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Reducing the Cost of SoC Testing

Reducing the Cost of SoC Testing
by Daniel Payne on 12-16-2016 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Automotive, Cadence, EDA

Every year certain technology themes appear, like at ITC this year a big theme was how to reduce the cost of SoC testing. I spoke with Rob Knoth of Cadence by phone to hear more about this cost of test theme. Rob gave me an example of an SoC that takes 27 seconds on a tester, so at $0.04 per second in test costs amounts to $1.08 per part. If you multiply that $1.08 per part times millions of parts, then your test costs are in the millions, so any technology that can maintain high fault coverage and yet at the same time reduce the test time will produce savings in the millions of dollars. So the real challenge is how to achieve acceptable levels of fault coverage without growing the die size or making convergence difficult.

Earlier in 2016 the technologists at Cadence introduced a new way to do on-chip test compression as part of their new software offering called Modus. Traditional test compression techniques that use an XOR structure start to take up more silicon space as you crank up the compression ratio higher and higher. The Cadence compression and decompression approach is up to 3X more effective in reducing test times than older techniques offered. Just take a look at the comparison shown below of a traditional XOR compression on the left with the massive wiring congestions to the same design on the right using Modus 2D compression. I’ll pick the one one the right side any day because it is less congested and offers a higher compression ratio, meaning that I save in test times.


Modus 2D compression yields a 400X compression ratio

Related blog – Cadence Adds New Dimension to SoC Test Solution

In our EDA industry we often believe that new, disruptive technologies can only come from small, focused start-ups, however in this case we see an established vendor like Cadence take the time to rewrite their tools in order to meet new design and test challenges. Here’s how the Modus test tool fits into an overall digital design flow:


Cadence digital design flow

Compression hardware for improving test isn’t a new concept, the folks at IBM pioneered this concept many years ago and LogicVision was an early commercial vendor offering compression. Using logic synthesis (Genus) and DFT tools (Modus) from the same vendor ensures that there are no timing differences between design and test.

Related blog – Digital Design Trends, A Cadence Perspective

Automotive

EDA and semiconductor IP vendors have taken notice of the growing automotive market and responded to the safety challenges that are required by the ISO 26262 standard. Two months ago it was announced that Cadence has Tool Confidence Level 1 (TCL1) documentation to meet the ISO 26262 standard, as determined by TÜV SÜD an accredited independent testing and conformity assessment company. Cadence users can further benefit by downloading the Automotive Functional Safety Kits where you get:

  • Safety manual for the specific design flow
  • Tool Confidence Analysis (TCA) documents for each tool in the chain
  • Compliance report from TÜV SÜD

Cadence has a long history of working with automotive customers like TI, so they know how to save them valuable time in being compliant with the ISO standard. Beyond just focusing on tool-level compliance, you can use three Cadence flows that are compliant:

  • Analog Mixed-Signal Design & Verification
  • Digital Front-end Design & Verification
  • Digital Implementation and Signoff

There are now over 30 Cadence tools predetermined for TCL1.

Related blog – Top Ten Insights on the EDA and Semiconductor Industry

Summary

You may have an old idea of what Cadence has to offer in DFT, ATPG, compression and BIST, so now is a good time to give Modus a closer look because it’s new technology that is up for the challenges of reducing the cost of SoC testing. If you’re working on large SoCs, with long test times and have high volumes, then it could really benefit your bottom line to reduce the test times using this newer technology.

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Enter the Cellular IoT

Enter the Cellular IoT
by Bernard Murphy on 12-16-2016 at 7:00 am
Categories: Ceva, IoT, IP, Mobile

You could be forgiven for thinking that wireless in an IoT device must be Bluetooth-5 or Zigbee or Thread. After all, that’s what ARM has introduced as a part of their IoT solution and they have market weight that is difficult to dismiss. However those options aren’t the only game in town. There is already some level of (second generation) cellular support, but in the interest of greatly expanding support the 3GPP standards group has been recently finalized two new cellular options: LTE CAT M1 (previously known as eMTC) and NB-IOT. The LTE we know best, for mobile and auto applications, is designed for high data-rates which offer battery life in the order of days. CAT M1 is primarily designed for wearables expecting no more than around a MB/sec but longer battery life. CAT NB1/NB-IoT takes the MTC (machine-type communication) objectives further, restricted to much lower data rates but offering battery life in the order of years.


