By Mark LaPedus
A survey revealed that 41% of U.S. adults who are married or in a relationship and have a computer say that time spent on the PC is a source of stress in their relationship. In fact, 59% cited work-related issues as causing relationship strain and 75% indicated that finances were a cause of stress in their relationship. The survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of Crucial.com.

Taiwan’s United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) continues to fall behind its competitors. UMC recently said it will move directly from 28nm to 14nm finFETs, thereby skipping the 20nm node. The new problem: UMC is having yield issues with 28nm and is behind in ramping up the technology, according to the company.

GlobalFoundries has not committed to build another new fab in upstate New York. However, the company this week filed plans for the possible construction of a new plant with 475,000 square feet of manufacturing space, according to various reports.

At the Common Platform Technology Forum, GlobalFoundries announced results from the industry’s first implementation of a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor using finFET transistors.

GlobalFoundries also disclosed several of its customers at the event, including Adapteva, Cyclos and Rambus.

Also at the Common Platform Technology Forum, IBM confirmed that extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography will likely miss the 10nm node. Now, the industry is looking at inserting EUV at 7nm. The delays are not surprising. What’s surprising, and scary, is that many of the problems with EUV are not engineering issues. They’re due to pure physics, namely how to generate enough consistent power for the EUV source. “We’re talking about physics challenges,” said Gary Patton, vice president of IBM’s Semiconductor Research and Development Center. “This is real physics.”

Cadence announced an agreement to acquire Cosmic Circuits, a provider of analog and mixed signal intellectual property (IP) cores.  In addition, GlobalFoundries has certified Cadence’s EDA tools for custom/analog design for its 20nm LPM technology.

Soitec’s SOI wafer shipments for radio-frequency (RF) applications have increased by 400% in the last two years.  In fact, SOI is having a profound impact on RF designs and processes.

Mentor Graphics announced the next-generation of the FloEFD concurrent computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation product.

Fujitsu and Panasonic will merge their semiconductor units and form a new company. For some time, the system LSI businesses of Fujitsu Semiconductor and Panasonic have struggled.

Packaging and assembly are key segments of the semiconductor supply chain in China. There are more than 200 companies competing in the packaging and assembly market in China, according to SEMI.

LED bulb prices are expected to drop from $23 per 1,000 lumens in 2012 to $10 per 1,000 lumens in 2015, and then down to $5 per 1,000 lumens by 2020, according to SEMI.

The BioMEMS market is expected to grow from $1.9 billion in 2012 to $6.6 billion in 2018, according to Yole Développement. The BioMEMS market includes pressure sensors, silicon microphones, accelerometers, gyroscopes, optical MEMS and image sensors, microfluidic chips, and microdispensers.

NAND flash revenue was $19.7 billion last year, down from $21.2 billion in 2011. Revenue will pick up this year and will rise to $22.4 billion after last year’s stumble, according to IHS iSuppli.

Facing a relentless onslaught from tablets, smartphones and solid state drives (SSDs), hard disk drive (HDD) market revenue in 2013 will decline by about 12% this year, according to IHS.

Polysilicon suppliers to the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry have reduced their plant utilization rates during the past six months, with average quarterly utilization rates falling below 70%, according to Solarbuzz.

Limited commitments by touch-screen suppliers and ultra-slim panel makers are putting a squeeze on the ultra-slim PC market, according to NPD DisplaySearch.

By Mark LaPedus
In New York, Saratoga County is booming. Saratoga counts on several growth engines, including semiconductors. In the county, GlobalFoundries is ramping up a new fab and recently announced an R&D center. In addition, there is a new push to build casinos in the county to further boost the local economy. But the local mayor is apparently against the idea, according to reports.

Samsung overtook Apple as the top worldwide semiconductor buyer in 2012, according to Gartner.

In 2012, Samsung almost doubled its foundry sales and surpassed UMC to become the third-largest IC foundry in the world, according to IC Insights. IC Insights believes that Samsung will challenge GlobalFoundries for the No. 2 spot in the rankings in 2013.

