I attended the 48^th Design Automation Conference in San Diego this past week and I came away from the conference with several main thoughts:

• EDA tool vendors continue to enhance their products by listening to their customers and acting on those inputs.
• There is mounting evidence that the discussion centered around the trend towards IP Subsystems is real and has substance behind it.
• The Automotive Networking workshop on Sunday featured a lively discussion around what networking bus would come after Ethernet.
• There seems to be growing dissatisfaction around the limited amount of data showing silicon and software design costs for SoCs.

At this DAC conference several IP vendors and EDA tool vendors were discussing the term ‘IP Subsystem’ in their booths and in presentations and panel discussions given throughout the time I was there.

Some of the notable vendors discussing the concept were: Sonics, Synopsys, Cadence, Atrenta, ChipStart, and eSilicon to name a few.

The panel discussion hosted by Jim Hogan framed the issue succinctly: the requirement by mobile and portable devices to be able to stream video files has driven today’s SoC to become a collection of subsystems. In essence, the SoC of five to six years ago has now become a system level feature in today’s highly complex silicon solutions. This tremendous pace of integration can only be achieved through the use of IP – but this creates another problem for the designer; how to manage this integration process intelligently, efficiently and within cost and design time budgets. Increasingly, for many designers this has become very difficult to do. There needs to be a way to increase the level of complexity in response to market requirements without increasing the cost and amount of effort needed to accomplish the design beyond a reasonable level.

Enter the IP Subsystem!

Reducing the level of effort needed while increasing the complexity and functionality of the silicon is what is powering the move to IP Subsystems by many vendors as designers would rather design at the system functionality level instead of acquiring and assembling many discrete IP blocks to create the functionality they need.

This also opens the door for EDA companies to step up with new products and approaches to applications software design, testbench creation and integration of the requisite parts into a contiguous whole – a portion of the new business model the EDA industry has been seeking.

Semico has previously stated that we believe there will be an IP Subsystem product announcement from one or more of the major IP companies before the end of 2011. I saw nothing to change that view and it could even occur sooner than that. However, by way of full disclosure, this is not to say that the term IP Subsystem was a topic in every discussion occurring on the show floor. We are not quite there yet, but that time is not too far off. The momentum is building nicely and the DAC conference reinforced my opinion that this is really happening.

The timing of product introductions and the popularity of those products all depends on how much the market pressure on IP and EDA vendors to create innovative solutions in answer to the real world problems designers face rises before we see such a solution enter the marketplace.

I also attended the Automotive Networking Workshop on Sunday where several in-depth presentations were given on the current state of automotive data networks were given.

Many of today’s higher end cars are moving a good deal of data between their embedded processors and ASICs to deliver the creature comforts, safety and performance features we all have come to expect when we drive a late model vehicle today. however, all these features come with a price – higher data flows and more complex semiconductors to provide the performance we seek. The older automotive CAN and Flex-Ray buses are no longer up to the task of meeting these system requirements over the long term. Their days are numbered in the minds of many automotive designers.

What then comes next? Ethernet is one answer. However, cost was mentioned as a potential obstacle. A possible solution to this issue in creating a hybrid Ethernet standard to allow a lower data rate was also discussed. This may have some merit but I wondered how long it would take to hammer out such a standard. If it takes too long, we may be looking at needing the higher data rates Ethernet uses today.

A further point was made about what technology would come after Ethernet and that answer was ‘Wireless’.

While it would seem reasonable to predict a wireless network in an automotive application as the future networking choice by designers, in the presentations I saw (and I didn’t see all of them), nowhere was the word ‘Security’ mentioned once. I was told that, in a later session on another day which I did not attend, security was discussed, but I wanted to bring this up here to make the following point.

It seems to me and to Semico that the issue of Security is becoming more important over time yet there is little discussion of this in the engineering community (or maybe more accurately to say in the press) in general. It’s possible that the current discussion about security is limiter to only those applications that really need it like financial transactions, secure data networks, etc. This could be because many designers perceive that by adding security functions to their silicon solutions will add cost, increase power usage and ultimately degrade performance somewhat – all issues to be avoided.

