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5G Auction without Action​ = Fraud

5G Auction without Action​ = Fraud
by Roger C. Lanctot on 08-07-2019 at 10:00 am
Categories: 5G, Automotive
1 Comment

“We don’t need 10 Mbit/s, but rather basic bandwidth and guaranteed latency. We need coverage!” thus spoke BMW Senior Vice President of Electronics Christoph Grote at the recent Automobil-Elektronik Kongress in Ludwigsburg, Germany. Grote was making this plea in the context of the onset of 5G technology. For Grote, 5G isn’t higher capacity or faster speeds – 5G is a new way of thinking about wireless.

Local wireless carrier and BMW partner, Deutsche Telekom, won an auction in June for 5G spectrum.  The company has been pumping out press releases describing the installation of new base stations throughout Germany.

Simultaneously, DT has chosen to highlight – with a unique Web page – approximately 1,000 locations where it has been working for months or years to receive approvals from local municipalities or land owners to build towers and base stations where gaps exist in its network. The months and years-long delays for approvals raise serious questions regarding the value of newly won spectrum.

Challenges to Network Expansion – https://tinyurl.com/y56l46ye – Deutsche Telekom

More importantly, the delays raise questions regarding the obligation of the Federal government to step in and arbitrate or accelerate these deliberations. What is the value of the spectrum if it can’t be tapped?

Wireless carriers, like DT, pay billions of dollars for spectrum and then must spend billions more to deliver on the promise of enhanced wireless technology. Normally, average citizens could care less. Billions of Euros spent on spectrum are far from the daily concerns of the man and woman on the street.

But things are different this time around. This is not “your father’s” wireless network. Wireless networks built around 5G are promising entirely new value propositions designed to transform factories and transportation networks in ways that are likely to save thousands of lives and mitigate ills such as congestion, emissions, and the overall inefficiency of the economy.

5G promises to enable self-driving cars, smarter cities and enhancements to efficiency from the factory floor to highways and city streets. But that won’t happen with a lot more base stations and micro-cells.

BMW’s Grote is not alone in seeking comprehensive wireless coverage – at least encompassing most major roadways. Today’s reality falls far short of this expectation or requirement, as evidenced by DT’s coverage gaps Website.

DT is not alone. Wireless carriers across the world have Swiss-cheese-like coverage maps riddled with gaps that indeed represent the gap between the promise and the reality of cellular technology in the 5G age.

With better coverage – requiring the deployment of hundreds of base stations and thousands of micro-cells – transportation authorities will be able to consider the elimination of proprietary and often incompatible roadside infrastructure. But to realize this promise carriers require the support of the very organizations that are auctioning off the spectrum in the first place.

If public authorities fail to step in to assist carriers in the deploying of network equipment capable of supporting both commercial applications and safety and public service applications, then perhaps the spectrum should simply be free. How can spectrum be auctioned with no guarantee of access?

To be clear, the vast majority of new connections to existing wireless networks have been coming from connected cars for the past five years. Numerous 5G awards have already been allocated by multiple car makers. Crazily enough, many of these awards involve two or more connectivity devices – to enhance connectivity and target different vehicle-related applications.

The European Union saw fit several years ago to mandate embedded connections in cars. What are those connections worth if the network is not available at the time and location of a vehicle crash?

As the wireless industry and the transportation industries prepare to leverage new capabilities enabled by both LTE and 5G connectivity for saving lives and removing friction from people-moving systems, it is time for more assertive support from Federal authorities. It is irresponsible, fraudulent, and disingenuous to auction off spectrum and require embedded connections (in the EU) without any quality of service guarantee. If Federal authorities across the world won’t step in to assist carriers with 5G rollouts, then they should be required to refund their ill-gotten billions. Lives are at stake.

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Insurers Not Ready to Discount Premiums on ADAS

Insurers Not Ready to Discount Premiums on ADAS
by Bernard Murphy on 08-07-2019 at 6:00 am
Categories: AI, Automotive

Think because your new car is loaded with ADAS your insurance company should give you a break on premiums? Think again. The purpose of all those fancy features is to reduce the risk of an accident or damage to your car, either of which could be costly to your insurance company and quite possibly to you also. If you’re paying extra for that car to reduce the likelihood of such claims, why won’t insurance companies reflect that in your premiums?

For those of us who can afford it, there are other good reasons to pay extra for those car features. From a purely financial point of view, if you make a claim your premiums may well go up. If ADAS buys you a longer period without accidents and therefore increases, that may justify the cost. More importantly, ADAS gives you and your family a higher assurance of safety, which for most of us is worth a whole lot more. So for those of us who can afford it, the added cost is amply justified. I know since I got the full ADAS package on my current car I will never go back to a lower level of support.

