semiconductors

The silicon wafer market got off to a rough start in 2019 with major silicon wafer manufacturers’ sales weakening in the first quarter of the year following a sharper memory market downturn than expected. Earnings forecasts for the rest of the year have been revised down.

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.

The electronics markets (and global economies in general) remain fragile, but there is some glimmer of hope on the horizon.

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.

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

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.

This article is the first 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. More than 40 years after establishing the SEMI International Standards program, SEMI recently announced its 1000th SEMI Standard – a safety guideline for handling energetic materials. Creating a resource for unpredictable changes in materials is the type of challenge the SEMI International Standards program is often called upon to tackle – where the standard is merely the end of the beginning. The semiconductor industry has learned to expertly control its facilities, equipment and components. The next logical step is materials. It’s common knowledge that the industry drives innovation with new process materials and enabling safer material exploration is critical to the industry’s success. Classification Schema The 1000th SEMI Standard provides three classifications of energetic materials and byproducts based on three criteria: Hazardously exothermic (large amount of heat released following a trigger event such as heating or a physical shock) Pyrophoric (self-igniting upon air exposure) Water-reactive (releasing a large amount of energy or flammable gas upon contact with water) Unsafe handling of any of these byproducts can, to put it mildly, result in a bad day for a fab or lab. The leader of the Energetic Materials Task Force and an expert in process and equipment risk assessment at his company Safety Guru, Eric Sklar recounted one of the stranger incidents. A cleaning crew detached a pipe from a piece of equipment associated with a process recipe that used no energetic materials. The team set it in a sink, sprayed some water to begin cleaning it, and the pipe ignited in flames. Remarkably, although the initial materials weren’t energetic, the process created new byproducts that were very much so. Standardizing on Shifting Ground Energetic materials are new ground for standards and that ground is shifting, with much more material innovation to come. The upshot is that it is particularly important that the energetic materials standard is dynamic. By design, all SEMI Standards are malleable – continuously shaped by the demands they aim to meet. The release of this document is nowhere near the end of the work, as the standard will evolve to keep pace with continuing materials innovation. Creating a Robust Materials Supply Chain SEMI Standards create the conditions for a more robust materials supply chain and sustain the needs of business. If the standards safeguards are too burdensome, they will never be adopted. Conversely, without protections, people and equipment are unnecessarily put in harm’s way and innovation slows. SEMI’s Energetic Materials Task Force members realized early on that the industry needed a standard that would be practical to implement and flexible enough to be optimized over time. They understood that collaboration and compromise, while time-consuming, are also essential for standards’ creation. They determined roles and responsibilities across the supply chain, and they struck delicate balances between sharing no information about the intended uses of potentially dangerous materials and sharing everything about proprietary process recipes. The sheer scope of this standard necessitated a multi-year timeline. “The effort began with SEMATECH assembling its members’ views about energetic materials safety,” said Eric Sklar. “It then required years of effort from SEMI to bring the key industry participants together to create pragmatic guidelines that address the challenges around energetic materials in the supply chain.” Only Getting Started Despite all the work, one certainty is that the standard isn’t perfect for the present and can’t reflect future demands. This is why the energetic materials standard is not a static document, but a living process that is in its germinal stages. Key players continue to shape the standard, and that’s fundamental to enabling future materials innovation and ultimately reducing the number of unexpected energetic materials reactions in fabs. The variables in standards development are numerous and ever-changing. Energetic materials only magnifies the need for the broad collaboration that SEMI has facilitated for more than 40 years. While the risks posed by energetic materials are substantial, the criticality for continued innovation is undisputed. Now, with its adoption, the work of adapting and modifying this 1000th SEMI Standard is only about to begin. Use your voice to help drive standardization in and around the semiconductor industry. Learn about SEMI Standards – and become part of the solution. Register to receive Standards Watch, SEMI’s quarterly e-newsletter. 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.

Global business conditions remain uncertain but the electronic sectors appear poised for growth in late 2019 or early 2020. Normal seasonality will fuel short-term sales increases through late autumn but real growth is still a ways off.

