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November 9, 2015

Real Men Use ASIC

Real Men Use ASIC
by Bernard Murphy on 11-09-2015 at 4:00 pm
Categories: eSilicon, Semiconductor Services

As we watch the gravitational collapse of the semiconductor industry, it becomes increasingly obvious that the tech zeitgeist, with investment in close lockstep, is squarely centered on complete solutions, not enabling technologies. That this seems unfair (they couldn’t do it without us, and what we do is really, really hard) is irrelevant. The money goes to those who provide value directly to the end-users and no amount of special pleading will change that. Believe me I understand – my roots are in EDA, an enabling technology to an enabling technology. I feel your pain.

Back in the mists of time, Jerry Sanders of AMD said “real men have fabs”, meaning that real semiconductor companies do it all themselves – from design through to delivery of the final product. He probably wishes he never said that. Most semis ceded manufacturing, assembly and test to the foundries and other outsourced experts, allowing them focus on differentiated design expertise – all the way from architecture down to GDSII. A good part of that differentiation is in the back-end of the process, which is very expensive in highly-qualified staff, tooling and contracting with the foundries and OSATs; this represents a major fixed cost for any chip design company.

That may be the cost of doing business if your business is building chips, but what if you are building end-user solutions? You still need the performance, power and cost advantages of semi-custom, but why carry that back-end cost if you only need to build one or two high-performance custom chips a year? Networking companies have seen it this way for a long time. They’ll do all the logic design and rely on an ASIC company to make the rest of the process completely turnkey. Increasingly I think all but the largest OEMs are going to see it the same way, especially now you can buy most of the IP you need. You’ll give up a little in power and performance and maybe some cost, but your competitive advantage is in your complete solution; for your purposes an underlying device may only need to be “good enough”, a position a device maker in a competitive market could not afford.

Which brings me to eSilicon. ASIC as most of us remember it was certainly turnkey, but only after you had navigated a convoluted qualification and estimation stage. To get to a quote could take weeks and tied up a lot of your time. All of which significantly limited comparison shopping. eSilicon has changed this in important ways which are very relevant to this new wave of end-user solution providers, and that starts with how you get a quote. Paul McLellan already blogged about GDSII Explorer, the eSilicon quote generator, so I won’t repeat his detailed summary here. The most important point for my purposes is that you can generate a quote in real-time, on-line by providing just enough information about the process technology and foundry you want to use, die area, package and so on. Importantly, you don’t have to provide a design at this stage. You get NRE and volume costs in just a few minutes and this isn’t an estimate – it’s a binding contract with all the legal boilerplate.

Now imagine how a solution provider can use this. In fact, we don’t have to imagine because Mike Gianfagna (VP Marketing at eSilicon) told me about a real case (no names). Without interacting at all with eSilicon, other than through the website, this company used the generator to build the cost part of their business plan, which they then used to raise funding. Once they had the cash, they ran the generator again to build a final quote, approved the quote and started the engagement. eSilicon had no (human) interaction with them until that point and was able to deliver prototypes in 3 weeks from tapeout. This looks to me like the kind of semi-custom design solution the entrepreneurs of our time really need.

So do real men (or women) use ASIC? If you measure by what you do being really hard and producing the absolute best outcome (for a general market) that it can, then perhaps not. But there are plenty of other industries building high quality complex products which are not known for being highly profitable. If instead you want to measure by who makes the most money, then yes, I think real men (and women) are going to be flocking to ASIC, very possibly built through eSilicon.

Automobiles and the DMCA

Automobiles and the DMCA
by Chan Lieu on 11-09-2015 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Automotive

When you drive a car off the dealer’s lot, you own the whole vehicle, right? For decades, car owners have popped the hood and crawled under the car to do their own maintenance; and for those mechanically inclined, even make modifications to improve performance or handling. However, in an era where a car is increasingly controlled by software, the right to tinker with your vehicle has been called into question. After all, software is often sold under a license and the end user doesn’t actually own the code. This means there is a lot of uncertainty about to what extent the public can modify the software embedded in a car.

Today the Library of Congress brought a bit more clarity to the situation by granting exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that would enable the public to delve into the embedded systems and software in their vehicles for “good faith security research” and “lawful modification.” This was a much anticipated decision that captured the attention of everyone from the auto industry to the cybersecurity research community.

