Technology and Trends

Stefano Zanella, Head of Automotive, Industrial and Location Businesses, TDK InvenSense will present at next month’s SEMICON Taiwan (September 18-20, 2019 in Taipei City, Taiwan). SEMI Taiwan’s Emmy Yi spoke with Stefano for a preview of his talk.SEMI: What macro market trends are driving automotive manufacturers to increase the variety and volume of MEMS sensors in cars?Zanella: The car world is changing. Consumers increasingly view car ownership as less desirable, yet the number of miles traveled and of hours spent in a car are rising steadily. At the same time, cars are changing profoundly, and the pace of change is rapid. To thrive in this new world, automakers are becoming transportation enablers and providers.Many vehicles today autonomously interact with humans and the world around them, operate with less or no human control, and are powered by electric batteries. MEMS sensors – which mimic and augment the five human senses – are front and center in these advancements.Unlike other types of sensors – such as cameras, radar and GNSS/GPSS – MEMS gyroscopes are functional in every environment. Gyroscopes, as well as accelerometers, can supplement those other sensors when they are not available and boost the accuracy of their outputs when they are available. Both camera stabilization and dead reckoning when GNSS is unavailable are good examples of the latter. Other prevalent sensors include MEMS microphones, used to capture voice commands, ultrasonic sensors, which can be leveraged for parking and gesture recognition, and fingerprint sensors, which can improve car security.SEMI: How can automakers stay competitive in this changing landscape?Zanella: Automakers can future-proof their relevance in the transportation market in several ways. By embracing consumer migration toward ride-sharing over car ownership, many are transforming from manufacturers to mobility providers. Carmakers that invest in ride-sharing and other modes of transportation (e.g., scooters) can sustain their profitability, even if the number of vehicles sold eventually shrinks or simply doesn’t grow as much as anticipated.Automakers will need to pursue new avenues of product differentiation. Traditionally, automakers have kept performance and aesthetics to themselves by owning the engine and the body design of the car, leaving nearly everything else to suppliers. Autonomous driving and electrification, however, are pushing automakers to own the battery pack and the autonomous driving software stack.While we are just beginning to see standardization in battery packs, automakers are likely to own the autonomous driving stack for many years to come. Automakers that offer cars with highly functional and efficient batteries and driving stacks stand to gain market share.Automotive infotainment systems will become increasingly crucial as autonomous driving turns everyone into a passenger. Audio subsystem providers such as Harman Kardon, Bose, and Bang Olufsen, for example, jockeyed for attention at the most recent Geneva Motor Show, demonstrating sophisticated surround-sound systems that rival premium-quality home audio setups.With more and more consumers using voice interfaces to interact with devices in the home, drivers are less willing to accept spotty accuracy in the car. Hence, automakers are using more higher-performing MEMS microphones to accurately capture voice commands. This will come as a relief to those of us who routinely yell at our steering wheels while using voice command to try to call home. Demand for higher quality infotainment systems has prompted some automotive OEMs to own the entire infotainment system and work directly with sensor and chipmakers, a level of intimacy that gives automakers a chance to tune sensor and chip development to their own needs. This tighter relationship also positions device suppliers to forge more direct links with drivers.SEMI: Which MEMS sensors are particularly important to tomorrow’s automobiles and why?Zanella: For many years the automotive industry has been integrating more electronics into cars to improve safety, advance the driver and passenger experience, and, more recently, power the car. As vehicles rely less on human control, automakers must replace the senses of the driver with something else. That something else is a bunch of sensors, microphones, cameras, radar and LIDAR to replace vision and hearing.Since MEMS sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and pressure sensors are much more robust than other types of sensors to operate in snow, rain and darkness and other imperfect environments, automakers use them to ensure that the vehicle never gets lost when other sensors and/or the GPS/GNSS signal become unavailable in tunnels or urban canyons. Gyros help determine direction, accelerometers velocity and distance driven, and pressure sensors height, such as when taking a fork on a multi-level highway. At the same time, fingerprint sensors, ultrasonic parking sensors, and temperature sensors are improving convenience, safety and security for the car’s occupants. Automakers increasingly use inertial and environmental sensors, MEMS microphones, fingerprint sensors, and vision/imaging sensors to augment or replace the five human senses on which car drivers have relied for over 100 years. Source: TDK InvenSense SEMI: To what degree can MEMS sensors enable automotive security?Zanella: MEMS sensors are used widely to enhance security today. Some of their mechanisms are easy to understand while some are unexpected. For instance, ultrasonic fingerprint sensors can authenticate the driver of a vehicle to prevent car theft or something less onerous, like a teenage driver taking the car out without permission.Accelerometers and gyroscopes can prevent a new type of spoof on keyless entry systems. Imagine that you are very close to your vehicle. Your car senses the remote control in your pocket and automatically opens the doors when you pull the handle. Now suppose that your car is parked on the street, not far from your house. You leave the remote control home, and the car doesn’t sense the proximity of the remote control. Great! No one can enter your car, unless ... a thief has a big signal amplifier that makes your car think that the keyless entry device is next to the car. In this case, what can an automaker do? Add an accelerometer that restricts the keyless device from broadcasting the entry signal unless you are walking to the car with the device on your person.SEMI: What would you like SEMICON Taiwan attendees to take away from your presentation?Zanella: I would like them to embrace the transformations afoot in the automotive market as well as their associated design challenges since, by overcoming these hurdles, they can offer significant societal benefits such as safer and cleaner transportation. At the same time, these transformations mean significant opportunities for semiconductor industry revenue growth. And while design-to-delivery cycles in automotive are longer than in consumer and mobile, the automotive market supports higher-value devices as well as the chance to fold dozens of MEMS sensors into a single model.To paraphrase Lord Kelvin: If you can’t sense it, you can’t manage it. As suppliers of many key technologies that make intelligent transportation possible, the MEMS sensors industry is in an excellent position to help automakers manage the many challenges ahead.Stefano Zanella, Ph.D., is Head of Automotive, Industrial and Location Businesses at TDK InvenSense, where he brings MEMS sensors (including accelerometers, gyroscopes and microphones) and location solutions to the automotive and industrial markets. Zanella holds an MS and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Padova, Padova, Italy as well as MBAs from both the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and from Columbia University.He will present MEMS Sensors Enabling the Smart Car Revolution on Wednesday, September 18, 2019, at SEMICON Taiwan at 1F 4F, Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Taipei City, Taiwan. Register today and save 20% to learn how MEMS sensors are transforming the human experience with cars.Connect with Stefano Zanella at SEMICON Taiwan or via LinkedIn. You can also get more information on TDK’s automotive solutions and application guides online.Interested in engaging with the MEMS sensors supply chain? SEMI MEMS Sensors Industry Group is a technology community that enables professionals in the MEMS and sensors industry to innovate, address common challenges and accelerate business results.Emmy Yi is a marketing specialist at SEMI Taiwan.