Post-Conference Report: SEMI Heterogeneous Integration SummitDemand for high-performance computing (HPC) chips is exploding. These super-speedy chips are critical for data centers and cloud computing infrastructures to support new performance-hungry technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G. The challenge is for the devices and their multi-core architectures to couple high bandwidth density with low latency and high energy efficiency. Heterogenous integration offers a potential answer as an advanced packaging technology designed to meet these skyrocketing performance demands on HPC chips and open the door to a whole new world of 3D integrated circuits (ICs).So important are 3D ICs that Intel and TSMC representatives speaking at the recent Heterogeneous Integration Summit hosted by SEMI Taiwan in Taipei declared that the packaging technology will all but dictate the future of the industry. All told, 12 speakers from government, academia and a broad range of leading international companies from sectors including advanced packaging, design, manufacturing, silicon photonics, equipment and materials shared forward-looking strategies, the latest technologies and potential heterogeneous integration market opportunities. Koushik Banerjee, vice president, TMG, Assembly, and Test Technology Integration, at Intel pointed out that using heterogeneous integration for a single SiP (system-in-package) will deliver what the industry has long wanted by enabling multiple process nodes, more diverse silicon IP (intellectual property) and chip functionality, and chips that pair low energy with high frequency. Intel plans to announce its first Forveros 3D packaging product combining a 10nm HPC chiplet with a low-energy 22nm base die and stacked with memory on top. When asked about the future of advanced packaging technology, Banerjee said it will be very much about the combination of Foveros and its very own Embedded Multi-Die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB).For its part, TSMC, will continue to upgrade its CoWoS (Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate), InFO (Integrated Fan-out) and other 2.5D IC production solutions while developing 3D chip stacking technology such as SoIC and WoW (wafer-on-wafer). TSMC is ushering in a new age of 3D IC packaging, said Marvin Liao, Vice President, Backend Technology and Service Division, at TSMC. The company’s SoIC is based on Chip-on-Wafer concept, with the flexibility to support one-to-many or different process nodes, whereas its WoW integrates two wafers with solid yields that could be used for products of the same size or manufactured with mature process technology.Speakers also included representatives from ATOTECH, Lam Research, SPIL, Sigurd, Cadence, Grand Process Technology, ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute), Industrial Development Bureau, and Lee San-Liang, Distinguished Professor, Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology all shared their perspectives on equipment, materials, and testing and how different industry value chains might contribute to the development of heterogeneous integration technology.Expected to be a key driver of the next wave of semiconductors, heterogeneous integration and related technologies – including 3D IC, FOWLP (Fan-out wafer-level packaging) / FOPLP (Fan-out panel-level packaging), silicon photonics, Micro LED, compound semiconductor, automated optical inspection and SLT (system level testing) – will be a key focus at SEMICON Taiwan 2019, September 18 to 20 in Taipei. The Heterogeneous Integration Innovation Zone – along with featured international programs such as SiP Global Summit, Strategic Materials Conference, the Smart Data Summit and the Smart Automotive Summit – will gather key industry players to reveal the latest technology breakthroughs and market trends.Emmy Yi is a senior marketing specialist at SEMI Taiwan.

The world of work is transforming. I believe digitalization can be a force for better quality work, unleashing higher productivity and opening up new opportunities to work in different ways. For this to happen, we must set the right framework. We must set the right conditions to enable everyone to reap the benefits from the digital era.One crucial condition is that people have the right skills. That's why the European Commission launched a "Skills Agenda for Europe" in 2016. It sets out 10 actions to make the most of Europe’s human capital, which is crucial to keep Europe on a competitive edge and growing. One of its focus areas for example is better skills intelligence – understanding skills bottlenecks and anticipating needs, including through stronger business-education partnerships. Education needs to be more responsive to labour market needs.The microelectronics industry is one such area in Europe that faces an acute talent shortage. But this technology is crucial for Europe’s competitiveness. Microelectronics enable many of the key technologies and innovations required for advancing a secure, sustainable and digital economy. Data centers, online platforms, autonomous spacecrafts, blockchain algorithms and 5G infrastructure may serve different purposes but share one vital element: microelectronics. The deepening penetration of electronics in the digital economy and new applications is giving rise to industry requirements for a workforce pool with soft skills and expertise in production technologies, software and data science.This is why the European Commission encourages new collaboration models between the worlds of education and industry across all business sectors, including in microelectronics. I welcome the fact that SEMI, the industry association representing the electronics manufacturing supply chain, is fully committed to building and maintaining the needed talent pipeline in Europe. I wish you best of luck in your endeavors. Marianne Thyssen is European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility.