Technology and Trends

“GlobalFoundries, TowerJazz, TSMC and UMC are expanding or bringing up RF SOI processes in 300mm fabs in an apparent race to garner the first wave of RF business for 5G, the next-generation wireless standard,” writes Mark Lapedus of Semiconductor Engineering. His recent piece, RF-SOI Wars Begin, explains why demand across the supply chain is currently tight. Rest assured, the supply situation is being addressed fast. By next year, 300mm-based RF-SOI manufacturing (vs. 200mm) will increase from 5% to 20%. But with insatiable end-user demand for greater throughput, overall RF-SOI device demand is increasing in the double-digit range, so 200mm-based manufacturing is also expanding fast. [caption id="attachment_11905" align="alignleft" width="300"] The front-end modules in all smartphones are built on Soitec's RF-SOI wafer technology. The most advanced, for LTE/LTE-A, are built on Soitec's RFeSI-SOI wafers, which have four layers to meet the demands of devices with high linearity requirements. (Courtesy: Soitec)[/caption] SOI wafer manufacturer Soitec has 70% of the RF-SOI wafer market share. The other RF-SOI wafer manufacturers – Shin-Etsu, GlobalWafers and Simgui – all use Soitec's RF-SOI wafer manufacturing technology. This is an excellent, comprehensive piece, that clearly explains the complexities of the markets, the devices, the manufacturing and the supply chain. It's a highly recommended read. BTW, the SOI Consortium is organizing a 4G/5G SOI supply chain workshop during Semicon West (July '18). Sign up or get more information on that under the Events tab here on the consortium website. Of course, here at ASN, we've been covering RF-SOI for over a decade. You can use our RF-SOI tag to access most of the pieces we've done over the years.

Some really innovative start-ups presented chips they're doing on FD-SOI at the SOI Consortium’s 2018 SOI Symposium in Silicon Valley. We'll cover those here in Part 3 of ASN's coverage, as well as a presentation on China by wafer-maker Simgui and the final panel discussion. BTW, if somehow you missed my coverage of the morning sessions about very cool new products and projects from NXP, Sony, Audi, Airbus and Andes Technology, be sure to click here to read it. And in the afternoon the foundry partners provided excellent insight into who's designing chips on FD-SOI, and VLSIresearch explained why. You can read that here. Some of the presentations are posted on the SOI Consortium Events page – but some won’t be. Either way, I’ll cover them here. Start-upsIneda Systems began as an ADAS start-up, and are now working on developing low-power SoCs for use in consumer and enterprise applications. They're using FD-SOI for their current family of chips. SVP Ramkumar Subramanian emphasized that NRE costs are really important for smaller designs. 22FDX, he said, enabled them to move from 40nm, and ramp to larger volumes. In February, GreenWaves Technologies, a fabless semiconductor startup designing disruptive ultra-low power embedded solutions for image, sound and vibration AI processing in sensing devices, announced its GAP8 IoT application processor. GAP8 evaluation boards can now be ordered. The GAP8 agile power management architecture combined with IOT low duty cycling is a perfect fit for FDSOI processes. CEO Loic Lietar talked about how it would be used in AI applications at the very edge, wherein only the necessary data should be uploaded to the cloud. Also in February, Dream Chips’ announced that its ADAS SoC fabbed in GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX (FD-SOI) technology was posting record power efficiency (you can read more about it in ASN's coverage at the time here.) Dream Chips is Germany’s largest independent Engineering Service Provider. At the symposium, CEO Jens Benndor's talked about their roadmap. [caption id="attachment_11865" align="alignleft" width="300"] (Courtesy: eVaderis, SOI Consortium)[/caption] eVaderis CEO Jean Pascal Bost talked about how data-intensive IoT applications are enabled with FD-SOI and embedded magnetoresistive non-volatile memory (eMRAM) technology. You can get the slides from his talk here. eVaderis has eflash-like and eSRAM-like eMRAM IP that covers most MCU applications. They also have an eMRAM compiler tool and high-value-added IP for 22FDX. They foresee impressive power savings at the system level with body biasing: 25x this year and up to 45x in 2020, so that intelligence can be brought to IoT. In February they announced that they are co-developing an ultra-low power MCU reference design using GF’s eMRAM technology on the 22FDX® platform. And in March eVaderis and Mentor/Siemens announced that eVaderis proprietary Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) model would be co-optimized with AFS to speed-up simulations and generations of embedded MRAM IPs and compiler products with good accuracy.An 22FDX MCU reference design project is underway, with tape-out in July '18. Reduced Energy Microsystems (REM) CEO William Coven talked about realizing near-threshold computing with 22FDX and low-power memories. REM has two products on 22FDX: their Neuron Vision SoC and 64-bit RISC-V IP cores. 