However, the old adage, “the security is in the network,” is working less and less in the portable and mobile devices we are using. It seems to us that the same logic chain will apply to automotive networking, especially if the automotive industry implements a wireless networking technology. Security must be considered in this environment because of the importance an automobile can mean in certain situations.

Automotive companies extensively test their products to ensure they will work in harsh environments like Alaska or the Sahara desert when someone’s life may depend on a vehicle operating when the driver needs it to. Can the approach to ensuring their products are hack-proof and virus-resistant be any different when it comes to the security issue and the data buses that are implemented in future vehicle? Probably not!

Building in the right level of security from the beginning will be a lot easier than waiting until an ‘event’ of some sort forces a corrective action – and it will certainly be less expensive in the long run.

A very interesting data point mentioned in one of the presentations is that in today’s Mercedes ‘S’ class cars, no less than seven separate data buses are used. While it is true that this represents the high end of automobiles today, how long will it be before these high end features migrate downward to less expensive models? Given the rate of change in the automotive industry, it won’t be all that long.

One final impression of the conference was the ‘famous’ ITRS SoC design cost slide I mentioned at the beginning of this article. I found that many people are questioning the validity of this data and herein lays the problem.

While the data in the slide is accurate, several people mentioned to me that it is based on the inputs of only one company and only depicts the design costs from a single design!

As most of you know this slide is shown frequently at conferences, in company presentations and even in books and literature about the semiconductor industry. It is used by many people and companies as a means to tell a particular story or make a specific point. It is generally used as is: namely without stating any of the caveats that would normally accompany such a data point.

On the silicon design side of the equation the normal questions to ask of the data are:

• Is it a first time effort at that process node?
• Does it represent the most complex design at that process node?
• Was every design parameter maxed out – biggest die, max number of transistors / gates, fastest clock speeds, number of CPU cores, etc.?
• Does this data represent a mainstream part or a design for a niche application?
• Do all the designs at a given node cost the same as shown by the data in the slide?

And finally:

• From how many designs is this data derived?

This last point is key because while the data in the slide can be said to be accurate, just how many companies and designs is it accurate for? Semico does not believe we can use the data from one design and apply it to all other designs in the industry – especially when we see the cost curve this slide depicts spiraling out of sight for future nodes.

To say it is inaccurate is being very charitable at best!

The same could be said for the portion of the slide that shows software costs roughly equal or higher than the silicon design costs. Again, where are the caveats that put the data into context and provide perspective to the viewer?

On the Software design side some reasonable questions would be:

• How many software designers does this design depict?
• How long did the effort take to accomplish?
• For software efforts, it is common to use many code developers to finish the design quickly. The more people used in the effort, the more costly it is. Where is this data and how does it relate to the design being shown? How does it relate to the rest of the industry?
• How much code was reused from a previous effort? None? Some? Any?
• How much of the depicted design cost was allocated for maintenance over the life of the product?

This last point is important since the companies writing their own applications programs probably do not use the same accounting rules that a software developer in the embedded software market uses. After all, most of these software applications are being written by semiconductor companies and not software development companies. Are there any differences between the two types of companies in how they account for development costs over time? Again, this data is not supplied with the slide.

This sort of data is becoming a critical part of the decision making process for many parts of the semiconductor supply chain.

• When a SoC start-up goes out for funding, does the VC he interfaces with throw up this slide as an issue to be discussed? Is it a showstopper in the VCs mind?
• When a company contemplates their next generation of silicon solution do they hesitate, thinking of this slide and the data it shows?
• When an EDA company thinks about developing their next generation tool, do they wonder how big the customer base will be at the next process node given the increase in design costs shown by this data? Do they possibly delay their efforts until enough customers ask for new products?
• Do the foundries look at the design cost data before they allocate their capex budget?
• Do semiconductor companies hesitate before starting designs to enter new markets looking at how many parts they need to sell just to make back the design investment? Is the choice of market to enter gated by the design cost data shown in this slide?

