marketing for Applied Materials’ Silicon Systems Group. The equipment and process technology supplier’s foundry customers are seeing a need to move to 3D transistor architectures with minimal leakage, she said, because of those power requirements.

Development will continue at 20nm and 16nm as well at TSMC and its rivals. This year, 88% of the 9 billion NT that TSMC will spend on capital expenditures will go to 28nm, 20nm and 16nm capacity; an additional 5% will be spent on additional R&D equipment. Chang predicted that by Q3 of this year high-k metal gate production will surpass that of standard oxynitride gates, a gap that naturally will widen in Q4 and beyond.

“Enough discussions have taken place with enough customers … to lead us to believe that in both its first and second year of production (2014 and 2015, respectively) the volume of 20nm SoCs will be larger than that of 28nm in its first and second years of production (2012 and 2013),” Chang said.

He further noted that this represented the state of the art, and not just for the foundry industry, but for the industry as whole. This may indeed prove to be true in a few years as those 20nm and 16nm/14nm SoC devices move into production. It’s a far cry from the days when foundries were traditionally technological also-rans.

But then the first-tier foundries at the leading edge are still playing catch-up in the meantime with those IDMs at the leading edge, namely Intel. The world’s biggest chipmaker has kept Moore’s Law on track on the CPU side of the ITRS roadmap, last year having brought its Ivy Bridge processors to market. These feature 22nm transistors replete with finFETs; Intel’s own roadmap calls for 14nm designs to be in production in 2014; in terms of mobile SoCs like those the foundries are talking about, the company has promised its 22nm Atom SoCs will be in production in 2015.

“Intel seems to be able to continue to shrink because they spend a fortune on R&D,” said Gartner’s Freeman. “The foundries are pushing hard to catch up,” He noted that while both GlobalFoundries and TSMC have 16nm/14nm chips featuring finFETs in development, they are taking a shortcut, so to speak, by employing 20nm metal interconnects. “It’s close to what Intel is doing. Intel’s design may be more sophisticated, but the lithography is the same.”

Plenty of room, and business, at the trailing end
But not everybody in the foundry market is playing at the leading edge. The same market and industry forces that have induced the bigger pure-play foundries to move beyond their historical roles also have created a two-tiered pure-play foundry market. In the first tier are those that have the deep pockets to play in this space: TSMC, Globalfoundries, UMC, and to a lesser extent China’s Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC).

Then there are the second-tier companies, those that are still fulfilling a traditional foundry role—at trailing edge processes, but nevertheless needed or even essential semiconductor manufacturing technology and capacity. Indeed, many second-tier foundries do quite well with their particular market niches and technologies. In the world of mobile consumer gadgets, including but not limited to smartphones and tablets, there are still many components fabricated on established, trailing-edge technology, such as sensors, microcontrollers and power components.

Even in 2013, where CPUs with 22nm transistors and mobile SoCs with 28nm transistors represent the current state of the art, some 40% of all silicon used to manufacture chips goes into mature devices fabricated on 200mm wafers. That’s typically 0.18-micron designs or larger. And much, if not most, of that is coming from pure-play foundries.

At the top of that second-tier foundry market, Israel’s TowerJazz, for example, has found a relatively comfortable niche making high-speed devices for a broad range consumer applications utilizing 0.13-micron designs and larger. It also makes CMOS image sensors with 0.16- and 0.11-micron design rules. In terms of financials, this has translated to record revenues: last year TowerJazz posted revenues of $638.8 million, an increase of 5% over the previous year.

Freeman suggested there are plenty of opportunities for these second-tier foundries. The so-called “Internet of Things,” for example, is a major driver behind sensor applications, as it is for the controllers needed to coordinate the data these sensors produce—data that can be managed via mobile Internet devices. These supplemental and complementary applications typically don’t need cutting-edge technology.