How did we get here?
Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent access controls and technical protection measures. In 1998, Congress ostensibly intended for this provision to stop content pirates from defeating digital rights management (DRM) and other content access restrictions restrictions on copyrighted works (i.e. stopping people from breaking encryption on CDs and DVDs). However, Section 1201 isn’t limited to just CDs and DVDs—it applies any bit of protected software. Whether intentional or not, Congress wound up giving rights holders and and manufacturers complete veto power over any examination of their code—any interested party would need permission to avoid being in violation of the DMCA. Critics argue that in practice, the DMCA has actually chilled a variety of legitimate activities that require breaking DRM, such as in academic research.

Petitions for Exemptions
Once every three years, the Librarian of Congress, through the Copyright Office, hears requests from the public on whether there are any new classes of works that will be exempt from section 1201’s prohibition. Last October, the Librarian considered a number of classes eligible for exemption, including software that controls automobiles. Since modern automobiles are controlled by a mixture of software, microprocessors, and computers (known in the auto industry as electronic control units, or ECUs), the DMCA could have potentially protected or limited access to the software and logic on those ECUs. However, many repairs require access to the software, as does research into vehicle safety. Petitioners, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, argued that when auto manufacturers deploy technology (i.e. encryption) to prevent access to the code, that can transform an act of repair or research into a DMCA violation. The EFF concluded that only persons authorized by the vehicle manufacturer could effectively perform repairs, and independent audits of vehicle safety and security would take place under a legal cloud, if at all.

Black Hat and VW’s defeat devices
Access to the underlying code that runs a car came to light this past summer when two well-known independent security researchers, Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, discovered a vulnerability in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Presenting their research at Black Hat 2015, the two demonstrated how they were able to exploit that vulnerability and remotely take over full command and control of the vehicle. While vehicle cybersecurity vulnerabilities have been previously researched and discovered, and the results have widely disseminated, Miller and Valise’s definitely brought the issue of automotive cybersecurity into the forefront of public awareness.

In another high profile case, researchers at West Virginia University found that Volkswagen had installed special defeat software to control the vehicles’ pollution-control systems to run cleanly during emissions testing, but allowed the vehicles emit higher levels of pollution during normal daily operations.
With today’s announcement, the U.S. Copyright Office has ensured that important legitimate research into a vehicle’s embedded systems and software can continue without the threat of legal action.

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November 9, 2015June 14, 2019

Forget about ThunderBolt, USB Type C is here!

Forget about ThunderBolt, USB Type C is here!
by Eric Esteve on 11-09-2015 at 7:00 am
Categories: Cadence, IP

At the early days of Semiwiki (March 2011), I wrote about ThunderBolt, predicting low market adoption of the protocol, for various reasons. One of these reasons was the cost associated with ThunderBolt integration by the OEM. Even if the protocol (associating PCI Express and DisplayPort) was offering better data bandwidth than competitors, the over-cost was too high. Why the cost of ownership was prohibitive? Because an OEM could not just buy an IP and integrate it into an application processor but had instead to buy a ThunderBolt IC to a chip maker who had licensed the technology. This strategy (and probably other factors) has killed ThunderBolt adoption on a wide scale.

Let’s have a look at a 20 years old success story (still going on), the massive, ubiquitous pervasion of USB protocol. USB has been with Ethernet at the source of the so-called Interface IP market (weighting $500 million in 2015). The recent launch of USB Type C could illustrate the Italian proverb: “Chi va piano va sano, chi va sano va lantano”… Between 1995 and 2015, the bandwidth delivered by USB has moved from 12 Mbps to 10 Gbps!

As any interface layered protocol, USB is made of a digital part (Controller) and a mixed-signal physical function (PHY), both interfacing by the means of the PHY Interface for PCI Express (PIPE) function in this case. The new Type-C connector is defined to support USB 2.0, USB 3.0, USB 3.1 or a combination of two. In the above example, Type-C supports USB 3.0 compliant protocol, backward compatible with USB 2.0, so the integration of the two PHY. But the revolution is with Type-C new capabilities, one being the connector-agnostic capability: everybody has once failed plugging USB connector right the first time and turns it to finally succeed…