The answer to all these questions is probably yes to some degree. While it is true that larger companies may not be totally influenced by design cost data, it is entirely likely that smaller companies would definitely pay attention to data points like this.

If these numbers are so important and are used to make so many important decisions in the industry, why is better data not available for everyone to see?

Unfortunately, the answer is simple. Not many companies are willing to share this data since, in the wrong hands, it would allow someone to calculate their competitors manufacturing costs with reasonable accuracy. Having that data would allow someone to know what their competitors bottom line threshold of pain would be in terms of how low they could go on a particular ASP price point. This would give a company a great advantage over their competition.

Not many people in the industry are willing to share their design cost data for these reasons.

This is an area that Semico is focusing on over the next month since it has implications that go throughout the industry. Stay tuned!

All in all, I can say that I thought this years DAC was very well run and that it seemed like attendance was up over last years conference. There was some blatant ‘over-the-top’ messages this year, but not more than in other years. If someone wanted to get the pulse of the EDA industry today, the DAC conference is definitely one place where that can be accomplished!

Rich Wawrzyniak, Senior Analyst

Did you ever use your a laptop on your lap and get an unpleasantly warm sensation, even a burning, sensation, on the top of your legs?  Manufacturers of portable electronic devices would like to have a way of monitoring case temperature to insure that you don’t experience that sensation on your legs; or an unpleasantly warm hand if you’re using a handheld device.  But, until now, the only way to do that was to measure the temperature of the warmest component in the device and use that temperature to approximate the case temperature.  Now, TI has made it possible to measure case temperature directly using a very small, inexpensive MEMS infrared sensor.

TI part number TMP006 is a MEMS infrared digital temperature sensor in a 1.6-mm x 1.6-mm package; approximately 1/16” x 1/16.  That is certainly remarkable!

In this small package, the TMP006 integrates an on-chip MEMS thermopile sensor, signal conditioning, a 16-bit ADC (analog-to-digital-converter), a local temperature sensor, and voltage references.  This provides a complete digital solution for contactless temperature measurement.  The TMP006 uses only 240 uA quiescent current and 1 uA in shutdown mode.  It supports a temperature range of -40 degrees to +125 degrees C (Celsius) with an accuracy of +/- 0.5 degree C (typical) on the local sensor and accuracy of +/- 1 degrees C (typical) for the passive IR sensor.   It includes I2C/SMBus digital interface.

Monitoring case temperature is not the only application for the TMP006.  It could also be used in a cell phone or other handheld device to measure the temperature of something outside the cell phone:  something cooking on a grill, a hot pan just out of the oven or any other temperature a person might want to know.  In addition, Semico believes that there are hundreds if not thousands of other potential applications in industrial or medical applications.  This is a temperature sensor that designers will find a way to use, often in unexpected ways.

The sales price for this part in 1,000 piece quantities will be $1.50.  This suggests that the price will be much lower for volume purchases.  An evaluation module is available for for $50; and an IBIS model to verify board signal integrity requirements is also available, along with full source code for calculating object temperature and applications notes.

This part is the kind of break-through part the semiconductor industry introduces from to time.  It is much smaller and less expensive than anyone could have imagined a remote temperature sensor could be.  At the same time, it has better performance that anyone could have expected in such a small package.  The fact that there are no specific applications for such a device in consumer applications is because until now a cost effective solution with low power consumption and small size was not available.  This is a new feature that system developers can exploit.  Semico believes that it will find numerous applications.

Tony Massimini, CTO

Last week Semico visited the GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ Fab 8 construction site and was impressed for several reasons. Not only is the infrastructure significant but the people and surrounding community have welcomed GLOBALFOUDNRIES, embraced the project as well as the invasion of businesses and people that go along with the project. This made our visit extremely pleasant and trouble-free.

The GLOBALFOUNDRIES fab is a multi-billion dollar facility that is on schedule and on budget! That’s noteworthy when we consider this is the first major project for the Luther Forest Technology Campus and a major portion of the infrastructure construction took place during the Upstate New York winter.

