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The SOI Consortium’s Japan Symposium this past fall covered a wide array of topics over two days. The first day was devoted to IP and products for RF and ultra-low-power (ULP) on SOI. The second day covered high voltage and photonics. It will take several posts to summarize all the presentations. In this post, we’ll cover presentations related to 5G. In the next posts we’ll cover IoT/ultra-low-power/automotive and photonics. (BTW, if your company is a member of the SOI Consortium, you can now access most of these presentations on our website.) The Japan SOI Symposium was organized for the 4th time at the Yokohama Landmark Tower (from which there was a fabulous view of Mount Fuji). It was a great success, with both days well attended. The event followed the day after (and in the same location as) Silvaco’s SURGE user event, so there were plenty of opportunities for synergy there. (Samsung Foundry talked about their partnership with Silvaco, for example, and their work together on RF and eMRAM on 28nm FD-SOI.) STMicroelectronics [caption id="attachment_27068" align="alignnone" width="589"] From “5G Deployment Driving RF and SOI Technology Opportunity” (Courtesy: ST SOI Consortium)[/caption] As noted in the ST presentation, 5G standards are getting a big push in the Asia-Pacific region, and by China in particular, which is leaping ahead especially in sub-6GHz. It’s a complex standard, noted John Carey, the company’s director of Digital RF for the A-P region, and it’s disruptive, demanding new silicon architectures and technologies. Next year’s premium phones, he said, will include over $30 in RF components, 40mm2 of which will be based on SOI. ST has been working on RF-SOI for over two decades, and offers a range of technologies and foundry services supported by three high-volume fabs. The key benefits with RF-SOI, he explained, stem from RF FEM integration of switches, LNAs and PAs. RF-SOI technologies are here now and are successful in the markets: ST has a long-term technology roadmap and is making continued strategic investments, he concluded. Toshiba [caption id="attachment_27069" align="alignnone" width="410"] From “RF-SOI Switch LNA for Mobile Applications” (Courtesy: Toshiba SOI Consortium)[/caption] Another long-time RF-SOI user is Toshiba, although this marked their first participation in a recent Consortium event. As Group Manager Kazuyuki Uchida talked about RF techology trends, there was lots of note- and picture-taking in the audience. He pointed out that the character and size of the switch LNA modules are particularly important in the move to 5G. They’ve been leveraging their TaRFSOI(tm) process, which he said achieves the industry's lowest insertion loss, for about a decade now. The latest version, TaRF11 will be launching in Q1 of 2020. TaRF10 integrated the LNA with the switch and control circuitry in a single chip. TaRF11 will feature performance improved by about 25%. Incize [caption id="attachment_27065" align="alignnone" width="405"] From “RF Characterization” (Courtesy: Incize and SOI Consortium)[/caption] During the Incize presentation, the company’s CEO Mostafa Emam affirmed that RF-SOI is a very good business opportunity. Incize works with the complete supply chain. For foundries and wafer suppliers, they measure harmonics and output with very high precision, which is especially critical for switches. For the wafer suppliers, it’s predictive. For the foundries, it’s measuring noise for models and PDKs. While RF may be an art, second tier foundries using Incize services are now able to compete with the first tier players, he noted. He sees trap-rich RF-SOI wafers as being especially important for 5G. GlobalFoundries [caption id="attachment_27064" align="alignnone" width="599"] From “RF Reliability for SOI CMOS Si-based Power Amplifier for 5G applications” (Courtesy: GlobalFoundries SOI Consortium)[/caption] The focus of the GlobalFoundries talk was reliability in RF processes. In 5G, you need technologies that are viable for both mmWave and sub-6GHz across handsets, wifi and automotive, noted Purushothaman Srinivasan (who goes by SP and is a senior member of the company’s technical staff). In SOI, you can stack FETs (which you can’t do in bulk) for PAs, which is a big advantage in mmWave. However, delivering scalable, linear, efficient and reliable RF power technology is more challenging than digital, and requires a holistic, collaborative approach that includes the foundry, the customers and the test equipment suppliers. GF has used its RelXpert simulation tool on aging simulations and lifetime predictions for both their 22FDX and 45RFSOI processes. They have observed good RF model-to-hardware correlation, and have built Safe Operating Maps that provide guidance to RF designs. This first-in-industry RF reliability evaluation provides “highly differentiated” solutions for GF. Silvaco [caption id="attachment_27066" align="alignnone" width="606"] From “RFSOI TCAD Solution” (Courtesy: Silvaco and SOI Consortium)[/caption] Silvaco is a leading EDA provider of software tools used for process and device development and for analog/mixed-signal, power IC and memory design. Their presentation began with a review of recent updates to their TCAD simulation framework, including the TCAD design flow, Victory ProcessTM simulation for speeding up 2D/3D process simulations, and Victory DeviceTM simulation. Under Silvaco’s DTCO – Design Technology Co-Optimization – semiconductor physics are connected to circuit design, recognizing that each technology has specific requirements that need to be taken into account at every stage of the flow. Applications Engineer Sun Tao then continued by showing useful TCAD simulations and analysis of SOI for RF applications. In trap-rich substrate simulations, for example, the Silvaco tools can predict the harmonic balance from the active device, device biasing and substrate, all of which can be co-optimized using Victory Process and Device. SITRI [caption id="attachment_27067" align="alignnone" width="305"] From “NB IoT FEM based on SOI” (Courtesy: SITRI SOI Consortium)[/caption] Shanghai Industrial μTechnology Research Institute – aka SITRI – is an international innovation center, focused on globally accelerating the innovation and commercialization of “More than Moore” technologies to power IoT. SITRI Director Wenwei Yang’s talk focused on their narrowband front-end module for IoT (NB IoT FEM). NB-IoT is especially meant to handle small amounts of data from remote places over long periods. There are a lot of players in this market, so taking a “good-enough” approach to performance wherein cost is primordial is key. SITRI’s low-cost NB-IoT FEM integrates everything on a single chip, including the power amplifier (PA) and integrated passive devices (IPD), so packaging costs are low. Putting it on SOI (either trap-rich or high-resistivity) gives them better isolation and simplifies integration. ~ ~ ~ Our next post will continue our coverage of the Japan Symposium. Note: 2019 marks a decade of SOI Consortium events – yes, our first one was in 2009! Because a lot of the presentations in the past were so forward-looking, many of them are still of great interest today. Currently the presentations from 2015 through to the beginning of 2019 are available freely to everyone – and are well worth perusing.