22FDX, he says, has been fantastic. Simgui Jeffrey Wang, the CEO of wafer-maker Simgui looked at why China is promoting its IC industry. (In the SOI ecosystem, Simgui is particularly known for its RF-SOI wafers, which it produces using Soitec's Smart CutTM process.) This was more of an overview talk, not necessarily specific to the SOI ecosystem, but certainly interesting. In terms of worldwide semiconductor sales, he said, about half end up in China. The CICF – aka the Big Fund – is currently running at about $74 billion. Having realized that mergers acquisitions would not solve the problem, they've opened a second round, targeting another $160 billion. China's two biggest innovation success stories are Huawei (with its Kirin processor), and China Rail, which is now a global Fortune 500 company. The CAGR for the China semiconductor industry is 19%, though they need 20% to reach their goals. IC design is a particularly successful area, posting a CAGR of 29%, with two players in China in the top 10 worldwide. Packaging and assembly/test are also very strong. Zing is working on increasing the supply of 300mm silicon wafers, while Simgui is expanding in both 200 and 300mm capex, due to “big demand”, he said. Panel Discussion [caption id="attachment_11866" align="alignleft" width="300"] SOI Symposium Panel Discussion: (left to right): Giorgio Cesana (Co-Director SOI Consortium), Dave Eggleston (VP GF), Tim Saxe (CTO, Quicklogic), Wayne Dai (CEO, Verisilicon), Samir Patel, (CEO Sankalp Semi), Kelvin Low (VP, ARM), Mahesh Tirupattur (EVP, Analog Bits)[/caption] The day wrapped up with an excellent panel discussion moderated by SOI Consortium Executive Co-Director Giorgio Cesana. Here are a few of the observations made by the panelists. QuickLogic CTO Tim Saxe said that FD-SOI made their designs more compact. With FD-SOI for FPGAs, you've got one set of IP, and you can decide at runtime where you're going for low power or high performance. With a lot of power domains, you see the benefits at the system level. GF VP Dave Eggleston said they're seeing early adopters of eMRAM, especially for wearables with RF and low power. ARM VP Kelvin Low said people should do more than just migrate to FD-SOI. If they use back biasing, it can replace the need for big/little cores. Body biasing makes things easier, maintained Verisilicon CEO Wayne Dai. His teams find that with body biasing, you can tape out for “typical” instead of “worst case”. It's not too late for FD-SOI: it's perfect timing for the MCU market, which is still at 40nm, said Sankalp Semi CEO Samir Patel. As designers, they're happy to focus on companies still on the older nodes. The IP ecosystem should be more enthusiastic about FD-SOI, said Analog Bits EVP Mahesh Tirupattur. You've got more potential customers, and your volume runs can be bigger. In his closing remarks, SOI Consortium Executive Co-Director Carlos Mazure reminded the audience of the day's three take-aways: power consumption is driving even systems companies FD-SOI is penetrating fields like MCUs and SoCs where more intelligence is needed China is still a really big opportunity.

Here’s why the embedded community should care whether the chips they use are built on FD-SOI. FD-SOI has “…dramatically improved the landscape for power efficiency,” NXP VP Joe Yu explains in a recent Embedded Systems Engineering piece (you can read it here). He gets into the hows and whys of the i.MX7ULP chip design, taking a deep dive into the things that the embedded folks really care about. He details how FD-SOI decreases leakage and dynamic power, including the roles played by forward and reverse body biasing. He then goes on to explain why it’s better for analog, and how it prevents latch-up. FD-SOI enables new features, too, he points out, like ultra-low power consumption and deep sleep suspend. And perhaps most importantly, he explains how bursty high-performance and ultra energy efficiency are dynamically traded off on an as-needed basis. “Engineers no longer face a forced selection: low-power processor or high-performance processor,” he say. “Rather, the selection for performance or power efficiency can be made instantaneously, as needed, without having to reconfigure.” All of this plus the rich graphics and user interface FD-SOI enables makes the i.MX 7ULP perfect for “…IoT edge devices, as well as smart home controls, building automation, portable patient monitoring, wearables, and portable scanners.” This is an excellent read: highly recommended. Of course, ASN covered the i.mX7ULP when it was first announced (on Samsung's 28nm FD-SOI) last year – you can still read our coverage here. But it’s good to see the company explaining to their customers how FD-SOI will change the way they build products. BTW, you can get all the i.MX7ULP product details on the NXP website here. NXP has also put together a nifty video on the i.MX7ULP – see it here.

