COVID-19

In my role as lead for the Smart Mobility initiative at SEMI, I recently spoke with Automotive Logistics Magazine about the growing importance of the semiconductor supply chain’s connection with the automotive industry and the semiconductor shortage hampering global automotive production. Following are excerpts from the interview. Automotive Logistics: Why is there a bottleneck in the global supply of semiconductors at the moment and how long is it likely to last? Weiss: The current automotive chip shortage resulted from the sharp, Covid-19-induced decrease in demand for automotive semiconductors in the second quarter of last year when vehicle production came to a near standstill. The automotive market picked up significantly in the fourth quarter and this caused the supply chain constraints we are seeing today. At the same time as the automotive standstill, the pandemic spurred an increase in demand for home computing and networking equipment, and semiconductor manufacturing plants (fabs) had to pivot to these other markets in order to maximize fab utilization and successfully navigate economic headwinds. Every minute a semiconductor fab is idle or has lines down adds up quickly to missed revenue, so their capacity is booked weeks and even months in advance. With this background, I don’t believe this is a structural shortage and expect a gradual recovery over the next two quarters, barring any major shifts in geopolitics or macroeconomics. Automotive Logistics: What needs to be done to remedy the current shortfall for the automotive industry? Weiss: The automotive industry needs to continue to strengthen its connections to the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain. In past years, auto manufacturers used to rely mainly on their tier one suppliers to interface with the semiconductor supply chain. This has changed significantly. Not only are more chips being used in vehicles (roughly 10% of all devices produced globally end up in cars), but the strategic importance of the chips as enablers for ADAS [advanced driver-assistance systems], electrification, safety, connectivity and other consumer-driven features has increased considerably. With this dynamic in play, carmakers have recognized the value of interacting and collaborating more closely with the semiconductor supply chain. This provides vehicle OEMs with access to innovation, the ability to influence technology direction and pace, along with greater visibility into global supply chain developments. The SEMI Smart Mobility initiative is evidence of this transition, with the likes of Audi, BMW, Ford, Uber, Volkswagen and other vehicle OEMs, along with tier one suppliers such as Continental and Bosch, now actively involved in our automotive electronics and mobility activities to do exactly that – influence, partner, accelerate and guide the global electronics design and manufacturing supply chain that SEMI represents. Automotive Logistics: What percentage of semiconductors manufactured for use by US-based companies are for automotive applications and how has this grown in recent years? Weiss: A little over 10% of semiconductors produced worldwide are sold into the automotive segment, but this number is expected to grow at an accelerated pace in the next few years as electrification, connectivity and autonomous driving become more prevalent. Automotive Logistics: How is SEMI working to help the automotive industry get a clearer view of sub-component supply and better manage supply chain risk? Weiss: The SEMI Smart Mobility initiative is designed to engage automotive OEMs, tier ones, semiconductor device makers, design houses, and equipment and materials companies to drive alignment across the supply chain and address shared challenges collectively. To facilitate this engagement, we created the Global Automotive Advisory Council (GAAC), which has active chapters in Europe, US, China, Japan and Taiwan. The GAAC provides an open platform for creating solutions, fostering collaboration and partnering with other industry bodies to accelerate and harmonize industry efforts that benefit the entire ecosystem. Volkswagen and Audi are already SEMI members – both are founding members of the GAAC Europe chapter – and have become vocal champions and critical contributors to our efforts. When all stakeholders work together, I have no doubt that the future of automotive and mobility will continue to be bright. Interested in learning more about this topic? Read the full interview in Automotive Logistics Magazine, A Fab Future for the Automotive Sector. Please contact me at [email protected] for more information about SEMI’s Smart Mobility Initiative, the Global Automotive Advisory Council, and how SEMI can help your organization navigate electronics in the automotive industry to drive innovation in the mobility space. Bettina Weiss is Chief of Staff and Global Smart Mobility Lead at SEMI.

