Technology and Trends

Let’s celebrate! As of April/May 2020, Advanced Substrate News – or ASN for short, and now aka the SOI Consortium newsletter – has been bringing you news for 15 years. I hope you’ll forgive me if this post has a personal angle, as I have been the Editor-in-Chief since Day 1 back in 2005. One of the things I’ve learned over my career covering technology in general and SOI in particular is that “new” technologies are never really new. They don’t pop out fully formed like Venus Boticelli-style. They take years – decades, even. SOI is no exception. What is exceptional about SOI imho is that the ecosystem – from the substrate providers to the end-product designers – keeps finding new things to do with it. There have always been naysayers – and for a while it took on an quasi-fanatic ferocity. There were those who quipped that SOI was the technology of the future...and always would be. But as it turns out, SOI’s is, has been and will be the right technology at many right moments, and I don’t see any sign of that changing in the years to come. We Need a Newsletter! [caption id="attachment_32012" align="alignright" width="189"] My Design News piece on SOI from June 2000 - it changed my life![/caption] As so much in the SOI story, ASN began with Soitec. I first encountered Soitec when I was working as Contributing Editor in Europe for Semiconductor International in the mid 1990’s. It was a start-up of just a few people that made silicon-on-insulator aka SOI wafers. Most of us at the time had barely a notion of what that was all about, but they had an intriguing story to tell about higher performance and lower power. It so happened a few years later (circa 2000) I was also writing for another publication called Design News – not about chip design, but product design, for folks designing cars and consumer electronics and washing machines and such. I kept hearing a new requirement added to the product-design mantra of faster-smaller-cheaper: lower power. It seemed to me that these SOI wafers could go a long way in solving some of product designers’ challenges. I pitched a story to my editor and it wound up on the cover (those were the days some might remember when trade magazines were on paper…). The big players were IBM for digital (in a current-events aside, DKY that those big iron machines at the US national labs cranking on the solutions for the current pandemic use IBM FinFET-on-SOI chips? Just saying…), Philips (now NXP) for power/analog, and Soitec for wafers – and of course Honeywell for aerospace and the big electronics players in Japan for all sorts of things automotive and ultra-low power. Top management at Soitec read the piece and saw that I “got it”. They brought me on board as a consultant, writing early websites, PR, brochures and such. But also most importantly, they invited me “in” – I sat in on sales reviews and attended the big shin-digs they sponsored on the Riviera and in the Alps. The people I met there – and stayed in touch with – were many of the ones that drive the industry today. (Of course, that was then, this is now: I don’t have that insider status any more, but I’ve kept in touch with and often still rely on the expert advice of people I met during that heady time.) Anyway, one day at the end of 2004, the Soitec folks said to me, “We need a newsletter.” They asked me to come up with a concept they could pitch to the Board. Since Soitec was also doing GaN SiC at the time, I thought it should be called Advanced Substrate News – ASN for short. And we agreed it should involve the entire ecosystem: end users, equipment manufacturers, academics, suppliers of all sorts, and especially: chip designers. But it was not an easy pitch. Who’d want to read about SOI wafers, they asked? Wouldn't we run out of things to say after two or at most three editions? But the idea was a solid one: ASN could be a bully pulpit for the nascent SOI ecosystem. Happily it won the day. I was named Editor-in-Chief, and have held that title ever since. Our very first edition (we were a print quarterly then) had about a dozen articles on SOI, including automotive with Philips, ultra-low power FD-SOI with Oki for Casio’s G-Shock watches (oh yes – it goes back a long ways!), low-power (by a company that Arm then bought), high-performance, high-resistivity SOI wafers for RF…it was all there. And if you look at what we cover now, it’s still all there – albeit better than ever and growing fast. (I just listened to the most recent Soitec Q4'20 quarterly financial report audiocast – announcing that they’d just had their best quarter ever – largely driven by RF-SOI.) We Need a Consortium! In 2007, the SOI Consortium was created with 19 members (a dozen of whom are still members today). As ASN Editor-in-Chief, I was honored to be part of that effort, participating in the meetings where we hashed out what it was all about and what a consortium would do. It was a great opportunity to meet the movers and shakers across the industry, many of whom I’m still in touch with. We published steadily, as the years, technologies and applications came and some went, but ASN readership continued to grow worldwide. Then in 2015, I got an email from the head of the Shanghai Academy of Sciences, which had recently spun off an SOI wafer maker called Simgui. He was (and is!) an ASN reader (though now he’s China’s Vice-Minister of Science Technology). Would I come to Shanghai and present some of the SOI-based applications ASN had been covering to his team there? They’d been working on SOI in parallel for many years, and were interested in where it was going in Europe and America. That was exciting! My first trip (of many, now) to China, it coincided with Semicon China 2015 and the announcement of the “Big Fund”. It was hall upon massive hall of stands immense and tiny, and the level of excitement was nothing short of amazing. (I was one of the only Western journalists there, and essentially broke the story in a piece I wrote for Consortium member Applied Materials’ customer magazine). That trip opened a lot of doors for me and ASN. As the SOI Consortium teamed up to with partners in China to host symposia there, we devoted more and more extensive coverage in ASN to those exciting events. [caption id="attachment_32041" align="alignright" width="328"] Here's some of our core players at the SOI Consortium: Executive Co-Directors Carlos Mazure (also of Soitec) and Jon Cheek (also of NXP) on the far left and right, respectively, Event Manager Iris Rith in the middle, me (Adele Hars) next on the right. We're joined here by Lucy Dai (2nd from left) of Simgui.[/caption] Eventually in 2016, ASN moved under the aegis of the SOI Consortium. We’re quite a jolly band that I have the privilege of working with. Granted at the time of this writing, the world is a difficult place, with so much uncertainty. But there are exciting times ahead with new products and technologies enabled by SOI, and you can be sure we’ll be covering them. RF-SOI will continue its juggernaut path in 5G mmWave. FD-SOI is steadily defining the new mainstream at the edge. The huge amounts of data the world is generating is driving photonics (which is all about SOI) to new heights. SOI for power (meaning high-voltage – think smart power) and imagers continues to grow. [caption id="attachment_32045" align="alignleft" width="99"] That's me - Adele Hars, ASN Editor-in-Chief - at the SOI Consortium's 2019 FD-SOI Symposium. (Photo courtesy VeriSilicon)[/caption] I’m honored to have brought you ASN for the last 15 years. Our archives are truly a treasure trove, and our mailing list of over 2500 really is an industry who's who. We’ve published well over a thousand (!) pieces in that time, most of which I’ve written with guidance from many an expert. However, we of course encourage our readers to pitch stories and/or submit SOI articles for publication consideration - so please, don't hesitate! I want to thank you all for your interest and your continued support. And thank you especially to all the SOI experts out there who so generously – and so patiently – share their time and enthusiasm with me and our readers. Stay safe! With warm regards, - Adele P.S. If you're not already on our emailing list and would like to join, just fill in the form at the bottom of this page. Thanks!