Synopsys announced immediate availability of its EDA solutions for finFET-based semiconductor designs. GlobalFoundries and Samsung are collaborating with Synopsys in the arena.

Soitec announced its results for the third quarter. The mobility-driven markets continue to offset PC segment weakness.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 0.92 in December, up from 0.79 in November, according to SEMI. “Both bookings and billings increased in December, but remain below figures reported one year ago,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI. “While uncertainty remains regarding the 2013 equipment outlook, the foundry and advanced packaging segments are the key investment drivers at the beginning of the year.”

SEMI announced that Rudy Kellner, vice president of the Industry Group at FEI, has joined the SEMI North American Advisory Board (NAAB).

The new edition of the International Technology Roadmap for PV (ITRPV) will be presented and published at the upcoming PV Fab Managers Forum, according to SEMI.

The Chinese end market dominated shipments of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels during the final quarter of 2012 with 33% of global end-market demand, according to NPD Solarbuzz.

Solar PV equipment spending was $3.6 billion for 2012, a 72% decline from the peak of $12.9 billion in 2011, according to NPD Solarbuzz. Finlay Colville, vice president at NPD Solarbuzz, said: “Spending for 2013 is forecast to decline even further to $2.2 billion, levels not seen in the industry since 2006.”

Mentor Graphics announced a hardware emulation solution for ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor-based system-on-chip (SoC) designs.

After two straight years of contraction, the global DRAM market has the opportunity to rebound to double-digit growth in 2013, according to IHS iSuppli.

A new generation of lower-cost and more appealing ultrabooks is expected to help cause global shipments of solid-state drives (SSDs) to more than double in 2013, according to IHS iSuppi.

With emerging economies such as China and India slowing down, the Southeast Asian nations are emerging as key destinations for multinational companies, both as markets for their products as well as a source for new technologies, according to Lux Research.

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
Lux Research has released its top 10 emerging companies in 2012. It features leaders in bio-based materials, 3D-printing, photovoltaics, drug delivery, energy efficiency and a fabless chip maker.

Soitec announced the grand opening of its North American solar manufacturing facility in San Diego. The concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules produced in San Diego will support hundreds of MWp of contracts for utility-scale projects in California.

IHS has released its top 10 predictions for the solar industry in 2013. Here’s one prediction: Many integrated players, particularly those based in China, will fold up shop in 2013.

Ericsson will take a non-cash charge related to its 50% stake in ST-Ericsson. Ericsson continues to believe that the modem technology has a strategic value for the wireless industry. ST-Ericsson is working on a technology based on SOI. Ericsson will continue to explore various strategic options for the future of ST-Ericsson assets. To acquire the full majority of ST-Ericsson is, however, not an option.

In a blog, Gold Standard Simulations has offered some advice to the SOI community: Metal-gate-first FD-SOI is good but gate-last could be spectacular.

Strain technology has been a key enabler for improving transistor performance. But there is a question whether stressors will maintain their effectiveness in IC scaling. Also which stressors will be most effective as the industry moves from planar to finFETs? According to a paper from Applied Materials and Synopsys at IEDM, the answer is clear: “S/D epitaxy remains an effective source of strain engineering for both aggressively and conservatively scaled finFETs. Not merging the S/D epitaxy between adjacent fins and recess etch into the fin before S/D epitaxy is recommended for maximizing the gain. With high active P concentration Si:C becomes an effective stressor for NMOS. Contact and gate metal fills provide new knobs for engineering strain in finFET devices for the 22nm node and remain effective with conservative scaling of contact/gate CD only.”

Worldwide wafer fab equipment (WFE) spending is forecast to total $27 billion in 2013, a 9.7% decline from 2012, according to Gartner. In 2012, WFE spending is on pace to reach $29.9 billion, a decrease of 17.4% from 2011 spending. The market is projected to return to growth in 2014.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 0.79 in November, according to SEMI. This compares to a ratio of 0.75 in October.