The power delivery is specified up to 100W on a Type-C external connector, such a feature should be highly appreciated in the mobile application world as it’s going with scalable power charging, which means that power consumption may dynamically change depending on the application’s needs. USB Type-C complete features list

Reversible plugs with two-way insertion; the host and device connectors are the same
Higher data rates, up to 10Gbps for USB Type-C 3.1 Gen2
Increased power, up to 100W through support for the USB Power Delivery 2.0 specification
Bi-directionality, so that devices can provide and consume power
Scalable power charging

Capitalizing on this USB Type-C revolution, Cadence has developed an IP subsystem going further, offering the industry’s first IP subsystem with pre-verified components including a single-chip port controller IP that integrates USB Type-C™, USB Power Delivery and DisplayPort™ Alternate Mode (Alt Mode). The IP subsystem architecture clearly shows the IP organization, including Tensilica Xtensa CPU to offload USB Type-C Port Controller:

The integration of the IP as a single-chip solution is important for mobile and cost-sensitive consumer devices where a single connector, lower bill of materials (BOM) costs and reduced board size can provide significant competitive advantages. The complete IP subsystem includes:

USB 3.0 xHCI Host and Device certified controller IP, which can be combined into a Dual Role Device Controller
USB Type-C Port controller (TCPC) IP
DisplayPort 1.2a Transmitter (Tx) controller IP
Embedded Tensilica® Xtensa® CPU
Multi-protocol USB 3.0 and DisplayPort 1.2a PHY IP for 28nm
USB 2.0 certified PHY IP for 28nm
Drivers for embedded systems and Linux OS

In consumer market, integrating a connector has always been a burden. I still remember this mature guy telling me (in 1990) about his first experience as marketing engineer in charge of Philips Razor, the rule was “no connector”, and the main reason was cost!

The rule is obviously false for mobile products developed today for the consumer market, but if you look a smartphone, the space available on product edges is limited, adding a connector will always increase overall cost. USB Type-C connector will soon become ubiquitous and combining audio, video, USB data and USB Power Delivery, will enhance the USB functionality, and provide a very cost effective solution.

Just remember ThunderBolt, the idea was good, but wide market adoption has failed, and the main reason was prohibitive cost (inducing low number of available peripherals), as well as the ban of IP sourcing has prevented integration and de-facto lowering the overall cost. USB Type-C connector adoption will help escaping these issues and products like this IP subsystem from Cadence will provide similar performance… at a fraction of ThunderBolt cost.

By Eric Esteve from IPNEST

More articles from Eric…

November 8, 2015

A moment of IoT silence before we disrupt

A moment of IoT silence before we disrupt
by Don Dingee on 11-08-2015 at 12:00 pm
Categories: ESD Alliance, Events, IoT, Semiconductor Services

As I sat down in the SEMI Arizona Chapter breakfast meeting a few weeks ago, a moment of semiconductor history flew right before my eyes before the IoT sessions started.

We were seated in the cafeteria of Freescale Building 94 on Elliot Road in Tempe, a place I’d been many times before, except this time may have been the last. NXP is consolidating facilities in Arizona early in 2016 Continue reading “A moment of IoT silence before we disrupt”

November 8, 2015August 22, 2024

What do Rockets and GF Fab 8 Have in Common?

What do Rockets and GF Fab 8 Have in Common?
by Daniel Nenni on 11-08-2015 at 7:00 am
Categories: Foundries, GlobalFoundries

An interesting thing happened during the driving tour of the GlobalFoundries Fab 8 in Malta, NY. We happened by an old structure with quite a bit of history. As it turns out, the “Malta Test Station”, a former US Army fuel and explosives testing facility, was the actual birthplace of the United States’ Space & Missile programs. In fact, Hermes Road, one of the main access roads, is named for the Hermes Missile Program circa 1944.

According to Wikipedia, after World War II we “borrowed” some German V-2 missile parts and the engineering team that invented them including Wernher von Braun. Wernher worked for the U.S. Army on ballistic missiles, then NASA where he was director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, and was later dubbed the “greatest rocket scientist in history”. Check out this guy’s resume:

Back to the Fab 8 tour, Scott Jones and I got the VIP treatment. Scott not only has worked in fabs, he has built them, so he was my translator and chief question asker. Scott will be writing about this trip as well so you may want to read his observations and opinions here: “Global Foundries Visit – Part 1 – It’s All About Execution”.