The size of this project is difficult to comprehend. The Luther Forest complex is 1400 acres. GF owns 220 acres and cleared 110 acres for development of Fab 8. The site is supplied by three electricity substations and two electric utility companies, National Grid and NY State Electric and Gas (NYSEG). M+W Group is the construction contractor. They provided a concrete processing facility on-site to accommodate the 60,000 yards of concrete that was poured in just one month. But concrete is only one of a massive amount of material that has gone into the building of this plant. We were really curious who got the order for the 30,000 beach balls that were used to plug the waffle flooring before the resistive coating was applied. Someone was definitely thinking outside the box on that solution.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES is well on their way to meet the production ramp schedule in 2013 as their first production tool was actually delivered on the day of our visit, June 1st, 2011. The company currently has 441 employees on property and expects to have 900 employees on the site by the end of the year.

It’s easy to stir up emotions around the investment required to build a state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing facility these days. The actual dollar amounts are usually quoted in presentations or articles drawing a picture of how ominous semiconductor manufacturing has become. In some cases, it’s used to support an argument that continued innovation in semiconductor manufacturing is economically impossible. No one said it’s easy. Fab 8 has already encountered a few challenges and will face many more as production ramps and the semiconductor market goes through more market and technology cycles. But it is truly exciting to see a project of this magnitude and precision being built in the U.S.!
Bravo to GLOBALFOUNDRIES, M+W and the communities of Upstate New York.

Joanne Itow, Managing Director

The temperature, shock and vibration requirements for components used in down-hole drilling are exceeded perhaps only by the requirements for components used in Hades, whatever those might be.  An oil well drill bit is not only subject to temperatures that may be beyond 200^○C, it is also subject to vibration while the bit is rotating and severe shock when the drill string is pulled or new sections are added.   Amazingly, Analog Devices new inertial sensor, part number ADXL206, which combines a MEMS accelerometer and the required logic on one IC, meets the down-hole requirements at a fraction of the cost and size of previous solutions.

Oil wells are no longer only drilled straight down.  They are often drilled at a slant to reach an oil field from an accessible location.  They are also often threaded around obstacles such as water or hard rock.  This requires an extremely accurate measurement of the tilt and direction of the drill bit.  The Analog Devices inertial sensor provides that measurement.  This part also has an application when the well is completed, when it can be used to monitor vibration from the down-hole pump to provide an early warning of a potential failure of the pumping apparatus.

The ADXL206 inertial sensor is a dual axis ±5g dual-axis accelerometer, which can operate from -40^○C to +175^○C.  It has diminishing performance above 175^○C, but is 100% recoverable.  Oil well drillers will calibrate the output of the part and use it at temperatures above 175^○C, a usual practice in the industry.  It has a long life, a guaranteed minimum 1000 hours at 175^○C.  It has high sensitivity and accuracy.

The ADXL206 is packaged in a 13mm X 8mm X 2 mm ceramic, dual in-line package, a tiny but rugged package, which replaces packages that can be up to the size of a hockey puck.  This part will sell at well under $1,000 in 1,000 piece quantities.  It will replace inertial sensors that sell for thousands of dollars.

Although the ADXL206 was designed for down-hole applications, Semico believes it is sure to find a home in other applications that require operation in severe environments.  Although none of these have materialized yet, that there may be applications in steel mills, blast furnaces, high temperature test ovens or other high temperature locations.  The ADXL206 has a unique set of characteristics.  There are, no doubt, design engineers who have set of requirements that have defied solution for years, requirements that match the specifications of Analog Devices part ADXL206.  They will be overjoyed to see this part.

Tony Massimini
Chief Technical Officer

Morry Marshall:  Repeating the Mistakes of the Past!

Here we go again, right back where we’ve always been.  In the 1980s the Apple Mac OS was the best operating system on the planet, and Apple was heading toward a dominant share in the personal computer market.  Microsoft MS-DOS had a text interface with arcane commands rather than an easy to use graphical interface.  The IBM PC was just getting off the ground.