Insurance companies already offer safe driver discounts, based on a device plugged into your car’s diagnostic port which tracks things like mileage, braking and acceleration. The discounts they offer drivers under these plans can be substantial – up to 40% of your premium. So why shouldn’t ADAS earn you an even better deal? A recent Reuters article provides some insight.

Bottom line, insurers don’t have enough data yet to accurately price the impact of these safety features on risk. According to the article, auto insurance is a low margin business (though it may not feel that way at times). If the insurer assessment of reduced risk is even a little bit wrong, they lose money. And there are a lot of other factors. Other vehicles may be involved in an accident and maybe not similarly equipped (short of force fields, you can’t stop other vehicles crashing into you). Or perhaps you’re driving so fast and close to another car that collision avoidance systems will be unable to help if that car stops suddenly.

Automakers are apparently not very helpful in sharing detailed features information by model with insurers. The article adds that there’s also a lack of standards, making it more difficult to calibrate such statistics as are available.

One more thing. A lot of accidents are fender-benders, which didn’t necessarily require costly repairs in the pre-ADAS days. But now a damaged fender has to be replaced with a new fender with all those fancy smart sensors, turning what had been maybe a $300 repair into a $1,500 tab.

So the insurers are waiting on more data. Even after the automakers have figured out how to share their data effectively, I am completely confident that insurers will ignore all theoretical information on what various ADAS features ought to be able to deliver and will instead rely on the empirical evidence they see in day-to-day use – the same way good engineers would.

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The China trade issue is back with a vengeance!

The China trade issue is back with a vengeance!
by Robert Maire on 08-06-2019 at 10:00 am
Categories: Semiconductor Advisors, Semiconductor Services
5 Comments

Watching the boats go by in Shanghai-

As I write this note I happen to be looking out my hotel window over the Bund onto the brightly lit party boats cruising the Huangpu river that meanders through Shanghai.  All is well here in China and the parties on the boats with millions of LEDs go on……

The view from China is that the trade issue is the US’s problem, not theirs and they don’t seem overly worried about it here. Not so in the US and especially chip stocks that are bearing the brunt of trade issues, getting trashed.

We have been talking about China trade issues for several years now, long before it became popular and it appears that we are coming to some sort of denouement in which there will likely be a resolution….but not likely a good one.

China issue won’t die…like Jason in cheesy horror movies

Like a dumb teenager in a Friday the 13th movie, we believed the monster would be dead after the China issue was kicked down the road several months ago and the administration had new topics to tweet about.  But it seems to have been resurrected in an even more serious form as both sides appear even more dug in and have already escalated their positions. I don’t think we will be able to kick the can down the road again….there may be blood in the trade wars.

Chip stocks recent bubble just burst….

Chips stocks had been on a tear for no real good reason as the stocks went up for no visible reason at all while reality remained ugly and uninspiring even without adding in the hibernating China issue. That bubble has just been burst as China has brought us back to reality which is not pretty.

China will make for a longer slower chip recovery

We have been saying that China will cause the recovery of the current chip downcycle to be longer and slower.  Demand will remain muted due to China and memory makers will have to idle even more capacity as balance will not be restored by increasing demand only falling supply….not a good recovery scenario…especially for equipment.

June was the worst month in DRAM pricing in over ten years….prices continue to crater….how were memory related stocks going up in the face of that reality?

The newly invigorated trade war will certainly slow not only memory demand but demand across the spectrum of the chip industry.

Huawei & rare earth issues bound to come back as well

As the tit for tat escalates in trade the collateral issues will start up again as well.  We already see this collateral issue come up between South Korea and Japan as the chip industry is so important that inflicting pain on the opposite side through the chip industry seems an easy thing to weaponize.

So far, semiconductor equipment sales has not been weaponized but we may not be far off as cutting China off from chip making equipment could be the coup de grace or the start of mass destruction….depending on how you look at it.  Neither side seems to want to push that button but things are twitchy……

The stocks

We had advised investors to take money off the table in Lam as the stock had clearly gotten ahead of itself in a weak market, which has clearly worked.

We think we could break through some important support levels in chip stocks as the China news rolls out.

Its not like fundamental news is strong enough to offset the dangerous China news….memory still sucks.

We could be at the beginning of a longer unstable period as the China issue will not go away overnight.  This time we will likely see a more sustained period of concern related to China which could go on through a seasonally slow August with the only real hope coming in the fall September October Iphone & holiday sales season which could also be muted due to China.

We would likely stay on the sidelines until things blow over one way or another….not likely to be a pretty or clean ending as the escalation has been quick….

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Adding CDM Protection to a Real World LNA Test Case

Adding CDM Protection to a Real World LNA Test Case
by Tom Simon on 08-06-2019 at 6:00 am
Categories: EDA, Events, Magwel

In RF designs Low Noise Amplifiers (LNA) play a critical role in system operation. They simultaneously need to be extremely sensitive and noise free, yet also must be able to withstand strong signal input without distortion. LNA designers often struggle to meet device performance specifications. Their task is further complicated by the need to add ESD protection to these highly tuned and sensitive circuits. HBM protection shields circuits from pin-to-pin discharge events, and the methodology for adding these protections is fairly straightforward.