The clean room tour is always interesting. Since I have been through about a dozen of these around the world I have quite a few reference points and can tell how modern a facility it is, where they are in the production cycle, and how busy they are. Contrary to popular belief, the less people working inside a clean room the better and I do count people. I also look at the wafer transport system, how modern it is, how fast it goes, and how many wafers are flying around. They never talk about who the wafers belong to but in this case I already knew (AMD, both CPU and GPU, GPUs first). There are no secrets in Silicon Valley… Needless to say Malta did not disappoint in all categories above, not even close.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES Achieves 14nm FinFET Technology Success for Next-Generation AMD Products

“FinFET technology is expected to play a critical foundational role across multiple AMD product lines, starting in 2016,” said Mark Papermaster, senior vice president and chief technology officer at AMD. “GLOBALFOUNDRIES has worked tirelessly to reach this key milestone on its 14LPP process. We look forward to GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ continued progress towards full production readiness and expect to leverage the advanced 14LPP process technology across a broad set of our CPU, APU, and GPU products.”

After Malta, Scott and I drove down to Burlington for a day at Fab 9 with presentations about the history of the fab, the RF and ASIC groups. I will wait for Scott to post his blog then add my two cents.

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November 6, 2015August 22, 2024

GlobalFoundries Visit – Part 1 – It’s All About Execution

GlobalFoundries Visit – Part 1 – It’s All About Execution
by Scotten Jones on 11-06-2015 at 12:00 pm
Categories: Foundries, GlobalFoundries

Fabless companies and the need for foundries
The success of fabless semiconductor companies is well documented with companies such as Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, AMD, Avago and others selling semiconductors made using the fabless model (see Fabless: The Transformation of the Semiconductor Industry by Daniel Nenni and Paul McLellan for more information). Fabless semiconductor companies are growing faster than the overall semiconductor industry and are becoming more important with each passing year. Mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets are particularly dependent on the fabless semiconductor industry. There are also companies such as Apple and Cisco that produce products that are dependent on semiconductors they design and manufacture using the fabless model. Of course the fabless model can only exist if foundries are available to produce the products the fabless companies design.

In the foundry industry today there are really only four companies that are driving to be first producers of the latest technologies, TSMC, GlobalFoundries, Samsung and Intel. The first four are the only foundries ramping 14nm class processes today and of them only TSMC and GlobalFoundries are pure play foundries. Companies such as UMC and SMIC are now followers with 14nm plans that are not yet implemented. All other things being equal, pure play foundries are the preferred solution because they are focused on foundry, it is their core business. The IDM’s such as Samsung or Intel that offer foundry have other corporate priorities and may even compete with their customers.

The fabless industry is well aware of the dangers of being sole sourced. This was really driven home as recently as the 28nm node where TSMC was the only viable supplier for over a year. It is critically important to the fabless industry to have two or more sources of leading edge technology available and as previously discussed they would ideally be pure play foundries.

In my opinion the preceding discussion makes the case that GlobalFoundries succeeding as a foundry is of great importance to the fabless semiconductor industry!

A Brief History of Global Foundries
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is a manufacturer of Microprocessors for Personal Computers (PCs) (among other products). For many years AMD was an Integrated Device Manufacturer (IDM) manufacturing microprocessors in their own fabs and locked in a battle with Intel for success in the PC market place. Intel consistently had larger market share, greater profitability and ultimately greater manufacturing scale and ability to invest in new technologies and facilities. Over time AMD’s cash position eroded to the point where they could no longer afford to make the investments required to stay on the leading edge for fab technology and risked falling behind Intel in performance further eroding their market share. In 2009 AMD reached an agreement to divest their fabs to Advanced Technology Investment Corporation (ATIC) a subsidiary of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Global Foundries (GF) was born.

GF started with two 300mm wafer fabs in Dresden Germany with a combined capacity of approximately 45,000 wafers per month and an empty site in Malta, New York where a new 300mm fab was planned. With ATIC as a backer, GF had the financial resources to update and expand Dresden and to break ground in Malta on a new fab. GF also received contracts to supply AMD as part of the deal. From AMD’s perspective, they got a manufacturing source for their microprocessors and no longer had to make the enormous investments to build and upgrade state-of-the art wafer fabs.