This article is the fifth and final in a series highlighting the vital importance of SEMI Standards to commemorate the publication of the 1000th SEMI Standard in July 2019. Find the entire series here.As we define industry standards for managing data in the fab and beyond, we are creating a virtuous circle. More data create better processes. Better processes generate more good data, and more good data lead to better processes. It becomes a cycle of continuous improvement, and we are only just beginning to realize its potential. To dive deeper we interviewed Alan Weber, vice president, New Product Innovations at Cimetrix, and an active member of SEMI Standards Information and Control Committee (IC C).“Industry standards are critical in allowing us to collect information across the fab and use it in increasingly sophisticated control algorithms for the equipment,” said Weber. “The last few years have been about analysis applications that leverage big data in the fab. What started at the lot level is now applied at the wafer level, and for a process like lithography, it’s down to the shot or die level. We’re now collecting enough data variables at individual process and recipe steps to model for predictive maintenance and virtual metrology.”The migration from using data as rearview mirror for identifying and addressing fab issues to using data to head off issues preemptively represents a paradigm shift with immense advantages. This is the starting point for realizing a virtuous data circle.The benefits of a virtuous data circle are simple and compelling: higher yields, faster time to market, more revenue and greater profitability. Our optimism, however, is tempered by major obstacles to this promising future.Multilingual ManufacturingWeber points out that the electronics industry is becoming a multilingual standards world with more than 1,000 fab equipment vendors and several layers of protocols that present the challenge of seamlessly handling multiple protocols. His IC C Committee is out to tackle this challenge.“While SEMI Standards efforts first began in the front end, our standards program now encompasses the back end with test and packaging as well as other device areas including MEMS, sensors and displays,” said James Amano, senior director, International Standards and EHS, SEMI. “We’re going to see data connectivity from the front end to the back end to the final assembly of multi-chip products and that needs standards,” Weber explained. “We’ll need more connected equipment throughout the global, multi-site manufacturing process if we are to support the full traceability requirements of the most demanding markets such as automotive.”The industry will benefit from greater collaboration. Weber predicts that companies will team to create integrated supply chains within broader industry supply chains.Getting the Right People at the Right Time“As we lead the development cycle of a standard from concept to realization, one of the most important jobs of our standards task forces and committees is to coordinate competing companies and build an industry consensus,” Amano said. “This is the case for data in particular, where we rely on industry professionals like Weber and his colleagues, who are working to bring people together to collaborate on developing standards for connectivity and data sharing. It is that critical human element that allows SEMI to sustain our commitment to introducing standards that move the industry forward.”Will Companies Share Data If It Is Secure? Weber contends that when it comes to securing and sharing the data, the biggest challenge is to change the industry’s information-sharing culture.“Finance and defense are already finding ways to deal with data security,” said Weber. “While we will always have problems that require technology fixes, like dealing with new types of computer viruses, I am confident that we will be able to create standards that enable the free, secure flow of information. The key to making progress and better leveraging data is to get companies to see the potential of sharing data while investing in the standards.”SEMI recently launched a project to optimize data sharing across two critical process steps – lithography and plasma etch – to accelerate the adoption of data-driven AI methodologies. The results will help to establish data transfer and management standards crucial to the trusted exchange of trade secrets, IP and other sensitive information. Tools and materials from several SEMI members will be used for the project at Cornell University’s NanoScale Science Technology Facility (CNF). SEMI members are invited to join the project review team. Contact Pushkar Apte at SEMI ([email protected]) for more information on the initiative.Advantages Are Too Great to IgnoreTraditional cultural obstacles aside, the advantages of creating virtuous data circles are simply too great to ignore. Now that it’s accepted wisdom for fabs, factories and supply chains to continuously leverage interconnected data to get smarter, the time has come to extend those advantages throughout the full manufacturing process. Without these data circles, we’ll slow the development of new technologies and applications.We can only speculate where the lines of sharing data are drawn and will be redrawn in the future. But, without doubt, technology innovations such as AI will spawn new information business models that vertically and horizontally integrate companies in ways previously unimaginable. Data standards will underpin this structural transformation.Use your voice to affect standardization in and around the microelectronics industry. Learn about SEMI International Standards – and become part of the solution. Heidi Hoffman is senior director of technology communities marketing at SEMI. Hoffman and her team shine a spotlight on the work of the more than 20 technology communities under the SEMI electronics manufacturing supply chain collaboration platform. Actively engaging community members in marketing programs that showcase their unique value, Hoffman’s team helps companies to grow and prosper through the power of connection, collaboration and innovation.