But, a funny thing happened on the way to market dominance.  Apple decided to keep the MAC OS and the MAC architecture proprietary.  For some inexplicable reason IBM, historically a company that kept everything to itself, decided to make MS-DOS and the PC architecture open systems.  A series of clone manufacturers emerged; and, as the Microsoft operating system evolved, it became overwhelmingly more popular with developers.  Easy to see why!  Their potential market was much bigger.

Today, Apple has a dominant share in the smartphone market.  Apple has also created the tablet PC market and dominates it.  The Apple iOS (born as the iPhone OS) is the best smart phone operating system on the planet.  It has been ported to the iPad, and it is the interface with the Apple App store for both the iPod and iPad.  The App store has far more apps available than any other site.  The iPod, the iPad, iOS and the App store are all proprietary.

Can’t anyone see this train wreck coming?  For now, the Apple App store is the most popular smartphone app site and iOS is by far the most profitable platform for developers.  But Android is winning the battle of smartphone market share.  There’s every indication that far more Android phones than iPhones will be sold as time progresses.

For now, app developers are frustrated, because they have to develop code for a wide variety of smartphones that use Android.  But, we’ve been here before.  Eventually, cell phone manufacturers will coalesce around a standard; and the market for apps written for that standard will be much, much bigger than Apple’s iPhone/iOS market.  A similar situation exists for tablet PCs.

Steve Jobs is a marketing genius, no argument.  He has created at least four major markets: easy to use personal computers, MP3 players, downloadable music and smartphones with display-based interfaces.  He’s working on a fifth, tablet PCs.  But, there’s a blind spot.  Unless the iPhone, the iPad and iOS are opened up, they’re going to be doomed to minor market shares.  Then Apple is going to have to invent the next big thing – all over again.

Michell Prunty: Trailblazing a New Future!

I’ve used both the iOS and the Android OS, and I have to say, I disagree that Apple is repeating mistakes, and here is why.

The current and past software market for the Mac and PC is very different compared to the app market for smart phones.  There were very few options for software for the original Mac, and Apple made it difficult to port over games, one of the reasons why the PC became to so popular.  The smart phone market however, as a centralized market where anyone can write and upload software to a hub.  Unlike with the computing market, there are no limits to the types of tools that can be found on the Apple app store.  Currently there are over 350k different apps available, and all of them have undergone QA testing, something other open source app stores are lacking.  Its hard to argue developers aren’t willing / can’t develop for the iOS when the numbers are this high.

Speaking of the QA for the app marketplace:  The Android app market is suffering because of its open source nature; anyone can develop on it, leading to a wide variety of bad software available for download.

The open source nature of the Android is also the source of its lag issues.  Apple has gotten around lag because they control the entire manufacturing process, and has even bought out some of their suppliers.  As they control the system from the ground up, there is no bloating in the software.  Android is the exact opposite; their OS becomes bloated in order to run on a variety of different hardware configurations.  Google acknowledges their open source problem, and has made Honeycomb, aka Android 3.0 closed source.

Now its true Apple has lost some market share due to its closed nature, but I would suggest that its lost more market share due to AT&T’s inability to create a stable infrastructure, the main complaint of iPhone customers.  Many deliberately waited for Verizon to take up some of the load.

Additionally, the target market for smart phones is vastly different than the target market for the early computers.  Old, young, tech savvy or not, there is a huge market for those who just want a plug and play system with no lag, and don’t care if they can develop for it or not.

When the iPad first came out, I had a few problems with it.  For example, it doesn’t support Flash, something Android does support.  Apple has addressed this issue by successfully arguing for the implementation of HTML5, a popular, and some would argue better, alternative.  As more sites port over to HTML5, and it becomes a standard, Flash will be a relic.

In terms of market share, the OS that will dominate the market is the OS that is licensed to the majority of products, so like Windows, Android will take on a great market share over time.  But this doesn’t mean Apple will slip down to <10% of the market, it just means there is still room for competition.  And if you don’t think it can compete 10 years into the future, remember the iPod came out 10 years ago, and its still in the number one position for PMP / MP3 market share for the US.