Do you email your doctor when you have a tickle in your throat? Wear a fitness tracker or use an app to monitor your sugar levels, exercise or nutrition? If so, congratulations! You are a part of the rapid growth of digital medicine.Since you’re on the leading edge of this trend to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery, you might enjoy learning more about how the medical industry is transforming healthcare in this collection of podcast episodes and video. These are my top picks and just the tip of the proverbial iceberg in how modern medicine is taking today’s technology and applying it to best practices for remote patient monitoring, medical diagnosis, rural healthcare and more.Enjoy! And let me know if you find any others worth the listen!1. Inside Angle: 3M Health Information Systems - Telemedicine: Enhancing Access to Improve OutcomesAccess to healthcare can be a matter of life or death. For some patients, this may mean taking a day off work and driving for hours because services are not available in their hometown.Inside Angle host Dr. Gordon Moore interviews Barb Johnston, co-founder and CEO of HealthLinkNow, about the implementation of telemedicine programs. They discuss how technology impacts telemedicine adoption and related regulations and benefits clinicians and patients in the telepsychiatry and mental health industry. 2. NPR’s The Salt: What’s On Your Plate – This Chef Lost 50 Pounds and Reversed Prediabetes With A Digital ProgramThis short audio clip and article dives into lifestyle and wellness apps designed to motivate users to eat healthier, exercise more and – in some cases – save them from a preventable disease, like diabetes.Wellness apps like Omada Health rely on smartphones, e-coaching, electronic nudging and other methods to encourage users to make and, more importantly, stick to changes that can improve their health. And it’s catching on as other organizations, such as The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recognize the difference lifestyle-change programs designed to prevent diabetes are making. 3. Red Hot Healthcare: Episode 57 - Bluer Skies for TelemedicineLast year alone, venture capitalists poured $7 billion into telemedicine. As an emerging concept, telemedicine has a long road ahead until it’s fully integrated and adopted into modern medical practices. Nathaniel Lacktman, partner and health care lawyer with Foley Lardner LLP, discusses legal issues and hurdles surrounding telemedicine today with Red Hot Healthcare host Dr. Steve Ambrose.Lacktman pointed to healthcare providers such as Mercy Virtual Care Center, Mayo Clinic and MDLive that are likely to lead the telemedicine race. This podcast episode is a great listen for entrepreneurs and medical professionals who are interested in learning about compliance and business considerations for the implementation of telemedicine. 4. Digital Health Today: Episode 56 – Eren Bali on Building the World’s Largest Connected Care NetworkEren Bali, CEO and co-founder of Carbon Health, is out to change our fragmented traditional healthcare system with his aim to build the world’s largest connected care network.For Bali, it all started with his sister’s experience consolidating his mother’s health records – scattered over 20 different systems. And from that challenge, his idea to create a universal network that aggregates patient medical records was born.Bali and Digital Health Today host Dan Kendall discuss Bali’s launch of Carbon Health, the new medical records system’s first implementation in a San Francisco primary care clinic, and how providers and patients can get on board with this model. 5. Digital Health Today: Episode 58 – Brennan Spiegel Gets Real About Virtual RealityThis episode of Digital Health Today centers on how Virtual Reality (VR) is being used to enhance patient care. Host Dan Kendall speaks with Dr. Brennan Spiegel, Director of Health Services Research at Cedars-Sinai Health System and Professor of Medicine and Public Health at UCLA, about how immersive technology like VR and Augmented Reality (AR) can improve patients’ experience as well as alleviate pain, anxiety, depression, addiction and more. In a particularly interesting segment, Dr. Spiegel calls the hospital a biopsychosocial jail cell and underscores its importance in not just treating physical ailments but, more wholistically, also addressing the psychological and social wellbeing of patients. 6. TED2017: Raj Panjabi – No one should die because they live too far from a doctor What do you do when access to a doctor means rowing a boat for hours? Millions of people around the world lack access to health care because they live in a remote town or village.In this TED talk, Raj Panjabi, physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and co-founder of Last Mile Health, offers a solution to the problem of healthcare access in the form of the Community Health Academy, a global platform to train and connect community health workers by leveraging devices like smartphones to bring preventative healthcare to even the most far-flung regions of the world. 7. GeekWire’s Health Tech Podcast: How AI is making humans the ‘fundamental thing in the internet of things’Can AI predict which patients are at risk for chronic diseases using their old medical records? This episode of Health Tech Podcast dives deep into the future of healthcare with a look at the potential for AI -- “augmented intelligence” or “assistive intelligence” – to improve patient outcomes, the focus of Ankur Teredesai, a data scientist at the University of Washington and co-founder and CTO of health AI startup KenSci.Clare McGrane, host of GeekWire’s Health Tech Podcast, speaks with numerous experts in this field. They compare precision health to a modern car constantly monitored by microprocessors. The minute something is wrong, you get a warning to take the car to a shop to resolve the issue. The same concept can be applied to humans and deliver big healthcare impacts as research in AI and machine learning continues to evolve. 8. NPR’s Shots: Can Home Health Visits Help Keep People Out Of The ER?In Washington D.C., the city with the highest per capita 911 call volume in all of the U.S., Mary’s Center is piloting a program to provide primary care telemedicine to patients who cannot, or in some cases, do not want to visit the clinic. NPR covers the story of Medicaid patient Dennis Lebron Dolman, who is currently receiving a mix of home visits and virtual treatment.Besides providing healthcare access to rural regions, telemedicine has the potential to reduce emergency room visits in cities as well as improve the health of patients in the long run. Learn more at SEMICON West’s Smart MedTech TechXPOT on Digital Medicine and Remote Patient Monitoring. Hosted by NBMC on July 12, 2018, from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM, the event will feature healthcare industry leaders exploring state-of-the-art healthcare practices and the future of medical technology. Registration is now open!Amy Ly is a Technical Programs Marketing Coordinator at SEMI.