Despite market saturation and stagnation saddling many business sectors, MEMS remains a shining star in the semiconductor industry. Opportunities in automotive, consumer electronics, mobile, medical are rising. What is supporting this industry growth? Who are the big players on the horizon?SEMI spoke with Dimitrios Damianos, Technology Market Analyst, Photonics, Sensing and Display division at Yole Développement, about MEMS market dynamics and future trends. Damianos shared his views ahead of his presentation at SEMI MEMS Imaging Sensors Summit, 25-27 September, 2019, at the WTC in Grenoble, France. Join us at the event to meet experts from Yole and many other key industry influencers. Registration is open.SEMI: MEMS and sensors is one of the healthiest industries not only in Europe but globally. Despite a global economic slowdown, the MEMS and sensors is still growing. What is fueling this growth?Damianos: The value of the global MEMS and sensor market will almost double from $48 billion in 2018 to $93 billion in 2024. In 2018 the MEMS and sensor market represented more than 10% of the total IC market, as more and more MEMS devices and sensors, such as MEMS, image sensors, and RF filters, are integrated in end products in consumer and automotive. In particular, the value of the MEMS-only market reached $11.6 billion in 2018, with consumer applications accounting for more than 60% of the total market. From 2019 to 2024 the MEMS market will grow 8.3% annually in value driven by pressure (for TPMS), RF (for V2X 5G communications), inertial (for ADAS) and future MEMS (such as pMUT for ultrasonic fingerprint) (Source: Status of the MEMS Industry report, Yole Développement, 2019). SEMI: How are MEMS shaping the semiconductor industry today? Damianos: MEMS have a make-smarter enabling capability. They are providing context for new applications and services in transportation, mobility, health, and security. Large companies such as Alibaba and Google are considering MEMS as a critical element in their business solution domains covering the upcoming smart home, smart campus, smart city and smart industry applications. MEMS have key features that correspond to these companies’ criteria for accuracy, small size (without performance degradation), low power and always on (e.g. microphones). Furthermore, with the advent of sensor fusion and edge computing, more sensor data can be processed, maximizing the qualitative and useful information about us and our surroundings. This has a huge impact in all markets, especially consumer.SEMI: MEMS foundries performed well thanks to the boom in industrial and medical applications. Who are the big players right now?Damianos: During 2018, all foundries saw their revenue increase. STMicroelectronics, Teledyne Dalsa, Silex, IMT, Micralyne and Philips Innovation Service are important MEMS foundry players that offer services for various MEMS devices used in medical and industrial markets, among others. On one hand, medical applications were driven mostly by microfluidics, flowmeters, pressure and inertial MEMS. On the other hand, industrial applications were driven by inkjet heads, microbolometers and pressure MEMS. The market prospect, however, is huge for RF MEMS and oscillators that will be used in next-generation 5G infrastructure. SEMI: What is the current status of MEMS for automotive applications? What are the related market drivers? Damianos: In automotive applications, accelerometers and pressure sensors still account for the lion’s share in units. Pressure sensors will grow at more than 8% with Tire Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) implemented in Chinese vehicles in the near future. After 2019 and 2020, with the new Chinese standard, GB 2614, TPMS will become compulsory: 100% of all new vehicles will have TPMS. Also, automotive MEMS could grow quicker than the corresponding car market (currently at approximately 3%). The reason is a higher number of many different MEMS devices that are being integrated in cars, such as MEMS inertial measurement units (IMUs), TPMS, environmental MEMS for gas and particle monitoring in-cabin and microphones for hands-free voice commands.SEMI: After years of decline, the inkjet heads industry is growing again. What other segments are benefiting from MEMS technology applications? Can you name two examples?Damianos: RF MEMS (BAW filters) is also benefiting from applications in smartphones and will continue to benefit with the arrival of 5G. 5G means additional high frequency sub-6 GHz bands that can only be addressed by BAW filters. Moreover, new infrastructure approach using active antennas will create an expanding market for BAW.Another segment is inertial sensors. Inertial MEMS already have a high potential in wellness and fitness wearables and are gaining support for medical wearable applications to monitor patient activity, with the aim to prevent seizure in cases of epilepsy and other mental disorders. Compared to other types of sensors, MEMS is the golden technology for inertial sensors integrated into medical wearables. They are used for rehabilitation systems, activity trackers and assistance living/fall detection. Specifically, the IMU market will continue to grow for consumer and automotive applications as their price and form factor continue to shrink and they replace traditional standalone MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes. However, the inertial sensor market will mostly grow for smartphone applications (mostly 6DOF, with 9DOF volumes being comparatively low).SEMI: Give us one prediction about the opportunities offered by the MEMS technology. Damianos: Sensor fusion is becoming more and more relevant since billions of MEMS sensors are made every year. The upcoming 5G revolution will make connectivity easier than ever, creating exponentially more data. To make these data meaningful, data processing is mandatory. Big data is an industry born of recent advancements in AI and machine learning, built upon and fueled by a wealth of new data from ever-expanding sensor applications. An upcoming trend is edge computing, with sensors and MEMS driving a new age of technology. Sensors are digitizing the human experience, and as the real and virtual worlds move closer together, it will be sensors that bind them, enabling new experiences for users everywhere. Running AI at the edge, coupled with sensor fusion, will open new applications for MEMS in audio, motion, olfactometry, and imaging. We also expect that new MEMS devices (microspeakers, ultrasonic fingerprint, pMUT) and piezoelectric MEMS technology could rejuvenate the MEMS market. SEMI: What are your expectations for SEMI MEMS Imaging Sensors Summit and why would you invite your peers to attend? Damianos: SEMI is organizing another very successful event, gathering experts from the Imaging and MEMS industries. We are at a turning point of innovation, with many technological advancements in AI, IoT, AR/VR, biometrics, and other areas where Imaging and MEMS technologies are paramount. Yole is excited to hear the thoughts of many high-profile experts on existing activities and future prospects within their organizations. If you are too, then it is an event that you shouldn’t miss!Dimitrios Damianos, Ph.D. is a Technology and Market Analyst in the Photonics, Sensing and Display division at Yole Développement (Yole). Damianos is a member of a Yole team that produces technology and market reports on the imaging industry including photonics and sensors. Damianos holds a MSc degree in Photonics from the University of Patras (Greece). After his research on theoretical and experimental quantum optics and laser light generation, Dimitrios pursued a Ph.D. in optical and electrical characterization of dielectric materials on silicon with applications in photovoltaics and image sensors, as well as SOI for microelectronics at Grenoble’s university (France). He has also authored and co-authored several scientific papers in international peer-reviewed journals. Learn more! Join the webinar on 5th September 2019. Registration is open! Serena Brischetto is a marketing and communications manager at SEMI Europe.