I am making the assumption that Apple will not rest on its laurels.  If Apple fails to continue to lead the market, then its possible 10 years in the future they will fall by the wayside, but they’ve made no indication they’re ready to give up the game.

It’s no surprise, the smartphone market is a high growth and potentially huge market.  In 2011 over 469 million units will ship worldwide.  This is an annual growth of 30.8% over 2010.  Semico Research projects that this market has a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.9% on units from 2011 to 2015, approaching 1.1 billion units by 2015.

It’s also no surprise that smartphone feature sets change over time.  What constituted a smartphone in 2003 is not at all the same as in 2011.  With each generation cell phones are becoming more feature rich, especially smartphones.

MEMS and sensors are important components that enable many of the new features on smartphones.  MEMS devices offer not only additional functionality but also smaller size and lower power consumption.  This makes MEMS very attractive to the smartphone market.  But what truly paves the way for MEMS in cell phones?    Is it just the new feature or new features at the right price point?

Will the cell phone market force MEMS devices to reduce margins or will manufacturers find ways to produce these chips more efficiently?

Prices for MEMS will erode as volumes increase.  CMOS image sensors is a perfect example of a feature that no one really needed but is on almost every phone because it was added at very little cost.  The CMOS image sensor share will decline but will still account for approximately one-third of this revenue in 2015.  Is MEMS headed down the same path?  Will margins erode?

In its most recent study, Semico has identified a dozen functions in a smartphone that either have a MEMS solution, or could potentially migrate to MEMS.  A significant trend this study points out is the development of the Inertial Motion Unit (IMU).  This incorporates several functions – accelerometer, gyroscope and digital compass.  The stand alone solutions are migrating to one package.  This can be a multi-die solution or monolithic.

MEMS and sensors for smartphones is a highly fragmented market with about 40 chip vendors involved in different areas.  MEMS and sensors functions in smartphones include CMOS image sensor, gyroscopes, accelerometers, magnetic field sensors (digital compass), autofocus actuators, pressure sensors (barometric sensors), micro mirrors, silicon microphones, oscillators and timing circuits, temperature sensors, micro-speakers, and RF MEMS – including FBAR, SAW, varactors, etc.

Lots of parts, lots of players…for now.

Tony Massimini, Chief Technology Officer

On May 10, 2011 ADI announced the availability of the semiconductor industry’s only double balanced wideband passive mixers.  P/N ADL5811 is a single-channel mixer and P/N ADL 5812 is a dual-channel mixer.

Due to differences in frequency allocations around the world, wireless receiver manufacturers often need to provide a receiver that will operate on several different frequencies, scattered across a wide frequency band.   But, this presents a quandary.  Active mixers have the requisite bandwidth but also have higher noise figures and lower linearity than passive mixers.  Passive mixers have better noise figures and linearity but only across a narrow bandwidth.  The new Analog Devices’ mixers employ a clever technical ploy to achieve the best of both worlds.

The Analog Devices’ mixers use a programmable RF balun transformer and a programmable low pass filter to allow a receiver manufacturer to tune the mixer to a frequency of their choice.  This allows a passive mixer to retain its low noise and greater linearity characteristics while achieving the bandwidth of an active mixer.  This allows a receiver manufacturer to shorten design time, eliminate off-chip matching components, achieve a shorter time to market, reduce the number of component qualifications and greatly improve inventory management.

The new ADI mixers offer outstanding performance.  Detailed specifications are available on the ADI Web site, but two specs are important.   The noise figure is below 12dB over a frequency range from 700MHz to 2800MHz at 25^○C.  The input 3^rd order intercept (IIP3) is above 24dBm over the same frequency range, also at 40^○C.  In addition, the mixers’ programmability allows a designer to adjust the mixer bias to trade off between IIP3 and noise figure to meet the requirements of the application.

These mixers are suitable for a wide variety of applications, including cellular base stations, down-link converters, cellular repeaters, software defined radios, broadband high dynamic range radios and many more.

It’s always exciting to see a company use ingenuity to overcome a seemingly intractable design problem, and that’s exactly what Analog Devices has done here.