CDM events are typically more difficult to characterize and prevent. CDM events occur much more rapidly than HBM events, which means that HBM protections will not respond quickly enough to be useful. To make matters worse, LNA circuits often use thin-film NFETs, which are more likely to be damaged at lower voltages by CDM events.

In an upcoming webinar on CDM protection network analysis, Magwel will mention a real world case involving Qorvo LNA test chips. Qorvo has shown that Magwel’s CDMi solution for evaluating the effectiveness of CDM protections correctly predicted over-voltage damage in a test chip.

The challenge is to add sufficient protection without adding parasitics that would impair circuit performance. In the Qorvo case study, it was shown that designers can determine the optimal protection diode sizing that offers adequate protection and preserves LNA performance.

Initially, the CDM simulation was run with insufficient protection diodes. The error report from Magwel’s CDMi tool shows over-voltage on one of the thin-film NFETs. Qorvo tested physical parts and performed imaging to pin-point the location of the failure, which agrees with the analysis.

Attendees of webinar replay will receive a copy of the case study for their own reference. The webinar should provide insight into an effective solution to the challenges of designing and verifying CDM protection for a range of circuit types.

Webinar Abstract:

Failures during manufacturing and assembly or in the field caused by charged device model (CDM) type ESD events are a serious concern for IC design teams. CDM failures are generally caused by charge build up on device packages, which capacitively charge large internal nets, such as GND or VSS. Once a device pin contacts a current path, the charged internal net can discharge through triggered devices to the pin. ESD protection devices allow this to occur harmlessly. However, if the ESD protection network does not work as intended, dangerously high voltages and currents can affect protected devices in the IC.

The only reliable method of determining if ESD protections will be effective is simulation. However, conventional circuit simulation is difficult to set up, too slow and provides hard to interpret results for CDM events. Magwel has developed a simulation based solution specifically designed to address CDM discharge events.

In this webinar you will learn how Magwel’s CDMi efficiently models the complex behavior of a CDM event in an integrated circuit. CDMi uses vf-TLP models in conjunction with 3D solver based resistive network extraction and dynamic simulation to predict device triggering. The results are comprehensive reporting of discharge event voltage and current flows. We will show how CDMi enables CDM ESD signoff before tape out to ensure high product quality and improved yields.

Webinar Replay

About Magwel
Magwel® offers 3D field solver and simulation based analysis and design solutions for digital, analog/mixed-signal, power management, automotive, and RF semiconductors. Magwel® software products address power device design with Rdson extraction and electro-migration analysis, ESD protection network simulation/analysis, latch-up analysis and power distribution network integrity with EMIR and thermal analysis. Leading semiconductor vendors use Magwel’s tools to improve productivity, avoid redesign, respins and field failures. Magwel is privately held and is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium. Further information on Magwel can be found at www.magwel.com

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eFPGA – What a great idea! But I have no idea how I’d use it!

eFPGA – What a great idea! But I have no idea how I’d use it!
by Daniel Nenni on 08-05-2019 at 10:00 am
Categories: eFPGA, Events, Flex Logix, IP

eFPGA stands for embedded Field Programmable Grid Arrays.  An eFPGA is a programmable device like an FPGA but rather than being sold as a completed chip it is licensed as a semiconductor IP block. ASIC designers can license this IP and embed it into their own chips adding the flexibility of programmability at an incremental cost.

We covered the history and importance of the FPGAs in our book “Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry”. In fact, you can get the 2019 updated version of Fabless at our upcoming webinar HERE but I digress…

Flex Logix landed on SemiWiki.com in 2016 as the first eFPGA company. From our first blog on 2/12/2016:

Nearly 30 years after the FPGA debuted, Flex Logix was formed in March 2014 based on programmable logic technology described in a ISSCC paper from UCLA alumni Cheng Wang and Fang-Li Yuan. CEO Geoff Tate (of Rambus fame) set a course away from competing with FPGA companies, instead adopting an IP strategy and aiming to embed reconfigurability in high-volume SoCs for mobile, IoT, wearable, server, and other applications. Flex Logix begins 2016 with 1 patent issued and 6 more applications pending, a recent $7.4M round of Series A1 financing, a new VP of silicon engineering in Abhijit Abhyankar, and a new VP of sales in Andy Jaros.