The next time you are on a Microsoft Teams call or write a group email that includes a female colleague, consider this: The next time you pick up the phone to contact her, she might be gone. According to the Women in the Workplace 2020 study by McKinsey Company and LeanIn.org, one in four women are considering leaving their workplaces or downshifting their careers due to work-life challenges stemming from COVID-19, leading to the potential loss of two million women from the American workforce. What is making work so untenable for many women?First, consider the overall U.S. workforce, across all sectors: The industries hardest hit by the pandemic are those dominated by women and people of color: healthcare, retail and hospitality, notably restaurants. These two demographics have been losing their jobs in staggering numbers. In December 2020 alone, according to the National Women’s Law Center, women accounted for 100% of the 156,000 jobs lost that month in the U.S. Second, the double whammy of the closure of daycares and the shift to remote schooling saddled mothers with overwhelming responsibilities. In the tech industry, women faced significant challenges before COVID-19 hit. Although women represent about 47% of entry-level workers in tech, that number dwindles to 20% in C-Suite jobs, with women of color accounting for just 2% of these executive roles. This leads to the challenges of being an “Only” – the only woman or person of color in a team, department or meeting. “Onlys” experience isolation, disengagement and pressure to out-perform male, white colleagues simply to be seen as equals. Women report feeling more exhausted, burned out and excluded than their male colleagues.Layer on the pressures of a pandemic and you’ve got a seriously overstressed female workforce at the breaking point. Fathers and partners are not taking on a fair share of the burden. Fully 40% of working mothers are spending 15+ more hours weekly on household duties than they did prior to the COVID-19 crisis and are more than twice as likely as fathers to worry that their performance at work is being negatively judged because of their caregiving responsibilities. And a survey by Chief, a private club for women executives, reports that, irrespective of added responsibilities at home, 70% of women report that they have taken on more duties at work since the COVID-19 crisis began. So, on top of the anxieties around keeping themselves and their families healthy during a worldwide pandemic, women are simultaneously working more, and doing more at home.Women are critically important in workplaces for a host of reasons. Women in senior-level roles have a profound effect on workplace culture. According to the McKinsey study, women are more likely to embrace and champion employee-friendly policies and programs and to take a stand for gender and racial equity at work. Women also mentor and sponsor other women more than men. If senior-level women leave the workforce, women at all levels will lose their strongest allies. Research also shows that gender-diverse teams – and companies – are more innovative, creative and productive. Inclusive workplaces tend to have higher retention rates and better recruitment rates. To sum up, companies where women are well-represented in leadership are 50% more likely to outperform their peers.As indicated by McKinsey, companies are at a critical crossroads. The choices managers, teams and companies make now will influence the workplace for decades to come. The authors of the study say it best: “If companies recognize the scale of these problems and do all they can to address them, they can help their employees get through this difficult time and even reinvent the way they work so it’s more flexible and sustainable for everyone. If not, the consequences could badly hurt women, business and the economy as a whole. This moment requires long-term thinking, creativity, strong leadership and a laser focus on the value of women to their organizations.”What can managers, teams and companies do? Women in the Workplace 2020 features an excellent Framework for Action, which includes everything from making work more sustainable, to minimizing gender biases, to strengthening employee communications. It is an important resource for any individual, team or company that wants to strengthen their support and retention of women. And – small steps can make a big difference. McKinsey encourages companies to ask a few important questions:Consider the workflow of your team: Is it flexible in a way that supports working parents and care-givers?Are performance expectations equitable across genders?Do the women on your team feel as though they can express difficulties or take PTO if they need to in order to take care of family obligations?Finally, simply acknowledging the realities women are facing is a great first step. For instance, if there are women on your team, you could forward them this article and say, “I didn’t realize how significant this issue was. If there are ways I can further help you navigate this time, please feel free to talk with me about it.” None of us want to find out what happens to our companies if we lose 25% of our female colleagues. We have the opportunity and obligation to reverse this troubling trend, if we act deliberately and intentionally to support the women around us. I invite you to dig into the Women in the Workplace 2020 study, to discuss it with your colleagues, and to determine how all of us can make our workplaces more supportive and inclusive for everyone, for the benefit of female workers and their employers everywhere.We encourage your company to participate in McKinsey’s 2021 Women in the Workplace study and make your voice heard. To enroll, visit Women in the Workplace.For information about the SEMI Foundation’s work in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or if your team would like to support the industry in creating a more equitable workplace, please visit us at www.semifoundation.org, or contact Michelle at [email protected] Williams is deputy director of the SEMI Foundation.