This article is the fourth in a series highlighting the vital importance of SEMI Standards to commemorate the publication of the 1000th SEMI Standard in July 2019. Find the entire series here.Computer prices have plunged over the years even as desktop and laptop PC performance has skyrocketed thanks to the semiconductor industry, giving users much more bang for their buck. The chip industry stands in a stark contrast to healthcare and education with their exponentially rising costs.What distinguishes the semiconductor industry from healthcare and education in the capacity to deliver so much for so much less over time? After all, even in other parts of the technology sector that are heavily regulated, such as cable television, we have not witnessed the same price decreases as in microelectronics.Some pundits claim that the difference among sectors is tied to their degree of regulation. Does greater regulation somehow degrade product value? The reality is far more nuanced. But one thing is clear: Smart self-regulation (i.e. standards) in the semiconductor industry has contributed mightily to its success.The recipe for success has been simple. Standards have been rocket fuel for competition, which in turn has sparked innovation, driving down device prices while boosting performance. Computer prices fell dramatically between 1997-2015 while the cost of cable TV and internet services rose. Myth of unregulated competitionA semiconductor fab might actually be the most regulated place on earth. Fabs hew to a much higher standard of air quality and cleanliness than even uber-sterile hospital operating rooms. Manufacturing processes are voluntarily regulated not to millimeters, but to nanometers. While some standards are proprietary with limited reach, others span the supply chain. Regulation has worked so well in this sector that the semiconductor industry isn’t moving toward less standardization. It’s moving toward more. Secret is smart standards The gap between regulation and self-regulation is more like a chasm. We typically view regulation as a series of top-down directives that more often focus on the interests of the producer than the consumer. Healthcare regulation, for example, may improve quality of care, but it’s often insurers, big pharma and hospitals that benefit most from regulation, rather than consumers.The semiconductor industry, on the other hand, uses self-regulation to improve business operations and make better products for consumers. Falling prices and rising performance are natural byproducts.Semiconductor industry self-regulation is an ecosystem-wide effort, where input isn’t just top-down, but also bottom-up or even side-to-side. The first SEMI Standard, which specified wafer sizes, exemplifies this approach.The SEMI Standards Committee formed in 1973 to address silicon wafer dimensional specifications. At the time, wafer specifications proliferated. Numbering more than 2,000, the various specifications led to major inefficiencies just when the industry was just getting underway. Wafer suppliers banded together under SEMI to solve this problem and rapidly developed consensus specifications for 2- and 3-inch wafers. By the mid-1970s, over 80% of wafers conformed to these new standards.Standardized wafer sizes freed equipment companies to focus on innovations that reduced cost and increased performance. It also allowed manufacturers to focus on product differentiation without having to worry about device fabrication process and cost. Since that first SEMI Standard made possible the modern semiconductor equipment industry, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have competed to deliver amazing innovations. For example, lithography systems routinely use light to design chips with feature sizes smaller than the wavelength of light.SEMI’s 1000th standard on energetic materials demonstrates how smart standards are also pragmatic. This standard is not about banning materials or assigning blame when things go awry. It is about creating practical guidelines that companies will follow, enabling them to realize greater innovation. Guidelines that reduce accidents and risks will spur more, not less, energetic materials’ exploration. Industry suppliers will be the big winners.The 1st to the 1000th SEMI standard all represent examples of cooperation making more sense than competition.Standards for the real worldCreating a business-friendly standard that still gets the job done is a process. As SEMI Standards Task Force and Committee members, materials, equipment and manufacturing companies take part in defining best practice guidelines that support safe and practical use of materials and equipment. Task force and committee members assign particular responsibilities and associated costs to the most logical segments of the supply chain. They also develop information-sharing practices around competitive process recipes and purity standards.Andy McIntyre, CIH, a member of the energetic materials task force and an executive vice president and managing principal at BSI EHS Services and Solutions, summarized what makes SEMI standards smart.“SEMI standards are pragmatic,” said McIntyre. “They take into account the need for implementation in a real-world business environment. They embrace an engineering approach to problem-solving to create practical solutions, and they define specifications and performance goals in ways that allow engineers — in collaboration with EHS professionals — to identify practical solutions for reducing risk in R D, pilot line and manufacturing operations.“SEMI standards employ a holistic process that considers all the important points of view throughout the supply chain, from materials selection, installation, use, recycling and/or disposal,” said McIntyre. “The breadth of SEMI EHS Guidelines, for example, is also very comprehensive as the SEMI EHS Committee and task forces work to ensure that standards keep pace with dynamic technology developments. Energetic materials is a prime example where the industry recognized the need for a new safety guideline to document safe usage of pyrophoric, water-reactive and unstable reactive materials, which have become increasingly important in semiconductor and advanced materials R D and manufacturing.”This is the real secret to the success of the semiconductor industry. Smart self-regulation allows industry players to cooperate in the development and implementation of standards that are pragmatic, comprehensive and dynamic. Participants in SEMI Standards have a voice in the semiconductor industry because they are the voice of the semiconductor industry.While innovation in semiconductors may not always keep pace with Moore’s Law, we can depend on one truth: As long as collaboration and cooperation are the rule and not the exception, we will continue to advance technology in amazing and unprecedented ways. You, me and all other consumers will continue to reap the rewards of innovation. Use your voice to affect standardization in and around the semiconductor industry. Learn about SEMI Standards – and become part of the solution.Heidi Hoffman is senior director of technology communities marketing at SEMI. Hoffman and her team shine a spotlight on the work of the more than 20 technology communities under the SEMI electronics manufacturing supply chain collaboration platform. Actively engaging community members in marketing programs that showcase their unique value, Hoffman’s team helps companies to grow and prosper through the power of connection, collaboration and innovation.