Good news: there are far fewer bigoted extremists out there when it comes to FD-SOI vs. FinFETs. People want the best technology for their application. It's that simple. That's a key piece of news from the updated survey by Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research, which he presented in the afternoon session of the SOI Consortium's 2018 SOI Symposium in Silicon Valley The afternoon then featured presentations by foundry partners, which I'll cover here. Also in the afternoon were presentations by wafer-maker Simgui, some innovative start-ups leveraging FD-SOI for custom SoCs and the final panel discussion. I'll cover those in Part 3 of this series. BTW, if somehow you missed my coverage of the morning sessions about very cool new products and projects from NXP, Sony, Audi, Airbus and Andes Technology, be sure to click here to read it. The presentations are starting to be posted on the SOI Consortium Events page – but some won't be. Either way, I'll cover them here. VLSI Research A couple years ago at the annual SOI Symposium in Silicon Valley, Dan Hutcheson presented results of a survey he did (ASN covered it – you can still read about it here). At the 2018 event, he presented an update, which is now posted. You can get it here. The FD-SOI roadmap and IP availability are no longer issues for decision makers, he found. The 14nm branch – do you go FinFET or FD-SOI? – is gone. “Fins and FD are complementary,” he observed. Most people said they'd consider using both and running two roadmaps, choosing whichever technology is appropriate to a given design. [caption id="attachment_11841" align="alignnone" width="1000"] (Courtesy: VLSI Research, SOI Consortium)[/caption] From a transistor viewpoint, the top reasons to choose FD-SOI is that it's better for analog and has lower leakage/parastics. It's perceived as better for complex, high mixed-signal SoCs, and especially for RF and sensor integration. In fact, people see RF as the new mixed-signal, wherein FD-SOI is uniquely positioned for 5G and mmWave. From a business viewpoint, FD-SOI is perceived to have real advantages. In particular, FD-SOI wins when it comes to keeping down design costs, manufacturing costs and time-to-market. IoT is still the hottest target market for FD-SOI, to which he adds high growth expected in automotive and medical. Samsung With 20 tape-outs in 2018, Samsung is seeing an acceleration in its FD-SOI business. “The trend is healthy,” said Hong Hoa, SVP of the company's foundry business. FD-SOI, he continued, is on a “differentiation path.” Samsung's 28nm FD-SOI process, called 28FDS is at full maturity with very strong yields. They're seeing more customers and a wider range of applications. The design infrastructure, silicon-verified IP and methodologies are also all mature. They have optimal implementation and verification guidelines for body bias design, a body bias memory usage guide, and a body bias generator integration guide. The process supports Grade 1 automotive, and will be qualified for Grade 2 in a few weeks. FD-SOI, Hoa reminded the audience, offers superior RF performance compared to both planar bulk and 14nm FinFET. The Samsung strategy is to first provide a base for for the FD-SOI process, then add RF and eMRAM. The base for 28nm was done in 2016; they added RF in 2017 and eMRAM this year. The Samsung platform for IoT applications integrates both RF and eMRAM to support multi-function needs in a single platform. Lead customers are already working with eMRAM in their designs, he added. (BTW, Samsung has a really nice video explaining their eMRAM offering – you can see it on YouTube here.) The basic PDK for the Samsung 18nm FD-SOI process (18FDS) will be available in September 2018, with full production slated for fall of 2019. It will deliver a 24% increase in performance, a 38% decrease in power, and a 35% decrease in area for logic. RF for the 18FDSplatform will be ready by the end of this year, and eMRAM beginning in 2019. GlobalFoundries With design wins from 36 customers underway, 12 of which are taping out in 22FDX (GF's 22nm FD-SOI process) this year, the market has validated FDX for differentiation, said GF SVP Dr. Bami Bastani. And indeed, designers are using it for a wide array of applications across North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific and Japan. Customers in the North America are designing in 22FDX for NB-IoT, industrial, RF/analog, mobile, network switches and cryptocurrency applications. In Europe, it's more or less the same plus automotive/mmWave, optical transmission, wireless BTS and AI/ML. In Asia Pacific/Japan the mix is similar to Europe. Bastani sees the three big enablers as the the strengths of the roadmap, the ecosystem and multi-sourcing from Dresden and Chengdu (where they're already equipping the cleanrooms). He also tipped his hat in acknowledgment to the partnership with FD-SOI wafer supplier Soitec, noting that they have gone the extra mile to match GF's requirements. So that was the first part of a great afternoon. As mentioned above, my next post (part 3) will cover a very informative presentation by wafer-maker Simgui on the markets in China, plus talks by some innovative start-ups leveraging FD-SOI for custom SoCs and the final panel discussion.