As the world confronts the health crisis of a generation in the form of the fast-spreading coronavirus, the microelectronics industry remains firmly in the spotlight. Aware of the central role they play in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing number of companies are joining efforts to combat the virus by developing technologies for coronavirus detection, contact tracing and predicting its spread.SkyWater Technology, a U.S.-based foundry and prestigious member of SEMI-Fab Owners Alliance, is on the front lines in supplying an essential microfluidic MEMS component used in COVID-19 testing and research to identify mutations of the virus. This component is instrumental for the sequencing kit in the DNBSEQ-T7 system, an ultra-high-throughput sequencing system manufactured by MGI, a subsidiary of global genomics leader BGI Group.SEMI had the pleasure to catch up with Thomas Sonderman, president of SkyWater Technology, to talk about the company’s valuable contribution to the detection of COVID-19. He also gave us a peek into its business continuity plan and the safety measures it is taking to resiliently run a 24/7 chip-making operation amid these unprecedented times.SEMI: Tell us about SkyWater's contribution to the detection of COVID-19 and your partnership with MGI?Sonderman: SkyWater has been working with genomics sequencing leader MGI for several years to supply a critical component used in MGI's DNBSEQ-T7, an ultra-high-throughput sequencing system. The component we supply to MGI is a microfluidic MEMS device that uses microscopic channels to help perform very small-scale chemical reactions in the genetic sequencing platform. MGI's DNBSEQ-T7 identifies and monitors possible mutations of viruses, which is important for epidemiologists when tracking how viral illnesses such as COVID-19 spread through human populations.MGI’s sequencing system is used in parallel with its sister company BGI Genomics’ RT-PCR test kit, which is typically used more broadly as an initial screening agent due to its ability to return virus detection results within a matter of hours. Sequencing with the DNBSEQ-T7 can be used to confirm results of the RT-PCR tests that have indicated positive for the presence of the virus and then to perform a full DNA sequence of these positive specimens, which can help track mutations in the virus.DNBSEQ-T7 is important in the fight against COVID-19 as it tracks how the virus changes and enables scientists to look at its genetic sequence like a fingerprint at a crime scene. Their focus is on finding sudden changes in the sequence over time — a mutation. When they analyze available genomes from infected patients in several countries, they can see if inevitable virus mutations are causing associated illnesses that may have different incubation periods, contagiousness or deadliness – all critical dynamics that must be tracked by public health officials during an outbreak such as this.SEMI: What was the path that brought your company to the forefront of this testing?Sonderman: MGI’s DNBSEQ-T7 sequencing system and BGI’s RT-PCR rapid testing kit were among the first officially approved products by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA – essentially China’s version of the FDA) – to fight the outbreak. MGI’s manufacturing plant, based in Wuhan, was able to fast-track its response, producing and delivering test kits very quickly to many hospitals and disease control centers in Wuhan and other cities in China.As concerns continue to rise about COVID-19 and we strive to flatten the curve, the pressure is on to enable even faster, more accessible testing. On March 27th, BGI’s RT-PCR virus detection test received FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for use in the U.S. The test works in just three hours. MGI’s DNBSEQ™ T7 sequencers are being used in China and other countries now and will be available in the U.S. starting in Q3. Products from BGI/MGI and affiliates are currently being distributed to more than 70 countries and regions worldwide to assist the global efforts in fighting the pandemic.SkyWater is certified to the ISO 13485 Quality Standard for Medical Devices to support the design, development and fabrication of DNA sequencing and other biochip applications in a wide range of emerging biomedical market segments. This allows us to provide this type of cutting-edge technology solution that is making an important contribution to coronavirus detection.SEMI: Given the challenges COVID-19 has placed on workforce and supply chain, what steps are being taken by your company to mitigate disruptions? Sonderman: SkyWater has been identified as Essential Critical Infrastructure per the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security in several categories including Healthcare/Public Health Sector, Defense Industrial Base Sector, Information Technology Sector, and Critical Manufacturing Sector. To maintain continuity of operations, we contacted our close market partners as we need their support to continue supply of their starting and manufacturing support materials necessary for us to maintain operations. We asked these organizations to make every reasonable effort to fulfill our order requirements while also following recommended protective measures and are actively monitoring these relationships for possible developments that could be disruptive. By means of their partnership with us, these suppliers, too, are a part of the Essential Critical Infrastructure. Currently, there has been no change in wafer operations or fab utilization during this time of COVID-19.In addition to our sustained operations, our fab expansion is well underway as construction continues. The over 60,000-square-foot facility expansion adds clean room area and infrastructure to support the Department of Defense’s investment in SkyWater to broaden our production capabilities for Strategic Rad-Hard electronics and other complementary technologies. A fab technician in SkyWater’s SkyTech Center, an expansion of its operations to enhance advanced processing capabilities at its U.S.-based and U.S.