Macronix

As the fight against COVID-19 presses ahead, many healthcare workers, especially those on the front lines, are being pushed to their limits and beyond to ensure our health and safety. To help doctors and nurses combat the virus, SEMI Taiwan mobilized six leading Taiwan semiconductor companies last month to donate personal protective equipment (PPE) designed for industrial operation to medical staff. The gear included powered air purifying respirators (PAPR), half facepiece respirators, head tops, protective coveralls, and air filter canisters.On behalf of the semiconductor industry, SEMI Taiwan worked closely with industry leaders and the government to deploy the direly needed resources to support the domestic medical community. The Taiwan Association of Medical Technologists accepted the donations in the ceremony attended by Taiwan CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang. The largesse is the result of public-private partnership to provide medical supplies to 35 hospitals and medical laboratories across Taiwan. Terry Tsao, Global Chief Marketing Officer and President of SEMI Taiwan, and six Taiwan semiconductor companies stepped up to help combat the coronavirus pandemic. TSMC Charity Foundation responded with PPE giveaways in March in a first wave of protective equipment donations to medical personnel. Before long, Vanguard International Semiconductor Corporation (VIS), ​​​​​​​​​​​Macronix, Micron, United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), and 3M Taiwan also answered the call for more medical equipment for COVID-19 frontliners. Extending the Taiwan semiconductor industry’s rich tradition of making charitable contributions in the region, including financial assistance for emergency relief efforts, the companies donated more than 1,000 pieces of PPE after balancing the giveaway with inventory needs in their fabs. Fab workers responsible for machinery, raw materials, and other goods and gear used in semiconductor manufacturing wear the protective devices. One piece of equipment, powered air purifying respirators (PAPR), features a battery-powered that sends filtered air flowing into a hood or head top covering the wearer’s head or face to protect against respiratory hazards. In healthcare, PAPRs protect medical staff as they test blood and tissue samples for traces of COVID-19. Dr. N.S. Tsai, CEO of TSMC Charity Foundation, notes that respiratory protection equipment can offer integrated protection against multiple hazards and is comfortable for medical technologists working long shifts to wear. Medical facilities across Taiwan quickly depleted PPE supplies after the rapid response to the January outbreak by healthcare providers across the region led to quick containment. The PPE donations were critical in minimizing exposure risks to medical staff. The chip industry’s protective clothing and equipment offered another benefit: Medical technologists found the gear – designed to be worn over long periods in semiconductor manufacturing facilities – comfortable as they worked marathon shifts early in the COVID-19 outbreak. “Coronavirus testing requires a much higher level of protection than is needed in many healthcare settings,” said Chuang Jen-hsiang, the Deputy Director for the Taiwanese Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and the spokesperson of Taiwan Central Epidemic Command Center. “Medical technologists must work in a poorly ventilated labs for more than eight hours a day, causing sweating and damp heat. The high-performance PPEs provided by the industry help healthcare workers breathe more naturally without wearing a mask while greatly reducing infection risk in hot, humid environments.”For their COVID-19 response, Taiwan’s government and well-trained medical workers drew lessons from the SARS outbreak in 2003 to quickly activate emergency management structures to fend off the emerging threat – one that put the Taiwan semiconductor industry and its round-the-clock operations at risk.“Taiwan’s swift response to the COVID-19 was vital in preserving the business continuity that is the lifeblood of the semiconductor manufacturing,” said Terry Tsao, Global Chief Marketing Officer and President of SEMI Taiwan. “We are honored to do our part to support the heroes of this fight – the medical technologists on the front lines – as an expression of our great respect and gratitude for their extraordinary work.”SEMI Taiwan has long partnered with TSMC Charity Foundation to care for people in need, drive positive environmental and social changes, and support emergency aid in Taiwan. The goal our joint corporate social responsibility efforts is to warm the hearts of our people and build a better society.Irene Huang is a public relations and marketing specialist at SEMI Taiwan.