The recent global pandemic redefined well-established paradigms in healthcare. The classic model involving frequent hospital visits is no longer viable due to the risk of contagion. The focus is now on remote and pervasive vital sign monitoring solutions and automated data processing for health assessment. Social-distancing-friendly technologies, such as wearables, implantables, insertables and ingestables that enable long-term monitoring, can help detect medical abnormalities both in individuals and large populations. SEMI spoke with Carlos Agell, program manager and principal member of Technical Staff at imec, about remote vital sign monitoring using innovative form factors and methodologies. imec’s healthcare technology vison for remote care systems will be the focus of Agell’s presentation at the SEMI MedTech Forum, 19 February, as part of the SEMI Technology Unites Global Summit, 15-19 February 2021, online event. Join us to meet experts from imec and other key industry influencers. Registration is open. SEMI: What is driving innovation in diagnostics and what is the role played by the semiconductor industry? Agell: There is a clear need for remote diagnostics triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Two examples are respiration monitoring and SARS-CoV2 testing technologies. The fact that some of the more obvious symptoms of COVID-19 are respiratory has revealed a big gap in medtech: the need for low-friction, ambulatory, continuous and pervasive respiratory monitoring solutions. At imec we have been working on bioimpedance-based technologies (from chipsets to smartphone-enabled sensing devices) that can provide feasible solutions in that space. Hence, novel sensing modalities from the semiconductor industry can make a difference when it comes to remote ambulatory respiratory monitoring. On the other hand, SARS-CoV2 diagnostic technologies have become paramount during the health crisis. In this space there is a clear need to simplify, speed up and lower the cost of testing. Additionally, from a practical perspective society needs to prevent virus spreading. imec is spearheading an innovative semiconductor-based solution aimed at simplifying SARS-CoV2 testing by collecting aerosols from subjects’ breath using a silicon-based solution for analysis using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, the gold standard in COVID-19 testing. Determining viral load in exhaled breath is a clear indicator of infectiousness, and detecting subjects with a high viral load is key when developing these rapid tests to facilitate economic recovery. A cost-effective and speedy though reliable SARS-CoV2 testing solution opens up possibilities for its use as gating mechanism (such as testing to allow access to facilities and prior to boarding a plane) to help jump-start some of the hardest-hit sectors in the economy, such as travel and hospitality (hotels and restaurants) by enabling more in-person interactions. SEMI: Please share more about imec’s commitment to improving the healthcare sector. Agell: imec R D is active in the field of remote unobtrusive respiration solutions, which are vital in treating respiratory system conditions such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and COVID-19. These solutions rely on a combination of silicon chipsets, sensor integration and algorithms to interpret sensor data. As part of our effort to understand biological fundamentals, imec’s multi-electrode array (MEA) platform for heart-on-chip applications offers unparalleled capabilities to acquire high-density information (4444 electrodes/mm2) to enable extra- and intracellular recordings, electrical stimulation and impedance gauging to study patient-derived cardiomyocytes, cells that make up the heart muscle. imec is developing a rapid, low-cost SARS-COV2 test based on breath analysis (aerosol capture) aimed at a 5-minute analysis. Such tool is a key to economic recovery, and imec is planning large-scale testing of the prototype device at Brussels Airport later in 2021. imec has recently supported spinoffs and external companies that develop social distancing tools for usage during the pandemic. Healthcare is a key strategic area at imec, with multiple departments working on complementary topics, ranging from cell-sorting technologies and multi-electrode arrays, through sensors and systems for non-invasive cardiorespiratory and neurological monitoring, all the way to advanced processing of medical data and tooling for trials. SEMI: How is the pandemic impacting remote diagnostics? What’s new in that field? Agell: The pandemic has accelerated advances in remote diagnostics for healthcare – for example making remote doctor visits possible and launching telehealth into a successful sector. But in my opinion, this is just the starting point. Telehealth doctors will soon need to collect health data points such as body temperature, weight, or blood pressure remotely, the same information they collect during an office visit. Soon thereafter though, doctor’s will need more and more data, sparking the next stage of advances in remote diagnostics as algorithms are developed to analyze sizeable amounts of data. All in all, it will result in a big move from doctor-centric paradigms to more patient-centric solutions. Hopefully that jump will also drive a more proactive approach to health, enabling prevention and keeping people healthy, and leaving behind the era of curing the sick. imec research tools for respiratory monitoring will come in the form of a health patch. SEMI: Besides infectious disease diagnostics, what solutions will enable a paradigm shift? Can you name two global market trends related to the rising need for remote diagnostics? Agell: The paradigm shift in healthcare will be largely fueled by the hyperconnectivity trend. Communications are fast and far-reaching. The pandemic has proven that healthcare, similar to retail, banking, trading and business in general, can also be done partly remotely through a communications line. The need for proof of performance in the case of diagnostics has been proven challenging, due to the highly regulated medical field and the general conservativeness of this market. There is a clear trend underway in which algorithms and automated diagnostics are slowly gaining the trust of the medical community. Trials and regulatory submissions will