-owned manufacturing facility. SEMI: What advice would you give to other companies seeking to keep their operations running amid COVID-19?Sonderman: First and foremost, creating a Pandemic Response Team (PRT) was critical for us in planning how to operate and communicate during this crisis. Our PRT updates our leadership team multiple times per week to enact procedures and ensure alignment throughout the organization. We follow CDC alerts and other local, state, and federal government guidelines on how to deal with home and work environments while communicating with all company stakeholders. This is important in providing reassurance of the company’s continued business and details on any potential change in operations.Increasing the frequency of communication with the organization’s supply chain to anticipate any disruptions in service is vital. Also, keeping in contact with customers is imperative to take the pulse of their continued operations during COVID-19. We recommend being flexible and pursuing new paradigms in getting business accomplished, such as telecommuting. In addition, if a company is deemed an essential business, we suggest drafting a letter in advance for employees should they need to prove why they are in transit (to and from work) if transportation becomes severely limited and monitored.Communicating with employees on how operations are changing is crucial. Ensure there is an intranet site that employees can access remotely via laptops or mobile devices that allows for ongoing updates and a way to communicate to all employees as things continue to evolve.We also put several safety measures in place, including: A screening process was set up to take the temperature of everyone entering the building. Site access is restricted for vendors, contractors, customers and other visitors as a default policy. Employee travel is restricted. All employees who can do their jobs from home can stay home. For essential on-site workers, we allow flexible schedules so people can move shifts if needed. Shifts have been staggered so people are not congested at lockers, gowning areas and other places. Physical distancing is required everywhere inside and outside the building. Video conferencing is being used even for participants inside the building. The number of people allowed in conference rooms is limited to comply with physical distancing; some chairs were removed and maximum occupancy signs were posted. Hand-sanitizing stations have been set up. We are providing employees access to masks, gloves and cleaning wipes. Safety measures are posted around the building and cleaning frequency of hard surfaces has been ramped significantly. These safety measures are among several other modifications we’ve made to daily operating procedures. SEMI: Please share some examples of how the SEMI Fab Owners Alliance (FOA) has helped support your business?Sonderman: Our Pandemic Response Team has leveraged the FOA recently by participating in its webinars on COVID-19 to ensure we are using industry best practices. We also use FOA surveys to provide and request information pertaining to COVID-19 practices.We have implemented building entrance protocols (i.e. temperature scanning, restricting access for non-employees) and expanded building cleaning procedures, including increasing the cleaning frequency of specific high-touch items. We have adjusted shift start times to minimize the number of personnel in the change room at the same time and we store each fab worker’s hood in the sleeve of the suit. These last two items resulted from a conversation with another FOA member.Outside of the pandemic, we have leveraged the FOA by participating in its industry-wide maintenance best practices and learning group that meets monthly on maintenance needs, issues and concerns within the industry. This allows us to learn from each other within the semiconductor industry. We have also leveraged this group in sourcing parts and/or parts sharing on tools no longer supported by OEMs.We greatly value the type of cross-organizational sharing and learning the FOA facilitates. It has been beneficial in a number of ways over the years. At this time, the FOA is especially useful when best practices are crucial to enable us and our peers to minimize disruptions, operate with the utmost safety, and quickly adapt to this new environment.SkyWater is a member of the SEMI Fab Owners Alliance, an international group of semiconductor and MEMS fab managers and industry suppliers that meets regularly to solve common non-competitive manufacturing issues and improve their business results. Nishita Rao is a product marketing manager at SEMI.

A recent survey by a SEMI Environment, Health and Safety working group found that all responding companies had Business Continuity Plans (BCP) in place prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, nearly half had already developed pandemic playbooks and, as a whole, have mounted robust, effective responses to the pandemic.The Business Continuity Plans of the 19 respondents to the survey, designed to speed crisis response and mitigate business impacts, included countermeasures for any threat to company operations including IT, production, finance, public communications and, of course, health and safety.Nine businesses, or 48 percent, had previously established plans for responding to epidemics and pandemics cited the World Health Organization (WHO) among the most reputable authorities for advice on how to prepare for a virus outbreak. Asian companies significantly outnumbered businesses in the U.S. or Europe in having a pandemic plan in place.The SEMI working group launched the survey shortly after it was formed in early March to gather insights into how SEMI member companies are protecting their employees while adapting facilities and manufacturing schedules to sustain production. The working group, which has grown to include 20 members that convene weekly for virtual meetings, consists of companies spanning the global semiconductor supply chain. The survey also found the following: As of late March, 95 percent of companies had implemented a mandatory work-from-home policy for job functions that could be performed remotely. One company reported that adherence to the policy was voluntary but strongly encouraged. At the time of the survey, 90 percent of companies had not considered using electronic tracking devices for employees at risk of cross-contamination. Taiwan has deployed the technology effectively to track confirmed COVID-19 cases and their travel histories. Nearly 75 percent of respondents conduct temperature screening for employees, 84 test visitors and contractors, and about 75 percent use no-touch infra-red thermometers as their preferred testing method. In instances where an employee, family member or close contact is ill but not a confirmed COVID-19 case, 42% of companies instruct the employee to stay home until he or she and family members are both symptom-free for at least 72 hours. For 30% of companies, the employee is invited to stay home for at least 14 days until the worker and family members are symptom-free. Fifty-eight percent of companies offer limited field service engineer (FSE) support to customers based on the circumstances. At 21% of companies, FSEs and equipment installers are working without restrictions if government and customer policies allow. Three companies suspended service activities. Sixty-three percent of respondents allow only critical visitors to enter their facilities after they’ve completed a health questionnaire and their temperature has been checked, while 21 percent prohibit visitors from entering their sites. More than half of the companies maintain production with social distancing protections in effect. For more information about the survey or to join the EHS Working Group, please contact Olivier Corvez at [email protected]. To learn more about best practices from SEMI member companies, visit our COVID-19 Resource page.Olivier Corvez is senior manager of Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability at SEMI.