Morry Marshall
VP Strategic Technologies

At the Semico Summit held May 2, 2011 in Phoenix, Az, one of the most lively discussions occurred during the panel Challenges at 28nm. Mahesh Tirupattur, Analog Bits brought out the best from the audience as well as panel members.

• Chi-Ping Hsu, Sr VP, Research & Development, Silicon Realization Group, Cadence
• Mark Papermaster, Vice President, Switching Silicon Technology Group, Cisco
• Grant Pierce, President & CEO, Sonics
• Suk Lee, Director, Design Infrastructure Marketing Division, TSMC

Some of the major issues and topics covered by the panelist were the following.

Chi Ping Hsu, Cadence feels the 28nm technology node is challenging because of the techno-economic problems that first became apparent at the 45nm process node and have become even worse.  The EDA industry collectively must spend around $2B per year on R&D aimed at solving or removing obstacles to industry productivity, manufacturing predictability and company profitability.

Despite all the issues, Suk Lee, TSMC currently has 89 28nm tape outs completed or in progress.  In addition, TSMC is making a big investment in 28nm.  The company expects to invest $16B in 28nm development and capacity.

As vice president of Cisco’s Switching Silicon Technology Group, Mark Papermaster, has a first hand view of ASIC design and strategy.  Leakage power is now 50% of total power consumption. Many mobile vendors think 28nm will allow them to reduce power consumption.  Papermaster believes 28nm is a very fundamental process node but the industry solution requires a system level approach.

Grant Pierce, Sonics has seen their role change over time. He agreed with Papermaster, Sonics is now being asked to address issues with a system level approach.  Customers want Sonics to operate more as a general contactor to pull the right types of IP together for a particular design.

Audience participation was fueled by a question/statement from Len Perham, President and CEO, Mosys.   Designing products at and below 28nm are so costly and overall performance of chips is actually decreasing.  How can a company justify moving to 28nm when problems with yields and signal integrity reduce any scaling benefit?  There are too many roadblocks for most companies.

According to Grant Pierce, it’s ‘invest or die’.  Suk Lee agreed that the investments are already being made by TSMC and others.  The key is to decrease risk and make the process more predictable by getting the IP and tool sets early so that the needed collaboration and verification have an opportunity to run their course.

Aart de Geus, Chairman of the Board and CEO, Synopsys was in the audience and offered the following more optimistic view.  The same challenges and the same skepticism arose when the transition was made from 65nm to 45/40nm.  The challenges were overcome by the collaboration between engineers, designers and manufacturers.  He thinks the concern is overblown and that scaling roadblocks will continue to be overcome for digital designs into the 16/14nm process node.  He jokingly pointed out that the analog piece is a different issue and is Cadence’s problem.

Grant Pierce agreed with de Geus that the roadblocks could be overcome, but the 28nm node will be a short lived node.  A ‘fab war’ will break out with the transition to smaller nodes. Designs in the mobile space are already looking to 22nm – to get even more power savings.

Another question from the audience focused on 3D.  Is 3D an alternative to scaling or an enabler to scaling?

TSMC:  Scaling will continue.  2.5D will provide opportunities for integration.  The goal is to mix and match the most appropriate IC dice.  3D will coexist with scaling. One of the means to continue on the Moore’s Law trend is 3D architectures.  Suk Lee believes that scaling will continue but will be aided by 3D.

Cadence:  From a capability standpoint Cadence has done a lot of work with IDMs on 3D.  They remain cautious about adoption because of the cost of 3D.  The foundries are doing a lot of work expanding the ability of 3D. The issues are not about the technology or the design tools but industry infrastructure.  How do we deal with the bare die?

Sonics:  The access to increased bandwidth using TSV technology is driving demand for 3D.  When the result is 4x performance at the same frequency and half the power, designers just can’t resist.  The next step is to developed multi-channel solutions, built into hardware to empower new chips with high bandwidth but invisible to software.

Cisco:  3D is irresistible.  Silicon interposer is one solution and if this can come up the yield curve it will be an irresistible solution.