ASN had a chance to talk to François Brunier of Soitec, who’s leading this important project.Advanced Substrate News (ASN): Can you tell us briefly about OCEAN12?Francois Brunier (FB): OCEAN12 stands for Opportunity to Carry European Autonomous driviNg further with FD-SOI technology up to the 12nm node.Francois Brunier, Partnership Program Manager, Soitec.OCEAN12 deals with “Ultra-low power computing solutions for automotive and aeronautics using all the range of FDSOI technologies”. This project with a budget of 103M€ brings together 27 partners from 7 different countries. The project received the ECSEL JU* label under the 2017 call. ECSEL is an EU-driven public-private partnership enabling the co-financing of innovation in electronic components and systems both by Member States and the European Union.ASN: Why is this project needed?FB: As of today a car has around 500 million transistors. These electronic components represent already an important vector of valorization and differentiation for the automotive industry and for the consumer. The increased autonomy of the vehicles will require a very strong build-up of computational capacities. 50 to 100 times more transistors could be required for a level 5 (fully autonomous car). Following this trend an autonomous car will require power consumption equivalent to 50 to 100 computers running continuously (without taking into account the car propulsion).The OCEAN12 partners.The power consumption of these components becomes a key element in the choice of technologies. We believe that our technologies on SOI present the best assets to meet this challenge.The FD-SOI substrates, technologies and designs developed in OCEAN12 offer a palate of different solutions to this challenge: increased performance for data processing (including Artificial Intelligence); much higher energetic efficiency; and smaller form factors to fit in embedded systems like autonomous cars with higher integration and reliability, and enabling safe connectivity.The OCEAN12 project will demonstrate that SOI technologies are able to meet these challenges through relevant demonstrators in the targeted fields.ASN: What are the project goals?FB: OCEAN12 will bring concrete solutions to the main challenges of smart connectivity and low power consumption in the automotive industry.As such, OCEAN12 will build awareness around the key enabling technologies in substrate development, transistor behavior, and the design and fabrication of integrated circuits up to the system and end-user application levels. We will show that the technology is advantageous for automotive and aerospace applications, which are strategic sectors for Europe. Having the whole supply chain in Europe means having trusted and secured components made in Europe.The OCEAN12 project goals stand on three pillars:First: Confirming the technology foundation. Ocean12 puts the FD-SOI substrate and device developers in direct contact with the full value chain of suppliers and end users. This gives the entire ecosystem visibility into current and future needs, and ensures that substrate and device solutions are both technically feasible and correctly aligned with actual system requirements.Second: Creating concrete, innovative demonstrators in automotive (Audi, Bosch) and aeronautics (Airbus, Thales). These demonstrators are a first step in defining the context and environment to prove the advantages of these technologies in real application cases, showing they are useful and as such prefigure a final system and a potential future product roadmap. Demonstrators should be as close as possible to the final application.Third: Broadening the design ecosystem, with the big companies, the small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) and the research organizations (universities, RTOs). We have a critical mass of 16 design ecosystem partners focusing their efforts on FD-SOI. The project leverages that dynamic FD-SOI design ecosystem for IC product migration to FD-SOI and the creation of new IP. Inventing the future components in Europe is also key.ASN: Can you tell us more about the demonstrators? When will we see them?FB: There are four demonstrators. All these demonstrators will be delivered by the end of the project in 2021:Always-on wake-up systems (Audi, Bosch, Leti). With such a system we can imagine an application to monitor our car when it is parked in a parking lot for a long time. The sensors would remain aware of everything that goes on around the car. Based on sensor observations, the car can make decisions on further actions to take. This can be used in many future car applications like intrusion detection or vehicle access systems. But you will not have to worry about battery drain: even though all the sensors are always on, they go right back into a very low-power sleep mode thanks to FD-SOI technology.mm-Wave integrated radar SOCs (Bosch and Audi), which will benefit from all the innovations of FD-SOI thanks to its low consumption properties, but also the optimization of the sensors. The performance gain is made over the entire system with adaptations between analog and logic.High-performance video processor for aeronautics. (Airbus, Thales, Kalray). Kalray, a French SME working on Massively Parallel Processor Arrays (MPPA) aims to demonstrate an ultra-low power, low-cost, high-performance neural processor on FD-SOI technology. This demonstrator would be key for Airbus and drones with high-performance, low-power cameras. Airbus and Audi have partnered on air and ground mobility services.Microcontroller plug-and-play board. This demonstrator lead by ST will allow for the development of new solutions in the domain of GNSS/GPS.ASN: Can you tell us more about the partners?FB: The OCEAN12 consortium of 27 partners involves 8 large groups, 9 SMEs and 10 universities/RTOs. These partners come from 7 different European countries.The eight large groups include: Soitec, the world’s leading provider of FD-SOI substrates; EVG, a leading global equipment supplier; GlobalFoundries and STMicroelectronics, the two major European FD-SOI foundries; and Bosch, as a Tier 1 automotive supplier. At the top of the value chain, high-end European automotive manufacturer Audi, the avionics industrial giant Airbus, and Thales for security issues, will develop product demonstrations.Ten highest-level research institutes support the industrial consortium. They include CEA-Leti (FR), Fraunhofer(GE), IMS (FR), INP Grenoble (FR), TU Dresden (GE), U. Paderborn (GE), Bundeswehr U. Munich (GE), Eberhard Karls U. Tübingen (GE), Instituto de Telecomunicações (PT), and Warsaw UT (PL). They increase the competitiveness through technological innovation and transfer of technical know-how while gaining new expertise working with global leaders.In addition, OCEAN 12 has a very strong SME consortium covering the supply chain in the fields of new equipment, IP, system integration and fabless companies. They include: IBS, UnitySC (HSEB), MunEDA, Kalray, AED Engineering, ISD, EVOTEL, M3 Systems and Design Reuse.All these partners have longstanding experience of cooperation in various national and international frameworks and are specialists in their fields of activity. Their contributions are essential for the success of the project.ASN: What is the timetable?The OCEAN12 kick-off event at Soitec’s headquarters near Grenoble.FB: The project started on April 1st 2018. The kick off with all the partners was held at Soitec on 29 September 2018. It was a great success. The project runs through December 2021, by which point everything has to be demonstrated.ASN: Can you clarify the funding structure?FB: The budget is about €103.6M. If the project succeeds, we get European Commission funding. In that case, just over 20% of the eligible cost – about €23M – is subsidized at the European level. The seven countries with companies or organizations participating in the project will then roughly match the European subsidies, contributing about €27M. These ECSEL-type public-private projects are a tried and true model in Europe, maximizing synergy across ecosystems. To conclude, in the name of the consortium I’d like to thank the ECSEL JU, the European Commission and our National Funding Agencies from France (DGE), Germany, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Austria and Poland. Such a project would not exist without them.______*ECSEL JU: Electronic Components and Systems for European Leadership Joint Undertaking

Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) is innovation and modern technology at their best, giving rise to lighter, more malleable sensors that better conform to the human body while breeding new applications across a number of markets. For the semiconductor industry, FHE technology is enabling the development of a new generation of chips with the high performance, light weight, scalability, softness and flexibility usually seen in printed electronics. The technology is a boon to chipmakers, giving them novel ways to innovate for the Internet of Things (IoT) market.“The global printed electronics market is expected to garner 14.9% GAGR from 2018 to 2023,” said Stanley Wong, Director of Asia Business Development, Brewer Science, said in his presentation at FLEX Taiwan 2019 in late May. Representatives from industry, government, academia and research institutions gathered at the event in Taipei to explore flexible electronics innovation and growth opportunities.One shining star of FHE innovation is the foldable smartphone. So bright is the future of the bendable devices that not even recent trade tensions between the United States and China have dimmed prospects for the fledgling industry.“While the US-China trade war might slow down shipments of Huawei’s phones, the industry remains bullish on foldable phones,” said Stacy Wu, Principal Analyst at IHS Markit. “When the first generation of flexible AMOLED displays was launched in 2016, the rolling radius was 3mm and it could be folded 200,000 times.”For foldable phones, the 200,000 mark was a major milestone – the industry’s consensus standard for foldable phone display reliability. The industry reasoned that phones capable of being folded and unfolded 200,000 times without distorting color or images or the display itself cracking was a safe bet for consumer adoption. Earlier this year, both Samsung and Huawei announced foldable phones using the thin-film-display technology, ushering in the era of mass-market availability of the devices. Steve Chiu, Division Director for Electronics, IC package, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), believes that breakthroughs in the next generation of flexible AMOLED technology will allow thin films to be folded 100,000 times with a rolling radius up to 30mm and electric resistivity of less than 10 percent. The rolling radius of 30mm, 10 times higher than today’s phones, will give foldables a higher bending radius, while the lower electric resistivity will help maintain the brightness of the AMOLED panel after tens of thousands usages and extend the service life of foldable smartphones.The biggest challenge facing the foldable phone industry remains developing new materials that are flexible yet durable, stressed Francesco Lemmi, Business Development Director, Flexible Display, at DuPont. Today, the prevailing practice is to layer polyimide (PI) and hard coating on the display module. These stacked protective films replace traditional glass panels but present technical challenges related to impact resistance and the durability of the display as it is folded and unfolded over time.Smart clothing market is another hot market, with 33 percent global growth annually and revenue expected to reach US$ 3.26 billion in 2026. Yet for all the promise of smart clothing, reliability and accuracy remain a big challenge chiefly due to a lack of industry standards. Another gap is the unanswered question of whether consumers will embrace light and energy-efficient products.FLEX Taiwan 2019 speaker Satoshi Maeda of Toyobo is confident they will, pointing out that in the future consumers will enjoy a wide selection of comfortable smart clothing products and applications. The industry is still working to better understand how to develop human-machine interfaces, the essential seam between the human body (the outer layer of skin) and electronics, said Dr. Reinhold H. Dauskardt of Stanford University. Still, he sees great promise in an innovative somatosensory communications platform involving human skin. Human-computer interactions have historically been defined by human touch and vision (for example, typing at a computer keyboard and checking our monitor for the accuracy of our inputs). Dauskardt believes that, in the future, electrical impulses from the skin (conductance) will interact with signals from electronic devices to establish a more intimate human-machine interface that could be adapted one day to extend the visual and auditory abilities of humans.David M. Yeung, co-founder and CEO of Lionrock Batteries, pointed to another challenge in wearables: battery size. Today, large and heavy batteries account for 50 percent to 70 percent of the space in wearable devices, making many of the products too cumbersome to wear. Nanofiber lithium-ion batteries now under development can be as small as ultra-thin 2mm with a rolling radius of up to 20mm in radius and support for high electrical currents, significantly lightening their weight and improving comfort.Nardev Ramanathan, Lead Analyst, Digital Health and Wellness at Lux Research, predicts that, of all flexible electronics products, smart watches will win the largest market share and with the fastest rate of adoption. The devices will get a boost when they shrink as flexible batteries are integrated with the bands. The next wave of smart wearables will feature devices for exercise or medical monitoring. Already, FHE materials have led to advances in medical devices. One example is that smaller hearing aids are now possible thanks to flexible electronics and dressings used to promote skin regeneration, reduce wrinkles and remove scars.Gillian Ewers, VP Marketing at PragmatIC, sees fertile ground for FHE applications in IoT solutions. As FHE manufacturing costs drop, she believes IoT technologies will significantly deepen their penetration into a broad range of industries. For example, the number of electronic tags used in convenience stores worldwide will exceed 100 billion in 2025. Thinner than human hair and more durable than traditional wafers, these tags are expected to spawn a host of new business opportunities. FLEX Taiwan attracted more than 270 attendees from more than 30 fields including smart healthcare, e-paper, displays, system integration, automotive electronics, textiles, wearables, and avionics. On the first day of the event, industry, academia and research center representatives from the United States, Japan, China, Singapore and Taiwan gathered to discuss common goals on a range of FHE-related issues and deepen cross-regional cooperation. Like the FHE industry itself, SEMI-FlexTech remains focused on the future by strengthening cross-border cooperation to help manufacturers find killer applications and test profit-making models. For Taiwanese companies, the event will continue to provide insights on market trends, equipment, materials, advanced manufacturing technologies, product applications and new business opportunities, helping the organizations hone their competitive edge in the global market.Emmy Yi is a marketing specialist at SEMI Taiwan.

This article is the third in a series highlighting the vital importance of SEMI Standards to commemorate the publication of the 1000th SEMI Standard in July 2019. Find the entire series here.SEMI Standards are the bedrock of the modern microelectronics industry. Without standards for wafer dimensions – which SEMI Standards first defined through a collaborative process involving semiconductor manufacturers and wafer suppliers in 1972 – the semiconductor equipment industry as we know it would not exist today. The late Robert Noyce of Intel noted in this 1992 video “being good at producing semiconductors will mean we have better, more consistent, better controlled equipment than we have in the past. Standards are going to play a vital role in that. Standards saves money and time for everyone.” Noyce also called standards a bellwether to surges of innovation in critical process technology. This is still true today as, for example, important standards-setting activity is afoot in panel-level packaging, electron microscopy and energetic materials. Will a surge of innovation follow?Panel-level packaging: a chicken-egg scenarioFrom advanced materials to more efficient production tools, one hallmark of the microelectronics industry is our fearless exploration of new technologies that will spawn change across the industry by improving performance and reducing cost. Advanced packaging techniques, such as panel-level packaging (PLP) – which moves semiconductor packaging to a larger-panel format – is one of those critical catalysts. Citing PLP’s potential to shrink costs by improving efficiency and economies of scale, research firm Yole Développement predicts a remarkable 63% CAGR for PLP from 2017-2023.[i]It’s no stretch to say that we are close to realizing a burst of innovation in packaging. With a just-published SEMI Standard (SEMI 3D20) specifying panel sizes, equipment companies will find it economically viable to invest more in developing the much-needed production tools that enable PLP. “It is really important to create standards so we come together and work much more efficiently. Creating those fundamentals allows you to be more productive in the long term,” said Christina Chu, ASM Semiconductors, and co-leader of the Panel Level Packaging Task Force, and one of five industry leaders recognized for their outstanding accomplishments in developing SEMI Standards for the electronics and related industries at the recent 1000 SEMI Standards reception during SEMICON West 2019. “This effort came up from the trenches,” said Richard Allen, NIST Quantum Measurement Division, and a co-leader of both SEMI’s 3D Packaging and Integration Committee and its Panel Level Packaging Task Force. “Equipment vendors told us that they wanted to serve the market, but they couldn’t do so without some standards. To respond to their request, our committee surveyed the market and discovered at least 15 different panel sizes in development.”