As a leading TCAD provider, Silvaco has very deep SOI roots, reaching back over 20 years. When Oki* pioneered the first FD-SOI chips in 2000 (really? yes!), whose tools did they use? Silvaco's. And those early FD-SOI chips went into Casio's most advanced G-Shock watches in 2005. (Yes, ASN has been covering FD-SOI for a long time!) But note that while those earliest chips used fully depleted architectures, they were on regular – not ultra-thin – SOI wafers, as they are today. [bctt tweet="Deep Roots: When Oki pioneered the 1st FD-SOI chips in 2000 (really? yes! for #CasioGShock) look whose tools they used: @SilvacoSoftware #FDSOI #lowpower #chipdesign #semiconductor #semiEDA" username="@soiconsortium"] When we look at the IEEE Spectrum Digital Library, it’s clear that Silvaco is continuing to be very active in the SOI space. There are 72 conference and journal publications citing Silvaco for their SOI research simulations since the year 2000 and 27 in the last five years. They’ve supported all the SOI evolutions – including partially-depleted SOI up through and including today's FD-SOI on ultra-thin SOI wafers. There are two Silvaco presentations that were given in Japan last fall – they're now on the SOI Consortium website. A Bit More About Silvaco Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and founded in 1984, privately-held Silvaco is a leading provider of TCAD tools. TCAD (short for Technology-Computer Aided Design) is the use of computer modeling and simulation in developing semiconductor devices and processes. As such, TCAD tools reduce the development cost and shorten the development time. Silvaco also provides a full suite of analog and custom design tools spanning schematic, layout, signoff and variation analysis. The portfolio also includes tools for power integrity sign off, reduction of extracted netlist, and production-proven IP cores for automotive, consumer, and industrial applications. Silvaco provides a full TCAD to custom circuit design flow for vertical markets including: displays, power electronics, optical devices, radiation soft error reliability, analog circuits, library and memory design, advanced CMOS process, and IP development. They have 500+ customers in worldwide, and market leadership in TCAD design solutions for flat panel displays and power devices. Recent SOI Presentations Here's a quick recap of the two Silvaco presentations from the Japan SOI Symposium, October 2019, which you'll find on the SOI Consortium website. (To view the full presentations, however, your company needs to be a member of the Consortium.) Silvaco RF-SOI TCAD Solution was given by Sun Tao, Applications Engineering Manager, Silvaco. Silvaco positions itself as a “cost-effective partner to the FD-SOI community.” And as the presentation title indicates, it's a review of the tools Silvaco offers that support SOI – especially for RF applications. The presentation began with a review of recent updates to their TCAD simulation framework, including the TCAD design flow, Victory Process for speeding up 2D/3D process simulations, and Victory Device for device simulation. Under Silvaco’s DTCO – Design Technology Co-Optimization – flow, 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. [caption id="attachment_31635" align="aligncenter" width="589"] An example of how Silvaco Victory Tools Support Detailed Simulations of RF Devices on SOI (Courtesy: Silvaco and the SOI Consortium)[/caption] 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 distortion from the active device, device biasing, and substrate, all of which can be co-optimized using Victory Process and Victory Device. In conclusion, he notes that Silvaco is offering TCAD to custom EDA solutions for predictive and comprehensive FD-SOI design work that can save money before committing to silicon. Platform Infrastructure for SOI-IP Ecosystem was given by Thomas Blaesi, VP of Global Marketing, Silvaco. "The massive use of IP is both an advantage and a challenge," began Blaesi. There are solutions out there, but they are disconnected. Typically SoC/IP designers, IP librarians, and support folks use various systems, while procurement, finance, and legal use others. This is a problem for both the providers and the consumers of IP. Silvaco has a system called Xena that centrally organizes all IP data: it’s an IP repository for tracking accounts, products, contracts, devices, support, compliance, and reporting. One of the first beneficiaries of Xena will be the SOI ecosystem, as providers of SOI IP are already signing on. [bctt tweet="One of the first beneficiaries of the Xena IP repository from @SilvacoSoftware will be the SOI ecosystem, as providers of SOI IP are already signing on. #FDSOI #RFSOI #semiconductorIP" #lowpower #chipdesign username="@soiconsortium"] Beyond the organizational advantages, Xena has patented “finger printing” and “DNA analysis”, so there is a digital representation of each IP on an SoC that cannot be reverse engineered. Each fingerprint contains list of unique signatures of each file in an IP or SoC. A file’s unique signature is created from the entire file content, and that signature is guaranteed to be unique to that content. [caption id="attachment_31634" align="aligncenter" width="591"] Silvaco's Xena Supports Audits of IP Usage in SoC Projects (Courtesy: Silvaco and the SOI Consortium)[/caption] It enhances support for all versions of common design files: hard IP, soft IP, and embedded software. Because it’s enterprise based, it will be particularly useful for large organizations. Fingerprinting and DNA analysis are vendor agnostic, universal, and easy-to-use tools and methodologies for IP lifecycle management, he concluded. -- *Oki's now part of Lapis Semi, btw, which is still active in FD-SOI

For five days in the latter half of March, the pall of the heavy human and economic toll COVID-19 has exacted in China appeared to be lifting. The epicenter of Wuhan reported no new coronavirus infections through domestic transmission. And in an initial step to loosen its nationwide lockdown, China began reversing restrictions on travel within its borders.Now, in another sign of progress, the region’s idled factory workforce is preparing to return to the production lines. Outside of Hubei province, home to Wuhan, most manufacturing workers are expected to be back on the job by the end of this month, with the proportion of manufacturing employees returning to work in Hubei cities except Wuhan reaching 70 percent by then, said Didier Chenneveau, Partner, Supply Chain Practice, McKinsey Company, in a late-March webinar presented by the business consultancy and SEMI.McKinsey is also “seeing evidence of a rebound in demand led by China’s online sales” as rising consumer confidence and a surge in the popularity of work-from-home policies spur strong spending on laptop computers, Chenneveau said.The turnaround stands in stark contrast to the unprecedented drop in demand McKinsey saw across retail and durable goods in China early in the year. Over the first two months, passenger car sales plunged 90 percent, smart phone receipts 40 percent and retail sales 21 percent, leading to what Chenneveau calls a whiplash effect that could disrupt supply chains as manufacturers and shipping companies scramble to meet pent-up demand once a recovery takes hold. As the outlook for China’s factories and suppliers brightens, concerns are shifting to the ripple effect of its deep manufacturing pullback on demand for goods in the United States and Europe. Sharp disruptions to global supply chains caused by labor shortages and knotty logistics challenges have also become worrisome. And while China is buoyed by the prospect of normalizing its workforce and manufacturing capabilities, parts shortages are bottlenecking production. In the United States and Europe, where 60 percent of air freight is carried in cargo holds of passenger aircraft, logistics concerns loom large with the widespread flight groundings. “Logistics must be a priority in any crisis war room because it’s a big challenge,” Chenneveau said.Asia Semiconductor Supply Chain ImpactsIn Asia, the semiconductor supply chain is working to overcome intractable challenges caused by COVID-19 including sourcing raw materials for