Hewlett-Packard’s Inkjet and Printing Solutions division has reaffirmed its use of Mentor Graphics’ Pyxis Custom IC Design Platform as HP’s standard solution for custom IC design and verification. In addition, HP has selected Mentor’s Questa CDC as its standard solution for clock-domain crossing (CDC) verification.

Mentor announced comprehensive design, manufacturing, and post tapeout enabling support for Samsung’s 14nm IC manufacturing processes. In addition, Mentor announced advances in its T3Ster+TeraLED measurement and characterization hardware.

Ultratech has acquired the assets of Cambridge Nanotech. Based in Cambridge, Mass., Cambridge is a supplier of atomic layer deposition (ALD) systems.

ASML Holding and Cymer provided a status update regarding ASML’s previously announced pending acquisition of all of the outstanding shares of Cymer. ASML is responding to a request for additional information from the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the transaction. This second request is part of the regulatory review process under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976. ASML and Cymer continue to anticipate completion of the transaction in the first half of 2013.

In a rare move, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is blocking a semiconductor acquisition. The FTC issued an administrative complaint seeking to stop Integrated Device Technology’s proposed $330 million acquisition of PLX Technology. The deal allegedly would give the combined firm a near-monopoly in the market for a type of integrated computer circuits called PCIe switches. In response, IDT and PLX have mutually agreed to terminate their merger agreement.

Micron posted a loss. “Unit shipments in both segments were impacted by unspecified manufacturing issues, although we do not believe these related to yields and more about execution on the back-end. Without these issues, we believe Micro would have beat consensus forecasts,” said Hans Mosesmann, an analyst with Raymond James. “Management provided a brief update on the Elpida acquisition, reiterating its expectation for the close sometime in 1H 2013. We also see positive strategic merits from the deal, including a significant addition to the company’s mobile DRAM portfolio (mobile DRAM share goes from ~4% to ~21%), with Elpida having a supply agreement with Apple.”

For the first time in 14 years, Nokia will not sit atop the global cellphone business on an annual basis at the end of 2012. Samsung is set to seize the mobile handset market’s top rank, according to IHS iSuppli.

Driven by continued demand for smartphones, tablet PCs, and other personal media devices, the total flash memory market (NAND and NOR) is forecast to grow 2% to $30.4 billion in 2012, surpassing the $28.0 billion DRAM market in sales for the first time, according to IC Insights.

IMS Research recently released its fourth annual video surveillance trends for the year ahead. Here’s one trend: The increased popularity of HD and megapixel resolution security cameras has been a hot topic in the video surveillance industry.

VLSI Research is raising its 2013 IC forecast to a +10% jump. “We are much more bullish and expect this to be an ASP-driven upturn due to the constraints in the capacity that the industry will face next year, especially in the memory market. As a result, we project IC units to increase 7% and ASPs to rise 3%. We’re seeing plenty of positive ‘Christmas black-hole’ indicators that the first half will be much hotter than thought before Thanksgiving.”

The semi equipment market has been downgraded to -16% in 4Q ’12, according to VLSI. The fab tool market in 2012 is expected to be minus 12.5%. 2013 is unchanged at -5.3%.

By Mark LaPedus

Raising the ante in the foundry business, GlobalFoundries has added a 10nm finFET process to its roadmap and expanded its technology platform offerings.

The foundry vendor plans to move into production with its 10nm finFET process in 2015, a year after its recently introduced 14nm finFET technology. In addition, the foundry vendor has also expanded its technology platform offerings to five, including bulk planar, super-steep retrograde well (SSRW), fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (minimum), fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (maximum) and finFET.

Perhaps the biggest surprise on the roadmap is SSRW, a technology that controls short-channel effects using a doping technique. For SSRW, GlobalFoundries has been talking to SuVolta about the technology, according to multiple sources, but it’s unclear if the companies  have reached a deal.