The MEMS industry has huge growth potential. Will MEMS fabrication act as a bottleneck to continued expansion or a critical conduit to achieving that potential? Slow development cycles, multiple fabrication platforms and high cost for small R D volumes are barriers to rapid development of new products. Understanding the special features of MEMS fabrication — with its many ecosystem options — will help your company to navigate successfully these challenges as you more quickly develop new and unique products.The sheer diversity and varying requirements of MEMS devices and the one product, one process approach are the root causes of most MEMS fabrication challenges. While a single approach will not suit all companies, forming an ecosystem that leverages different companies’ expertise is one of the best ways to address these challenges. However, knitting together this ecosystem is difficult because having multiple partners in the mix only works if the entire supply chain follows common basic design rules and a common top-level technology development roadmap.Because establishing these commonalities takes time and effort, many large- and medium-sized companies prefer to own their supply chain, regardless of the costs. In contrast, emerging companies that cannot support heavy capital investments in new equipment will inevitably find foundries that have all the equipment in place — as well as a wide variety of MEMS processes — a more attractive option. As you embark on a MEMS fabrication journey, which options should you consider to stay ahead of the pack?Finding ecosystem partnersSince there are so many different technology choices that make process integration difficult in MEMS fabrication, technology know-how is the key to developing unique products in time. If you are not able to own your supply chain, you must find ecosystem partners whose expertise both matches and complements your technology (Table 1). Table 1: Ecosystem options as a function of company expertise. 1=Excellent fit 2=Good fit 3= Ok fitYou must also understand how your company can add value — either directly to the end-product or to the other partners in the ecosystem. Above all, there must be trust among partners. A lack of mutual trust will lead to inadequate information-sharing and cumulative knowledge-gathering — slowing problem-solving and/or causing excessively long development cycles. Option 1: Own your supply chainWhile few companies can support Option 1 — having the whole supply chain in-house (like Bosch or STMicroelectronics) — the benefits are many: all know-how will be contained within the company, IP is easy to protect, and supply-chain management is simpler. However, this model demands a significant investment in tools and, in the long run, substantial effort and money to remain technologically competitive in each part of the supply chain.Option 2: Outsource the ASICYou might opt for a fully owned supply chain — outsourcing only ASIC fabrication and possibly ASIC design and assembly. This option requires significant expertise in MEMS technology, freeing you from the limitations of a fabless operation model as you gain more control of MEMS fabrication processes. It also offers more IP protection than you would have with a foundry.While the disadvantages of Option 2 are similar to the fully owned supply chain model, you can mitigate them by outsourcing part of the MEMS chip fabrication supply chain or outsourcing some development to wafer supply companies that can handle the customer-designed embedded structures inside the wafer and/or multi-stack wafer packages. Outsourcing will shorten the process flow and reduce the amount of capital required for growth. A third outsourcing option is to farm out especially difficult or incompatible steps, delivering multiple benefits such as access to better materials, including specialized polymers – which are typically more expensive than silicon – and precious metals, such as gold or platinum, which can contaminate equipment during thin-film deposition processes.Options 3-4: Foundry modelsWhile more companies still own the whole supply chain or outsource the ASIC portion of their device than use MEMS foundries, the MEMS foundry solution is still an especially good option for cost-conscious companies. If you cannot afford the substantial investment needed for new tools and/or advanced materials or your product requires rapid scaling-up because of short lifecycles, you should explore foundry solutions. There are two main types: pure-play foundries (Option 3) and a foundry with design services and its own IP (Option 4). Option 3 offers no design services, nor does it provide its own designs. It is an excellent choice for a MEMS design-based company lacking its own MEMS fabrication line. However, if your company lacks in-depth knowledge of MEMS design, Option 4 will give you design support and possibly some IP as well. Option 5: Buy the MEMSOption 5 is to buy ready-made MEMS chips and use them as the foundation to build your component. This is solid choice if your company is high in the value chain or has system-level expertise.In the future, MEMs ecosystem players will win by offering both design-library development and a supporting portfolio of MEMS process design kits — just as the IC industry now does. This winning approach will significantly shorten the MEMS product-design cycle – from idea to process development and finished product – and will ultimately change the rules of the game for the MEMS fabrication industry.Based in Vantaa, Finland, D.Sc.(Tech.) Heikki Holmberg develops new business opportunities for Okmetic’s high-performance silicon wafers. He also manages Okmetic’s research portfolio, including European Union- and nationally funded research projects. For more information, visit: https://www.okmetic.com/

“The ecosystem is ready. The focus is now on applications and products.” And with those words, SOI Consortium Executive Director Carlos Mazure opened the annual Silicon Valley SOI Symposium. As promised, the day was packed with presentations about products on FD-SOI – some from big players like NXP and Sony, some from names new to the FD-SOI ecosystem like Audi and Airbus, and some from start-ups just getting into the game. The event got excellent coverage in EETimes/EDN – including in their editions across the globe in China, Japan, Taiwan, India and more. Samsung, GF Ramp FD-SOI, heralded the headlines. It was a full day of excellent presentations. In this post, I'll chronicle the morning presentations. The next post(s) will cover the afternoon session. Note that as of this writing, the ppts are not yet posted on the SOI Consortium website, but many will be. Keep checking back under the Events tab, and look under “past Events”. Andes Technology As semiwiki noted a few years back, Andes Technology is “...the biggest microprocessor IP company you've never heard of.” Based in Taiwan, Mediatek is one of their big customers; they've got a strong client base across Asia/Pacific, and are now making inroads into North America. Last year they announced with GF their 32-bit CPU IP cores had been implemented on GF's 22FDX® FD-SOI technology. In his symposium keynote, CEO Frankwell Lin said that in the test chip they're doing with GF and Invecus, they're seeing a 70% power savings compared with what they'd gotten