chip manufacturing and maintaining assembly and test operations, Mark Patel, Sr. Partner Semiconductor Practice Lead, McKinsey Company, said at the webinar. Those problems cascade to foundries and IDMs even as they confront the compounding issue of a shortage of fab operators and engineers. Downstream, the inability to package, test and qualify products risks exacerbating the supply constraints.Patel said another acute challenge is that most semiconductor manufacturers and suppliers are operating under restricted practices, making it harder to sustain engineering activities vital to new product introductions, new process development and capital equipment expansion. In the longer term, the supply chain fallout hold implications for product life cycles and investments in capacity and next-generation technology – factors that analysts will need to monitor in evaluating the economic impact.Returning Workers Key to Economic RecoveryIssuing shelter-in-place orders have been an effective antidote to the spread of COVID-19 but a double-edged sword as nations worldwide sustain the economic blowback. Discretionary consumer spending on items such as automobiles has dropped by 45 percent globally so far this year, business investment has fallen and trade has seen a sharp slowdown, said Sven Smit, Chairman and Director at the McKinsey Global Institute, speaking at the webinar.A lockdown for as little as a month can slash aggregate global GDP by as much as 10 percent, a scenario McKinsey expects to play out in the second quarter of 2020. The drop would be the deepest since World War II and larger than the plunge in the first quarter of the Great Depression, raising the question of how long governments can afford to keep workers holed up at home.“The economic shock is unprecedented,” Smit said. “We’ve never sent people home to not work. Even in World War II, next to the front lines, people were harvesting food.”China offers a potential blueprint for economic recovery. McKinsey estimates that China’s rigorous containment efforts could help its economy bounce back in as little as six months – a V-shaped rebound. Western nations generally have not been as forceful with their containment measures. For them, the fight against the pathogen could be prolonged, deepening the economic damage.Yet even with the best protective lockdowns, a new challenge arises: The longer shelter-in-place orders remain in effect to contain the spread of the virus, the longer the economic impact drags on. “Until the path to return to work becomes clearer, people will not be confident to spend,” Smit said.Confronted with that reality, governments worldwide must strike the delicate balance between safeguarding the lives of people – critical forces of economic growth through consumer spending – and limiting the economic shock. The faster the virus can be brought to heel, the softer the impact to economies around the world. And the stronger the return-to-work protocols in place once COVID-19 has been brought under control, the faster workers can get back to their jobs. Smit believes resolving both issues simultaneously is not only possible but necessary for a return to normalcy.“That’s the imperative of our time,” he said. Related blog COVID-19: The Way Forward – Insights from McKinsey Company For McKinsey’s latest insights on the coronavirus pandemic, visit its website, which is updated daily.For the latest COVID-19 information and SEMI event updates SEMI is providing members, visit Coronavirus Resources.Michael Hall is a marketing communications manager at SEMI.

On Saturday, March, 21, 2020 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave emergency authorization to Cepheid, a California company, to sell a new test for rapid detection of the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. Cepheid’s Xpert® Xpress SARS-CoV-2 test gives healthcare workers results in just 45 minutes, with less than a minute of hands-on time for sample preparation.Cepheid, founded by Kurt Petersen, M. Allen Northrup and five others in 1996, is well known in the MEMS community for commercializing microfluidic chip-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis machines. This is not the first time Cepheid has responded quickly to a biological threat; after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA, Cepheid was the first to provide rapid anthrax detection capabilities to the U.S. Postal Service, and it still does today.At the heart of all COVID-19 test protocols (see the WHO protocol and U.S. CDC protocol) is the real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis technique. In a very simplified description, PCR uses thermal cycling to amplify the DNA present in a patient’s swab sample, and then using fluorescence optical detection, searches for the virus’s specific DNA. The test requires knowing the virus’s genome in the first place; the crucial work to sequence the full genome of SARS-CoV-2 was first published by Chinese scientists for public use on January 10, 2020.While traditional PCR machines take many hours to thermal cycle and reach a result, MEMS-based PCR systems can work much faster. Featuring scale heaters and reaction chambers that have a tiny thermal mass, they create a significantly faster heat-cool cycle, enabling a rapid result in minutes.The first MEMS silicon PCR chip, developed by Northrup et. al. at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and licensed to Cepheid (left) and the Cepheid test cartridge today (right). (Source: Northrup MA, Ching MT, White RM, Watson RT, “DNA amplification in a microfabricated reaction chamber,” Transducers 1993, Yokohama, Japan. pp. 924–926.) Research on MEMS-based PCR systems has continued steadily since the early 1990s. Today, researchers have been focusing on developing highly integrated, low-cost systems specifically for point-of-care use. One example of recent research: a team at Korea’s ETRI and Genesystem have developed a prototype low-cost, handheld PCR system having a polyimide chamber and microheater and an integrated CMOS detector for optical readout of results (figure below). Cross-section schematic of the chamber, heating module and integrated optical detector in a portable PCR prototype (left) and integrated test cartridge (right). (Source: DS Lee, OR Choi, and YJ Seo, “A Handheld and Battery-Powered Realtime Microfluidic PCR Amplification Device,” Transducers 2019, Berlin, Germany pp. 1063-1065.) Korea’s quick recruitment of its biotech companies and creation of novel drive-through testing sites helped it to successfully pinpoint its COVID-19 outbreak and to implement control measures. Let’s hope the Cepheid test can be similarly effective.Based on successive epidemics of SARS, MERS and now COVID-19, rapid PCR test machines, enabled by MEMS technology, are becoming essential medical tools in the fight against viral outbreaks. As continued development lowers the cost of such critical equipment, let’s hope we may soon have a PCR machine in every doctor’s office.Alissa M. Fitzgerald, Ph.D., founded A.M. Fitzgerald Associates, LLC (“AMFitzgerald”), a MEMS and sensors solutions company based in Burlingame, CA, in 2003. She has over 25 years of engineering experience in MEMS design, fabrication and product development.Prior to founding AMFitzgerald, Fitzgerald worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Orbital Sciences Corporation, Sigpro, and Sensant Corporation, now part of Siemens. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from MIT and her doctorate from Stanford University, in Aeronautics and Astronautics. Fitzgerald has numerous journal publications and holds eight patents. She served on the Governing Council of MEMS Industry Group from 2008-2014 and was inducted into the MIG Hall of Fame in 2013. Fitzgerald serves on the Board of Directors of both Rigetti Computing and the Transducer Research Foundation.AMFitzgerald is a longtime member of MEMS Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), a SEMI Strategic Association Partner. For more information on AMFitzgerald, please visit: https://www.amfitzgerald.com.Interested in learning more about this topic? Read Alissa M. Fitzgerald and Farzad Khademolhosseini’s article in EE Times, MEMS in the Fight Against Covid-19.