A huge advantage for LTE in this space is that solutions of this type can piggy-back on top of existing and widely available infrastructure which can only continue to improve and expand. For this reason, the cellular-based IoT market is expected to grow at a healthy clip, 34% annual CAGR over the next 5 years. And those growth rates don’t include applications using short-range solutions today which may choose to switch to cellular.

Also interesting is how operator response to these new standards varies by region. In the US, AT&T and Verizon are deploying CAT M1 now. They apparently will also support NB-IoT but not for 1 to 2 years. China and Korea are aggressively going after NB-IoT and will introduce next quarter, with no plans yet for CAT M1. Meanwhile Europe is all over the map 😎, some operators starting with NB-IoT deployment, others with CAT M1. Overall this gives interesting insight into who/what is driving priorities in each region.

Particularly in these narrow-band applications, IoT nodes must be ultra-low power and ultra-low cost. For example NB-IoT targets a 10+ year battery life in user equipment. And cost pressure for IoT devices is always acute, perhaps no better exemplified than in asset-tracking applications where a device may sometimes need to compete with an RFID alternative. This suggests for this class of applications that it may not be enough to simply adapt SoC architectures but that architects should be looking at more aggressive ways to reduce cost, complexity and time to market.


CEVA has an interesting and aggressive proposal, based on their CEVA-X1 solution. First, you need a processing core for the radio, so why do you need another core for general processing? Certainly, a challenge to the dominant paradigm but you can’t argue with the area logic – one core will be smaller than two. They also say you can remove hardware accelerators thanks to a few dedicated IoT instructions they have added to cover operations which are usually not efficient in a DSP. They also have some interesting ideas for reducing RAM footprint through more extensive use of embedded flash (reducing need for RAM) along with clever caching.

In general for these devices, where latency is not critical they suggest heavier use of software rather than hardware in the spirit of minimizing area and complexity. They point out that typical functions – modem, GNSS and sensor fusion – can easily multiplex on one processor core. Also, compressing a data payload prior to transmission (to further reduce RF power) is a function readily provided on a DSP platform.

CEVA has partnered with NextG-Com Limited to offer packaged solutions to simplify the development of CAT M1 and Cat-NB1 platforms. These incorporate the CEVA-X1 single-core IoT processor together with NextG-Com’s ALPSLite-M CAT M1 or ALPSLite-NB Cat-NB1 protocol stacks, in a highly compact and power-efficient manner. The solutions have also been carefully optimized to ensure smallest memory footprint, minimizing the requirements for embedded flash and static RAM.

CEVA still have some interesting questions to answer, particularly regarding security and provisioning for devices built along these lines. But no question they are thinking outside the box; with this class of solution they are offering a very low-cost and power-effective cellular IoT solution.

To learn more about CAT M1, CAT-NB and the CEVA-X1 solution, click HERE. You can also download the CEVA-X1 product note HERE.

More articles by Bernard…

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What Stephen Hawking gets right and wrong about the most dangerous time for our planet

What Stephen Hawking gets right and wrong about the most dangerous time for our planet
by Vivek Wadhwa on 12-15-2016 at 4:00 pm
Categories: Automotive, Security

Stephen Hawking made a bold headline last week: “This is the most dangerous time for our planet.”

In an essay in the Guardian, the renowned theoretical physicist wrote: “Whatever we might think about the decision by the British electorate to reject membership of the European Union and by the American public to embrace Donald Trump as their next president, there is no doubt in the minds of commentators that this was a cry of anger by people who felt they had been abandoned by their leaders.”

Technology is the main culprit here, widening the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. As Hawking explained, automation has already decimated jobs in manufacturing and is allowing Wall Street to accrue huge rewards that the rest of us underwrite. Over the next few years, technology will take more jobs from humans. Robots will drive the taxis and trucks; drones will deliver our mail and groceries; machines will flip hamburgers and serve meals. And, if Amazon’s new cashierless stores are a success, supermarkets will replace cashiers with sensors. This is not speculation; it is imminent.