In 2010 ATIC followed up their initial acquisition of AMD’s fabs by acquiring Charted Semiconductor. Chartered was a pure play foundry headquartered in Singapore and at the time of the acquisition was the third largest foundry in the world on a revenue basis behind TSMC and UMC. Chartered had always struggled with profitability trailing their larger rivals and the acquisition offered Chartered greater scale and financial resources.

Finally in 2015 GF acquired the microelectronics business of IBM. IBM microelectronics adds additional fabs, a huge portfolio of patents and a large and highly experienced development team. IBM had a long history of leadership in semiconductor technology development having invented scaling, the 1T DRAM cell (used in all DRAM today), developed CMP and copper interconnect and more.

GF now has four – 300mm fabs around the world, Fab 1 (former AMD site) in Dresden producing 45nm to 28nm technologies (22nm is in development) with 60,000 wafers per month (wpm) capacity, Fab 7 (former Chartered site) in Singapore producing 180nm to 40nm technology with 68,000 wpm capacity (they also have several 200mm fabs in Singapore), Fab 8 (greenfield GF fab) in Malta, NY producing 28nm and 14nm, and developing 10nm and 7nm technology with 60,000 wpm capacity and Fab 10 (former IBM site) in East Fishkill, NY producing 90nm to 14nm technology with 14,000 wpm capacity. The IBM acquisition also added a 200mm fab in Burlington, VT producing 180nm to 130nm RF wafers (more about this in part 2).

To-date GF has successfully brought up 28nm technology in Dresden and in Malta NY but they were later than TSMC. At 14nm GF was developing their own 14nm technology but they abandoned the development effort and licensed 14nm from Samsung. As an outside observer the impression I have of GF is they have a lot of worldwide scale and resources but that they have struggled with execution.

When Daniel Nenni offered me the opportunity to visit the GF Malta and Burlington sites, tour the sites and meet key GF executives for briefings on the company I jumped at the chance to go. In the balance of this article I will discuss our visit to the Malta NY site; in a following blog I will discuss the Burlington VT visit.

Malta Fab 8 Visit
Fab 8 is GF’s flagship site and the home of their most advanced technology development efforts.

Site Tour
Our visit began with a driving tour of the Fab 8 site. There is currently a massive cluster of buildings on the site. Looking at the buildings from the front there are two large administration buildings, behind the administration building to the left is fab 8 – phase 1 and phase 2. Phase 1 is a 200,000 square foot cleanroom with a capacity of approximately 40,000 wpm and phase 2 is a 100,000 square foot cleanroom. The combined phase 1 and phase 2 cleanrooms are equivalent to approximately six US football fields in area! Behind the right side of the administration buildings is another 100,000 square feet of cleanroom space originally used as a Technology Development Center but now renamed phase 3. Phase 1 is currently fully fitted-out with tools and phase 2 and 3 are being fitted-out. Current capacity is stated as approximately 60,000 wpm, presumably when phase 2 and 3 are completely fitted-out that number may be higher depending on the complexity of the technologies being run.

The Malta site also has space for two more fabs similar in size to the existing fab providing the potential to ramp the total site up to approximately 180,000 wpm.

The site also has some interesting pre GF history in rocket development with a lot of old buildings and test structures still in place.

The overall site and buildings are simply massive. The employee parking lot appeared to be full and there was a large contractor area that was also full and busy.

Meeting with Gary Patton
Gary Patton ran development for IBM microelectronics for eight years prior to GF acquiring IBM microelectronics. Gary is now the Chief Technical Officer for GF and responsible for all of their technology development. I asked Gary is being CTO at GF required a change in mind set. I suggested that at IBM development was likely performance first and cost a distant second but Gary disagreed sighting his work on the bulk technologies for the common platform. He said he had a lot of experience with developing for cost and performance per watt. His job now is to accelerate technology development at GF and make sure there aren’t silos. Gary has established a process council with members from the sites around the world to promote cooperative technology development across the company. One of the things that were clear early on in talking to Gary was a focus on execution, “Say what you do and do what you say to establish credibility”. Gary noted that GF was late on 14nm and late starting on 10nm, at 7nm they started early and they are really pushing. The 7nm technology can be run using multi-pattering but EUV may offer some advantages if it is ready.