help here, but the clear proof will be the general trust of the medical community (and general population) in solutions that have been on the market for a while. Similar to what happened with GPS navigation technologies back in the day, it would require a critical mass to reach general acceptance. As far as the healthcare market is concerned, there is a forecast bounce back from telehealth into hybrid models (a mix between in-office visits and telehealth) as a first post-pandemic scenario. Although this is perceived as the best of both worlds, its effectiveness and survival within the market is still to be proven. A clear market trend accelerated by the pandemic is the commoditization of health and wellness features in consumer electronics. A glimpse into consumer electronics venues reveals that watches, smartphones, weight scales and even your office chair or mattress will soon be collecting healthcare information. imec MultiElectrode Array (MEA) chipset SEMI: What is imec’s role in addressing the challenges and trends in healthcare? Agell: As an R D organization, imec offers expertise in the semiconductor, integration, data interpretation, data management and health-specific application domains. Thanks to our experience in horizontal technology and multiple application domain verticals (including healthcare), imec provides solutions to partners that push the boundaries of performance in health-tangential fields such as communications, consumer electronics, automotive and energy. imec is part of big European initiatives aiming to tackle the challenges of the pandemic. For example, we recently started working on the Digipredict project, which aims at early intervention in infectious diseases. We’re working with key players in the research domain within the EU such as École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, University of Twente and Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich. Additionally, imec has worked for market leaders in the healthcare sector such as Philips and Biotelemetry (recently integrated in Philips) and can help partners make the next health solution a reality. SEMI: How can technology unite us? What do you expect from your participation at SEMI Technology Unites Global Summit? Agell: I am a big optimistic on this pandemic. I believe technology has played a key role in putting boundaries around damage caused by the global health crisis. Technology does not only unite us, but it arguably saves lives! My personal expectation for the SEMI Technology Unites Global Summit is for us to get a better understanding about how the semiconductor industry reacts to a pandemic and upcoming post-pandemic scenario. I am curious to see if health-related trends emerge, and whether this is a transitory effect. During the last global pandemic, the semiconductor industry was not even existing, so there is no clear precedent for the current situation. Carlos Agell, program manager and principal member of Technical Staff at imec, where he oversees the development of projects and sets strategy directions for research topics. He has a background in wearable device development, having taken leadership roles in development of two FDA-approved medical devices in the field of wearable cardiology. He is member of the Dutch chapter of the standardization committee, which develops next-generation international standards for active medical devices. Carlos Agell holds two MSc degrees in Electronics Engineering and EECS from the Polytechnical University of Catalonia (Spain) and the University of California in Irvine (Irvine, CA, USA). Serena Brischetto is senior manager of Marketing and Communications at SEMI Europe.

SEMI spoke with Dr. Franz Laermer, Research Fellow (Senior Chief Expert) at Robert Bosch GmbH Stuttgart, Corporate Sector Research and Advance Engineering, about the latest trends in medical diagnostics and personalized treatments. An open platform for the automation of complex molecular diagnostics workflows recently developed by Robert Bosch has proven its ability to take molecular diagnostics to the point of need.To make this happen, miniaturization, microsystems and microfluidics technologies, as well as microelectronics, are crucial. This is critical for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 infections within a rather short development time.Laermer shared his views ahead of his presentation at the SEMI MedTech Forum, 19 February, as part of the SEMI Technology Unites Global Summit, 15-19 February 2021, online event. Join us to meet experts from Robert Bosch and other key industry influencers. Registration is open. SEMI: What is driving innovation in diagnostics and what role does the semiconductor industry play?Laermer: One of the major drivers in diagnostics is the molecular breakdown and detailed analysis of nucleic acids on the level of the individual nucleotide. This reveals the root causes of diseases like cancer, genetic aberrations, infections and therapy resistances. Today’s solutions are mostly PCR-based (that rely on the polymerase chain reaction) or depend on sequencing. The keys to bring these technologies closer to the point of need are automation, miniaturization, low-cost, ease of use, flexibility, reliability, and fast time from sample-to-result. Semiconductor and microsystems technologies are enablers to meet these requirements, thanks to their ever-increasing performance, with Moore’s law pushing the semiconductor side of the story.SEMI: Can you tell us more about the the Bosch VIVALYTIC system? Laermer: VIVALYTIC is a universal and highly flexible diagnostic platform for the integration and automation of a wide variety of molecular diagnostics assays. It consists of the universal laboratory analyzer tool, which operates the application-specific cartridges. All reagents and specific bio contents are contained in the application-specific cartridges in a long-term stable manner at room temperature. The user only has to introduce the patient sample into the cartridge, push the cartridge into the analyzer and start the automatic workflow, which yields a diagnostic result within typically less than one hour. The VIVALYTIC products are manufactured by Bosch Healthcare Solutions GmbH (BHCS) in cooperation with strategic diagnostic partners and bio content owners.SEMI: How is the pandemic impacting automated diagnostics in the medical