in 28ULP. Their newest products are the N25 32bit and NX25 64bit RISC-V based cores, and in July they'll announce a core that runs on Linux. NXP “With FD-SOI we're enabling the future of embedded processing,” the always-quotable (and keynote speaker) NXP VP/GM Ron Martino told us. NXP's i.MX7ULP, i.MX8, i.MX8X and i.MXRT are all FD-SOI based. They all share fundamental building blocks, so NXP can build platforms, scale and re-use IP. “It's better than any technology I've worked on in my 30 years in the industry,” he said. They're seeing much higher performance with on-chip flash. And the RT “crossover” processor boasts 3x higher computing performance than today's competing MCUs. This is going to be critical for edge computing going forward, to which end NXP is working very closely with foundry partner Samsung. FD-SOI is not just helpful for the logic part of these chips – memory technologies also share in the benefits. They get much higher performance with on-chip flash. Leakage is cut by a factor of ten with biasing techniques, and the enhancements mean that memory can operate at very low voltages. NXP is increasingly sophisticated with how they use body biasing, applying high-granularity techniques to independent domains in different parts of the chips. Getting sub-0.6 Vmin delivers value at multiple levels: on battery life, on total system cost, and on system enablement. Invest in body biasing if you want to get leadership results, advised Martino. Edge computing – including machine learning and neural networks for things like image classification – is a big target, he continued. At the last CES they did a proof-of-concept “foodnet” where two appliances talked to each other without having to go to the cloud. In that case it was an i.MX8 in a fridge and an i.MXRT in a microwave, but he explained that the same concept can be applied to a car for driver awareness, where you don't want to take the extra time for or don't have a connection to the cloud. iMX and FD-SOI enable scalable solutions, he concluded. Audi What's a metal-bending company doing talking about electrons? asked Audi Project Manager Dr. Andre Blum. And why SOI? Well, for Audi, he said, SOI stands for Solutions, Opportunities and Innovation. [caption id="attachment_11790" align="alignleft" width="300"] Audi Project Manager Andre Blum says SOI stands for Solutions, Opportunities and Innovation -- at the 2018 SOI Symposium in Silicon Valley.[/caption] Audi is working on the various levels of autonomous driving, and they want it to be without design limitations. That means being able to hide sensors wherever they're needed. They'll create a cocoon around the car for the best driver experience. He showed a fun video Audi's made to illustrate their concept – it's the Invisible Man video, which you can check out on YouTube. But those new architectures can't up the power budget (think heat): rather they need to cut power drastically while increasing performance. And with FD-SOI, they see an opportunity to do just that, he said, while integrating the sensors. Audi is one of 25 partners in a heavily funded ( 100 million Euros) brand new EU Horizon 2020 program called Ocean12 (lead by Soitec). The launch was only May 1st 2018 (so as of today it doesn't even have a website yet), and it will run for about 4 years. It is described by ECSEL (a public-private entity that puts together the big EU research projects) as an “opportunity to carry European autonomous driving further with FDSOI technology up to 12nm node”. One to watch! Airbus For Airbus, it's all about increased connectivity and communications that are trusted and secure, said company expert Olivier Notebaert. Since their chip runs are low, NRE – non-recurring engineering costs – are very important; and they need flexible systems. SOI has a long history in aerospace – in fact that's originally where it got its start, since it can handle radiation and is immune to latch-up. Notebaert says that even for Airbus, IoT is their future. The developments they pioneer will be part of it. Airbus is a partner in the EU Horizon 2020 DAHLIA project – which stands for Deep sub-micron microprocessor for spAce rad-Hard appLIcation Asic. The project is, “...developing a Very High Performance microprocessor System on Chip (SoC) based on STMicroelectonics European 28nm FDSOI technology with multi-core ARM processors for real-time applications, eFPGA for flexibility and key European IPs, enabling faster and cost-efficient development of products for multiple space application domains. The performance is expected to be 20 to 40 times the performance of the existing SoC for space.” According to another recent presentation, DAHLIA is prototyping an FPGA this year that will be in production in 2019. Sony For Sony GM Kenichi Nakano, FD-SOI has big potential for low-power products. And he should know. Sony has been an FD-SOI pioneer, using it as the basis for GPS chips that are now in a growing number of cool products, especially watches. They're getting good feedback from the market and see good opportunities across a diversified global customer base, he said. Their CXD5603, for example, is the lowest power GNSS (GPS) chip worldwide. In mass production since 2015, it is now dominating world wearable markets like trackers -- such the popular Amazfit line. Running through their various FD-SOI based GPS offerings, he noted that the GPS is a pretty simple chip. But now customers are asking for more, like for it to work in the water (where a GPS typically doesn't). So Sony has partnered with triathalon teams and are seeing good results. With success, of course, comes greater demands: for greater accuracy, for more precise positioning in motion, for increased height accuracy, for even lower power – and Sony is meeting these demands with FD-SOI, in solutions like the new CXD5602. The CXD5602 product configuration covers audio/video/communications: key factors in IoT. A camera version is releasing this summer, as are main and extension boards. An LTE module will be released at the end of 2018. And now they're using those FD-SOI chips in audio applications. You'll find it in the Xperia™ Ear Duo, he said. The MWC press release noted that Xperia Ear Duo “... is driven by Sony’s ultra-low power consuming “CXD5602” chip and a sophisticated multi-sensor platform, the “Daily Assist” feature will recognize time, location and activities to offer relevant information throughout the day – reminding you what time your next meeting is when you reach the office or narrating the latest news headlines.” Also in that PR, Hiroshi Ito,Deputy Head of Smart Product Business Group at Sony Mobile Communications, said, “Ear Duo is the first wireless headset to deliver a breakthrough Dual Listening experience – the ability to hear music and notifications simultaneously with sounds from the world around you.” The highly anticipated wireless “open-ear” stereo headset started rolling out to select markets in Spring 2018. There's a great info page with video here. https://youtu.be/1lKo9acJDPs So that's what we heard in the morning. My next post (or posts?) will cover the afternoon. That includes Dan Hutcheson's excellent talk updating his FD-SOI survey, presentations from Samsung, Globalfoundries and Simgui, plus some from very cool start-ups, and the final panel presentation.