As has always been the case in the foundry industry, as leading-edge technology becomes trailing-edge, there will be new opportunities for second-tier foundries, as well. Some of the larger second-tier foundries eventually may have the opportunity to compete with first-tier companies head-to-head with 28nm capacity if they have deep-enough pockets to invest.

In the bifurcated smartphone market, for example, low-end smartphones that originally utilized chips manufactured with 40nm technology soon will migrate to chips with 28nm technology, as capacity ramps and it becomes even more cost effective, said Applied’s Ta. Even as the leading-edge players are driven beyond the 28nm node and the adoption of 3D gate architectures, the industry could very well see an extended 28nm node, driven by this market for lower-end smartphones and other mobile devices, she said.

But What About …
Things rarely ever prove to be so clearly defined in the chip industry. With players such as Samsung, Intel and IBM among others flirting with the foundry business, and some of the larger first-tier foundries suffering the same financial headaches that have plagued the IDMs in the past—problems that drove some of them to a fabless model in the fist place—there are some significant unknowns.

While 3D, high-k metal gate architectures, i.e, finFETs and the like, seem to be the wave of the near future, there are still those in the industry that tout the efficacy of fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) as either an alternative to complement to 3D gate technology, for example.

IBM and its technology alliance partners have considered FD-SOI as a possible outcome of the semiconductor technology roadmap in the near future, Ta noted. “We see most of the effort on the finFET/Intel approach, but some of our customers are still talking about SOI,” perhaps used in some combination with finFETs, she added.

Gartner’s Freeman noted that Intel’s finFET devices are already fully depleted devices, although SOI could conceivably provide a bit less leakage; as such it may be an option at future nodes. Given the transistor speed and power usage achieved by its 22nm Atom processors, which are manufactured on top of bulk silicon technology, that seems unlikely though for Intel and those choosing to follow its lead. Freeman further observed that GlobalFoundries, once a proponent of FD-SOI, has backed off somewhat, although some of its largest customers remain committed to an FD-SOI strategy for the foreseeable future. IBM, for one, has publicly stated it will use FD-SOI, finFETs and stacked die together at future nodes.

But what does this mean for the leading-edge foundries? As always they will have to be able to manufacture what their customers want. It may be that some chipmakers will choose to go the FD-SOI route and that could prove a competitive opportunity for any foundry.

Another wild card that the top-tier foundries will need to take into account is the overlapping of technology nodes, which may become more pronounced with the extension of the 28nm node coupled with the rush to get 20nm devices into production. “It’s happening faster than previous node transitions have happened,” Applied’s Ta, noting that it’s driven by the low-power promise of finFETs. In the past node transitions typically took two to 2.5 years; “This time we may see a 1.5 year transition to finFETs,” she added.

Another question mark in the foundry market itself is SMIC. While most would still classify the Chinese foundry as a top-tier foundry, it is in a very real way straddling the gap between first and second tier. The company, once relatively close behind TSMC and UMC, has foundered in red ink and legal woes in recent years. While it has subsequently experienced an impressive turnaround financially under the helm of current CEO Tzu-Yin Chiu in 2012, it’s capital expenditures fell dramatically, even as capacity utilization hit 95% in Q2, and it is well behind its rivals in terms of technology.

Customer tapeouts of 28nm devices won’t take place until the end of this year; One of SMIC’s largest domestic customers, Spreadtrum, already has been forced to move to rival TSMC to meet its current plans for 28nm devices.

SMIC’s Chiu has said that the company’s 28nm technology will include both standard polysilicon oxynitride devices and high-k metal gates, and that it has plans to manufacture finFET devices at the 20nm node. In the meantime, it has found a saving grace in applications typically manufactured by second-tier players: smart cards, CMOS image sensors and power management chips.

Which way will SMIC go? Will it continue its impressive turn around by abandoning the leading edge or will it continue to play technological catch up? Or perhaps a little bit of both?

Time will tell. But it’s certainly an interesting time for the foundry business, and certain that for the foreseeable future the pure-play foundries will have to work hard at the cutting edge of semiconductor technology.