industry? What is new now?Laermer: The pandemic has clearly shown the importance of fast automated diagnostics at the point of need. Breaking infection chains as early as possible requires fast reliable PCR testing anywhere and anytime. We managed to reduce the time needed for SARS-CoV-2 rapid testing to less than 30 minutes for positive probes, an achievement that is embraced by our customers. Until a sufficiently high level of immunization is reached by vaccination, rapid testing is the only way to limit the number of infections, hospitalizations, and lethal outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic.SEMI: Besides infectious disease diagnostics, what solutions will enable a paradigm shift in medical treatments?Laermer: Today more and more targeted drugs and therapies are developed in oncology to address certain mutations that are considered drivers of the cancer. This moves away from the one drug fits all approach to precision oncology. As a prerequisite of this personalized therapy, the mutation status of a tumor must be clarified – and monitored precisely and repetitively during therapy. The latter requires molecular diagnostics at the point of need, i.e. at the onco-ambulance. One keyword in this context is liquid biopsy. Another example of personalized therapy is the detection of bacteria type and antibiotics resistances in bacterial infections, and the selection of optimized antibiotics therapy.SEMI: What solutions can Robert Bosch bring to address the needs just mentioned? Laermer: Robert Bosch GmbH is a leader in microsystems, microsensors and semiconductor technologies. Our new 12-inch semiconductor plant in Dresden will strengthen our position in these fields. This encompasses artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things as well. As a technology provider, we generate superior solutions for automation and management of complex workflows, and thus deliver win-win-solutions together with our diagnostic partners.SEMI: How can technology unite us? Laermer: Technology, especially semiconductor and microsystems technology, is a game changer in the medical area. Whenever different disciplines meet each other and cooperate, as are the medical, diagnostics and semiconductor areas, innovation is accelerated strongly. New things happen at the interfaces between different areas of competencies.Franz Laermer, Research Fellow (Senior Chief Expert), Robert Bosch GmbH Stuttgart, Corporate Sector Research Advance Engineering. Dr. Franz Laermer joined the Corporate Research and Technology Center of Robert Bosch GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany, in 1990, where he started the development of new key technologies and sensor functions for the upcoming field of MEMS at Bosch. Today he is a Bosch Research Fellow/Senior Chief Expert for Microsystems, Microfluidics and Molecular Diagnostics. Laermer's work laid the foundation for the VIVALYTIC Diagnostics Platform of the newly founded Bosch Healthcare Solutions (BHCS) Business Division and the SARS-CoV-2 rapid tests from Bosch. Dr. Franz Laermer is the co-inventor of the Bosch Deep Reactive Ion Etching Process (BOSCH-DRIE) for microstructuring silicon. He holds more than 200 patents and was awarded with European Inventor of the Year 2007 – Category Industry prize by the European Commission and the European Patent Office (together with co-inventor Andrea Urban) for the invention, development and sustainable success of the BOSCH-DRIE process. He received the 2014 IEEE Jun-ichi Nishizawa Medal Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), USA. In 2019 he was awarded with the 2019 Technology Prize from the Eduard-Rhein-Foundation in Germany.Serena Brischetto is senior manager of Marketing and Communications at SEMI Europe.

Back in March 2020, at the onset of the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S., SEMI quickly formed an Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) COVID-19 working group made up of EHS professionals who suddenly saw a critical need to share their experiences, validate untested policies, and collaborate on establishing best practices in response to an extraordinary public health crisis. The group, which today numbers 20 member companies, meets regularly to discuss an array of topics that have grown beyond their pressing need to react to a crisis earlier to a longer, more measured view of risk management as coronavirus cases continue to climb worldwide. While themes vary from one meeting to another, the recurring agenda remains the same to address the following topics: Phase approach – How to bring staff back on site Social distancing – How to manage people traffic flow on site Contact tracing – Track exposure to ensure workplace safety Space allocation – Changes to offices, cubicles and conference rooms HVAC systems – Optimizing workplace air flow and improving filtration systems Clean rooms – PPE and distancing protocols Training – Communications approaches to expanding awareness in order to reduce risk of spreading the virus Travel policies – Domestic and international travel guidelines Vaccines – Policies for vaccinating and monitoring personnel Site inspections – Preparing for an eventual increase in inspections from OSHA representatives In April, the SEMI EHS team issued a survey to assess the pandemic preparedness of member companies. Designed by the COVID-19 working group, the survey found that, despite having a pandemic plan in place, many member companies faced a shortage of PPE and sanitization equipment, their most significant challenge at the time. Members also pointed to operational challenges posed by the pandemic and raised questions about how to establish sound policies appropriate for their operations and geographic locations. Today, the SEMI EHS COVID-19 working group is well-established collaborative forum on public guidelines that members see as unclear as they continue to chart their own pandemic policies. With the first tranche of vaccines recently starting to ship in the U.S., the group has turned its attention to vaccine distribution and how companies will encourage employees to be vaccinated. For more information about the SEMI EHS COVID-19 working group or to join the group, please contact the SEMI EHS team at [email protected]. Olivier Corvez is senior manager of Environment, Health, Safety and Sustainability at SEMI.