Ajit Manocha, chief executive of GlobalFoundries, disclosed the company’s new roadmap during a keynote presentation at the 2012 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco on Tuesday. During the keynote, Manocha also addressed GlobalFoundries’ capacity plans, 450mm fabs and EUV.  In fact, GlobalFoundries is not counting on EUV for the 10nm node.

His keynote was entitled, “Is the Fabless/Foundry Model Dead? We Don’t Think So. Long Live Foundry 2.0!” During the keynote, Manocha said the fabless/foundry model is alive and well in spite of recent comments from an undisclosed party.  “Somebody said the foundry business is dead,” he said. “The same company wants to get into the foundry business. Something doesn’t add up.”

The comments may have been directed towards Intel. In a recent interview with SemiMD, Mark Bohr, senior fellow at Intel, said: “The traditional foundry model is running into problems. In order to survive, the foundries will have to become more like an integrated device manufacturer. Being an IDM, we have design and process development under one roof. That’s really a significant advantage.”

At IEDM, Manocha agreed the foundries must act more like IDMs or virtual IDMs, saying the old model simply doesn’t work. “The traditional foundry model is that you work in isolation,” he said. “It doesn’t work.”

In the new model, dubbed Foundry 2.0, there is a deeper and earlier collaboration between foundries and their customers, he said. GlobalFoundries refers to its strategy as a “collaborative device manufacturer.”

New Technologies

As part of its strategy, GlobalFoundries continues to expand and accelerate its foundry offerings.  Within its new 300mm fab in New York, the company has begun ramping the plant for 28nm and 20nm technology. In 2013, the New York fab will be capable of running 30,000 wafers a month. At some point, the fab will capable of running 50,000 wafers a month.

Meanwhile, in September, GlobalFoundries rolled out its finFET technology for the 14nm node. GlobalFoundries is taking a “modular fin” approach with its bulk finFET offering, dubbed 14nm-XM. The 14nm-XM combines a 14nm-class fin with its 20nm back-end-of-line (BEOL) interconnect flow.

By taking the modular approach, the company has accelerated its process roadmap by a year. Early process design kits (PDKs) are available, with customer product tape-outs expected in 2013. Production, which is slated for 2014, will take place within GlobalFoundries’ new 300mm fab in New York.

Then, in October, rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) updated and accelerated its process roadmap. The world’s largest silicon foundry has accelerated its 16nm finFET efforts by one quarter and added a 10nm finFET technology to the roadmap. TSMC’s 10nm finFET process, dubbed CLN10FF, is expected to move into risk production close to the end of 2015.

GlobalFoundries moved to keep pace with TSMC. At IEDM, GlobalFoundries disclosed a 10nm finFET process, which is due out in 2015, or a year after 14nm finFET.  “We have accelerated (the 10nm finFET process),” Manocha said after his keynote at IEDM.

At 10nm, GlobalFoundries and others may be forced to extend 193nm immersion, while also going with a multiple patterning scheme. EUV is late to the party and may miss the 10nm node. “10nm will be optical,” he said. “We have evidence that we can do 7nm with immersion.”

GlobalFoundries did not describe the details of its 10nm process. The foundry vendor did disclose it would offer several new technology platforms. Besides planar bulk and finFETs, the company is moving to offer FD-SOI.  In July, GlobalFoundries agreed to manufacture STMicroelectronics’ FD-SOI technology in both the 28nm and 20nm nodes. The SOI substrates are supplied by Soitec.

As part of its technology offerings, GlobalFoundries plans to offer two versions of FD-SOI: minimum and maximum. The maximum version is a technology tuned for a specific application. IBM and STMicroelectronics are examples of companies that would utilize maximum versions of FD-SOI. Meanwhile, the minimum version is a simple and an “out of the box” FD-SOI technology, said Subramani Kengeri, head of advanced technology architecture at GlobalFoundries.