A lot has changed in the eFPGA business over the last 3 years but not Andy Jaros. Andy is still VP of Sales of Flex Logix and he will be presenting at our upcoming webinar eFPGA – “What a great idea! But I have no idea how I’d use it!” Here is the abstract in case you are interested in talking to Andy and learning more about eFPGAs:

For decades, chip designers have thought, “wouldn’t it be great to have RTL flexibility for their ASICs?” Decades have come and gone, and there have been many failed attempts at providing this type of technology. Now that there is viable, usable FPGA IP available for designers, the challenge now is up to the designer to take advantage of it. This webinar will discuss why FPGA IP is viable now. It will also provide some ideas for designers where they may be able to take advantage of this programmable technology on their next ASIC.

Embedded FPGA (eFPGA) Overview handout for attendees included!

Andy has decades of semiconductor experience to share and has been championing eFPGA use for that last 3+ years so he knows where the bodies are buried. I first worked with Andy when Virage Logic acquired ARC and we have been friends ever since. Previous to ARC, Andy was at ARM and Motorola so he knows the processor core business. After Synopsys acquired Virage, Andy spent 5+ years with the Synopsys IP group before joining Flex Logix in early 2016. Andy and I are neighbors so I literally know where he lives. I remember talking about his job offers at our local coffee shop with him. I remember voting for Flex Logix with both hands.

The upcoming eFPGA webinar is offered in three different time zones for your convenience or you can register without attending and the replay will be sent to you automatically.  Either way, I hope to see you there!

Flex Logix Company Website

Flex Logix on SemiWiki

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Intel,  Motorola, and the IBM PC

Intel,  Motorola, and the IBM PC
by John East on 08-05-2019 at 6:00 am
Categories: John East
8 Comments

Wikipedia  …   “In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a non-linear system can result in large differences in a later state”.  In other words, a butterfly bats its wings in Argentina and the path of an immense tornado in Oklahoma is changed some time later.

In 1980, IBM undertook a very secret project.  They had decided to develop a personal computer.  Apple Computer was making a killing in the personal computer market.  (See my upcoming weeks #13 and #14 dealing with Apple). IBM owned the big computer market.  They weren’t about to allow upstart Apple to horn in on their territory! Normal IBM policy was to design their products in a central design group in New York and to use primarily IBM manufactured ICs.  They recognized that sticking to this policy would slow things down.  They didn’t want to go slowly.  They wanted to announce the product in the summer of 1981.   They formed a task-force group in Boca Raton, Florida working under a lab manager named Don Estridge.  The task:  get a personal computer on the market and do it by August 1981.  Use outside ICs.  Use outside software.  Do whatever it takes, but get it out on time!!!   And keep it secret!!!

Meanwhile, Intel was in a tough place.  The memory market was already extremely competitive.  (See my week #6.  “Intel let there be RAM”). The microprocessor market was becoming so as well.  Seemingly every company was offering their own version of a microprocessor. (At AMD we were a microprocessor partner of Zilog who was offering a 16 bit microprocessor called the Z8000.)   Over the past decade Intel had gone from a place where — having introduced the first commercially successful DRAM and microprocessor — they controlled the market to a place where they had  become just one of the pack.  They didn’t like that!  They created Operation Crush  — a massive project  aimed at regaining domination in the microprocessor space.  Bill Davidow managed the effort.  Andy Grove supported it strongly via a message to the field sales organization saying essentially,  “If you value your jobs,  you’ll produce 8086 design wins”.

Paul Indaco (Now the CEO of Amulet Technologies) was a young kid just out of school. He was working at Intel in the Applications Department. As part of a rotational program (common in those days.),  he was sent out into the field to learn the selling side of the business.  As luck would have it,  he ended up in the Intel sales office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  The custom was (And I’d imagine still is) to give the new guy the account scraps that didn’t much matter while the experienced guy kept the important accounts.  So —  Earl Whetstone,  the existing salesman in the office, took the accounts to the south of Ft Lauderdale and Indaco got the less important ones to the north.  One of the accounts that “didn’t matter” was IBM Boca Raton.  How could IBM “not matter”?  Because Boca Raton was not a design site.  That is, it wasn’t where decisions regarding what parts to use were made.  Those decisions always came down from Poughkeepsie.   — or so everyone thought.

One day not long after Indaco had moved to Florida, he happened to be talking with a salesman from his distributor (Arrow).  “Oh.  By the way.  An IBM guy asked me today for some info on the 8086.  He works in some secretive new group. He didn’t say why he wanted to know.”  With nothing better to do, Paul got the name and number and called the guy.

Yes.  It turned out that IBM was up to something.  They wouldn’t say what it was. That was top secret.  But  —  they said they were in a huge hurry trying to make a very short deadline.  They said that they had more or less decided to go with a Motorola processor (Probably the 68000) but they conceded that they might be willing to take a quick look at the Intel 8086 along the way.  That wasn’t good for Intel.  It was generally acknowledged that the Motorola 68000 was technically superior to the 8086.   It looked like a longshot for Intel,  and they weren’t even sure what they were shooting at.