As 2019 draws to a close, the SOI Consortium would like to recognize members that have joined over the course of this year: Applied Materials, Analog Bits, Antaios, Silicon Catalyst and SmarterMicro. And as we start off 2020, the Consortium is pleased to welcome Thalia Design Automation. Here’s a bit of SOI-ecosystem background for each of them: Applied Materials: AMAT has a long history in the heart of SOI ecosystem – in fact they’ve been working with SOI wafer-leader Soitec for over 25 years. AMAT is leading supplier of SOI-related process equipment, with systems for ion implantation, epitaxial deposition and chemical mechanical polishing (CMP). In fact their ion implanters are a key enabler to what became and is Soitec’s industry-leading Smart CutTM SOI wafer manufacturing process. And of course AMAT equipment is used to make virtually every chip in the world, so their breadth of vision as a Consortium member is clearly a wonderful addition. Analog Bits: SERDES (Serializer/Deserializer) IP is central to many modern SOC designs, providing a high-speed interface for a broad range of applications from storage to display. Analog Bits has been revolutionizing SERDES IP by drastically cutting the power it pulls. In fact in porting the IP to the FD-SOI processes of leading foundries, Analog Bits has laid claim to the industry’s lowest-power SERDES IP. They have been an active and generous sponsor of SOI Consortium events for several years now. Antaios: Antaios is a start-up in advanced memory technology. They are developing Spin Orbit Torque (SOT) non-volatile (NV) memory IP that is ultra-fast, durable, and reliable. The SOT-MRAM was proposed by SPINTEC and is now being developed by Antaios for nodes below 28nm where an STT-MRAM process is available. It is writable/readable in the nanosecond time scale making it particularly promising for cache memory applications (such as SRAM) for IoT, edge computing, AI and high-performance computing. SOT is an MRAM flavor that Antaios explains solves the STT-MRAM tug-of-war between endurance, speed and retention, thereby addressing both eFLASH and eSRAM replacement. Silicon Catalyst: Silicon Catalyst is the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating solutions in silicon. They address the challenges faced by startups while guiding them from concept to product, providing a path to funding, free access to tools, testing and shuttle runs, along with advice on proper corporate governance and strategic execution. The 21 startups admitted since 2015 to the incubator are developing innovative solutions in a variety of areas including energy harvesting, wearables, silicon photonics, memory technology, loT, high performance computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, wireless communications, and biomedical devices. SmarterMicro: SmarterMicro is a fabless RF chip company. Their portfolio includes switches, power amplifiers and front-end modules FEMs. SOI technology provides the ideal platform for the software-defined RF front end module. They presented at several SOI Consortium events in Shanghai in recent years. Their 2018 presentation, RF-SOI in 5G Era and their 2017 presentation Reconfigurable RF PA and FEM with RF‐SOI, are available from our website. Dr. Li Yang of SmarterMicro received an SOI Consortium Industry Achievement Award in 2018 for outstanding contributions to RF-SOI, particularly citing the reconfigurable FEM, which debuted at Mobile World Congress in 2019. Thalia Design Automation: Thalia’s Re-use Platform-as-a-Service (RePaaS) solution combines an innovative methodology, advanced design automation technology and experienced analog engineering resources. It helps analog IP providers to maximize re-use of their existing product portfolio, to create new product variants quickly and easily, and to adapt their designs for manufacture using any semiconductor foundry service. Thalia’s AMALIA™ EDA design tools comprise an intelligent analog design optimisation automation toolset. The company has worked on multiple FD-SOI projects with body biasing, some of which are described in a recent company blog (read it here). Interested in joining this dynamic organization? For information on how your company can become part of the SOI Consortium, visit our About Us page, then use the Contact page to make your request.