“As no vendor is going to make over a dozen unique tools for the same process, we worked with the manufacturers and tool companies to write a specification that standardizes on two of the most widely accepted sizes,” Allen said. “For the first time, the industry will have a real market for panel-level packaging tools, and that will spur commercialization of new technologies that never would have seen the light of the day without standardization.”Allen pointed out that evolution of standards in microelectronics reflects the dynamism of the microelectronics industry itself. “Given the rate of technology advancement in microelectronics, SEMI Standards committee and task force members know that a newly-published standard is often just a starting point, and change will likely follow,” he said. “The Panel Level Packaging Task Force, for example, is currently determining how to best support this packaging technology, whether through possible enhancements to 3D20 or by creating new PLP standards.”Process automation is key for TEMTransmission electron microscopy (TEM) is another area where industry cooperation will fuel progress.“People throw around the phrase ‘exponential growth,’” said James Amano, senior director, International Standards at SEMI. “It’s usually a gross exaggeration, but not when it comes to TEM data. That’s because demand for more TEM data, which uniquely enables innovations around smaller feature sizes, has exploded. At the same time, TEM data is a bottleneck in the fab. Operators literally use tweezers to carry around electron microscope samples by hand, and that is untenable.” TEM sampling standards are currently being formulated under the SEMI Standards development process. “Applying a model that we have employed successfully time and time again through SEMI Standards, we are gearing up for process automation in TEM,” Amano said. “We’ll start by establishing a grid carrier standard for electron microscopy. Through ongoing standards efforts, we may realize a fully automated TEM process within just a few years. That achievement will enable exponential growth in shrinking design geometries.”Energetic materials gain safety standardAlong with wafer-level packaging and design shrinks, the push for safety in materials’ usage is a hotbed of innovation. This is especially true with energetic materials, the potentially hazardous process chemicals used increasingly in semiconductor manufacturing to spur advances in materials purity, integrity and quality.“When you’re working with energetic materials, if you don’t get it right, you may face serious yield and cost issues, and most important of all, safety risks,” said Paul Trio, senior manager of strategic initiatives at SEMI. “This isn’t a theoretical concern. Real problems occurring in fabs have made an energetic-materials standard a high priority for the industry.”“After years of collaborating with companies across the supply chain to address this significant challenge, we recently published our 1000th SEMI Standard around safe usage of energetic materials,” Trio said. “Now manufacturers can turn to a new standard – which will evolve dynamically in response to industry changes – as they employ energetic materials in their quest to achieve higher yields while controlling costs and managing safety risks.” Whether it’s packaging, design shrinks, materials or other key innovations, standards are essential to progress in microelectronics. From equipment and materials suppliers that provide the most advanced, efficient and safest tools, materials, and processes to device manufacturers that get products to market, all stakeholders in the microelectronics ecosystem benefit from SEMI Standards. Are you curious about the areas of process technology where innovations are likely to occur? Would you like to get involved in standards efforts that could have an impact on your business? Take a look at the activity of SEMI Standards Committees and Task Forces. Because that’s where innovation, pragmatism and a commitment to harness industry resources come together.Use your voice to affect standardization in and around the microelectronics industry. Learn about SEMI Standards – and become part of the solution. Heidi Hoffman is senior director of technology communities marketing at SEMI. Hoffman and her team shine a spotlight on the work of the more than 20 technology communities under the SEMI electronics manufacturing supply chain collaboration platform. Actively engaging community members in marketing programs that showcase their unique value, Hoffman’s team helps companies to grow and prosper through the power of connection, collaboration and innovation. [i] Status of Panel Level Packaging report, Yole Développement, 2018

No, that wasn’t a fancy chandelier on the periphery of ES Design West’s exhibit area, the co-located event at SEMICON West. It was IBM’s Q quantum computer, a striking bit of industrial design that looks like a chandelier from a stately ballroom.While it resembled an ornate lighting fixture, IBM Q does much more than illuminate a room. The Q contains 20-quantum bits (20 qubits), equivalent to 2**20 or two to the 20th power classic bits. Impressively, IBM is currently readying (or may already have) a 50-qubit computer.During ES Design West, IBM demonstrated the Q Experience quantum cloud services platform and Qiskit, an open source quantum software framework. IBM’s booth staff showed how Q can solve problems beyond the practical reach of even today’s conventional supercomputers. Examples include the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) of finding the shortest route to enable the salesman to visit every city once and return to the starting point. Other examples are chemistry, drug and medicine discovery, weather and climate modeling, and security and advanced cryptography.The demos did even more, highlighting just how far semiconductor design and manufacturing advances have come to make quantum computing architecture possible.We have Dr. Jeffrey Welser, vice president of IBM Research–Almaden, to thank for bringing Q to SEMICON West and ES Design. During his keynote, The Future of Computing: Bits + Neurons + Qbits, he noted that Quantum computing holds the potential to solve problems even the most powerful classical computers cannot and challenges our community to drive innovation from materials to devices to systems. Both he and the booth staffers made the point out that Q will not replace conventional computing but augment it to solve complex problems beyond computational limits and/or the storage capacity of conventional computers.Challenges of Quantum Computing are not insignificant, however, and start with coherence time or the time interval over which the qbit is in a quantum state. The 20-qbit Q shown at ES Design West has a coherence time of 90 microseconds. Noise and variance are other challenges. The IBM booth staff said that a typical program must be run at least 1,000 times. Results are filtered with the extremes removed to get the most consistent result.Fault tolerance is high on the list of challenges as well because a solution for fault tolerance in quantum computing has yet to be discovered. Users like us take fault tolerance for granted in modern classical computers, addressed in hardware and firmware. Programmers don’t need to be concerned about it because the computer takes care of it through error correction.Finally, Q and most other quantum computers require near 0 Kelvin temperatures to operate. The refrigeration systems are large, expensive and not easily portable. Research is ongoing to find materials, such as carbon nanospheres, that will allow quantum computing at room temperature.Most experts agree that we are years away from practical deployment of large quantum computer systems. IBM’s open system for users around the world to access a Q computer to run programs is helping drive the way forward.Robert (Bob) Smith is Executive Director of the ESD Alliance, a SEMI Strategic Association Partner. He is responsible for the management and operations of the ESD Alliance, an international association of companies providing goods and services throughout the semiconductor design ecosystem.