Gary also noted that even with the acquisition of IBM Microelectronics by GF, IBM is still involved in semiconductor R&D. IBM retained Yorktown Heights and the Almaden Research Center and is involved in Albany Nanotech. R&D developed at those locations then feeds into Malta where the development team bolstered by the influx of IBM researchers is focused on 10nm and 7nm development. The IBM acquisition brought in a lot of experienced researchers to Malta and there is now a dedicated 10nm and 7nm development team whereas in the past development was done by manufacturing. From the IBM perspective the deal has freed IBM from having to invest in low volume production. GF will provide customized processes to IBM for their relatively low volume server requirements. Former IBM operations such as RF that was constrained to Burlington and ASIC that was constrained on IP are now unconstrained (more on that in part 2).

The IBM 14nm technology will stay in East Fishkill (Fab 10 now). 14LPE acquired from Samsung is run in Malta plus 14LPP is built off of the 14LPE base and will also run in Malta. 14LPP is the same design rules as 14LPE and offers a 10% to 14% performance improvement over 14LPE. When 28nm was brought up in Malta there was no base to work off of, now the 14nm ramp is leveraging the 28nm experience. Both 14LPE (E for early) and 14LPP (P for performance) are ramping in Malta and have “world class yields”. 10nm and 7nm development is all being done in Malta.

I asked Gary for his view of FDSOI versus FinFETs. He said he didn’t see it as “versus”. FDSOI body bias is a great capability but FinFETs are better for high-end smart phones and performance and FDSOI is better for low power. Throughout the interview Gary was very poised and confident. He was very interesting to talk to and I would have been happy to have had more time for the discussions.

Gary’s Presentation

Meeting with Tom Caulfield
Tom is the senior VP responsible for the Fab 8 site. Tom noted that Fab 8 was originally going to be an AMD fab. Phase 1, 2, and TDC (now phase 3) are now close to 400,000 square feet. Development on the site is now done as a development “corridor” inside the manufacturing “corridor”.

As was covered above the 14nm technology was licensed from Samsung, the transfer was done as a copy smart. Some recipes were transferred one to one, some had to be modified because the tools were different. There were approximately twenty Samsung engineers on site and morning and afternoon conference calls. During the transfer they were always within one quarter of where Samsung’s S1 fab was and typically within 2 months. By buying Samsung’s process Samsung and GF basically split the cost of the development. The Samsung and GF 14nm processes are PDK compatible.

At 10nm/7nm the technology will be IBM driven. He thinks 7nm options are so limited that industry wide the processes will be similar. Current optical technology capabilities have defined how 7nm will be done. The usage of 14nm and even 10nm is driven by performance, at 7nm the driver will be economics. 7nm as defined today is economical even if done optically; EUV will be an opportunistic adder.

We talked a bit about the pyramid of systems companies supported by semiconductor companies supported by materials and equipment companies. Equipment companies used to just build tools but now they have to provide processes. They even supply some modules but individual steps are better. Tom talked about how the Eco system has to have a value proposition at each level or the model collapses.

In terms of why GF acquired IBM microelectronics:
[LIST=1]

Scale – you need at least $1B per year for R&D to stay competitive.

Bought a set of IP that makes the GF offering richer and brought in new customers.

Bought an R&D team. The IBM acquisition will let GF develop future technologies internally.

GF now has the “Malbany” corridor, Malta to Albany in about 29 minutes. The scale they are building is reaching the point that suppliers are setting up locally. For example, bulk hydrogen peroxide transportation is a big part of the cost coming from Texas, but now a hydrogen peroxide plant is being set up near Malta.

Tom also noted that 28nm launched at Fab 8 in June of 2014 established manufacturing so that infrastructure was in place for 14nm. GF currently has 14LPE in production on one part and 14LPP has two parts ramping production now and they will exit Q1-2016 with a least six parts.

We also talked about 20nm/16nm and the possibility that 10nm/7nm will be similar. Daniel has noted that 20nm and 16nm shared the same equipment set and 20nm ended up being a very short lived node. Daniel thinks 10nm may also be a short lived node with a quick shift to 7nm using the same equipment. Tom noted that at 20nm foundries didn’t make their R&D investment back and 10nm could be similar. 20nm succeeded at TSMC because Apple designed down to it and paid for the technology. Others who didn’t design down to it weren’t successful because the power performance wasn’t there.