The dissatisfaction is not particularly American. With the developing world coming online with smartphones and tablets, billions more people are becoming aware of what they don’t have. The unrest we have witnessed in the United States, Britain and, most recently, Italy will become a global phenomenon.

Hawking’s solution is to break down barriers within and between nations, to have world leaders acknowledge that they have failed and are failing the many, to share resources and to help the unemployed retrain. But this is wishful thinking. It isn’t going to happen.

Witness the outcome of the elections: We moved backward on almost every front. Our politicians will continue to divide and conquer, Silicon Valley will deny its culpability, and the very technologies, such as social media and the Internet, that were supposed to spread democracy and knowledge will instead be used to mislead, to suppress and to bring out the ugliest side of humanity.

That is why we can’t rely on our political leaders for change. All of us must learn about advancing technologies and participate in the decision-making. We still have a voice and a choice.

Uber would be nowhere if it hadn’t persuaded passengers to use its services and to lobby for its legalization. We can choose not to purchase the artificial-intelligence chatbots that Amazon and Google are marketing. And we can certainly decide not to have our morning latte delivered by drone. We can also choose to stop using Facebook until it stops feeding us fake news and Twitter unless it banishes the trolls that misuse its platform.

In my forthcoming book, “The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future,” I suggest a filter through which to view advancing technologies when assessing their value to society and humankind. It boils down to three questions relating to equality, risks and autonomy:

[LIST=1]

  • Does the technology have the potential to benefit everyone equally?
  • What are the risks and the rewards?
  • Does the technology more strongly promote autonomy or dependence?

    Why these three questions? To start, note the anger of the electorates, and then look ahead at the jobless future that technology is creating. If the needs and wants of every human being are met, as technology will make possible, we can deal with the social and psychological issues of joblessness. This won’t be easy, by any means, but at least people won’t be acting out of dire need and desperation. We can build a society with new values, perhaps one in which social gratification comes from teaching and helping others and from creative accomplishment in fields such as music and the arts.

    And then there are technologies’ risks. Do we want the self-driving cars and robotic assistants watching everything we do, learning our needs and doing our chores? Most of us will want the benefits these bring. But what if the makers of these products use them to spy on us and the technologies themselves begin to exceed the intelligence of their creators? We clearly need to incorporate limits into our servant machines.

    And what if we become physically and emotionally dependent on our robots? We really don’t want our technologies to become like recreational drugs; we want greater autonomy and the freedom to live our lives the way we wish.

    No technology is all black or white; each can be used for good and for harm. We have to decide what the limits should be and where the ethical lines are. As Hawkings points out, we are at an inflexion point with all of these technologies, and we can still take them in a direction that uplifts mankind. But if we don’t learn and participate, our darkest fears will become reality.

    For more, follow me on Twitter: @wadhwa and visit my website: www.wadhwa.com.

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    Cybercriminals Next Targets: Long Term Prizes (part 2 of 2)

    Cybercriminals Next Targets: Long Term Prizes (part 2 of 2)
    by Matthew Rosenquist on 12-15-2016 at 12:00 pm
    Categories: IoT, Security

    AAEAAQAAAAAAAAhUAAAAJGVmZTI3MmI1LTNmMWEtNGFlMi05M2YxLTQ2MzdiMWU0NTE1NQ

    In the previous blog, Cybercriminals Next Targets: Short Term Dangers (part 1 of 2), I outlined how cybercriminals will use the holiday season to victimize unwary consumers and target businesses. They will also dive deeper into leveraging Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. The longer-term outlook expands their reach to more bold and potentially more lucrative pastures.