In addition, GlobalFoundries also plans to offer SSWR, a doping technology. “You add a ground plane below the channel,”  Kengeri said. The technology is a 20nm planar process at 28nm costs. For years, several companies have been working on the technology to solve a major issue. A phenomenon called random dopant fluctuation (RDF) causes more than 70% of all random variations at 65nm and the problems are getting worse at each node.

To solve RDF and other problems, one company, SuVolta, recently rolled out a new transistor option that extends conventional bulk CMOS technology. SuVolta’s Deeply Depleted Channel (DDC) technology works by forming a deeply depleted channel when a voltage is applied to the gate.

In the distant future, GlobalFoundries is also looking at 450mm. It is part of the recently-announced Global 450 Consortium. The G450C group includes five IC manufacturers, with IBM and GlobalFoundries joining the original “International Sematech” members, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC. Those companies, along with Sematech and the SUNY-Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), will sit on the board of directors that will govern the consortium.

The G450C demonstration line in Albany is targeted for 14nm design rules in early 2013. “Do I want to be the first one (on 450mm)? No. Do I want to be the last? No. I would like to be behind the first,” Manocha added.

By Ed Sperling
STMicroelectronics yesterday unveiled the results of its 28nm production silicon chips using fully depleted silicon on insulator technology, which it claims offers a 30% improvement in speed over bulk CMOS while using less power.

The debate over FD-SOI and FinFETs has been notching up over the past few months. While FinFETs and FD-SOI both promise improvements in controlling leakage current, the FinFETs are more difficult to design. FD-SOI uses the same design flow, although it does use a different SPICE model with better characteristics than the one used for bulk CMOS.

ST also used an ultra thin body and box (UTBB) and body biasing to boost performance, according to Joel Hartmann, the company’s executive vice president of front-end manufacturing and process R&D. Hartmann presented his results at an SOI Consortium-sponsored event at the IEDM show last night.

“We are using body bias to boost performance,” Hartmann said. “You can do that with FD-SOI. We also decreased the Vdd of the device by applying body biasing.”

What’s particularly attractive about FD-SOI is that is can be implemented at the 28nm node for a boost in performance and a reduction in power. The mainstream process node right now is 40nm. And while Intel introduced its version of a finFET transistor called Tri-Gate at 22nm, TSMC and GlobalFoundries plan to introduce it at the next node—whether that’s 16nm or 14nm. That leaves companies facing a big decision about whether to move all the way to 16/14nm to reap the lower leakage of finFETs, whether to move to 20nm on bulk, or whether to stay longer at 28nm with FD-SOI.

Hartmann said ST has seen improvements in analog running on FD-SOI, and for memory where the minimum voltage required is lower. He said ST’s road map calls for FD-SOI all the way down to 10nm, with voltages dropping from 0.9v at 28nm to 0.8v at 14nm and 0.7v at 10nm.

One of the sticking points in adopting FD-SOI has been market acceptance. Despite the promise of improved performance and/or lower power, bulk CMOS has been extended using a variety of techniques such as strain engineering and FD-SOI is considered more expensive. At 28nm and beyond, however, bulk has run out of steam, which is why Intel has opted for finFETs.

Still, FinFETs are more difficult to design and manufacture, and they potentially can add significantly to the cost of an SoC. FD-SOI, in contrast, uses the same design tools and reduces the number of masks and metal layers. ST is the first large fab-lite company to adopt FD-SOI and to move beyond just test chips. It remains to be seen which path the rest of the industry takes—and how quickly.

By Mark LaPedus
SVTC Technologies, an ill-fated R&D foundry based in San Jose, Calif., is officially out of business. SVTC “ceased operations and executed a general assignment for the benefit of creditors as of October 12, 2012,” according to an e-mail from the company. “All employees of the company have been terminated as of October 12, 2012.” As reported, 3D memory supplier Tezzaron has signed a contract to purchase the assets of SVTC’s semiconductor technology development and wafer fabrication facility in Austin, Texas. In a major surprise, multiple sources said German chipmaker Telefunken has won the bid to buy SVTC’s fab assets in San Jose. Telefunken declined to comment. Separately, Telefunken this week also expanded its fab in Roseville, Calif. Japan’s Renesas recently sold the Roseville fab to the Germany company.