I asked Tom about FDSOI versus FinFET and got my favorite quote of the trip. “FDSOI and FinFET competition is like a screwdriver and hammer fighting, they are different tools”. FDSOI is Internet of Things (IOT) and FinFET is big data. Earlier in the session we had discussed how IOT doesn’t really get interesting until you load the data up into a server and start running expert systems on it. They are complimentary pieces.

As a final observation Tom said you put values in place to judge behaviors. GF is focused on execution and measuring against that. They have met everything they said they would at 14nm.

Throughout our interview Tom was enthusiastic and energetic about GF and where they are going. I would also say that everything I heard from Gary and Tom matched up very well especially on the need for execution.

In summary at Fab 8 in Malta GF seems to have gotten the message that they have to execute and they are focused on making it happen! I came away both impressed and optimistic for the future of GF.

Tom’s Presentation

In the next installment I will discuss Burlington. Going in I expected Malta to be the highlight of the trip but Burlington held it own and has it’s own really interesting pieces to add to the GF puzzle.

November 6, 2015

What Makes Us Indecisive?

What Makes Us Indecisive?
by Sunit Rikhi on 11-06-2015 at 7:00 am
Categories: Foundries, Intel Foundry

An indecision is actually a very bad decision. It is an implicit decision for the status quo. It is worse than an explicit decision regardless of how bad that decision turns out to be. In my experience, our indecisiveness is caused by various reasons involving trade-offs.
Continue reading “What Makes Us Indecisive?”

November 5, 2015

Moore’s Law Linear Approximation and Mathematical Analysis!

Moore’s Law Linear Approximation and Mathematical Analysis!
by Vaibbhav Taraate on 11-05-2015 at 4:00 pm
Categories: Foundries

Respected Gordon Moore has given the real computing power to the world and Respected Stephen Hawking’s work from past many years has given the reality of physics and mathematics to the universe. We can imagine the shrinking and intelligence in computing due to the real evolution of semiconductor technology. The process node has shrunk from 250 nanometer (Year 1997) to 14 nanometer (Year 2014). And continues to shrink but have limitations due to fundamental laws of Physics.
Continue reading “Moore’s Law Linear Approximation and Mathematical Analysis!”

November 5, 2015June 14, 2019

The Revenge of Microprocessor Design: The Return of the Macro

The Revenge of Microprocessor Design: The Return of the Macro
by Bernard Murphy on 11-05-2015 at 12:00 pm
Categories: CLK Design Automation, EDA

(Two Star Wars™ allusions in one title – eat your heart out George Lucas.) Most of us are comfortable with the idea that you design more or less whatever you want in RTL and let the synthesis tool pick logic gates to implement that functionality. Sure it may need a little guidance here and there but otherwise synthesis is more or less a hands-free operation (subject to meeting timing). Not so for microprocessor designers who until recently, thanks to demands of very tight margins, had to manage sequential stages using special large macros more often than not, even while they relied on synthesis for other logic.

Now it seems FinFET technologies are driving us all back to large macros. The problem is that, in several cases for a variety of reasons to do with the arcana of FinFET technology, an aggregate of small cells placed and routed using standard methods often has significantly lower performance and higher power than a custom-crafted macro (cue old designers muttering “Well – duh”). Some opportunities to optimize are large bit count register trays, pulse latches and retention flops. There are even valuable performance and power improvements possible in folding larger logic gates into registers.

As always, there’s a challenge. Actually two challenges, both in characterization. Large macros simulate exponentially slower than smaller macros because run-time dramatically increases with number of nodes. Worse yet, Monte Carlo Spice, required to deal with acute on-chip variation in FinFETS, massively amplifies run-time on these large circuits. You’re caught between an unavoidable need to use these macros to meet power and performance goals and impossibly long times to characterize with sufficient accuracy to be able to trust that characterization in chip-level analysis.

Maybe you could sample a sparser space in Monte Carlo and apply margins to handle whatever you might have missed? It’s pretty clear this approach is no longer viable, especially if you are running at low voltages (0.6V) where the difference between early and late arrivals can be as much as 100%. And we all know (or should know) about the evils of over margining, perhaps resulting in a problem in a device that came out in spec from one foundry but much higher power (and lower battery life) from another.