The companies represented on the panel were definitely biased towards those with the ability to move to the next advanced technology solution.  They benefit from the companies willing to move up the technology curve.  But there were many companies in the audience that can’t afford to design at the bleeding edge or even be fast followers.  When all the bugs are worked out and economies of scale are reached, there use to be a group of fast followers providing a second wave of demand for the advanced IP, tools and capacity.  The concern is whether the fast followers or any followers are willing and able to move quick enough to provide the panelists a return on their investment.

A possible solution to this “Catch 22” is the increasing use of derivative SoC designs to reduce cost and time to market. However, over-reliance on derivative designs does not address the fact that many of the current SoC architectures are getting rather old. A new round of effort to refresh these architectures must be started to ensure silicon solutions at 28nm can utilize all the features of 28nm while at the same time deliver all the features and functionality the markets will demand going forward. Based on what we are seeing today, Semico believes the process of architectural refresh has started and that it will accelerate over the next two years.

Sam Caldwell, Analyst

Joanne Itow, Managing Director, Manufacturing

Rich Wawrzyniak, Sr. Market Analyst ASIC & SoC

At the Semico Summit this week Jim Feldhan said “2011 will see revenue growth of 8% however the Semico IPI indicates the second half of 2011 as the beginning of the next market slowdown.” What other evidence supports this hypothesis?

• Approximately 100 tablet models are being introduced this year, each with a market share goal of more than 1%.  There will be winners and losers.  The result will be excess capacity and inventory in the channel as these models shakeout. In terms of semiconductor ASP’s, the supply chain only has to be few percent points out of equilibrium to cause prices to crash.  We’ve seen it in the memory market many times.
• The smart phone is considered the “promise land”. A market that continues to grow at double-digit rates with increasing semiconductor content is an irresistible market. However, there is a similar threat in the smart phone market.  Overbuilding of smart phones will result in a production pullback in 2012 contributing to excess capacity and inventory leading to falling ASP.

While we would expect a semiconductor downturn to produce negative semiconductor revenue, Semico has identified several factors that will dampen the severity of the downturn.

• The devastation in Japan from the earthquake and the tsunami left heavy damage in northern Japan. A number of production facilities were severely damaged.  Renesas was one of the company’s hardest hit. In addition to plant closures, the Japanese automotive manufacturers have substantially reduced production rates.
• Some consumer products, particularly games and TVs are in a similar situation.
• Although this is bad news for the affected companies and potential revenue for 2011, Semico believes that there will be pent-up demand that will roll into 2012 helping to mitigate the downturn.

Other positive factors affecting 2012 include:

• A continuing growth in Internet activity and cloud computing is spawning a wave of upgrades in the communication back bone and server farms.
• The build-out of 4G wireless networks will require substantial investment that will spur demand from 2012 through 2015.

Jim Feldhan,

President

At the recent Semico Summit Ganesh Moorthy, Chief Operating Officer of Microchip Technology, examined how much embedded computing permeates our lives.  But he also pointed out how much more opportunity there is for microcontrollers.  Microchip is a leading vendor of microcontrollers

Mr. Moorthy showed how several applications that have evolved from very simple solutions to solutions that utilize sensors and intelligence.  This has enabled products that are adaptable, have more security, simplified user experience, improved energy efficiency and more.  Among these are developments in automotive, lighting, thermostats and appliances.  There are new applications for microcontrollers providing support management in personal computing, data centers, handsets, asset tracking & management and personal medical equipment.  Embedded computing is found throughout various applications within the smart power grid.

Mr. Moorthy cited several innovation enablers.

• More integrated features, lower cost
• Higher performance, lower power
• Smaller size
• Wired and Wireless connectivity
• High quality, low cost graphics
• Touch – buttons, sliders, screens
• Energy Efficiency building blocks

Chip vendors need to invest in customer support.  There are more software engineers than hardware engineers involved in the development of MCUs.  A chip vendor cannot just produce silicon, it must also help system designers with tools and expertise.  Today’s applications are just the tip of the iceberg, according to Mr. Moorthy.  There are many more innovations yet to come.

Tony Massimini

Chief of Technology

tonym@semico.com