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.

Crying Need For Tunable Materials
Tunable materials that adapt to environmental changes are in their infancy and currently limited, according to researchers at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University and Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Researchers at Harvard have devised a new class of adaptive materials made from liquid films and nanoporous elastic substrates. The new materials, inspired by tears in the act of crying, are based on a technology called Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces (SLIPS).

The materials act as a coating, which repels anything it comes in contact with. Tunable materials can be used in fuel transport, textiles, optical systems, and other applications. For example, the materials could be used on a tent, which blocks light during the day and becomes water-repellent when it is raining. The materials could be used for self-adjusting contact lenses.

According to Harvard, a liquid flows within the pores, causing the smooth and defect-free surface to roughen through a continuous range of topographies. Then, the liquid is transformed into a finely tuned material, which can be dynamically adjusted from an optical transparent or wet state.

Harvard has demonstrated simultaneous control of the film’s transparency and its ability to manipulate various low-surface-tension droplets. “In addition to transparency and wettability, we can fine-tune basically anything that would respond to a change in surface topography, such as adhesive or anti-fouling behavior,” said Xi Yao, Wyss Institute and SEAS postdoctoral fellow, on the entity’s Web Site.

SOI Meets DSA
Using directed self-assembly (DSA), IBM has demonstrated the ability to pattern 29nm-pitch fins, which are etched onto a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate. The process could enable next-generation finFETs based on SOI.

DSA uses templates to guide the phase separation of a block co-polymer film. As part of its DSA process, IBM has demonstrated an etch transfer technology. It has demonstrated the process using three integration materials: silicon, silicon nitride, and silicon dioxide based on tetraethyl orthosilicate.

The company studied the critical dimensions, line edge roughness (LER), and line width roughness during the pattern transfer process. IBM demonstrated that co-optimization of the materials and etch process can improve the final transferred pattern.

A fin patterning example for a logic library design.11(a) Fin design. (b) Directed self-assembly (DSA) fins after etch transfer into a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate. The pitch of all dense lines is 29nm. Source: SPIE.

All told, IBM demonstrated that the use of post-etch annealing can further reduce the LER of DSA-patterned SOI lines from ∼3nm to less than 2nm. “By co-optimizing both the circuit design and patterning process, we expect to enable DSA patterning of semiconductor devices and circuits in a 300mm product development environment,” according to IBM on the SPIE Web site.

Battery Boost
Battery technology is not keeping up with Moore’s Law. Consumers want more and longer battery life in cellular phones, tablets and notebook PCs. And even emerging products such as electric vehicles require a longer battery life.

ETH-Zurich is looking at ways to optimize the electrodes in batteries, thereby making them more efficient. In doing so, ETH-Zurich is exploring the discharging and charging process in lithium ion electrodes. Using X-ray tomography, researchers are able to screen lithium ion battery electrodes and reconstruct the microstructures.

Researchers discovered that the electrodes are comprised of numerous particles. The smaller particles are on the edge of the cathode, while the larger ones are in the interior, according to researchers. Smaller particles form compact structures, while the larger ones tend to be porous.

Porosity has an impact on energy density and the speeds at which the ions move through the electrodes, according to researchers. “A lithium battery’s anode is mostly made of graphite,” according to ETH-Zurich’s Web site. “The tortuosity of graphite electrodes might be improved through the use of round graphite particles. The drawback here is that up to seventy per cent of the valuable raw material is wasted during production–one reason why many battery manufacturers still use plate-shaped graphite as an anode material.”

ETH-Zurich also discovered a facile synthesis of monodisperse colloidal tin (Sn) and Sn/SnO2 nanocrystals with mean sizes tunable over the range 9–23nm and size distributions below 10%. Electrochemical measurements demonstrated that 10nm Sn/SnO2 nanocrystals enable high Lithium insertion/removal cycling stability, according to researchers.

—Mark LaPedus

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.