Emboldened by advances in self-driving and Internet of Vehicles (IoV) technologies, Taiwan’s microelectronics sector is investing heavily in manufacturing processes and equipment as engines of innovation and growth for autonomous driving, the world’s next market goldmine. But breaking into the self-driving vehicle industry can be a steep uphill climb. Semiconductor players hungry to secure their piece of the potentially massive market must know how to navigate the automotive industry’s unique ecosystem of suppliers, not to mention its lofty standards for safety and reliability.To explore opportunities and challenges in the automotive semiconductor market, SEMI recently organized Mobility Tech Talk – a gathering of experts from Strategy Analysis, Yole Développement, Renesas, X-FAB and IHS Markit who examined the evolution of sensors for autonomous cars, advanced driver-assisted system (ADAS) applications, and new energy vehicles (NEVs) in China. Nearly 200 participants exchanged in-depth, forward-looking insights and perspectives as the event helped forge stronger relations among various market segments. Here are four key takeaways from the conference. Lidar: The Hottest Sensing Technology for Smart AutomotiveLidar, mmWave radar, cameras and inertial measurement units (IMUs) are critical sensing devices for autonomous cars. With sensor and high-speed computing technologies maturing at their current pace, some 350,000 self-driving vehicles are expected to hit the road by 2027. But before a single autonomous vehicle takes to the roadways, self-driving technology must become expert at monitoring a vehicle’s environment.That’s where Lidar, the hottest of all sensing technologies and the key to the holy grail of safe self-driving, comes into the picture. Lidar’s versatility supports multiple essential functions such as mapping, object detection and object movement. The problem is that mass production is still impossible due to the technology's high costs. What’s more, technical issues must still be sorted out with solid-state lidar, mechanical lidar and MEMS. Both startups and traditional tier-1 semiconductor manufacturers are aggressively investing in related research and development in hopes of fulfilling lidar's promise and seizing the market opportunity. Smart Automotive Sets New Quality and Safety StandardsAs cars become smarter, so too must silicon. Chips must support vastly more data generated by in-vehicle connectivity, ADAS, electrification, autonomous driving and an array of other functions that rely on advanced automotive electronics components. With demand for smarter silicon surging, Taiwan semiconductor companies are turning to the automotive chip industry for expertise and serving as OEMs for major automakers.Quality and safety for automotive applications is paramount. In-vehicle semiconductors must meet strict requirements for vehicle control, robustness, liability, cost and quality management to meet the automotive specifications necessary to securing certifications. Smart silicon must also pass all AEC-Q liability standards promoted by North America automakers and score “zero defect” for the ISO/TS 16949 Automotive Quality Management System.China’s New Energy Vehicles To Fuel Semiconductor GrowthTo promote NEVs and reduce fuel consumption of cars with internal combustion engines (ICEs), late last year the Chinese government introduced the Measures for the Parallel Administration of the Average Fuel Consumption and New Energy Vehicle Credits of Passenger Vehicle Enterprises. With China the world’s largest market for NEVs, the policy is forcing automakers in Japan, the U.S. and Europe to accelerate moves towards NEVs that, in turn, will fuel growth in the semiconductor and automotive battery industries. NEVs in China are expected to number 2 million by 2020 before more than doubling to 4.9 million by 2025. Today, most cars still run on ICEs as environmentally friendly motor drives are still under development. In unit shipments, motor drives are expected to surpass ICEs by 2025.Cross-field Collaboration is KeyThe rise of smarter, fully autonomous vehicles – a disruptive Car 2.0 – is unlikely to happen overnight. Rapid growth of the global automotive semiconductor market will continue, with safety and powertrain applications driving the strongest chip demand. Meanwhile, automakers are focusing more on innovations from startups and non-traditional suppliers, and some have even started to develop their own IP and solutions. These paradigm industry shifts are diversifying the automotive supply chain into a cross-domain collaborative network of suppliers, pushing the closed, one-way automotive supply chain into lesser relevance. In the near future, rivals and partners may become indistinguishable as traditional turf wars begin to wane. As ADAS and autonomous cars evolve, and the era of electric cars nears, automotive semiconductors are emerging as the engine of growth for the global semiconductor industry. The automotive semiconductor market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.8 percent, reaching US$48.78 billion by 2022.For its part, the SEMI Smart Automotive special interest group connects professionals from the microelectronics and automotive industries. The group promotes the semiconductor industry's development of automotive technologies and cross-domain collaboration to help drive autonomous vehicle innovation.