Intel announced that the company’s president and CEO, Paul Otellini, has decided to retire as an officer and director at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting in May. In a new report, Hans Mosesmann, an analyst with Raymond James, said: Our understanding is that Intel’s mandatory retirement age is 65, which is why Otellini’s sudden announcement of retirement at 62 years of age will raise a few eyebrows. Our bet is that Intel goes outside for its new CEO and a search that will not be trivial. As we have articulated over the past few years, we suspect that times are changing given the emergence of a near-viral architecture from UK-based ARM Holdings. Building massive $10 billion dollar fabs just won’t cut it for Intel in our opinion, as had been so effective back in the day when AMD was the company’s sole mainstream competitor.”

The recently concluded 18th China Communist Party Congress, which saw outgoing President Hu Jintao deliver a report on China’s economy and a roadmap for the next decade, will jump-start key industries including the information and communications technology sector, according to a report from IDC.

In the last year, 5,754 mobile phones were lost or left behind by consumers in U.S. shopping malls, more than double from the year before, according to a survey. The results underscore the need for users and their employers to take proactive steps in securing both personal and corporate data.

Applied Materials reported its results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended Oct. 28.

TowerJazz posted its results. The foundry vendor is seeing demand for SOI in mixed-signal applications, according to company executives in a transcript of a conference call from Seeking Alpha.

Soitec reported its audited consolidated results for the first six months of its 2012-2013 financial year.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 0.75 in October, down from 0.78 in September, according to SEMI.

Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments decreased during the third quarter 2012, compared to second quarter 2012 area shipments, according to SEMI.

Mentor Graphics announced progress in its Embedded Nucleus Innovate Program. The program is designed to help businesses with less than $1 million in annual revenue kick start their embedded development projects.

UMC announced that its board of directors today appointed senior vice president Mr. Po-Wen Yen as the company’s new CEO. Former CEO Dr. Shih-Wei Sun was promoted to the position of UMC Vice Chairman.

Texas Instruments will reduce costs and focus investments in its wireless business on embedded markets. Cost reductions include the elimination of about 1,700 jobs worldwide.

Infineon reported its results for the fourth quarter and the 2012 fiscal year. Cost-cutting measures are being implemented. “In manufacturing, Infineon will, for example, adjust production costs through measures such as temporarily switching off underutilized equipment, reducing the temporary workforce and the selective use of short-time work,” according to Infineon.

Advantest has developed a new electron-beam lithography system. The tool meets the requirements for 1xnm technology nodes.

DigitalOptics, a subsidiary of Tessera, will focus on its MEMS camera module business. It also plans to reduce its workforce, not including those related to manufacturing operations in Zhuhai, China, by up to 40%.

Samsung rolled out a NAND-based 64GB embedded multimedia card (eMMC) using 10nm-class process technology.

IC content in TVs is increasing even as TV unit growth slows, according to IC Insights. Smart TVs and LED technology is boosting IC content for TVs.

Initial findings from a new report by IMS Research has revealed a growing trend in building automation systems towards photorealism and increased end user interaction. The “gamification” of the graphical user interface (GUI) is shaping the way these systems are being developed and used.

By Mark LaPedus
In a blog, a former technologist from SEMI makes a strong case for 450mm fabs after dismissing the technology some years ago.

NASA faces some new and big challenges. There is wave of counterfeit parts hitting the space agency, a phenomenon that threatens the success of its missions, the safety of its personnel and the security of the country, according to iSuppli.

Three pure-play foundries, TSMC, GlobalFoundries and UMC, are expected to be in the top 20 rankings of leading semiconductor suppliers in 2012, according to IC Insights.

X-FAB Silicon Foundries announced its XT018 process, a trench dielectric isolated SOI foundry technology offering for 200V MOS capability at 180nm.