The SOI Consortium’s China 2019 event ran for two days, and it’s taken four (!) posts to cover all the presentations. In this final post we cover the afternoon RF-SOI sessions, which were dedicated to the China RF-SOI ecosystem and the RF value chain. In case you missed them, our previous posts recapped: 1. major keynotes from both the FD-SOI and RF-SOI days; 2. the FD-SOI presentations; 3. the morning sessions of the RF-SOI day; and 4. (this post) the RF-SOI day afternoon sessions. As we noted in Part 1 of our RF-SOI coverage, there were over 500 attendees for the RF-SOI day. And impressively, the room was still packed right through to the very end of the afternoon. Read on! SESSION 2: CHINA RF-SOI ECOSYSTEMSuzhou HunterSun Electronics: Super Opportunity for Integrated RFFE (“Jacky” Yujun Ding, COO)This talk had two parts. First, how is 5G changing the world, and second, what are the RFFE opportunities? He cited IHS data indicating that 5G will create tens of millions of jobs. New products include NB IoT, cellular V2X, as well as traditional PC/tablets and smart phones. But you still need to cover 2/3/4G with 5G. Major growth will happen in 2025-27. In terms of opportunities for RFFE, you've currently got 550mm2 going for $8; in 5G, you'll need 600mm2, but it will cost $16. You need RFSOI for filters and antenna switches, which are in high demand. Parts of the supply chain have no China players. Revenue for BAW is higher than SAW, but there's more SAW. He sees the industry moving heavily into integrated FEM (versus chip-on-board). He finished by itemizing different parts of the RFFE, indicating where the opportunities are (citing some data from Yole), with a special emphasis on integrated products for Chinese companies, with continued investor confidence. SmarterMicro: RF-SOI: Key Technology of Smart Connection (Yangyang Pen, Director) RF-SOI is an enabler of smart connections. However he sees GaAs as better for power, so SmarterMicro has a solution combining RF-SOI and GaAs. They've developed the world's first mMTC RFFE for high-performance upgrades on a single die and software reconfigurable. He notes that for IoT, lifetimes will be longer than 10 years, and that terminals are becoming more powerful. CanaanTek: Critical SOI CMOS Blocks in the 5G NR Sub-6GHz RF Front-End Architectures (Wayne Ni, CTO Board Chairman) CanaanTek is a fabless company working in consumer markets, with switches, tuners and LNAs in SOI-CMOS. He wants to capture 10% of the market with a focus on sub-6. The antenna/tuner is a must, and they've developed solutions for switches here. The figure of merit is RonCoff. He showed a product roadmap on SOI-CMOS. Xpeedic: Innovative EDA Solutions to Enable Differentiated RF-SOI Designs (Feng Ling, CEO)RF-SOI is growing, but there are still design challenges in process, models, filters and packaging. To design a good front end, you need better models and filters. People think passives are easy, but you need accurate models here. Xpeedic has developed design flows that include the effects of packaging early in design. Their products include IRIS, iModeler and Metis (for packaging). They've also introduced substrate modeling in partnership with CWS in France. The product is called SiPEX: it can address linearity in switch or PA designs. You need accurate substrate models to do this. Customers indicate they're seeing big improvements as well as reductions of 25% in chip area. IDP filters is another place they're working, to provide RF filters to fabless IC or module companies. No single filter technology can fit all the needs – IDP is one of them, so they have a broad portfolio of IDP filter technologies. He closed by saying that especially in China, the SOI ecosystem is really growing. SESSION 3: RF VALUE CHAINTowerJazz: Specialized RFSOI Foundry Technology to Support Rapid New Product Development (Paul Hurwitz, Director of RF Technology Development)This presentation gave a full overview of what TowerJazz offers in terms of RF-SOI foundry services with its fabs in Isreal, the US and Japan. What's new in 2019 is a diversifying of 200mm and 300mm. 200mm is best for power handling (for infrastructure/basestation antenna tuners and switch power handling, for example). 300mm is best for SW and LNA integration and higher digital densities. They've got new SOI models for the latest technology generations, and physics-based modeling of RF breakdown for accuracy. With more die being flipped, they needed new substrate modeling. For LNA and switch integration in 300mm, they invested in RF modeling. They also have an in-house MPW (multi-project wafer) program. He noted that customers in China are moving quickly in response to their customer requirements. Okmetic: Tailored Silicon Substrates for RF Applications (Atte Haapalinna, CTO)Okmetic Oy is a niche player in the substrate materials market, with specialties in sensors and MEMS, where they are the market leader. Now part of China’s NSIG group, they are expanding their manufacturing facility in Finland. In this presentation, their CTO talked about their current offerings as well as what they have under development. They do 150-200mm wafers, with a special emphasis on thick SOI. In terms of silicon substrates for RF, ultra-high resistivity is key. Their wafers are also used in IDP – integrated passive devices – for RF and acoustic filters. They are continually improving their high resistivity Magnetic Czochralski (MCz) silicon wafers, and are developing substrates for RF passives for automotive V2X. For RF beyond 6 GHz, they are looking at customized high resistivity silicon wafers for mmWave with researchers and customers. For sensors, they do SOI wafers with built-in cavities. Incize: RF SOI Ecosystem – History Challenges (Mostafa Emam, CEO)The world is exceeding expectations in terms of data usage. While the CAGR for devices is 27%, for data it’s 46%. Therefore each device needs to be faster and more power efficient. Incize recognizes RF as an art, with each piece hand crafted. But artists need to see the whole picture: at Incize, they help 17 companies – including wafer suppliers, foundries and fabless – see that big picture, especially in measurement, characterization and modeling for RF. For wafer suppliers, they do very high-power and very precise on-wafer testing to determine things like intermodulation distortion and substrate interference. For foundries, their specialty is in RF switches, for whom they do harmonics testing and thermal noise management. With those insights, Incize foundry customers have drastically increased the performance of the RF chips they’re manufacturing on trap-rich, high-resistivity SOI wafers. Meanwhile, Incize is also preparing PDKs for future potential substrate generations including GaN-on-Silicon, silicon-on-porous, and new contactless testing techniques for piezoelectric-on-insulator (POI – used in filters in 4/5G). “There’s a really big business opportunity for RF-SOI,” concluded Emam, “and room for everyone.” Cadence: SOI Technology in Intelligent and IoT/Vision/AI Systems (Jonathan Smith, Senior Director)Cadence does SOI enablement at advanced nodes. Smith shared three recent success stories. First, there’s the Musca-S1 test chip they did with Arm, Samsung and Sondrel this past spring. Second, there’s the Tensilica DSP for automotive vision on GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX, which uses 1/10th of the power of existing solutions and was demonstrated at CES. And finally there’s the i.MX line from NXP. In recent news, there’s a new version (18.1) of Virtuoso RF. Though it’s been on the market for 30 years, they’ve added advanced methodologies so that system design and analysis are on the same platform. They’ve also announced National Instruments’ analysis solver, the Clarity 3D solver for next-gen 3D solutions, the integration of multiple electromagnetic (EM) solvers, and advance SiP options. Silvaco: Xena-IP Management Infrastructure for the SOI Ecosystem (Babak Taheri, CEO)Every multi-core SoC today has as many as 200 IPs, if not more. How do you manage that? Tracking and traceability of IP is complicated but important. For IP providers, how do they track where its being used? And for IP consumers, they need to know what they’ve used and where. What’s required is an IP management system to keep track of the different functions and different concerns. Today’s tracking systems don’t talk to each other. Silvaco’s Xena IP management solution organizes all IP data, accounts, products, contracts, devices, support, compliance and reporting. For compliance in particular, they do IP “fingerprinting” and “DNA analysis”, which they’ve patented. The fingerprint is a digital representation of the IP: it’s not just software. It is secure, and can’t be reverse engineered. It’s not a tag: a tag is inserted into the IP, whereas fingerprints are extracted. DNA analysis flags discrepancies and quickly identifies where they are and which files to look in. Xena works in the cloud, enterprise systems or hybrids. The SOI ecosystem will be hearing a lot more about this. ~~ Please note that the China event presentations are all available on our website to anyone whose company or organization is a member of the SOI Consortium.

The SOI Industry Consortium awarded two luminaries of the semiconductor industry for pioneering advances in RF-SOI, a technology now found in all cellphones. Jim Cable (shown on the left in the photo above), Chairman and CTO of pSemi, a Murata Company, and Herb Huang, CEO and GM of Ninbo Semiconductor received the awards during a gala following the SOI Consortium's 2019 RF-SOI Workshop in Shanghai. "Thanks in large part to the innovation, dedication and perseverance of men like Jim Cable and Herb Huang, RF technology based on SOI is now ubiquitous," said Carlos Mazure (on the right in the photo), Chairman and Executive Director of the SOI Consortium. "Jim Cable drove the development of SOI and RF switches that are now in every cellphone, and Herb Huang has been a key contributor to SOI technology and a champion of the SOI foundry ecosystem in China. We are happy and honored to recognize the contributions they have made to advancing RF-SOI globally." Jim Cable joined pSemi (formerly Peregrine Semiconductor) in 1996 and held technical leadership roles before serving as CEO from 2002 to 2017. An early pioneer of SOI technology, Cable believed SOI would ultimately replace other technologies in the RF front end, and he pushed his team to innovate. Cable is a co-inventor on more than 70 semiconductor and technology patents, including breakthroughs in SOI-based processes for CMOS RF switch linearity and integration that are used by all smartphones today, and will become even more mission-critical in 5G and millimeter-wave markets. He received his B.S. in physics from UC Riverside and his master's degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from UCLA. Herb Huang is CEO of Ningbo Semiconductor International Corporation (NSI), which is based in Ningbo, China. A driver of the RF-SOI ecosystem in China, he spent much of his career at SMIC, the largest semiconductor foundry company in mainland China. In 2016, SMIC created NSI as a joint venture subsidiary with China IC Investment Fund, Ningbo Economic Development Zone Industrial Investment Company, Ltd. and other IC investment funds. Under Huang's leadership, NSI optimized the process and model of a 0.13um RF-SOI technology platform transferred from SMIC. Now in mass production, the RF-SOI technology platform supports customers in IC design and product development for new generations of radio communications. Huang holds both a Ph.D in Materials Science and Engineering and an MBA from the University of Minnesota.

The 2019 International RF-SOI Workshop in Shanghai was packed to overflowing, with over 500 attendees, noted SOI Consortium Chairman Executive Director, Carlos Mazure. There were 16 presentations over the course of the day – every one of them excellent – so it will take two posts to cover them all. We covered Danni Song's compelling keynote in a previous post – see it here. In this post, we’ll cover the remaining keynotes and the morning session, which was dedicated to 5G deployment. In the next post, we’ll cover the afternoon sessions, which were dedicated to the China RF-SOI ecosystem, and the RF value chain. PDFs of the presentations are not yet posted, and then they will only be available to those whose companies belong to the SOI Consortium. But we’ve summarized them all for you, so read on! KeynotespSemi: 30 Years of RF-SOI – Past, Present and Future (Jim Cable, Chairman and CTO, pSemi (a Murata company))The keynote by RF-SOI legend Jim Cable chronicled his always-innovating journey from digital to RF via sapphire then SOI. (Cable's work was recognized in an award that evening.) His original vision back in the early days was for a RF front-end module (FEM) + CMOS transceiver. At the time, doing it on sapphire (an insulator) rather than bulk made it much easier, as sapphire eliminated the non-linear capacitances. That was the beginning of their UltraCMOS technology, and though it did very well, sapphire was only available in 6” wafers. So pSemi (or Peregrine, as it was known at the time), engaged with Soitec on bonded-SOS. “It was a killer technology, and the marketshare we won was staggering,” he recalled, and helped convince Soitec RF-SOI was worth looking at. The goal is to handle high RF power levels: you can use SOI to handle higher voltages than you'd think were possible. They added an invention they called HaRP, that dealt with accumulated charges and enabled them to hit the linearity specs on silicon. With that, he explained, they came to completely dominate the switch industry. UltraCMOS evolved, getting 60% smaller with 20x better linearity – but now of course you have 50 switches, not six. He heralded the great partnership they have with GlobalFoundries, noting, “We were pioneers in this field.” In fact, in 2017 they were in the top 10 for IP generation in semiconductor manufacturing. Now comes mmWave, where he says, “We see everything we believed and more.” They're currently sampling an 8-channel mmWave RFFE (RF Front End). Soitec: 5G-on-Insulator: the 5th Gear In Mobile Radio (Michael Reiha, GM, Soitec)Michael Reiha's talk centered on how SOI wafer-leader Soitec is positioning itself on 5G, which, he explained, demands a wider portfolio. Soitec looked at what they could do to make 5G ready for sub-6GHz. Massive MIMO (mMIMO) is an efficient technique to improve throughput. With SOI, you can reduce the power it takes, making it a good choice for urban environments. RF-SOI is a candidate for power amplifiers, and FD-SOI is enabling more users to be added. The concept of network sharing is an opportunity for compact, low-cost filters that can meet the requirements with simpler, lower-cost, higher-efficiency filters. That's why they've just announced a new substrate called piezo-on-insulator (POI). However, total cost-of-ownership is not just how much a product costs, but how much it costs to run it.. Currently, RF and mechanics dominate the bill-of-materials, so you need to decrease the number of RF FEM components and get savings scaled with the array size. The main challenge of SOI is in efficiency, but the advantage is that it can be used in integrating digital with analog sensing and RF. Then you can use AI sensing for tracking temperature, for example, and control for 5G optimization. In short, with RF-SOI, you apply AI to the radio head, especially for things like mMIMO. And btw, he added, Soitec currently has capacity of two million wafers per year. SESSION 1 – 5G DeploymentYole: 5G is ON. Which Impact for RFSOI Technologies? (Cederic Malaquin, Technology Market Analyst)There are over a thousand 5G networks available today worldwide, said Cederic Malaquin. Adoption is accelerating, driven by 5G cloud gaming, AR/VR/XR, 5G multi-video calling and stadiums. However, carriers need better ROI. 5G should address this so that customers are better served. MIMO and carrier aggregation (CA) are the main techniques supporting network capacity and coverage improvements. 5G NR will bring more spectrum. With each generation putting more content in phones, new spectrum is happening in sub6 and mmWave. The impact of 5G on mobile phones is huge in terms of both content and complexity. Some phonemakers (like Apple and Samsung) are moving towards increased integration. Others (like Huawei) are going more for discretes. Yole sees tuners, switches / LNA as addressable by RF-SOI, but they are less convinced about power amplifiers. They also see SiP (system in package) as prevailing over integration. The 5G mobile and base station markets will really build up in 2022-25. RF-SOI will remain the mainstream technology for switches and antenna tuners through at least 2025: they don't see anything else replacing it. There is still increasing demand for 8” wafers. 12” wafers growth comes from integrated switch/LNAs, which comes from the Tier 1's. In the front-end space, Murata leads in dollars by far, followed by Skyworks and others. Though mmWave is not yet clear, there are opportunities for RF-SOI. ST: 5G Deployment Driving RF and SOI Technology Opportunity (Laura Formenti, Sr. Director)STMicroelectronics has a long history in RF-SOI, noted Laura Formenti, dating back to 2000 when they started collaborating with Soitec and Leti. An IDM, ST also offers foundry services. For 5G, their foundry offering includes H9SOIFEM, C65SOIFEM and SOI mmW for high-performance analog, dedicated RF processes for RF switches, LNA, PA plus RFFEM. Then they have FD-SOI for RF, mixed signal and digital integration. From antennas to transceivers there's an opportunity for full integration. For infrastructure, it depends on the customer preferences. 12” C65SOIFEM was introduced in 2019, and 12” SOIMMW will be introduced in 2020. Both their fabs at Crolles and Rousset, France, are in production. H9SOIFEM is for 4G and 5G sub-6GHz RF FEMs, enabling monolithic integration of the PA, LNA and switches, which is especially good for wifi. The C65SOIFEM is high-performance. Panel: 5G Deployment in China, Jeffrey Wang, CEO, Simgui Technology, moderatorWith Danni Song (China Mobile), Jim Cable (pSemi), Peter Rabbeni (GF), YangYang Pen (SmarterMicro), Paul Hurwitz (TJ), Michael Reiha (Soitec)Q: Why sub-6GHz and not mmWave?Danni Song said its a question of available spectrum. In sub-6, you get the same level of coverage with fewer base stations; also, sub-6 is much more mature. When will mmWave be ready? It depends. In the US, yes, but in China the spectrum allocation for mmWave has not yet been done. So it's a wait and see for the industry to be ready. Peter Rabbeni agreed, adding that in the US sub-6 is crowded and conflicts with military bands. Paul Hurwitz added that mmWave is for fixed wireless access. Michael Reiha added that mmWave has advanced a lot even in the last few months (Verizon in Washington, DC, for example), so there is momentum.Q: Does China lead in the sub-6GHz opportunity?Jim Cable said that at pSemi they have two business models: mobile and infrastructure. He sees massive MIMO in base stations as huge (though in mobile their role is more supporting Murata). Peter Rabbeni added that they're working with innovative partners in China, and that GF also offers skills in services and packaging. Yangyang Peng sees big opportunites with 5G for SmarterMicro and China. Paul Hurwitz has seen an increase in the capabilities of RF companies in China, and that the market in China moves faster than elsewhere. Michael Reiha sees China as strategic, and because there is central deployment, they can plan with the right partners.Q: Data usage will be huge – what will it cost to individual users?Danni Song said 5G phones will be expensive, but consumers want them, so we need to bring down costs and increase performance – but what about power consumption? Power needs to come down, maybe levering things like sleep mode more. For 3G 4G, she noted, they had lots of time. People are pushing hard for 5G, but there's a need for patience. Yangyang Peng said he didn't want to pay more than for 4G. In summary, Jim Cable noted that mmWave will demand huge amounts of silicon, to which Paul Hurwitz agreed, and Michael Reiha said Soitec will be ready. Everybody agreed that 3D packaging would be very important, especially for mmWave. And that's it for our coverage of the morning. Next up we'll cover the presentations given during the afternoon.

The first day of the SOI Consortium’s recent China event – the 7th Shanghai FD-SOI Forum – was full to bursting in every way: the room, the networking, the level of expertise, the in-depth presentations and the overall energy. We covered the Samsung and GlobalFoundry keynotes in our previous post (if you missed it, read it here).This post will recap the rest of the presentations given during the day. (If your company or institution is a member of the SOI Consortium, you’ll be able to access the full presentations online.)International Business Strategies (IBS) – Impact of AI on Automotive and IoT, and Opportunities in China (Handel Jones, CEO) When it comes to deep insights on China + tech + analytics, and especially with a thorough understanding of FD-SOI markets, Handel Jones is arguably the world’s leading expert. Here are some of the observations he shared. Though the chip industry will see declines across the board in 2019 (he sees 13.5%), he sees a return to growth in 2020. By 2030, he sees it as a trillion dollar market, of which China will have half. AI is a key driver – and will become more prevalent at the edge. Major drivers will include preventative medicine, gaming, NB-IoT and 5G. At the chip level, FD-SOI has a lower cost/chip compared to bulk – you’ve got small chips and high yields. Sensors – especially image sensors – are a key area, and this is another place where FD-SOI is better than bulk. He sees chip shortages in the 2022-24 time frame (as opposed to the current oversupply), so now is the time that China should be establishing large FD-SOI capacity.NXP – Automotive, Industrial and IoT Solutions Leveraging FD-SOI (Ron Martino, VP GM) In terms of power consumption, computing is easy but data transmission is hard, Ron Martino reminded the audience at the onset. That’s why you need the edge. This is where FD-SOI comes in, and if you want to have leadership, you should be leveraging body biasing, he said. In terms of machine learning, a lot can happen at the edge on the smallest devices. NXP is now shipping a very wide range of products based on FD-SOI, including the i.Mx7 and 8 families and the new RT crossovers. The latest announcement is the i.Mx RT 1100 MCUs, a very low-cost processor solution for high volumes. The i.MX7 ULP is in mass production for wearables, with record low leakage and high performance. The i.Mx8 and 8x are going into a broad range of applications – from retail solutions for automated checkout to pasta makers, and automotive applications for full cockpits with vision detection, as well as things like parking, V2X and in-vehicle monitoring.Sony Semi – Low Power IoT Products with FD-SOI eMRAM Technology (Kenichi Nakano, GM) Chips built on FD-SOI with eMRAM are in production, said Kenichi Nakano. In GNSS/GPS, Sony is the #1 in lowest power consumption worldwide, thanks to FD-SOI, he continued. They’ve had 70 remarkable design wins, giving them over 50% market share in the sports and health watch markets, he said with a tip of the hat to the FD-SOI ecosystem and SOI Consortium. In GNSS, performance is very important – and now they can do it in water, which is huge. Development cycles are shorter than ever – for the latest chip it started in February 2018 and was in production by the spring of 2019, achieving decreases of 20% in power, 30% in area and 10% in cost. Integrating eMRAM was easy in terms of the design flow and manufacturing, with production yield of 97-100%. So with the GXD5605GF they’ve got the first GNSS chip with FD-SOI/eMRAM/RF in the world and it’s on 28FDS/eMRAM technology. It’s very reliable and very good, he concluded.Rockchip – Challenges of AIoT Chip (Feng Chen, SVP) At the beginning of this year Rockchip announced the launch of their RK1808, a low-power AIoT solution with built-in high performance (3TOPS) NPU fabbed in GlobalFoundries 22FDX, said Feng Chen. Their clients were very happy that Rockchip delivered the real power and performance numbers they’d promised. Because of the power/performance it delivers, FD-SOI (both 22 and 28nm) is very well suited for AIoT chips, he said. It’s very cost-effective in terms of NRE and die, and there’s room for further savings. While the ecosystem needs a unified push, FD-SOI is good for the market in China, and China has the volumes FD-SOI needs. Rockchip sees particular potential in retail and smartphones.Panel – Verticals Driving FD-SOI VeriSilicon CEO Wayne Dai moderated the first panel, asking first why China should adopt FD-SOI. Soitec CEO Paul Boudre said because it is a big, dynamic market (noting that Sony’s first FD-SOI GPS win was in China). Handel Jones said that at the wafer level, there was cost parity, but with FD-SOI chips are smaller and higher yield. The main reason it’s taken so long to get going was IP, but that’s changing now, he added. Dai’s next question was about the top application fields the panelists predicted for 2020. Sony’s Kenichi Nakano said wearables with connectivity, low power consumption, small size and high levels of integration; Rockchip’s Feng Chen agreed. NXP’s Ron Martino said FD-SOI for automotive, machine learning and edge computing was shipping now, with wearables ramping.VeriSilicon – Low Power IoT Connectivity IP Design Based on FD-SOI (Yi Zeng, Director, IoT Connectivity Platform) The “value” of IoT data is not yet being generated, noted Yi Zeng but AI can help here. The IoT industry needs innovation for both chips and networking. SiPaaS – which stands for Silicon Platform as a Service – as offered by VeriSilicon can help lower the barrier to entry. [In the SiPaaS model, VeriSilicon has its own IP-based core. Based on the company's advanced chip design capabilities and mass production service experience, it has created a variety of silicon-proven chip design platforms that can significantly reduce the customer's chip design cycle.] They have FD-SOI IP for NB-IoT, BLE, GNSS and sub-1 GHz. The BLE (Bluetooth) RF IP is a complete offering optimized for low power on GlobalFoundry’s 22FDX. The NB-IoT IP is also optimized on their 22FDX ZSPNano, an energy efficient general purpose MCU+DSP core on 22FDX. And they’ll have results of test chips for GNSS RF IP on 22FDX by the end of this year.Secure-IC – AIoT Embedded Security Using FD-SOI (Hassan Triqui, CEO) While AI enables products and services, it’s important to plan for security early in the design cycle, said Hassan Triqui. Software is not enough to protect edge-to-cloud. Secure-IC’s hardware security module, Securyzr, is an IP block that can be embedded into every device to answer security functionalities such as root-of-trust and key management. In sleep-mode/tunable cryptography, FD-SOI allows the creation of physically secure systems. (Note that designers are leveraging FD-SOI’s unique body biasing for ultra-low-power deep-sleep modes.) Because safety and privacy require a combined solution, Securyzer is particularly well-suited to IoT chips built on FD-SOI, he concluded, so that IoT adds value to AI, and not just the other way around.Soitec: FD-SOI – The 5th Gear for mm-Wave Radio (Michael Reiha, GM FD-SOI Business Unit) There are four key areas to 5G, explained Michael Reiha: coverage, number of antennas, frequency and traffic density. 5G mmW access architectures are currently inefficient in terms of power and performance, but FD-SOI is ready for 5G access as both an analog and hybrid beamformer. For MU-mMIMO (massive MIMO), the RF front-end modules (FEMs) and transceiver will fully exploit FD-SOI. Sensing, calibration and control enabling hybrid beamforming and multiple users is easy in FD-SOI. The adaptive body biasing on the horizon will reduce power of FEM mixed-signal circuitry, and be a disruptive technology.STMicroelectronics – Automotive MCUs in 28nm FD-SOI for ePCM NVM (Shan-Lin Liu, Automotive Marketing Manager) As a leader in the automotive market, ST has seen that increased data flows in automotive are driving demand for higher performance and bigger memory in automotive MCUs, said Shan-Lin Liu. ST has taken a unique approach to NVM with embedded PCM (phase change memory) on 28nm FD-SOI. This gives them energy-efficient, high-performance cores with larger NVM memories, and it’s already qualified up to auto grade-0. PCM (vs MRAM) is BEOL. It uses two cells, so it’s more reliable and is good at high temperatures, he said. With FD-SOI, they can go up to 165o, and it’s soldering compliant. The preliminary results of the first MCU chip are excellent. It’s now running in a car, replacing the previous generation 40nm eFlash product.Leti – Advanced FD-SOI for Edge AI (Emmanuel Sabonnadiere, CEO) To fully run artificial intelligence on the edge, research powerhouse Leti is working on an unsupervised learning neural network using advanced FD-SOI and a mix of other technologies. These include embedded non-volatile memory (NVM), 3D integration, and new design tools. Sabonnadière said this new approach is expected to exceed the performance levels of current digital deep learning with neural networks that are capable of handling time-domain signals, sound and speech—and may produce a first "killer app" for advanced SOI. AI will require compact and power-efficient circuits for the inference phase, when neural networks infer things based on new data they receive, close to the end user. The combination of FD-SOI, 3D integration, and NVM opens a path towards dedicated circuits with major performance improvement within the limited power budgets of distributed electronics. In Europe, he noted, privacy concerns are driving the move from the cloud to the edge. On the Leti roadmap, they’ve broken through the 10nm limit for FD-SOI, using strain and body biasing to compensate for transistor mismatch. Also of note: since 2016 Leti has had an ongoing collaboration with SITRI, the Shanghai Industrial μTechnology Research Institute, an international innovation center focused on globally accelerating the innovation and commercialization of More than Moore technologies to power IoT.GlobalFoundries – GF Fab 1 Dresden: Delivering Differentiation with FDX for the Future of Automotive (Thomas Morgenstern, SVP GM Fab 1) Dresden Fab 1, Thomas Morgenstern reminded the audience, is the biggest in Europe, where it is part of the Saxony ecosystem. GF is moving advanced mask-making to Dresden, which is the lead site and Center of Competence for FD-SOI. With the “pivot”, GF is providing platforms. Fab 1 is automotive certified for 22FDX (GF’s 22nm FD-SOI technology), with automotive tapeouts in 2019. “Automotive is a journey,” he said, of continuous improvement, and a mindset: it’s a zero defects culture. The ramp to volume production is well underway, with 26 tapeouts of 22FDX products this year – almost double that of last year. He showed high yield data of about a dozen products, adding that since the beginning of the year every tapeout was first-time right with decreased cycle time. The key specifications for 22FDX with eMRAM for Auto Grade-1 have all been demonstrated, and customer feedback has been excellent.Next: Shanghai International RF-SOI Workshop recap As you can see, it was a packed day for the FD-SOI part of the SOI Consortium’s Shanghai event. In fact the room was still packed at the very end of the day. Several hundred VIPs then headed out for the ever-popular and festive evening riverboat dinner cruise, where the non-stop networking continued.A big shout-out to our sponsors and supporters: VeriSilicon, Simgui, SIMIT, Soitec, Samsung, IBS Ion Implant, ShinEtsu, GlobalFoundries and NXP.The next day of the event was devoted to RF-SOI. That will be the subject of our next post.

GlobalFoundries Has Quietly Become A Player In Silicon Photonics Manufacturing - 31 March 2020 by Patrick Moorhead, Forbes. Blog: Body Bias Gets Its Own Book - 13 February 2020, Junko Yoshida, EETimes Asia. The authors of The Fourth Terminal: Benefits of Body Biasing Techniques for FD-SOI Circuits and Systems make the case for body biasing, describing it as “a new and efficient tuning knob.” Three design experts at STMicroelectronics, including Fellow Andreia Cathelin, have co-edited and written chapters for The Fourth Terminal. NXP's i.MX RT1170 Crossover MCUs (on Samsung's 28nm FD-SOI) - the industry's first GHz MCU - wins Best In Show Arm - TechCon2019 in the Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and IP category! (Embedded Computing Design, 9 Oct. '19)

The SOI Consortium’s next annual event in Japan takes place on the 30th and 31st of October in Yokohama. Both days of the SOI Design Symposium will take place in the Yokohama Landmark Tower. The event is complimentary, however pre-registration is required – just follow the link here. Rest assured that in addition to the excellent program, the agenda provides ample time for networking.Wednesday, October 30 -- RF and ULP on SOI: IP ProductsOctober 30th showcases industry leaders with ULP IoT applications by NXP, and opportunities in the RF space by STMicroelectronics and Toshiba. The strong development of the design and EDA platform is discussed by ARM, Silvaco, Attopsemi and Dolphin. GlobalFoundries will present on their predictive reliability platform for RF, while Incize discusses the criticality of RF characterization and Secure-IC addresses to important topic of IC security.The day finishes with an overview of the SOI ecosystem by the SOI Industry Consortium. (See the full agenda here.)Thursday, October 31st -- SOI Enabling Photonics and Power InnovationWe start the day with two keynotes on High Voltage SOI electronics for automotive by NXP followed by Soitec on engineered substrate solutions. The Silvaco overview on RF modeling and SOI NB-IoT by SITRI promises to be very interesting. Then the day will offer a deep dive into Photonics touching applications with Cisco, foundry offerings with TowerJazz and GlobalFoundries, EDA with Cadence, and advanced SOI Photonic solutions by Leti-CEA. An ecosystem and market outlook by Soitec wraps-up the day. (See the full agenda here.)We look forward to seeing you there!

The 45th (yes!) IEEE SOI Conference takes place 14-17 October 2019 in San Jose. Now called S3S –since it also covers 3D and subthreshold – it’s a networking event par excellence: a unique opportunity to meet firsthand the movers and shakers in the SOI ecosystem and the giants of R D. As always, it has a strong technical program you won’t want to miss. Plus this year there’s a full-day short course dedicated to FD-SOI design, and half-day tutorial on RF design. Get all the details and registration info at http://s3sconference.org/.The SOI Consortium’s own Executive Co-director Jon Cheek of NXP is one of the keynoters. In fact the consortium membership is extremely present at this event, with over half our member organizations having a hand in it. There’s a plenary talk by GF’s CTO/VP Subramani Kengeri, keynotes by ST Fellow Andreia Cathelin and NXP Fellow Rob Cosaro, and invited talks from Arm, Samsung and Dolphin Design, for example. And this year’s General Chair is Incize CEO Mostafa Emam. Focus Sessions #12 and 13 are all about FDSOI Platforms and Products, with invited speakers from Renesas, NXP, ST, ARM, GF, Huali and Dolphin Design, while focus Session #2 is all about RF-SOI. Here’s the agenda for the FD-SOI Design short course (which takes place on Thursday, 17 October):Short Course Opening and Welcome Philippe Flatresse, Business Development Marketing Director, Dolphin DesignGLOBALFOUNDRIES 22FDXTM Technology and Body Bias Compensation to Enable New Design Optimization Strategies Joerg Winkler, Fellow Design Engineer, GLOBALFOUNDRIESEmbedded Flash Memory Technologies and Applications in Advanced Nodes Memories Koji Nii, Vice President, Global Marketing Sales, Floadia CorporationEnabling the Adaptive Body Bias in Modern IoT Applications Vincent Huard, CTO, Dolphin DesignSoC Design Realization with Adaptive Body Bias Kripa Venkatachalam, IC Design Practice Director, Mentor Graphics Didier Roland, Application Engineers Manager, Mentor GraphicsAnalog Design Techniques for Microprocessors in FD-SOI: Power-Management, PVT Monitoring and Data Conversion Edevaldo Pereira Da Silva Junior, Senior Principal Engineer, NXP Semiconductors MPU/MCU R DLow Power Solutions for SoC Architectures Antonio Pullini, Senior Hardware Designer, GreenWaves TechnologiesSOI to RF Sidina Wane, CEO, eV-technologiesIf you know the way to San Jose, you'll want to be at S3S 2019, for sure!

April 9, 2019 Informatique News (in French) Video interviews with SOI Executive Co-Director Carlos Mazure (Soitec) and Jean-Éric Michallet (Leti).