SEMI’s Nano-Bio Manufacturing Consortium (NBMC) is in the news again for collaborating on the development of a patch that monitors hydration by measuring electrolyte levels in sweat. The innovative sweat patch is featured in this story by Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS).“Born out of an AFRL (Air Force Research Laboratory) and industry collaboration within the Nano-Bio Manufacturing Consortium (NBMC), a wearable patch is helping researchers make ‘sense’ of the link between sweat and hydration,” the article notes.NBMC is a diverse group of companies, universities and organizations that brought their enthusiasm and interdisciplinary smarts across nanotechnology, biotechnology, advanced (additive) manufacturing, and flexible electronics to tackle the challenge of underhydration and dehydration for people with high-stress, high performance occupations. The idea was to develop a device that delivers reliable, wireless, actionable human performance data in a non-invasive way.The team is currently concentrating its efforts on a next-generation of sweat patches that will take what they developed, refine it and even incorporate other sweat-assessment capabilities.Certainly, the world is their oyster as the patch received recognition at this year’s 2018FLEX conference in February. The article notes:“The sweat patch development team received the 2018 FLEXI Award for R D Achievement at the SEMI FLEX Conference and Exhibition in Monterey, California. FLEXI awards recognize groundbreaking accomplishments in the Flexible Hybrid Electronics sector. The award-winning team is comprised of researchers from the Air Force Research Laboratory, GE Global Research, UES, Inc., the University of Arizona, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts Amherst and Dublin City University.”Kudos to the team! We couldn’t be more excited about future developments!Want more information? Be sure to check out our last blog post on GE's extensive report on the project. Also, visit www.nbmc.org for more information.NBMC is hosting a Smart MedTech TechXPOT on Digital Medicine and Remote Patient Monitoring at SEMICON West on July 12, 2018 from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM. Listen to healthcare industry leaders explore state of the art and what is on the horizon for this medical technology space. Registration is now open.

With technology moving at breakneck speed, MEMS and sensors professionals whose job is to stay on top of industry developments must be able to find useful information—fast. Podcasts are one rich source of insight. In All Ears, I share roundups of recent podcast interviews with entrepreneurs and CEOs and episodes covering emerging technologies, breakthroughs and even the unexpected – like a MEMS pinball machine. For the seasoned MEMS and sensors professional or the curious onlooker who loves to learn, here are 5 podcast episode recommendations. 1. Embedded.fm – Episode 214: Tiny Sensor ProblemsChristopher White (@stoneymonster) and Elecia White (@logicalelegance) host Embedded.fm, a weekly podcast about the 5Ws of engineering. They’re both embedded software engineers by trade and their guests include everyone from entrepreneurs and makers to educators and engineers.Tiny Sensor Problems is a good introduction for people who have little to no knowledge of MEMS sensors. Kristen Dorsey, Assistant Professor of Engineering at Smith College, provides a brief overview of MEMS and touches on the manufacturing processes, including temperature sensitivity and sensors hype over the years. You’ll learn facts about interesting MEMS applications that were created, like the pinball machine I mentioned. Dorsey also elaborates on her work in flexible strain and pressure sensors for possible applications in AR and robotics in the future. 2. NPT – Episode 4: MEMS Directional SensorsLet’s dig deeper and learn about some of the applications for MEMS and Sensors. In this case, Erdos Miller, The Drilling Technology Podcast focuses on an extreme niche: oil and gas drilling technology. Ken Miller and David Erdos make up two of the engineering, developers and architect team at Erdos Miller that specializes in creating custom solutions for oil and gas downhole devices. Throughout the episode, they explore surveying sensors starting from the 1920s. History buffs would appreciate the stroll down memory lane and the ingenuity behind the first survey sensor, which involved a glass bottle filled with acid. Texas Instruments’ DLP technology gets a mention towards the end of the episode when micromirrors became a topic of discussion. 3. The Early Stage Podcast – Episode 15: Vesper – Tiny Microphones That Listen ForeverMEMS and sensors are a huge part of IoT—no doubt about it. The Early Stage Podcast captures insights from entrepreneurs into their company’s journey including their innovative approaches to developing cutting-edge technologies and overcome business and technology challenges they encounter. This episode focuses on Matt Crowley, CEO at Vesper, and how piezoelectric microphones will affect the voice interfaces as AI grows more sophisticated. Enthusiastic about the subject, John Valentine, host of the Early Stage Podcast, poses thoughtful questions and Crowley is eloquent and clearly passionate about his trade. They touch upon the race to produce the best voice interfaces for the AI ecosystem and tool kits for companies interested in voice enablement—but lacking a dedicated audio team—and looking for a simple solution. 4. IoT Podcast – Episode 155: New toys, Pi Day and insect-tracking LIDARHost Stacey Higginbotham, a technology journalist covering cloud computing, data centers and IoT, joins IT expert and veteran podcaster Kevin Tofel, in a weekly conversation about IoT developments. They’re entertaining and informative with a knack for making complex concepts easily digestible. In this episode, they discussed their thoughts on how the Broadcom/Qualcomm merger played out. While not explicitly focused on MEMS and sensors, the episode and the podcast in general touches upon overarching challenges the MEMS and sensors industry faces with security, standards, product development and applications usage. The highlight of the show included the guest of this week, Tobias Menne, global head of digital farming at Bayer AG who discusses Agriculture Technology (AgTech). 5. Amelia’s Weekly Fish Fry – Silicon Stagnation: How Emerging Technologies and Non-Traditional Materials Are Changing the Future of MEMSHosted by visionary Amelia Dalton, this episode of Fish Fry addresses the prospect of paper and plastic displacing silicon in MEMS manufacturing. Dalton interviews A.M. Fitzgerald Associates founder Alissa Fitzgerald about her research on the threat of waning research to silicon sensor technology. And more importantly, they discuss its implications for the MEMS and sensor industry 10 to 20 years down the line.Can’t get enough of MEMS? Register to listen in on MEMS and Sensors Industry Group’s free webinar, “Process Control and Root Cause Analysis for More-than Moore and Advanced IC Technologies” on April 25 at 8:00 AM PDT.