Every day it seems like a new portable voice-first device is coming to market. From smart speakers small enough to fit in your pocket to tiny wireless earbuds and voice-activated TV remote controls, we are using voice increasingly to play music, select TV shows, turn on the lights or interact with our smart thermostat. While the popularity of voice-first interfaces has spawned massive diversity in device type, as long as these devices are portable, they have one thing in common: They’re battery-powered, and that could be a problem for consumers who are tired of frequently recharging or replacing batteries. Change the Architecture, Reduce the PowerThe issue lies in the traditional hardware architectures of today’s voice-first devices, which are notoriously inefficient when it comes to power consumption. Such devices rely on a “digitize-first” model of processing voice data in which the heaviest power-consumers, like the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and the digital signal processor (DSP), do all the heavy lifting up front, right at the start of the audio signal chain. They continuously digitize and analyze 100% of the ambient sound data as they search for a wake word, even if speech is not present and the only sound is noise. Because voice is spoken randomly and sporadically, that continuous digitization of sound wastes up to 90% of battery power.To tackle the battery drain in portable voice-first devices, we need look no further than the human brain. Our brain processes sound very efficiently. Imagine that you are outside your house having a conversation with your neighbor. You are able to focus on what your neighbor is saying because your brain can differentiate between sounds that it should send to the deeper brain for speech processing and sounds that it shouldn’t bother processing further (e.g., dog barks, sirens or car traffic). The brain spends minimal energy up front to decide whether it should spend additional energy on processing down the line. In other words, it saves the most power-intensive processing only for the important sounds.We can mimic the brain’s approach to signal processing by enabling a new “analyze-first” architecture for voice-first devices. This analyze-first approach requires ultra-low-power analog processing technology that can differentiate voice from noise before the sound data is digitized. This keeps the higher-power capabilities in a voice-first system, such as the wake-word engine, in a low-power mode when just noise is present. This approach only wakes up the higher-power chips in the system, e.g., the DSP or ADC, when it detects speech. Like our brain, a voice-first system uses an analyze-first architecture to conserve energy most of the time, saving the heavy lifting, i.e., the wake-word listening, for times when speech is present. The analyze-first architectural approach to always-on listening analyzes the analog microphone prior to digitization, saving considerable power in portable voice-first devices that run on battery. This architectural shift to analyze-first is well worth the investment because it reduces the system’s power consumption in a battery-powered voice-first device by up to 10x. That’s the difference between a portable smart speaker that runs for a month on battery instead of a week or smart earbuds that last for a whole day instead of a few hours on a single charge. Longer battery life in portable voice-first devices generates more good will among consumers, creating another key differentiator for manufacturers engaged in the ultra-competitive race for more users.For more information on the analyze-first architectural approach to voice-first devices, please view our video.Tom 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, visit www.aspinity.com. Aspinity is a member of SEMI-MEMS Sensors Industry Group, which connects the MEMS and sensors supply network, allowing members to address common industry challenges and explore new markets.

This article is the second in a series highlighting the vital importance of SEMI Standards to commemorate the publication of the 1000th SEMI Standard in July 2019. Find the entire series here.Chip traceability. It’s one of the next big things for the technology industry. The benefits are enormous, and the upsides — which include enhancing yields by identifying the sources of reliability issues, fighting counterfeiting, and growing the overall technology market by enabling new applications — are plentiful.But the implementation challenges of chip traceability are also big and will require considerable effort to overcome. Perhaps the biggest hurdle of all is that we need to transcend industry fears by demonstrating that we can secure IP when it is shared across the hardware supply chain. What will drive the technology industry to make the necessary investments in traceability? “Automotive will drive traceability,” asserted Doug Suerich, product evangelist at PEER Group and an active participant in the SEMI Standards Traceability Committee. “If I had to guess, the autonomous car in particular will drive a traceability-standard effort.”Where Reliability is CriticalWhen your laptop crashes, it’s annoying. But when a car crashes because of a system failure, the damages can be severe and catastrophic It’s also one that is poised to get exponentially larger as we see ever greater amounts of silicon content in vehicles.Fortunately, everyone can agree on the nature of the solution. The industry needs to create a standard for traceability throughout the supply chain. When lives are at risk, we must find and fix the manufacturing source of any defects that affect reliability. That’s understood. Now it’s the not-so-small matter of figuring out the details.Of course, it’s not just about cars. Manufacturers and users of medical devices and military platforms also put a premium on extended, high levels of reliability. In the technology industry, however, the automotive market represents such enormous growth potential that we view it as integral to future industry success.At a market size of more than $1 trillion, automotive is steadily becoming a high-tech market as cars transform into advanced technology platforms that offer partially or fully autonomous features. Vehicles are fast becoming semiconductors on wheels. With leaders from Google to General Motors investing heavily in chip advances, the automotive industry will demand a supply chain that requires chip and device traceability from all its participants.The SEMI Technology Communities and Standards Committee have made some inroads toward solving the traceability challenge with their development and publication of a SEMI Standard enabling traceable device-level identification (ID) throughout the IC manufacturing, test, and assembly processes to the point of use in the final system. The standard is a meaningful first step but overcoming the challenges of counterfeiting and information sharing remain and will require greater industry collaboration.“It comes down to a safety issue,” said Suerich. “We need the ability to collect data across the supply chain, so we can trace down the source of a reliability issue, analyze the data and take corrective actions around applications for which safety is critical. Automotive, medical and aerospace devices need to keep working over five, 10 or even more years. For the semiconductor industry, that means redefining yield.”Traceability Roadmap“It’s going to be a major challenge to share data throughout the supply chain, not just technologically, but culturally as well,” added Suerich. “It will take a concerted effort, and we’re just in the early stages of figuring out some of the IP protection issues.”While traceability is new ground for the culture of the semiconductor industry, the automotive industry has long embraced tracing the sources of defects. In some cases, automotive suppliers have issued wide-ranging product recalls due to safety concerns. The Takata airbag defect, for example, resulted in tens of millions of recalled airbags. As the automotive and semiconductor supply chains increasingly overlap, SEMI committees and task forces are in an ideal position to model traceability best practices in after those implemented by the automotive industry.“We’re going to need an organization like SEMI to coordinate and organize this,” observed Suerich. “While we’re still in the early phases of figuring this out, the market potential around automotive has attracted a critical mass of powerful companies who want a solution. We need to standardize a way to tag which information can flow up and down the chain, and which is protected. I think we’re looking at more than five years of hard work around new standards.”Semiconductor companies are understandably cautious about sharing data related to their proprietary processes because the value of the intellectual property and need to protect data is simply higher than in many other industries. “Automotive offers the perfect confluence of factors to drive traceability in semiconductors,” Suerich concluded. “There is increasing silicon content as well as lives and big money at stake, and motivated players at leading companies and within government institutions want to see progress.”Use your voice to affect standardization in and around the microelectronics industry. Learn about SEMI International Standards – and become part of the solution. Learn more about SEMI's traceability activities. Heidi Hoffman is senior director of technology communities marketing at SEMI. Hoffman and her team shine a spotlight on the work of the more than 20 technology communities under the SEMI electronics manufacturing supply chain collaboration platform. Actively engaging community members in marketing programs that showcase their unique value, Hoffman’s team helps companies grow and prosper through the power of connection, collaboration and innovation.