The seemingly simple act of commanding consumer devices by voice is a choice that nearly 118 million Americans now make every day, according to a recent report from eMarketer, the digital marketing research firm.While the voice interface is convenient for users, its implementation comes at the potential loss of individual privacy. The reason? Always-on, always-connected voice-first devices such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home require a wall plug and an internet connection to powerful cloud processors, making it possible for cloud companies — however benignly — to collect data on personal habits, location and conversation that were never intended for sharing. Move processing to the edgeTo address concerns over user privacy, device designers are attempting to do more of the audio processing within the consumer device, rather than sending users’ voices into the cloud. Moving more processing to the edge is a trend across the Internet of Things (IoT) industry, and not just for voice data but for other types of sensitive or proprietary data as well.Yet designers have realized limited success because the conventional approach to always-listening edge processing is notoriously inefficient: It digitizes and processes 100% of incoming sound data even though up to 90% of the data is irrelevant noise. This digitize-first approach wastes vast amounts of system power digitizing and analyzing the audio signal as it searches for a wake word when there isn’t even speech present, making it impractical for use in small, battery-operated devices.Workarounds don’t workTackling this power issue is critical to keeping private data secure. Unfortunately, it’s also exceptionally difficult. Design engineers have tried workarounds to decrease power consumption in an always-listening system, including duty cycling and reducing the power of each individual component in the audio signal chain that handles the data. The reality is that these kinds of approaches don’t address the root cause of the problem: too much data.To truly tackle the problem, we need to change our approach to a system solution, not a component solution. By moving to a more efficient edge architecture that intelligently minimizes the amount of data that moves through the system, we can focus the system’s energy resources on analyzing voice and not on searching for a wake word in irrelevant noise. Analyze, THEN digitize It’s time to move away from the digitize-first approach that has dominated voice wake-up device architecture since the invention of voice-first applications.Inspired by the way the human brain efficiently filters incoming information, differentiating, for example, a dog bark from a baby’s cry, an ultra-low-power analog machine learning technology is changing this paradigm. For the first time, device designers can use low-power analog machine learning to detect which data are important for further processing and analysis prior to data digitization.Leveraging an analyze-first architecture, a new analog neuromorphic semiconductor platform allows the higher-power-processing components in the system to stay asleep until voice has actually been detected, and only then does it wake them to listen for a possible wake word.Delivering a post-microphone audio chain that draws as little as 25µA of current when always-listening and collecting preroll data, this analyze-first architecture allows designers to extend battery lifetime significantly. That’s the difference between smart earbuds that run for weeks instead of hours or a battery-powered smart speaker that runs for months instead of weeks.More importantly, it’s the difference between the current always-listening devices that indiscriminately record and send all sound data to the cloud, and one that has the localized intelligence to select and send only the relevant data, reducing the user’s vulnerability to the loss of private data.Balance convenience with privacyThe trade-off between making our lives easier and keeping our personal information private is a choice that we are asked to make throughout our day in a hundred different ways. Bringing more audio processing capability to the mobile device without draining the battery is the first step toward delivering more secure voice-first solutions. But to succeed in this effort, we must shift to a bio-inspired architecture that determines which data are important and requires further processing at the earliest point in the signal chain. Once we move to the analyze-first approach, only a small fraction of the tens of zettabytes of data collected by the forthcoming generation of always-on IoT devices will require further processing in the device and in the cloud.A better balance between cloud and edge processing is a better balance between convenience and privacy, and that’s a win for everyone.About the AuthorTom Doyle is CEO and founder of Aspinity. He brings over 30 years of experience in operational excellence and executive leadership in analog and mixed-signal semiconductor technology to Aspinity. Prior to Aspinity, Tom was group director of Cadence Design Systems’ analog and mixed-signal IC business unit, where he managed the deployment of the company’s technology to the world’s foremost semiconductor companies. Previously, Tom was founder and president of the analog/mixed-signal software firm, Paragon IC solutions, where he was responsible for all operational facets of the company including sales and marketing, global partners/distributors, and engineering teams in the US and Asia. Tom holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from West Virginia University and an MBA from California State University, Long Beach. For more information, please visit https://www.aspinity.com/Technology.Aspinity is a member of MEMS Sensors Industry Group (MSIG), a SEMI technology community, that enables the MEMS and sensor industry to address common challenges, innovate and accelerate business results.

GlobalFoundries recently announced that its embedded magnetoresistive non-volatile memory (eMRAM) has entered production on the company’s 22nm FD-SOI (22FDX®) platform. (See the full press release here.) The company says this advanced embedded non-volatile memory on its FDX™ platform provides a cost-effective solution for low-power, non-volatile code and data storage applications. It is now working with several clients with multiple production tape-outs scheduled in 2020. GF heralds the announcement as a significant industry milestone, demonstrating the scalability of eMRAM as a cost-effective option at advanced process nodes for IoT, general-purpose microcontrollers, automotive, edge-AI, and other low-power applications. [caption id="attachment_31334" align="alignright" width="485"] (Courtesy: GlobalFoundries. Click to enlarge.)[/caption] “We continue our commitment to differentiate our FDX platform with robust, feature rich solutions that allow our clients to build innovative products for high performance and low power applications,” said Mike Hogan, senior vice president and general manager of Automotive and Industrial Multi-market at GlobalFoundries. “Our differentiated eMRAM, deployed on the industry’s most advanced FDX platform, delivers a unique combination of high performance RF, low power logic and integrated power management in an easy-to-integrate eMRAM solution that enables our clients to deliver a new generation of ultra-low power MCUs and connected IoT applications.”[bctt tweet="In production! @GlobalFoundries’ eMRAM on #22FDX FD-SOI replaces #eFlash for #IoT genpurpose #microcontrollers #automotive #edgeAI more. #lowpower #chipdesign #FDSOI" username="@soiconsortium"] [caption id="attachment_31330" align="alignleft" width="467"] (Courtesy: GlobalFoundries. Click to enlarge.)[/caption] Designed as a replacement for high-volume embedded NOR flash (eFlash), GF’s eMRAM allows designers to extend their existing IoT and microcontroller unit architectures to access the power and density benefits of technology nodes below 28nm. It is a highly versatile and robust embedded non-volatile memory (eNVM) that has passed five rigorous real-world solder reflow tests, and has demonstrated 100,000-cycle endurance and 10-year data retention across the -40°C to 125°C temperature range. The FDX eMRAM solution supports AEC-Q100 quality grade 2 designs, with development in process to support an AEC-Q100 quality grade 1 solution next year. [caption id="attachment_31331" align="alignright" width="280"] GF’s state-of-the-art 300mm production line at Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany, will support volume production of 22FDX with MRAM. (Courtesy: GlobalFoundries)[/caption] Custom design kits featuring drop-in, silicon validated MRAM macros ranging from 4 to 48 mega-bits, along with the option of MRAM built-in-self-test support is available today from GF and their design partners. eMRAM is a scalable feature that is expected to be available on both FinFET and future FDX platforms as a part of the company’s advanced eNVM roadmap. GF’s state-of-the-art 300mm production line at Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany, will support volume production of 22FDX with MRAM. Prior to this announcement, an excellent GF blog by David Lammers recapped GF's 2019 IEDM presentation of their eMRAM reliability data. You can read that here. It also provides a lot of interesting background information.