Soitec has more than doubled production of bonded silicon-on-sapphire (BSOS) substrates to meet increased demand from RF chipmaker Peregrine Semiconductor.

Soitec has signed a solar power purchase agreement in South Africa.

Mentor Graphics announced its new Tessent IJTAG solution, which allows designers to easily re-use test, monitoring and debugging logic embedded in existing IP blocks. In addition, ON Semiconductor has completed multiple tapeouts with Mentor’s Pyxis Custom IC Router.

C.J. Muse, an analyst with Barclays Capital, attended Lam’s analyst day. “One of the key points from the analyst day was Lam’s decision to focus on its core markets–etch, deposition, clean, and strip–as evidenced by its announcement to exit the PVD business and selling off the Peter Wolters business in 2013. We note that Novellus’s share in the PVD subsegment had steadily declined in recent years, reaching ~5-6% of the $1.6 billion market in 2011,” Muse said. “Lam had suggested that while the 2012 WFE is tracking weaker to ~$28-29 billion, the company anticipated the 2013 WFE market to recovery to $30B+, driven by a $1-$2 billion pick-up in memory, particularly NAND.”

Kulicke & Soffa Industries posted its results for its fourth quarter and fiscal year ended Sept. 29.

STATS ChipPAC has expanded its packaging options for advanced embedded Wafer Level Ball Grid Array (eWLB) technology.

Deca Technologies rolled out its M-Series CSP product line featuring Adaptive Patterning.

Alchimer, a provider of deposition technologies for advanced 3D packaging, through-silicon vias (TSVs) and other electronic applications, announced the appointments of Bruno Morel as CEO.

RF Micro Devices signed a definitive agreement to acquire Amalfi Semiconductor.

Wide-band-gap semiconductor materials such as gallium nitride (GaN) offer far higher performance than traditional silicon but cost significantly more. However, by 2020 GaN costs will drop enough for it to become competitive based on performance gains, according to Lux Research.

Worldwide tablet shipments totaled 27.8 million units in the third quarter of 2012, says IDC. Android shipments, led by Samsung and Amazon, surged during the quarter, at the expense of Apple, which saw its share slip notably during the quarter.

The “smart trend” has hit IT as an unstoppable force, as 821 million smart devices (smartphones and tablets) will be purchased worldwide in 2012 and pass the billion mark in 2013, according to Gartner.

More than half of all electronic OEMs worldwide plan to reduce the number of contract manufacturers they work with during the next year, according to iSuppli.

By Mark LaPedus
Intel reported quarterly revenue of $13.5 billion and net income of $3.0 billion. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-reports-third-quarter-revenue-200100019.html C.J. Muse, an analyst with Barclays Capital, said: “Intel lowered its capex guidance to $11.3 billion for 2012 vs. our estimate of $11.8 billion. While we believe Intel will remain vigilant in the ramp of 14nm, as Intel looks to aggressively redirect space and equipment to 14nm (80-90% of equipment bought at 22nm is reusable at 14nm node), we see capex of ~$9 billion +/- $1 billion in 2013.”

Is AMD on the ropes again? AMD will cut its workforce by approximately 15%. It also announced revenue for the third quarter of 2012 of $1.27 billion and a loss of $157 million. “Management’s ongoing mis-execution in our opinion seems to be contributing to building too much inventory, firing top operational managers, channel misalignment (and) withdrawing from broad swaths of the market,” said Craig Berger, an analyst with FBR. Meanwhile, analyst, Hans Mosesmann of Raymond James, said: “The worrisome but not too surprising commentary by AMD management was that the PC market will take several quarters to recover. AMD now considers 85% of its current business ‘legacy’ PC, with the planned restructuring focused on attacking various adjacent high-volume markets.”

Seeking to accelerate the development of EUV lithography, ASML has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Cymer for $2.6 billion. “Cymer’s light source is critical to EUV success and given recent slippage of key metrics, we think it makes sense for the technology to move in-house at ASML,” Muse said.

In response to its foundry rivals, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) has updated and accelerated its finFET roadmap.