Sales of critical subsystems for use in semiconductor manufacturing equipment will exceed $12.2 billion in 2020, a 6% increase over the previous record of $11.5 billion reached in 2018. What makes this such a remarkable feat is they achieved this despite unprecedented disruptions to the supply chain.The key to critical subsystems suppliers’ success was a swift and efficient response to the initial local shutdowns due to COVID-19 in February and March. Within four to six weeks, most vendors had secured their supply of raw materials and put the required measures in place to ensure the safety of their workforce and reduce the risk of being shut down themselves. Most were reporting a return to high volume manufacturing by May. There were no significant holdups reported, which means everyone stepped up their response to enable the semiconductor equipment industry to deliver double-digit growth. It also helped that before the pandemic, most suppliers expected 2020 to 2023 to be healthy growth years and already had plans to add capacity this year. Those plans are being accelerated, and delivery is no longer an issue for most vendors in the near term. This is just as well as OEMs are advising their suppliers to cope with a 20% surge in orders in any given quarter in 2021.While the overall growth rate for critical subsystems in 2020 is on track to beat 19%, some suppliers had to deal with extraordinary growth. Suppliers of vacuum valves, chillers, and optical fiber thermometry are likely to grow above 35%, while suppliers of process power subsystems are looking at increasing around 30%. The extra demand can be explained partly by the very low inventories of these products held by customers at the beginning of the year, which needed replenishing. However, the main reason for the above-average growth is that these segments have been outgrowing the overall critical subsystems industry for several years due to semiconductor manufacturing becoming more vacuum intense.Critical Subsystems for Semiconductor Applications in Billions of DollarsNext year is shaping up to be another record for critical subsystems with growth rates in the high single digits predicted. The next cyclical downturn is forecast to be 2024, but these are unprecedented times, and the risk of a downturn in 2022 cannot be excluded. Whatever the future holds, the critical subsystems supply chain has proved they can raise their game when the chips are down… or up.For more information about critical subsystems and VLSI Research, please visit our website.John West is managing director at VLSI Research Europe.

If you think the world is flooded with a mind-boggling volume of digital content, then you might be just a amazed to learn about the sheer wealth of information and business opportunities that will be uncovered at this year’s SEMICON Japan as the event goes full digital.To start, more than 160 companies will exhibit their semiconductor manufacturing gear and services on the virtual show floor of Japan’s premier event for the semiconductor manufacturing and design supply chain. Add to that over 80 presentations and panels that feature global industry executives, visionaries and experts offering insights into the latest microelectronics developments, trends and technologies, and it’s easy to see how SEMICON Japan 2020 Virtual is designed to help attendees grow their businesses and the industry drive the next wave of innovations that promise to address some of the world’s greatest challenges across healthcare, the environment, transportation and other industries.Best of all, it will all be available at your convenience from your office or home 24 hours a day, making it safe and easy for you and others from all over the world to attend. Following is what’s in store at SEMICON Japan 2020 Virtual to help lead you into the future.Leading Japanese Securities Analysts to Weigh in What’s Ahead for the Chip Equipment Sector in 2021 For the first time, SEMICON Japan will feature Bulls Bears as Japan’s’ five top securities analysts focus on the 2021 outlook for the global semiconductor equipment sector. The December 17th event will include discussions on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the semiconductor industry, the continuing geopolitical tensions that are forcing the industry to reconfigure its supply chains, the fast-growing China market and cutting-edge applications that are powering industry growth. The perspectives from Japan’s investment community are sure to be compelling as the region supplies one-third of the global semiconductor industry’s chip manufacturing equipment.Moderated by Akira Minamikawa of OMDIA, the panel will include these experts:Three Visionaries to Explore the Digital TransformationPowered by semiconductors, the fourth industrial revolution is driving digitalization globally, remaking societies to bring more efficiencies and conveniences to our work and home lives and help more people prosper. But the flip side of those tremendous benefits is the risk that wealth will be concentrated in the hands of people in positions of power, companies and nations. Democratizing economic development remains a serious challenge worldwide.Addressing this pressing issue, the Opening Panel on December 11 will feature prominent visionaries from political, academic and industrial communities including the following:Sony’s Leading-Edge Electric Car and Nissan’s Driver Assistance System to Highlight Automotive InnovationsCars are becoming more like smartphones on wheels, rapidly filling with more and more semiconductor chips every year with electrification and electronic driver-assisted systems to key drivers of this growth. At the SMART Mobility 1 session on December 14, two pioneering companies – Sony and Nissan Motor – will focus on both areas of semiconductor innovation.Sony’s Vision-S concept car, exhibited at CES 2020, astonished many in the electronics ecosystem and the automotive industry. What is Sony’s vision behind the vehicle? Izumi Kawanishi, Senior Vice President, AI Robotics Business at Sony will share the latest on the initiative.Nissan, maker of the pioneering LEAF electric vehicle, is the first Japanese carmaker to equip a car – its new Skyline – with the ProPILOT 2.0 driver assistance system for hands-off highway driving. Nissan Executive Vice President