    Rise of Blockchain
    Over the next year, blockchains are poised to take on the world of finance, commerce, healthcare, and potentially government services where transactions must have a permanent record and can be seen by the masses. Originally started as the backbone for the emergence of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, blockchains can be used for so much more. Imagine purchasing items and having a permanent record of your investment. Land titles, in parts of the world where governments come and go with frequency, will persist even after a regime change, as they are part of an unalterable distributed public record. Stock trading by individuals could happen at lightning speed, not requiring an account at one of the big trading houses to process your order and take a fee. Your entire personal medical profile and records may be encrypted, but available to any doctor at a moment’s notice if you need them to be. Blockchains will likely be important in India where government bank and spending accounts for each citizen could be protected from fraud and transactions processed quickly.

    The benefits are huge, motivating organizations to adopt the technology, which is already being explored in several sectors such as finance, commerce, digital contracts, and healthcare. Once embraced, blockchains will control and protect a mind boggling amount of resources and power, guaranteeing they will be targeted by thieves, fraudsters, organized criminals, hacktivists, and even nation states. This is where the true test of technology will be tempered. Like encryption before it, the math is solid, but implementations are where vulnerabilities will exist. Adopters will feel growing pains, as not all blockchains will be equal when it comes to cybersecurity. The attackers will hunt the weakest in the herd for an easy and profitable meals.



    Social Media Rules our Attention
    The attention market has changed so much over the past few generations. Newspapers and magazines gave way to radio, then television, the Internet, and now the social media platforms. There is massive value in capturing people’s attention. It shapes our perceptions of justice, tempts us with purchases, cajoles us into trust, fuels fame of celebrities, and is the lens we see the world through. It is powerful on so many levels, which it is why it will be targeted by all manner of digital threats.

    Cyberthreats recognize that social media is now seen as a tool to shift public sentiment. Expect terrorists, hacktivists, and nation states to explore various exploitations to support their objectives. The first battles will be around the ability to promoted content, top search results, shuttering opposing views, and hacking accounts of influential people. I also expect more campaigns to embarrass individuals and exposing their private online activities. This will be done for profit and control, as well as amusement.

    Ransomware
    Ransomware will continue to bring in tremendous amounts of money for cybercriminals. The number of ransomware engines will likely decrease, but the overall impact will go up. Like any software, every generation gets better and adds more features, which drives consolidation to the very best vendors. This will also play out in this type of malware. Very soon, just a handful of engines will dominate the field. The result will be a greater overall impact as these better tools expand to target businesses, which are more lucrative when it comes to the extortion amounts. Unfortunately, ransomware and extortion is a long term problem which is here to stay.

    A Stressful Holidays and New Year
    Criminals, like the rest of us, enjoy having extra money to spend during the holidays. Expect more malicious activity for the end-of-year season, especially for those who are careless in their trust, and a sharp rise in fraudulent ecommerce, credit/debit card fraud, and identity thefts. Ransomware will expand from a mostly consumer scourge to also impact businesses at higher payment levels for a much greater payoff. Social media will be both a target by attackers as well as an emotional sounding board where we can express our discontent. Longer term attacks, of a more strategic nature, will test early blockchain implementations and continue to explore ways to monetize pathetically weak IoT devices. Banks, ATM’s, global financial transactions, and cryptocurrency will continue to be targeted for the foreseeable future, with ever bigger and bolder schemes.

    Interested in more? Follow me on Twitter (@Matt_Rosenquist) and LinkedIn to hear insights and what is going on in cybersecurity.

    Also Read: Cybercriminals Next Targets: Short Term Dangers (part 1 of 2)

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    GLOBALFOUNDRIES ASIC Update!

    GLOBALFOUNDRIES ASIC Update!
    by Daniel Nenni on 12-15-2016 at 7:00 am
    Categories: Foundries, GlobalFoundries

    Back in my IP days we spent a lot of time with the ASIC companies chasing multi-million dollar licensing deals. IBM was a fierce ASIC competitor back then with leading edge processes and a silicon proven IP catalog that was unmatched.

    Unfortunately that ended at 65nm as the pure-play foundries (TSMC and UMC) and fabless ASIC companies (eSilicon and Open Silicon) came into power. ASIC industry pioneers VLSI Technology and LSI Logic were assimilated while IBM ASIC would fade into the background using mature nodes. That all changed of course with the IBM Semiconductor acquisition by GLOBALFOUNDRIES in 2015. Not only did GF get the IBM advanced process technology, they got the famed ASIC business unit to rival TSMC’s GUC and UMC’s Faraday ASIC offspring.


    Some may remember that Scott Jones and I visited the IBM Burlington fab (now GF Fab 9) late last year and got a briefing by GF ASIC VP Jim Rogers. Jim was a career IBM guy with 10+ years in the ASIC business unit. He gave us a spirited presentation about what GF was going to do in the ASIC business so I thought it would be interesting to see how things stacked up a year later. You can see his original slide deck HERE.

    Last week I caught up with Jim by phone and reviewed his blog:

    FX-14™ Methodology: A Formula for First-Time-Right Success    :

    GLOBALFOUNDRIES VP of the ASIC product line shares how the team’s rigorous approach to design implementation and methodology were critical factors in achieving first-time silicon success for a major networking customer…

    Which was followed by this press release:

    GLOBALFOUNDRIES Demonstrates Industry-Leading 56Gbps Long-Reach SerDes on Advanced 14nm FinFET Process Technology    .

    Santa Clara, Calif., December 13, 2016 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced that it has demonstrated true long-reach 56Gbps SerDes performance in silicon on the company’s 14nm FinFET process. As a part of GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ high-performance ASIC offering, FX-14™, the 56Gbps SerDes is designed for customers seeking to improve power and performance efficiency while handling the most demanding long-reach high-performance applications.

    During our visit last year the underlying theme of all GF presentations was execution which to me is, “Tell them what you are going to do, do it, then tell them what you did”. One example from Jim’s presentation last year is the SerDes roadmap and yesterday’s 56Gbps SerDes announcement which is a clear example of execution and the IP leadership that GF gained from the IBM ASIC Business Unit. It was clear to Scott and I, then and now, that having a world class ASIC team with more than 2,000 chips completed across 10 process nodes, one of the largest if not THE largest silicon proven IP collection, and scalable leading edge manufacturing under one roof will again bring fierce competition back to the ASIC business, absolutely.

    About GLOBALFOUNDRIES
    GLOBALFOUNDRIES is a leading full-service semiconductor foundry providing a unique combination of design, development, and fabrication services to some of the world’s most inspired technology companies. With a global manufacturing footprint spanning three continents, GLOBALFOUNDRIES makes possible the technologies and systems that transform industries and give customers the power to shape their markets. GLOBALFOUNDRIES is owned by Mubadala Development Company. For more information, visit www.globalfoundries.com.

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    Waymo Misses the Boat… Wayless?

    Waymo Misses the Boat… Wayless?
    by Roger C. Lanctot on 12-14-2016 at 4:00 pm
    Categories: Automotive

    The big news in the world of transportation today is Alphabet’s spinoff of its automated driving business into a business unit called Waymo. The effort is positioned as Alphabet’s formal attempt to commercialize automated driving technology.

    The project has been greeted with much fanfare and rumors of a late 2017 introduction of a ridesharing service built around Chrysler Pacifica crossovers from FCA. As if on cue, car segment CEO Richard Krafcik commented cryptically: “We are not in the business of making better cars. We are in the business of making better drivers.”

    All of this information suggests that Alphabet still lacks a clue as to how to make its way into the market. The company is still pursuing automated driving as an end in itself as if that’s all that’s necessary. Alphabet seems to be completely missing the point that automated vehicles are best suited for building transportation networks and, as such, it is optimizing the performance of that network which will determine success.

    The clever trick of automating driving is not only well understood at lower speeds or in defined or limited use areas, it has been and is being mastered by more than 19 organizations with automated bus bots across the world. Meanwhile every outfit from tiny startups and graduate students to huge, VC-funded behemoths such as Uber are taking on the challenge with hopes of expanding automated vehicle-based public transportation and eliminating drivers in the process.

    What most of these organizations have grasped early on that it’s not the driving, it’s the network. The goal is to eliminate drivers altogether and disrupt transportation.

    BMW partner RideCell grasped this early on and has enabled more than a dozen car and ride sharing systems around the world. Understanding the functioning of those networks and how to expand their commercial scope is the essential missing ingredient that will allow car makers to transition their business models from B2B-centric – built around dealers – to B2C-centric – built around offering transportation services directly to consumers.

    The rumored FCA deal raises more questions than it answers especially from the standpoint of what brand will be on the service and who is going to create and manage the network? Is Waymo simply building self-driving car algorithms? That field has become pretty crowded and automated vehicles on public and private roads are multiplying.

    Alphabet’s rumored plans with FCA will put the initiative in direct competition with Ford’s Chariot service based on human operated Ford Transit Connect vans. But Ford has its own ambitious plans for automating driving within four years. Hard to predict which company will win that race, but I give the advantage to Ford with the early lead in developing the customer-facing elements and the network first via its Chariot acquisition.

    Alphabet needs to get out of the press release business and into the proof of concept business. The Local Motors and Navya’s of the world have beet Alphabet out of the blocks and Waymo looks like a sad sorry effort at grabbing headlines with vaporware.

    There are multiple and multiplying open source automated driving development platforms and suppliers with development kits. Alphabet’s talking a good game regarding commercial vehicle deployments and ride sharing partnerships with Waymo, but the company has lost the luster of market leadership.

    And at this point in time, Waymo looks like Wayles.

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    Cybercriminals Next Targets: Short Term Dangers (part 1 of 2)

    Cybercriminals Next Targets: Short Term Dangers (part 1 of 2)
    by Matthew Rosenquist on 12-14-2016 at 12:00 pm
    Categories: IoT, Security

    AAEAAQAAAAAAAAiAAAAAJDkzODVhYTI0LWMwNjctNGVhNC1iYzg5LWNlN2QyNTc2ZTRiNg

    Knowing what cybercriminals are targeting today is easy. Their attacks are loud, impactful, and have the elegance of a herd of bulls crashing through a glassware shop. The tougher challenge is figuring out where they will take aim tomorrow. Knowing where cyber threats will attack in the future, gives the necessary insights to be one step ahead of their mayhem.

    In the Short Term
    With the holiday approaching, the next focus will be the lucrative ecommerce online shopping, email ransomware, phishing for credentials, and infection by holiday-lurking malware. It is also a time for dark-markets to thrive, selling unmentionables to those looking for illegal items for the holiday celebrations.

    We must all expect malware ridden holiday sale emails and websites. Look for the fake shipping invoice or an urgent message from some merchant. All bogus. Shady ecommerce sites, advertising insane deals as bait will look to harvest credit card accounts, emails, and maybe convince you to install some ‘helpful’ software. Phishing will increase a notch and look for a new wave of ransomware to hold family pictures, personal files, and entire systems for extortion. Identity theft will add to the rise of new credit card applications to do some unauthorized shopping. In the next couple of months, all these financially motivated threats will increase, so now is a time to be more on your guard.

    Businesses Beware
    Businesses must worry about the increased amount of ecommerce fraud, ransomware that extorts money to unlock important files, and the ever present risk of data breaches. Healthcare, retail, and financial sectors will be targeted the most, but all businesses are in jeopardy. Social media will be targeted as a springboard to reach more potential victims and influence them to download or visit sites containing malware. For some larger companies, who rely on heavy web traffic, there will be Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) extortion attempts. Pay or be unavailable to your customers, will be the threat. As always, cash is king and credit is queen. More ATM attacks are in our future. Europe will be the hotbed, given its machine density and proximity to current thieving bands who are becoming more proficient at these attacks. The U.S. will suffer from more credit card and debit card fraud, some in-store, but more shifting towards online sites as the chip-on-card initiative forces thieves to adapt.

    Exploiting IoT Devices
    Hacking home Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, the ones always connected to the Internet, is easy for botnet herders looking to amass an army to conduct DDoS attacks. But there is little money in attacking. Some will adjust to provide ‘protection’ extortion schemes. Others will move into using those simple devices to create social media accounts which can ‘follow’ or ‘like’ in mass for a fee. Early signs are already present as buying followers/likes is lucrative business in the ego-markets of social media.

    Looking down the road a bit, we will actually see fewer random attacks against IoT devices. Two factors are at play, in the future. First, IoT device manufacturers and consumers will shift to close the basic weakness currently seen; the use of default passwords. The second change will be when professional hackers, likely organized criminals and nation states, take over the market with more professional hacking capabilities. They tend to not play nice with others. Upon compromising an IoT device, they will immediately close the vulnerability so they are not displaced by another hacker. This ensures they keep control of their victim.

    We will see more creative ways for attackers to monetize this resource by coupling with ransomware, DDoS attacks, data leakage, creation of mass accounts to facilitate fraud, and perhaps even creating specialty routing networks to obfuscate traffic. The result is more devices exploited, but in a more organized manner, until such time as the IoT industry becomes much more secure overall.

    In the next blog, Cybercriminals Next Targets: Long Term Prizes (part 2 of 2), I will share what cybercriminals will target in the long-term. There are many opportunities for them to choose from which could reap big payouts. They are a greedy lot and I expect them to make bold moves.

    Interested in more? Follow me on Twitter (@Matt_Rosenquist), Steemit, and LinkedIn to hear insights and what is going on in cybersecurity.

    Also read: Cybercriminals Next Targets: Long Term Prizes (part 2 of 2)

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    An End of Year View of Semi Consolidation

    An End of Year View of Semi Consolidation
    by Bernard Murphy on 12-14-2016 at 7:00 am
    Categories: Foundries

    The last couple of years have been tumultuous for the semiconductor market. IC Insights just released a report showing just how much consolidation has concentrated market strength in a small number of companies. The report (which excludes fabs) shows that the 5 top companies – Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, Broadcom and SK Hynix – now hold 41% of worldwide semiconductor market share.


    Contrast this with 2006 when the top 5 held 32% share. That’s a ~30% increase in share in a market that grew in the same timespan by about the same amount. In other words, the top 5 (who were not all in the top 5 in 2006, but that’s secondary to my point) have soaked up the great majority of growth in the market. In the musical chairs of semiconductor consolidation, if you’re not in the top 5 then you’ve grown revenue on average about 3% a year, hardly better than the US GDP – you’re just rising with the tide. It’s very hard to break out of that trap through M&A – who wants to lend money to a company with that kind of growth?

    Of course, the top-end of the next tiers are still growing but not nearly as rapidly. The next 5 companies below the top on average gained 2% share in a growing market. The next 10 companies below that had essentially zero growth in share, still (in some cases) making money but moving the needle negligibly for what we’ve always assumed was a high-growth industry.

    Again, this is an argument based on averages, indifferent to which companies are in those groups. Any given company may have grown more or less than these averages. Mediatek and Nvidia are two excellent examples, both likely to show ~30% growth this year (which has to make them prime targets for acquisition). But the bottom line for most other companies in this class is clear. Investor pressure to find buyers must be intense; expect more consolidation in 2017.

    Of the top 5 this year, Intel and Samsung are no surprise. Both Qualcomm and Broadcom have made recent significant moves to bulk up, most recently seen in Qualcomm’s acquisition of NXP and Broadcom’s acquisition of Brocade. SK Hynix stays in the top 5 this year but not in auspicious circumstances; they are expected to post a 15% revenue drop for the year. Micron, immediately behind them are also likely to post a significant drop. Behind them are TI who are perhaps best positioned to jump into the top 5 next year, though falling quite a long way short of Qualcomm/NXP and Broadcom/Brocade combined revenues. Then again, Broadcom+Brocade looks like a different animal that perhaps doesn’t quite fit in a semiconductor ranking any more. But then the same could be said for Samsung I suppose. Which maybe points to a bigger truth – perhaps the best path to significant growth lies outside pure-play semiconductors.

    You can read a more complete summary of the IC Insights report HERE.