GlobalFoundries could employ as many as 3,000 workers at its Malta plant, according to reports.

STMicroelectronics’ 28nm Fully Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator (FDSOI) process, which uses substrates from Soitec, is now available for prototyping to universities, research labs and design companies through the silicon brokerage services provided by CMP.

Soitec announced total consolidated sales of 130.2 million euros for the first half, down by 19.9% on a yearly basis.

European government representatives, consortia and suppliers discussed 450mm fabs at Semicon Europa in Dresden.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted a book-to-bill ratio of 0.81 in September, compared to 0.84 in August, according to SEMI.

Mentor Graphics has rolled out a formal-based technology in the Questa Verification Platform.  In addition, Mentor announced new capabilities to complement TSMC’s 20nm manufacturing processes.  Meanwhile, SpringSoft and Mentor announced that the Laker-Calibre RealTime custom layout flow has been selected for the TSMC Custom Design Reference Flow. In a related announcement, TSMC has presented Mentor with two “Partner of the Year 2012” awards in various categories. And, Mentor announced the winners of its 24th annual PCB Technology Leadership Awards.

At the Storage Networking World (SNW) conference, there was no shortage of SSD presentations. But none of the keynoters who shared their data center experiences had deployed any SSDs in their systems. This seemed particularly odd to The SSD Guy.

Amazon is in talks to buy the mobile chip business of Texas Instruments. TI’s chips are used in Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet.

FormFactor completed its acquisition of Astria Semiconductor Holdings and its subsidiary MicroProbe.

Lam Research achieved revenue of $906.9 million, up 22.3% from prior quarter, in first full quarter of consolidated results with Novellus.  “Based on continued push-outs of NAND spending, Lam guided to December quarter revenues of $820-880 million, well below consensus of $927 million,” said Barclay’s Muse. “While management had previously suggested that 2012 WFE was tracking to the low end of the $29-30 billion outlook, management took the opportunity to lower their 2012 WFE outlook to about $28-29 billion.”

Xilinx announced fiscal Q2 2013 sales of $543.9 million, down 7% sequentially and down 2% from the second quarter of the prior fiscal year.  Barclay’s Muse said: “Xilinx reported mixed September quarter results and then guided to worse December quarter, highlighting continued macro pressure for semis.”

Microchip Technology has lowered its forecast. “Our lower than anticipated net sales activity in the September quarter was driven primarily by macroeconomic and industry conditions,” said Steve Sanghi, Microchip’s president and CEO. “The overall global economic outlook continues to be poor and is adversely impacting our business as well as the rest of the semiconductor industry.”

Marvell expects net revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2013 will be in the range of $765 million to $785 million, compared with prior outlook of between $800 million to $850 million. “The continued slowdown in the global economy during the third quarter is resulting in a weaker PC market than previously anticipated and thus lower demand from our storage HDD customers,” said Sehat Sutardja, Marvell’s chairman and CEO. FBR’s Berger said: “We think Marvell has a structural management problem that inhibits the firm from realizing real change, may discourage the development of formalized engineering processes, and keeps the firm on what seems to be a self-destructive path of no growth and limited traction in cellular. With the board unwilling to make real changes, business at Marvell could migrate from bad to worse over time.”

The NAND and NOR flash memory market landscape is shifting rapidly, with increasingly sophisticated mobile handsets playing a leading role in driving industry trends and determining which suppliers will be successful, according to IHS iSuppli.

For continued attractiveness and competitiveness of advanced electronic appliances such as smartphones, TVs, notebooks or tablets, the semiconductor industry is moving to “fully depleted” transistor technology to build integrated circuits. This technology comes in two flavors: planar and tri-dimensional (FinFET), each with its own advantages and challenges. This White Paper explains how innovative wafers, which are the foundations of silicon chips, will play a role to enable or facilitate the introduction of the planar and non-planar approaches to fully depleted technology, starting at the 28nm node. It also outlines the benefits that users can expect.

To view this white paper, click here.