Asako Hoshino will provide an update on the company’s driver assistance system strategy and plans.Quantum Computing Meets Chip Manufacturing for the First Time at SEMICON Japan In contrast with current computer systems that use bits (binary 0 or 1 state) for computing, quantum computers leverage quantum superposition (0 and 1 states exist at once) to quickly solve highly complex problems that might take traditional supercomputers hundreds or even thousands of years to tease out. American physicist Richard Feynman promoted quantum computer as early as 1982, but it wasn’t until nearly two decades later and long after his death that quantum bit circuits emerged for use in superconductive materials.With quantum circuits and devices requiring state-of-art semiconductor processing technology, The Era of Quantum session on December 15 at SEMICON Japan 2020 Virtual will discuss necessary advances in chip manufacturing technology to enable the next generation quantum computing. The session will be the first time SEMICON Japan connects the semiconductor manufacturing and quantum computing communities.The program will feature the following experts:Strategies for Sustainable Semiconductor Industry GrowthSemiconductors are giving rise to a hyper-connected world that is fueling demand for staggering volumes of chips, pressuring the electronics industry to uncover new ways to increase manufacturing efficiency while reducing power consumption in a bid to help combat climate change. The Grand Finale Panel composed of executives from Japan’s semiconductor supply chain and a supervising ministry will gather for the Grand Finale Panel on December 18 to discuss ways the industry can achieve sustainable growth through innovation with a focus on energy savings and an new process technologies such as extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), which promises to enable electronics devices that are more power powerful, cheaper and more energy-efficient.Panelists include the following:Register TodayThe SEMICON Japan 2020 Virtual All-In Pass provides online access to all 80 presentations and panels, which will be available on-demand for replay until January 15, 2021. What’s more, all eight keynote programs will feature English subtitles. For complete information of the exposition, programs and registration, visit the SEMICON Japan website.I look forward to seeing you virtually at the event!Jim Hamajima is president of SEMI Japan.

D-SIMLAB Technologies, a Singapore-based provider of simulation-based business analytics and optimisation software solutions, recently joined SEMI. I spoke with Peter Lendermann, the company’s co-founder and Chief Business Development Officer, about the company’s role in the smart manufacturing movement, how customers are benefiting from D-SIMLAB solutions, and what the future holds for smart manufacturing. Ng: What is D-SIMLAB’s mission?Lendermann: Our mission is to develop, market, and deliver high-performance simulation-based decision support solutions that enable corporations to enhance their performance in a sustainable manner leading to significant cost savings. In particular, we focus on semiconductor manufacturing material flow planning and optimisation but also do business in aviation where we help customers optimise their spare parts support operations. What these two domains have in common are three important attributes: They are capital intensive, their underlying operations are complex, and operations are also heavily affected by random, i.e. unpredictable events, which makes both planning and execution of manufacturing operations very challenging. D-SIMLAB is a spin-off from the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech) under the Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR). Our head office is in Silicon Island Singapore. We also have representations in Germany and the U.S. Most of our staff are industrial and computer engineers with up to 20 years of operations experience in their respective industry domain, as well as vast data analytics and software development capability.Ng: What solutions does D-SIMLAB offer to optimise semiconductor manufacturing?Lendermann: In the three-pillar smart manufacturing framework of Connect, Sense and Predict advocated by SEMI, our focus is on Predict though we emphasise the equal importance of the subsequent Act: Our solutions can Predict, for example, WIP waves or usage-based preventive maintenance due dates. But much more value-add can be realised once some decisions with regard to how to Act can be derived from such a prediction. The ability to pro-actively adjust action plans in a timely manner is essential to overcoming challenges arising from changing customer due dates, mix profile changes, untimely production line issues, and production capacity to be shared with R D lots effectively, so that ultimately our customers can enhance capacity, reduce cycle times and improve the due-date performance of their factories.To that end, our D-SIMCON solution suite spans the full spectrum of decision-support tools required to forecast, manage and optimise material flow – from operational scheduling and dispatching, WIP forecasting and dynamic and static capacity planning all the way to specific applications for fab load mix optimisation or for the enhancement of the product/layer dedication and resist allocation in the lithography area. Our solutions are implemented in numerous 6-, 8- and 12-inch wafer fabs operated by both IDMs and foundries worldwide with capacity ranging from 40,000 to 200,000 wafers per month.Ng: What are the key enablers of D-SIMLAB’s success?Lendermann: Our success lies in deploying production-ready solutions for our customers, allowing them to extract immediate value. Our solutions enable the portrayal of many domain-specific characteristics such as queue time constraints or specific equipment behaviour, which is absolutely essential to generating operationally feasible plans or schedules in order to be able to Act in the best possible manner according to what has been Predicted. Moreover, we have modules for automatic generation, calibration and maintenance of the underlying capacity model, including resolution of data inconsistencies as well as verification and validation of the model, to allow near real-time responses to continuously