Intel had a few advantages though.  The first was their development system  — the 8086 in-circuit emulator.  It was better than what Motorola had to offer.  That would be helpful in speeding up the design and software debugging process.  Given the tight deadline, that could be important!  Paul loaned them one.  Then came good news.  The IBM engineer soon said something like, “Hey, I like this development system, would you loan me another one?”   The Intel policy was one loaner to a customer. The issue was clear though:  “Any work they do on an Intel development system applies to Intel only, so let’s help them do a lot!”  So Paul talked with Arrow who happily agreed to loan three more.   IBM often needed help on site from the Intel FAE.  The project was so secretive, though, that when the FAE went to help with the emulation work, the emulator was separated from the rest of the lab by curtains.  All he could see was the door, the emulator, and the curtains.  IBM would escort him in, he would solve the problem, and then IBM would escort him out.

Intel had three other advantages:  Bill Davidow, Paul Otellini, and Andy Grove.  Those were good advantages to have!! Bill ran Intel’s microprocessor division, Paul ran Intel’s strategic accounts, and Andy ran Intel.  They wanted this win!  Operation Crush was in full force!  Any number of issues had to be solved.  Among them was the ever-present issue of needing to beat Motorola.  And of course, there was the issue of pricing.  IBM wanted a price that was in the neighborhood of one half the current 8086 ASP.  Then, the Intel team had an epiphany!  Why not switch from the 8086 to the 8088?  (The 8088 was an 8 bit external bus version of the 8086.) Pricing would be less of an issue with the 8088 and IBM might like it because it would speed up the design cycle.  Why?  Because Intel had a complete family of 8 bit peripherals which would eliminate the time required to design the functions that the peripherals handled.  The available peripherals would not only speed up the project, they’d also reduce the number of components required to do the job. Neither the 68000 nor the 8086 had a complete family of peripheral chips at that time.   In the end the Indaco/Whetstone/Otellini/ Davidow/Grove team pulled put a victory.  Even after they won, though, they didn’t know what they had won until the day IBM announced.  The design win report that Indaco filed listed a win in a new IBM “Super intelligent terminal”.

It ended up being the most important design win in semiconductor history.

What does this have to do with butterflies and chaos theory? ……    Intel is the biggest semiconductor company in world.  To a great extent that is due to the IBM design win.  I wonder what company would be biggest if Indaco hadn’t happened to be talking with the Arrow salesman that day?  What if the Arrow guy happened to talk with a Zilog salesperson or an AMD salesperson instead? Or one from National or Motorola or Fairchild?!!!  The world might be very, very different!

Grove went on to be Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1997.  Otellini went on to be CEO of Intel for a decade.  Davidow went on to become a very successful venture capitalist with the distinction of leading one of Actel’s financing rounds.  They all ended up well.

But Indaco has them topped.  He went on to become Actel’s Vice President of Sales!!

Next week:   Steve Jobs

Picture #1. The Plaque awarded to Paul Indaco for winning the IBM PC design

Picture #2.  Paul Indaco holding his plaque earlier this year.

 

See the entire John East series HERE.

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Chapter 4 – Gompertz Predicts the Future

Chapter 4 – Gompertz Predicts the Future
by Wally Rhines on 08-02-2019 at 6:00 am
Categories: Wally Rhines
12 Comments

In 1825, Benjamin Gompertz proposed a mathematical model for time series that looks like an “S-curve”.1  Mathematically it is a double exponential (Figure 1) where y=a(exp(b(exp(-ct)))) where t is time and a, b and c are adjustable coefficients that modulate the steepness of the S-Curve.  The Gompertz Curve has been used for a wide variety of time dependent models including the growth of tumors, population growth and financial market evolution.

FIGURE 1. The Gompertz Curve

S-Curves are common in nature.  In any new business, or in biological phenomena, we start out small with an embryonic business or a tiny cell and it reproduces slowly but the percentage growth rate is large. As time goes on, the growth accelerates until it finally slows down as it reaches saturation.  A new product takes a significant period of time for early adopters to spread the word of its benefits but it then goes viral, saturates the market and then declines (Figure 2).  On the right half of Figure 2, we see the same phenomena when the vertical axis of the graph is the cumulative number.  An example would be the freezing of water in a pond.  It starts with a few water molecules and then grows to a critical nucleus which grows rapidly until the pond is mostly frozen.  Then the last bit of water freezes over a longer period of time.  Expressed mathematically, the integral of the cumulative function is the area under the curve and it increases until the S-Curve finally flattens.

FIGURE 2. Typical product life cycle or life cycle of an industry

Figure 3 shows the stages of growth of the S-Curve.  It starts out slow but the highest percentage growth is early in the S-Curve evolution.  The curvature of the “S” increases upward until about 37% of the time on the horizontal axis is completed.2 Then the curvature is downward.  Mathematically we would say that the second derivative of the Gompertz function is positive until about 37% of the time is completed and then the second derivative becomes zero.  The rate of the rate of growth becomes negative and so the growth rate is less each year after that point.

FIGURE 3. Gompertz Curve Life Cycle

I first became acquainted with the Gompertz Curve while managing a design project that TI was doing for IBM.  IBM wanted us to report the number of simulated transistors that we had completed in our design each week.  They then plotted them as a Gompertz Curve (Figure 4).  Inexperienced project managers would have been frustrated by the fact that progress was initially very slow.  The specification for the design project kept changing, new architectural approaches were tested and the number of simulated transistors remained small for some time.  Then, things took off.  The number of transistors completed each week grew linearly.  Our inexperienced design manager would have been delighted and would have extrapolated this progress to an early completion as shown in Figure 4.  With more experience, he would realize that the last fifth of the project would take more than one third of the total time.

FIGURE 4. Use of Gompertz Curve for Project Management

While the Gompertz Curve is useful for project management, it provides even more insight for forecasting the future success of an embryonic product.  Figure 5 shows the evolution of worldwide sales of notebook PCs.  Using the data available to us with the actual shipments of PC notebooks in the years up through 2001, we can solve for the Gompertz coefficients a, b and c.  We could then have used these coefficients to predict the future evolution of the growth curve for cumulative units of PC notebooks shipped.  Figure 6 shows the Gompertz prediction versus the actual results reported in 2016. The results are nearly identical.  If you were an aspiring competitor in the PC notebook business in 2001, or even an investor in the personal computer business, accurate knowledge of the future market for PC notebooks over the next fifteen years could be very useful.

FIGURE 5. PC Notebook Shipments through 2001 provide data for Gompertz forecast

FIGURE 6. Actual PC Notebook shipments though 2016 (shown in green) versus Gompertz prediction in 2001 (shown in yellow)

Finally, Gompertz Curves can be used to predict the future of an industry.  A good choice would be the future of the silicon transistor since lots of research dollars have been devoted to developing an alternative to the silicon switch and we don’t even know how soon we need it.  Or do we?  Gompertz analysis provides an opinion.  It’s shown in Figure 7.  Although the semiconductor industry and silicon technology may seem mature to some, we are in the infancy of our production of silicon transistors.  The cumulative number of silicon transistors produced thus far is almost negligible compared to the future, as shown in Figure 7. The actual RATE of growth of shipments of silicon transistors is predicted to increase until about 2038.  At that time, the Gompertz Curve suggests that the increase in the RATE of growth will become zero and the RATE of increase will be less each year until we reach saturation, sometime in the 2050 or 2060 timeframe.  By then, we should have developed lots of alternatives.

Figure 7. Future of the silicon transistor

1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Gompertz

2https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1306/1306.3395.pdf

Read the completed series

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Lam beats reduced guide as 2019 is done and 2020 is just a hope!

Lam beats reduced guide as 2019 is done and 2020 is just a hope!
by Robert Maire on 08-02-2019 at 4:00 am
Categories: Semiconductor Advisors, Semiconductor Services

Nice house in a neighborhood in decline

Lam posted EPS and revenues ahead of reduced expectations, but guided the current quarter below street current estimates.

Is a “beat” really a “beat” if its against greatly reduced numbers? We would remind investors that we are looking at EPS cut more or less in half from a year ago.

Execution has been great as Lam management has done a great job of cutting opex and doing everything in their control that they can possibly do but it doesn’t make up for a market continuing to decline quarter after quarter. $1.1B in stock buy backs this quarter when added to previous buy backs have taken 15% of Lam’s shares off the streets also propping up EPS.

Management did not “call a bottom” as there is no bottom in sight but was hopeful for a better 2020. Right now 2020 is nothing more than a hope that the down cycle will be over and memory will recover—-but its a “hope” with no hard evidence.

Memory is still two thirds of Lams business – and in decline

While memory is no longer 85% of business it is still the vast majority as Lam remains the most exposed to memory.  As we had pointed out in our Semicon West report, and Lam echoed, foundry is recovering based on 5G early production. While this clearly helped ASML and will also help KLAC, Lam has less exposure than average to the foundry segment. Even Applied has more foundry exposure. While Lam has some unique applications that are not memory specific its not enough to offset the weak memory market….at the end of the day Lam is still a memory driven company…..

Memory buys are technology not capacity driven

We have said for many years that there are two cycles that underlie buying; technology buying cycles and capacity buying cycles. Technology buys obviously follow Moore’s law and the progress in memory/logic technology. Capacity buys, which are higher in overall volume are based on market demand such as the switch to SSD’s. Right now capacity buys are zero as equipment is still being idled to artificially reduce supply while technology buys to increase NAND layer count or migrate from 1Z to 1A continue.

Lam needs capacity related buying to come back before it can recover but capacity related buying will take a longer time to come back as the idled capacity will come back on line long before memory makers will need to buy new equipment for additional capacity purposes.

Still searching for a bottom….

Setting the “Limbo Bar” lower….

As we continue in a slow downward spiral, estimates continue to be lowered, resetting the bar ever lower so that the company can “beat” the new lower number and say they beat expectations, meanwhile the stock is up 50% on the year in a declining memory sector with EPS cut in half….go figure….  It might be reasonable if there was a clear or even a murky recovery coming together but right now there is no difference as most analysts continue to kick the can of recovery down the road another quarter or 6 months or talk about an “etheral” recovery in 2020. We would remind investors that the vast majority of so called analysts also thought that industry was no longer cyclical or the downturn was a one quarter “air pocket”, are now calling for a 2020 recovery after previously calling for a 2019 recovery.

The problem is that no one really knows…..

Niche technology is nice but not impactful

Lam talked about some new areas of business outside of the core wheelhouse of advanced etch and dep.  Given the huge number of steps in chip manufacturing and many types of process there is a lot of fertile ground for new business which Lam is doing a good job of rounding up.  This too helps cushion but not offset the downturn in mainstream memory tools.  We think some of these applications could potentially be larger in a recovery scenario.

One that we find interesting, though not publicly mentioned, is “cryo” etch (or a “cold” etch) for buttery soft materials used in new memory types such as Intel’s Optane. We remain a fan of the upside of these type of memory devices.

The stocks

If we put a 15X market multiple on Lams current outlook for the year we get a $210 price target…which is where we are today.  The problem is that the EPS outlook continues to come down and we think Lam should trade at a discount to the market as its business is in contraction mode not expansion mode. If we take a haircut to the EPS outlook and discount the multiple we get a target well below the current stock price.

All this is beside the point that the stock is up 50% on the year in a declining business.   We still have a lot of time to buy the stock prior to an upcycle cause we are still far off in the future.  Add to all this the uncertainty of China still out there.

We would consider taking money off the table as the downside beta is clearly higher than the upside at this point.

Other Stocks

ASML was driven by logic/foundry and an earlier recovery of litho tools.  KLAC has always been a logic/foundry driven company and not a memory company like Lam.  Applied has strong ties to the foundry market.

However, we need to be clear that the memory industry has grown so large and so fast that no tool company can remain immune to its weakness or escape the gravitational pull of the weak memory sector.  We would also caution investors that a “stabilizing ” memory market does not mean that memory companies will rush out and start ordering tools in bulk again.  It could be a long slow climb of using up the idled capacity before we start buying new again.  Even if memory stabilizes in H2 2019 there is no guarantee of increased equipment purchases in 2020.

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GPU-Powered SPICE – Understanding the Cost

GPU-Powered SPICE – Understanding the Cost
by Daniel Nenni on 08-01-2019 at 10:00 am
Categories: EDA, Empyrean, Events
2 Comments

To deploy a GPU-based SPICE solution, you need to understand the costs involved. To get your hands on this new report analyzing this specific issue, all you need to do is attend Empyrean’s upcoming webinar, “GPU-Powered SPICE:  The Way Forward for Analog Simulation,” which will be held on Thursday, August 8, 2019, at 10:00 am (PDT). This webinar is the first webinar in the SemiWiki Webinar series. Click here to sign up using your work email information.

SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) was initially developed at the Electronics Research Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley by Laurence Nagel in the early 1970s. SPICE1, the version of SPICE first presented at a conference in 1973, was largely an effort to have a circuit simulator without ties to the Department of Defense, essentially keeping the electrical engineering department in step with the rest of the anti-war movement at UC Berkeley. SPICE1 was coded in FORTRAN. I believe it ran on the IBM mainframe computer available to the department.

In 1989, SPICE3 was released, the first version of SPICE written in C. As the code has long been available under the standard BSD license, SPICE has been available via open-source, and it was ported to many CPU-based systems as commercial versions started popping up from the emerging EDA industry during the 1990s. There are still many versions of SPICE out there, commercial, academic, and proprietary.

Unfortunately, SPICE being ported to newer computers was still insufficient to keep up with the increasingly large circuits engineers wanted to simulate. Simulation times kept getting longer. Less accurate versions of SPICE were then invented, generally referred to as fast-SPICE. They traded off some accuracy for improved speed of analysis. This has continued to be the state of the market until just recently.

For the last 15 years or so, companies have been trying to find ways of harnessing the incredible computation powers of GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) as an alternative to CPUs. CPU-based computers have typically one-to-eight processors at their disposal. GPUs have hundreds of processors, though they cannot do general-purpose computing well. The idea when programming a GPU is to give it a large sequence of calculations to do with little branching (e.g., avoid IF statements). GPUs are data throughput engines. Think of them as the dragsters of processing units – they go extremely fast but do not turn very well. So, the longer you can only feed the GPU data and let it just calculate it runs fast. When you ask a GPU to branch, it slows down. It takes experienced GPU programming skills to re-write code written for a general-purpose processor (CPU) and make it perform well on the GPU. Not all types of algorithms can be ported to a GPU and run faster, but matrix solving, which is critical in SPICE, will be one of them. I have seen this before in photo-lithography simulations. It makes sense it can be done with SPICE as well.

Empyrean is working on a paper which goes into comparing the cost differences between its GPU-accelerated ALPS-GT™ SPICE simulator and CPU-based simulators. Keep in mind that Empyrean already boasts the fasted CPU-based SPICE simulator Empyrean ALPS™, which was voted “Best of DAC 2018” for being the fastest SPICE simulator with True SPICE accuracy.  Empyrean ALPS™ has displayed 3X – 8X faster performance than the next fastest SPICE simulator in the market. Empyrean claims ALPS-GT is an order of magnitude faster with the same True SPICE accuracy. There are the so-called fast-SPICE simulators that sacrifice some accuracy to achieve faster throughput. That is not what Empyrean’s tools are. They provide true SPICE accuracy.

About Empyrean Software
Empyrean Software provides electronic design automation (EDA) software, design IPs and design services, including analog and mixed-signal IC design solutions, SoC design optimization solutions, and Flat Panel Design (FPD) solutions and customized consulting services.

Empyrean Software is the largest EDA software provider in China, and its research and development team has more than 30 years of experience in technology and product development. Our company has comprehensive cooperation with many corporations, universities and research laboratories.

Empyrean’s core values are dedication, collaboration, innovation, and professionalism. Our company is committed to working with customers and partners through win-win collaboration to achieve our common goals.

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Arm Gets More Creative with Licensing

Arm Gets More Creative with Licensing
by Bernard Murphy on 08-01-2019 at 6:00 am
Categories: Arm, IP
2 Comments

Arm flexible access

Without a doubt, RISC-V is generating a lot of buzz and I’m sure a lot of new designs, especially in spaces that are super-cost competitive or demand added differentiation in the processor. I doubt this is having meaningful impact on Arm business, in $$ rather than press. It takes a long time to replace an ecosystem of that size and the confidence markets have in Arm products. It’s not even clear it would make sense to displace Arm in the foreseeable future, any more than it would make sense for Arm to displace Intel in servers. In both cases, there are subset markets that can be better served by an alternative but there’s no apparent (to me) reason to switch most applications.

Still, I’m sure Arm is feeling some heat. I’m guessing they are also under pressure from customers needing to respond to highly fluid demand, such as system builders moving into SoC design, where what IPs they need and how many they need may not be very clear until relatively late in the development cycle. Perhaps some of those design teams might also wonder if life would be a lot easier if they could instead work with other platforms.

After all, the Arm business model for development wasn’t very flexible; you had to decide and pay up-front those IPs you wanted to license. Many RISC-V implementations are open-source and free to use as a starting point, or available under attractive terms compared to Arm options. And, no doubt, there is some appeal to the thought that you might be able to get processor IP for free, with no up-front payment and perhaps no royalties, even if you have to do more design work yourself.

Arm now offers Flexible Access, a new engagement model intermediate between DesignStart ($0 for access to Cortex-M0, M1 and M3, software trial for 90 days, royalties when you go to production) and the standard licensing model where fees vary with IP you want to use, single or multi-use access, levels of access and so on.

In Flexible Access you get access to a much wider range of core and support IP (eg system and security IP), can choose between an option of one tapeout per year or multiple tapeouts per year at (per the current website details) $75k or $200k annually. Again you pay royalties on production volumes. Arm already has several partners active in this engagement model, including AlphaICs, Invecas and Nordic Semi.

IPs included under the plan include most Cortex-M, -A and -R processors, TrustZone and CryptoCell IP, a number of Mali GPUs, system IP such as the AMBA fabric generators and other tools and models for design and software development. Global support and training are also included.

OK, so it’s not free, but it definitely is more flexible. A lot of customers don’t know exactly upfront which IP they are going to need or how many they are going to need. The big systems houses – hyperscalars, communications equipment and similar – won’t particularly care about cost but they do need flexibility. Smaller and more cost-sensitive ventures needing to react quickly to updated spec demands from their customers should definitely appreciate this new model. And I would imagine for all of these customers, easier access to this range of Arm IP has to be a more attractive and safer option than launching a RISC-V adventure.

Not everyone has the stomach for the inevitable risk in embracing open hardware standards or the need to differentiate on the processor. WD knows exactly what they want from RISC-V and has years of experience and large teams building similar designs around Arm cores; their work with RISC-V must feel like a relatively incremental step for them. But IMHO (and I’m not alone) this step will be a big and unnecessary unknown and risk for many. That said, more heat on Arm (or any near-monopoly) is never a bad thing. They’ll work harder and we’ll all benefit.