    More articles by Bernard…

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    Advanced Semiconductor Process Cost Trends

    Advanced Semiconductor Process Cost Trends
    by Scotten Jones on 12-13-2016 at 4:00 pm
    Categories: Foundries, Semiconductor Services, TechInsights, TSMC

    The cost trend for leading edge semiconductor technologies is a subject of some controversy in the industry. Cost is a complex issue with many interacting factors and much of the information out in the industry is in my opinion misleading or incorrect. In this article, I will discuss each of the factors as well as present a view of the status and a future forecast.
    Continue reading “Advanced Semiconductor Process Cost Trends”

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    #CES2017: Aftermarket to the Rescue

    #CES2017: Aftermarket to the Rescue
    by Roger C. Lanctot on 12-13-2016 at 12:00 pm
    Categories: Automotive

    Has it really been 50 years? Listening to a George Hotz Udacity podcast got me to thinking that the upcoming CES 2017 in Las Vegas will be a turning point in automated driving technology. It was just two years ago that Audi was self-driving itself from California to Nevada for CES 2015, but we don’t seem to have come that far in perfecting automated driving. In fact, the biggest headlines have come from people losing their lives in autopilot-equipped Tesla’s in the U.S., Europe and China.

    Dying on the highway is becoming popular again in the U.S., with highway fatalities on the rise. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Transportation repeatedly intones the estimates of experts attributing 94% of crashes to the failings of human beings.

    The 94% figure, which we are hearing more and more frequently, is part of the argument promoted, interestingly enough, by both Alphabet/Google and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Both agree that humans are the source of all driving woes – or at least 94% of them – and therefore should be removed from those tasks. This is, of course, reminiscent of the complaint that business would be so much easier to conduct if it weren’t for those pesky customers.

    Near the end of his talk, Hotz assesses the various paths to automated driving. He points out that he has met with multiple car maker CEOs, all of whom, he says, are at least five years away from delivering anything. (Hotz is the apostle of what he calls “shipability,” which he recently modified to “buildability.” His sub-$1,000 vision of semi-autonomous driving, though, has now escalated to $2,000+.)

    He notes that the next closest prospects for building or shipping vehicles capable of automated driving are Alphabet, Uber and Tesla. He notes the recent departures of senior Google car executives and founders at Alphabet and concludes that the team, now headed by a former auto industry executive, is crippled and unlikely to realize the objective.

    As for Uber, he questions whether funding sources have the stamina and tolerance to support the ongoing bleeding and burning for another five years with an uncertain outcome. With each passing quarter Uber looks more and more like a Ponzi scheme with no payoff… except for the passengers.
    Which leaves Tesla Motors, with whom Hotz was unable to reach a development deal but for which Hotz harbors abiding respect. The bottom line for Hotz, though, is speed to market and in that respect the aftermarket rules.

    With that in mind, one can’t help but root for Hotz’s success even if his semi-open source gambit allows him to take advantage of the open source community while preserving his core value proposition. Regardless of how you feel about Hotz’s open source strategy, though, his activities reflect the current state of automated driving development which is hard core research. (It’s worth remembering that Hotz is only currently offering aftermarket enhanced cruise control – Level 2 automation.)

    Unlike Hotz, Polysync is offering a true open source development platform which the company has already begun selling to universities in the form of development kits. Both the Hotz and Polysync initiatives point the way to automated driving research expanding and stimulating aftermarket opportunities.

    CES 2017 will see more dash-mounted solutions from Harman’s Navdy to Caruma, Nauto, Carvi and Brandmotion all designed to enhance driving with driver alerts, sensors, cameras and wireless connections. There will also be parking assist systems from companies such as Pearl Auto integrating cameras, OBDII connections and smartphone displays for collision avoidance, parking assistance and back-up camera applications.

    Hotz is probably right that Alphabet seems to be losing its way, car companies are taking too long and Uber is losing too much money. But where there are lives to be saved, there are solutions to be sold and CES 2017 will be the place to find those solutions.

    While you’re in Vegas you might want to check out:
    http://tinyurl.com/zzf4qwm – Go NV: CES Summit on transportation.

    Roger C. Lanctot is Associate Director in the Global Automotive Practice at Strategy Analytics. More details about Strategy Analytics can be found here: https://www.strategyanalytics.com/access-services/automotive#.VuGdXfkrKUk