Ischemic stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability worldwide, affecting over 13 million people each year and costing tens of billions of dollars. Sensome, a French medtech that offers connected medical devices, has developed micrometric AI-powered impedance sensors that can identify the biological nature of the tissue they touch in real-time. Integration of this proprietary technology into a probe to guide medical devices in arteries (a guidewire) has given rise to Sensome’s first product, Clotild®, which recognizes blood clot types in ischemic strokes so clots can be treated faster to improve patients’ chances of a full recovery. The Sensome technology also helps transform the current standard of care in oncology.SEMI spoke with Franz Bozsak, CEO and co-founder of Sensome, about innovative medical technology trends and how microelectronics plays a crucial role.SEMI: When did your adventure with Sensome start? Bozsak: My former Ph.D. advisor Abdul Barakat and I spun-out Sensome from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris in early 2014 after receiving a 200.000 Euro grant from the French government. We then developed a micrometric impedance sensor that coupled to machine-learning algorithms to identify biological tissues on contact. We are still integrating this sensing technology with existing medical devices in order to create a new category of smart medical devices that provides physicians with relevant insights during their interventions and treatments. These additional insights aim to render healthcare treatments more effective by reducing the risk of complications and the cost of interventions while improving patient monitoring.SEMI: How are strokes typically treated? Bozsak: Before 2014 the almost exclusive way of treating ischemic stroke was by injecting tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) intravenously in order to chemically dissolve an arterial clot. This treatment approach has severe limitations and can only be used in the first 4.5 hours following the onset of a stroke. In 2015, several randomized clinical trials demonstrated the efficacy of a new treatment modality: mechanical thrombectomy.Medical devices that allow a clot to be removed mechanically either using a grid-like structure (a stentriever) or by aspirating the clot using an aspiration catheter completely changed the paradigm in the treatment of ischemic stroke for up to a third of all patients. This new intervention removes the clot in up to 90% of all cases and can for certain patients be used up to 24 hours after the onset of the stroke.Mechanical thrombectomy is now one of the most effective medical treatments in the world. The clinical data gathered over the past years also shows that, in order to maximize the patient’s chances to lead a life free from disability after a stroke, it is not only a question of getting the clot out but also about how the clot was removed. Removing the clot on the first attempt significantly increases the patient’s chances of recovery – the first-pass-effect that is now the objective when treating ischemic stroke patients. And this is exactly where Sensome wants to help since clot removal after several attempts increases risk for patients. SEMI: How did you improve mechanical stroke treatments?We have integrated our sensor technology into a guidewire, the first device to enter a patient’s blood vessels for navigation to the clot. Once in place, the smart guidewire – called Clotild® – guides the thrombectomy device to provide the physician with information on the clot to help the physician choose the thrombectomy device with the highest chances of achieving the first-pass-effect. SEMI: Medical technology has made astonishing advances over the years. How did Sensome develop the micrometric AI-powered impedance sensors?Bozsak: The development of a product like Clotild® would have not been possible five years ago, and many people considered what we wanted to achieve simply incredible. Today, we can answer those same people: We knew it was almost impossible and therefore we just did it. By combining diverse semiconductor technologies, we were able to build the smallest impedance meter in the world. This was then integrated into a guidewire that can be connected via a transmitter to a tablet that serves as the interface with the physician. The guidewire provides impedance measurements that can be analyzed by a machine-learning algorithm, which in turn identifies the tissue in contact with the sensor. A very diverse team of people, collaboration and several different disciplines such as micro-electronics, data science, biology and engineering were required to make this happen.Our ambitious team has been able to flourish and accomplish their ideas in the very stimulating and resourceful environment of the Ecole Polytechnique, while being embedded into the rich and fertile start-up ecosystem of Paris. It is the combination of all these factors taken together that have made our innovation possible.SEMI: What are the main challenges and what are the market opportunities? Bozsak: Bringing semiconductor technology into the medical field is not a straightforward process. The primary hurdle is the simple fact that medical device production volumes are not comparable with consumer electronics volumes and that development cycles are much longer due to regulatory constraints. Both factors are, at first sight, not necessarily compatible with today’s business model of the semiconductor industry. At the same time, this is also a unique opportunity for the semiconductor industry to diversify and expand into a new field – sensors and, in particular, their seamless integration into the healthcare workflow, are a key driver for the healthcare sector of the future. And to achieve this objective, semiconductor technologies are key. What is beneficial, in my opinion, is that the quality standards and requirements of the semiconductor industry are highly compatible with the needs of the medical device industry.SEMI: Are market fragmentation and the high level of regulation making medtech innovation harder?Bozsak: Both are challenging but very rewarding to pursue since the impact on a patient’s life can be profound. Innovation is harder because many stakeholders are involved in ensuring the success of a medical device launch. The involved, milestone-driven, highly regulated process of developing a medical device and bringing the device to the market assures its eventual success. The development process differs very much from those for normal consumer devices. In our case the beneficiary, the patient, is not necessarily the user of the device but rather the physician. The physician is not necessarily the buyer of the device, but the hospital. The hospital is not necessarily paying the device, but ideally the government.The interests of all these stakeholders need to be satisfied to bring a successful device to the market.SEMI: What are your expectations regarding the future of medtech digital innovation? Bozsak: This is the right moment for the medical device and semiconductor industries to come together. The healthcare sector is not low on medical needs for which innovative ideas exist, and the semiconductor industry has many technologies that can enable these ideas to generate solutions. But to make this happen, both sectors need to collaborate. Working together requires both sides to understand their respective needs and constraints. The earlier the knowledge exchange starts, the more powerful the solutions. SEMI MedTech Forum at SEMICON Europa last year was a wonderful opportunity for Sensome to get this discussion going. We are looking forward to continuing the exchange and push the frontiers of the possible further to create the future of digital healthcare.Franz Bozsak, CEO and co-founder at Sensome, obtained a M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Stuttgart and a Ph.D. from the Ecole Polytechnique in Biomedical Engineering on the optimization of stents. He is a graduate of the Stanford Ignite/Polytechnique business program. In 2014, he co-founded Sensome and has since built a team of renowned scientists, engineers and doctors to realize his vision of connected medical devices. He was named Innovator Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review in 2016. Serena Brischetto is a marketing and communications manager at SEMI Europe.