changing operations. And the associated optimisation approaches focus on creating maximum possible value with as few iterations as possible and within minimum time through smart heuristics and parallel computing infrastructure – a paradigm that is as powerful as it is cost-effective.Ng: What are a few of your more notable customer successes?Lendermann: As a result of the first implementation of our novel, multi-objective based Scheduler cum Dispatcher, a tool capacity gain of 8%, a transportation capacity gain of 10%, and an operator workload reduction of 25% were concurrently realised at one of the critical equipment groups in our customer’s fab. At another set of equipment groups in the same fab, a 7% increase of lots within the critical queue time limiting area was achieved.Another use case we successfully realised is fine-tuning of Preventive Maintenance plans: Based on a seven-day lot arrival forecast at each equipment generated with our WIP Forecaster, a recommendation is made when PM would be best possible without causing too much disruption in the WIP flow. The effect of this synchronisation of the PM plan with material flow enabled a dramatic reduction of the average queue lengths at critical equipment groups and the associated cycle times without incurring any capacity loss. Reduction of average queue length as a result of synchronising preventive maintenance with material flow. Ng: What challenges has D-SIMLAB been facing in the COVID-19 world?Lendermann: Obviously, software delivery projects have become more challenging for the time being since our engineers cannot be on-site frequently. But it also turned out that more and more services can be delivered remotely, which has the nice side effect of making the services more cost-effective for customers. Overall, we are confident that our solid customer base will enable us to sail steadily through these challenging times.Ng: Where does D-SIMLAB see the technological development heading?Lendermann: In the future, enriching decision support and manufacturing execution solutions with machine learning and other AI techniques will be critical in reducing dependency on human experience. This path is essential to making manufacturing operations fully Industry 4.0-compliant. D-SIMLAB will certainly be at the forefront of this development. Bee Bee Ng is president of SEMI Southeast Asia.

The global economy has started down a gradual path to recovery from COVID-19 in recent months as the world continues to combat the virus. Yet one sector – semiconductors – has shown impressive growth powered by a transformation hastened by the pandemic across industries ranging from education and work-from-home to healthcare.Semiconductor sales increased 12% in September to mark a second consecutive month of double-digit growth, and year-to-date semiconductor receipts as of September jumped 5.5% compared to the same period in 2019, according to SIA/WSTS.While this upward trajectory is encouraging, it pales compared to 2020 semiconductor equipment billings growth, with results from SEMI showing worldwide global chip equipment billings in September soaring to a new high of $7.6 billion this year. During the first nine months of 2020, aggregate equipment billings logged a 23.6% rise compared to the same stretch in 2019, surpassing $51 billion. Better still, the total semiconductor equipment market in 2020 is on track to beat the previous high of $64.5 billion set in 2018.Investments in China, Taiwan and Korea are fueling the chipmaking equipment spending surge. With big domestic and international fab projects in the works, China this year is projected to become the world’s largest capital equipment market for the first time, surpassing Taiwan, which will follow at a close second. Korea will rank third in equipment investments. Taiwan and Korea growth will come on the strength of equipment spending for manufacturing leading-edge semiconductors.Equipment billings in North America and Europe declined year-over-year as the automotive and industrial sectors suffered the heaviest blows from COVID-19. Investment momentum in both regions is expected to pick up in 2021 after automotive production recovers to pre-pandemic levels while factory automation will boost industrial demand.For more information about monthly equipment billing trends by region and equipment segment, please see the SEMI Equipment Market Data Subscription.Clark Tseng is director of Industry Research and Statistics at SEMI.

Global business conditions continued to improve through October although the rate of improvement slowed a bit as pandemic concerns increased (Chart 1).Electronic Equipment Shipments RecoveringThird-quarter world electronic equipment shipment growth showed a big improvement over the second quarter but was still down an estimated 1.4% compared to the same quarter in 2019 (Chart 2).Based on regional electronic equipment shipment data, October 2020 sales were up 3.5% versus October 2019 and up 6.1% sequentially versus September 2020 (Chart 3). As the traditional autumn busy season winds down, the key impediment to a strong recovery is the rising COVID-19 infection rates, especially in the United States and Europe. The world awaits the deployment of a much-needed vaccine.Semiconductor Growth May be EbbingSemiconductor chip shipments continue to increase but their global rate of growth has leveled off to mid-single digits (Chart 4). Wafer foundry sales growth also appears to be peaking (Chart 5), pointing to slower chip growth in coming months.SEMI Equipment ShinesSemiconductor capital equipment shipments continue to outshine both electronic equipment and semiconductors. Third-quarter 2020 SEMI global sales were up a whopping 31% compared to the same quarter in 2019 and up 16% versus the second quarter of 2020 (Chart 6). SEMI equipment shipments are definitely outpacing semiconductors on a 3/12 growth basis (Chart 7).SEMI Outpaces Electronic Supply ChainGlobal electronic supply chain growth is improving but the semiconductor sector is clearly the winner this autumn (Chart 8).Looking Forward, Pandemic Spread is Biggest WorryBusiness conditions definitely look brighter. Even stronger growth is likely if we can get COVID-19 under control.Walt Custer of Custer Consulting Group is an analyst focused on the global electronics [email protected].