So you have to do comprehensive variance analysis and you know that any standard approach is impossibly slow. What you need is a way to simulate large circuits with Spice-level accuracy but much faster, and a better way than Monte Carlo to deal with mapping the effect of variations on many paths into the characterization. Macro FX™, based on the CLKDA FX simulator, combines solutions to both problems. FX is an intrinsically fast Spice accurate simulator (“check” on the first problem), but what I find most interesting is how it deals with the second problem. To elaborate a little more on that issue, no matter how fast any one Spice simulation runs, Monte Carlo techniques multiply that time by hundreds or thousands in order to cover a sufficiently representative sample space. Whatever gain you may have in simulation speed, you lose that and much more in having to run many, many simulations.

FX on the other hand solves for sensitivities based on variances as it runs simulation, which is a lot more efficient than running simulations many times over. The outcome is a parameterization of variances within the characterization data. This can be output as AOCV, LVF, POCV or SOCV tables, or can be used directly in-line in PathFX™ to get the ultimate in signoff accuracy.

You can learn more about how FinFETs are driving a need for larger macros, and how MacroFX helps HERE. To learn more about the effects of variance on timing, especially at low voltages, click HERE.

May the FX be with you.

China Further Expands Its Influence in Semiconductor Industry

China Further Expands Its Influence in Semiconductor Industry
by Raman Chitkara on 11-05-2015 at 7:00 am
Categories: Foundries

For the fourth consecutive year, China’s semiconductor consumption growth far exceeded worldwide market growth. At the end of 2014, the country had a record 56.6% of the global semiconductor consumption market.

China’s semiconductor consumption grew by 12.6% in 2014, exceeding the worldwide chip market growth of 9.8%. To put that in a broader perspective, over the past 11 years China’s semiconductor consumption has grown at an 18.8% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR), compared with a 6.6% CAGR for total worldwide consumption.

At the end of 2014, China had three semiconductor companies with US$1 billion or more in annual revenue. Collectively, these companies have experienced an 18.5% CAGR over the past 11 years. In the future, we expect to see more Chinese semiconductor companies break the billion-dollar revenue mark either organically or through mergers.

Even with Chinese semiconductor companies growing in number and size, non-Chinese global semiconductor companies remain the dominant semiconductor suppliers to China. This contributed to China’s integrated circuit (IC) consumption/production gap of US$120 billion at the end of 2014—US$12 billion wider than at the end of 2013. The growing production/consumption gap and the strategic importance of the industry will continue to favorably influence the policies of the Chinese government as far as the semiconductor industry is concerned.

So what areas contributed to China’s chip consumption during 2014? We saw heavier concentrations in the data processing (computing) and communications applications sectors, and slightly more concentration in the consumer sector versus the worldwide market. Contrasting with the worldwide market, however, China’s semiconductor consumption was less concentrated in the automotive sector, and noticeably less concentrated in the industrial/medical/other, and military/aerospace sectors.

China’s IC consumption over the past decade has grown by more than US$134 billion, compared with just US$99 billion for the worldwide market. The country’s growth in this area has come at the expense of other regions’ IC markets, but we’re also seeing China’s rate of IC consumption market growth gradually moving closer to the worldwide rate. China’s IC consumption increased by more than US$20 billion in 2014, which was US$6 billion less than the worldwide market.

China’s O-S-D (optoelectronics-sensor-discrete) segment tells a similar story, with consumption growing 8.1% during 2o14 to reach a new peak of US$34.3 billion. Sensors are fundamental to the Internet of Things (IoT), and will help drive an increase in semiconductor industry billings. But for the first time in four years, China’s O-S-D increase was slightly less than the worldwide market increase, meaning China’s O-S-D market share remained relatively flat in 2014, at 56%.

When we look at China’s pragmatic government policies in this area, and combine them with a culture of entrepreneurship and a vast pool of engineering talent, we believe the Chinese semiconductor industry should continue to gain strength over the rest of the decade.

I’d love to hear your opinion in the comments. How do you see China’s semiconductor industry taking shape over the next several years? Are there additional factors you see influencing the space?
Also, I encourage you to stay informed in the coming months as we explore this area more. You can register for updates on our microsite covering China’s impact on the semiconductor industry.

Raman Chitkara leads the global technology practice at PwC. Read his full biography here.

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