In the two months since the COVID-19 outbreak in January, the Chinese economy has shifted from shock to ongoing recovery under the guidance of the Chinese government. China has worked tirelessly to restore production at its chip manufacturing facilities, a core strategic industry in the region, and the effort is paying off. Operations at several fabs and OSATs – the domestic semiconductor industry’s chief growth engines – have begun to stabilize.As of mid-March, SMIC had restored its manufacturing lines to over 90% of production capacity and expects to be operating at full bore in the next few weeks, while the company’s R D line has returned to full operation. Huahong Grace reestablished normal supplies of various equipment parts and production raw materials. At Huahong Fab2, 12 new pieces of equipment went online to help increase production capacity, and production at Huahong Fab1 and Huahong Fab3 is now stable. JCET said the company's overall return rate has exceeded 90%. Meanwhile, IDM maker Silan Microelectronics' 6-inch and 8-inch lines maintained 90% production.Production lines at Huahong Group, SMIC, CanSemi, GTA Semiconductor, Samsung (Xi'an) and other mainland China chip manufacturers have been generally operating at normal capacity since the Spring Festival. Lines at YMTC, Tianma, CSOT, and BOE, all in the Coronavirus epicenter of Wuhan, have also returned to normal operations. China’s chip industry is finding its footing, and an impressive host of semiconductor companies are gearing up to participate at SEMICON China 2020, rescheduled to June 27-29. The list includes the major domestic wafer foundries such as Huahong, the major packaging and testing companies such as JCET, TFME, Huatian, and large domestic and foreign equipment companies, among them TEL, ASMPT, DISCO, ULVAC, VAT, ASML, KLA, NAURA, AMEC, Anji, CETC, Sinyang, SMEE, CAS, CANON and SPIROX.DigiTimes, a daily newspaper covering the semiconductor, electronics, computer and communications industries in Asia, interviewed SEMI China President Lung Chu in mid-March about what’s ahead for China’s semiconductor industry. Following is an English translation of the interview. DigiTimes InterviewAs China continues to ramp back up to normal activity, SEMI China is making every effort to hold SEMICON China 2020, a leading international semiconductor industry platform for promoting growth and innovation in China's semiconductor industry supply chain. SEMI China president Chu emphasized that the strong support of SEMICON China 2020 exhibitors and the Chinese government made rescheduling the event to June possible.Chu, a semiconductor industry veteran who has experienced numerous economic and industry upheavals over his career including the SARS shock in 2003, said current global economic uncertainty stems from two black swans – the global COVID-19 pandemic and how long it will take to contain it, and the sharp drop in oil prices triggered by the recent geopolitical dispute between Russia and Saudi Arabia. In China, the government responded with strict containment actions and promoted public awareness of self-isolation, resulting in effective domestic containment as of mid-March. As a major oil consumer, China sees the lower prices as relatively favorable to its economy. Those dynamics should allow China to recover sooner than many other regions, and it could emerge even stronger once the pandemic is contained, despite the current slump in global semiconductor demand, Chu said. Once the epidemic has passed, China is in a position of "turning crisis into opportunity," and the semiconductor industry will recover from the trough, he said. Companies in semiconductor supply-chain sectors face various challenges in restoring normal operations. IC design companies experienced relatively low impact since employees can work from home and most companies are located in major cities in China, where epidemic prevention control is strict. For most chip manufacturers, production has not stopped but is hampered by manpower shortages from restrictions on employees returning to work. IC packaging and testing companies are suffering bigger impacts because of the more labor-intensive nature of their operations. However, all companies in the supply chain will be affected by the decline in demand for electronic products and ICs in 2020. As the COVID-19 threat recedes in China, the region remains unwavering in its commitment to semiconductors as a strategic industry with its continuing efforts to evolve sustainable and reliable localized supply chains, Chu said. Investments in “new Infrastructure” for 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), data centers, as well as public health services should help drive semiconductor demand for smart applications and devices associated with the new infrastructures as are all powered by ICs, benefiting companies in the global supply chain. The COVID-19 outbreak triggered a slowdown in new factory construction after the Chinese government implemented restrictions on the flow of people resulting in a worker shortage. SEMI has revised downward its forecast of wafer equipment spending in China to just a 3% increase this year.Market analysts revised downward forecasts for 2020 annual global semiconductor revenue growth from 7-10% to 0-5%, while some expect negative growth. The recent COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe, the United States and other regions have created more uncertainty. Declining end-user demand for electronics will drive down spending on upstream equipment for both memory and logic IC device makers. For Chu and his SEMI China staff, the postponement of SEMICON China 2020 has been a “major challenge,” he said. “It is a huge project to communicate and coordinate with the government and to reconfirm with exhibitors and industry leaders.”As a leading industry platform, SEMICON China attracts a large number of global customers and suppliers each year. The major China domestic suppliers, leading foundries and OSATs have confirmed their attendance in SEMICON China 2020. Most key foreign suppliers are planning to staff the event with local teams in case some executives are unable to enter China by June due to travel restrictions if the COVID-19 virus has not been brought under control in the United States, Europe and other regions. To assure the success of the concurrent Forums, SEMI has prepared multiple contingency plans, including live broadcast, video and slide presentations. SEMI will also hold the grand opening session at a larger venue than last year’s event to accommodate more attendees with more sitting distance apart. SEMI will follow government guidelines to implement appropriate public health and safety measures during SEMICON China. "Ensuring the welfare of all exhibitors and guests and providing a safe exhibition environment is SEMI’s top priority," Chu said.Cherry Sun is a marketing manager at SEMI China.