The fast-growing automotive semiconductor market means big change for the IC supply chain. Beyond the obvious demands for reliability and traceability, the sector is moving towards simpler and lower-cost solutions while facing the daunting challenge of automating driving in a complex world. The need for simpler and cheaper automotive intelligence will likely drive acquisitions to build complete platform solutions that are easier to integrate. This demand has already spawned a market for pre-configured test cars to save developers time and money, and is driving LiDAR (Light Detection And RADAR) towards lower-cost, solid state solutions. “The growth of the automotive electronics market provides a great opportunity for the IC supply chain to differentiate on specialty processes and quality for the high-volume automotive business with its long design cycles,” says Scott Jones, principal, strategy, at KPMG, who will speak in the automotive program at SEMICON West. “This differentiation is a chance to reduce chip suppliers’ dependence on scaling volume for the mobile phone world with its short-cycle volatility of winning and losing sockets.” He notes that increasing demand for automotive ICs is also reinvigorating the eight-inch supply chain and spurring opportunity for specialty products such as compound semiconductor devices for power efficiency. Supplying the automotive market also means addressing automotive reliability requirements, which can be 10 times more stringent than for consumer devices. At the same time, the industry must sustain fast-paced development cycles required for the volume and diversity of low-cost IoT devices, manage the segmented supply chain for both those markets, and still spread development costs. Another big challenge for the supply chain will be to automate testing and update vast amounts of embedded software in these automotive devices. “The more complete solution a company can put together, the more the automakers will gravitate to it. They want simplicity,” Jones suggests. Smaller players will need to differentiate with IP and acquire other IP provider to build a broader platform, or be acquired and folded into an all-in-one solution.AutonomouStuff helps accelerate and simplify development of autonomous driving solutionsAutonomouStuff is helping to speed development of these platforms. The company has grown from a sensor distributor into a supplier in the emerging niche of vehicles preconfigured with key interfaces for sensors and controls. These interfaces can then be customized by integrating different components for developers to test their applications. AutonomouStuff offers developers a lineup of vehicle models pre-configured with the interfaces needed to add desired chips, sensors and software to develop their autonomous vehicle systems. Source: AutonomouStuff.“Whether they’re major chipmakers or AI software startups, they don’t have a year to build their own vehicle platforms themselves for developing autonomous vehicle systems,” says Wolfgang Juchmann, VP sales and business development at AutonomouStuff. Juchmann, a SEMICON West speaker, will bring a demonstration vehicle to the show. “In four to six weeks we can prepare a custom test car with selected sensors, enabling users to start testing their computer platforms and software. It’s faster and more cost-effective for us to supply the car with the needed interfaces.” He notes that developers are using some 300 AutonomouStuff vehicles in the field. AutonomouStuff customers are starting to transition from testing on a single car or two to testing on mini-fleets with 50 to 100 vehicles. Beyond sensors and pre-configured vehicles, the next step will be to add more data intelligence services to help with capabilities like tagging the data for training, Juchmann says. AutonomouStuff already offers hardware to support Baidu’s Apollo open-source software stack and data set. The company was recently acquired by the Swedish holding company Hexagon to help support expansion.CMOS silicon LiDAR nears automotive qualificationInnovations in the hyper-competitive LiDAR market, where burgeoning demand is driving the race to develop various types of solid-state devices, may also help reduce the cost of autonomous vehicles. Among the roughly 40 LiDAR suppliers, at least one – Quanergy – is taking advantage of 45nm and 32nm foundry CMOS volume production. The company uses voltage through the semiconductor stack to change the refractive index, controlling the phases of optical beams and the resulting interference patterns of light exiting the chip to quickly steer the laser beam without the need for moving parts, much like the phased array radar its team developed earlier. Solid state LiDAR image with object recognition software. Source: QuanergySo far, most of the small LiDAR units have shipped to the security, industrial automation, drone, robots and 3D mapping markets. However, Quanergy CEO Louay Eldada, another SEMICON speaker, says the company is also winning automotive designs and expects automotive shipments to take off early next year, once automotive certification testing is completed. “We can get design wins because standard CMOS production at TSMC makes us a known entity,” says Eldada. To prevent component misalignment, the company produces its own specialized packaging to secure the laser, phase control ASIC, optical phased-array emitter, detector array, and receiver readout ASIC at its plant in Silicon Valley or the facility of its automotive partner Sensata. Through its software business, Quanergy offers an artificial intelligence (AI) perception program for object recognition and LiDAR tracking. The solution uses the people-tracker software the company acquired from Raytheon.SEMICON West this year expands to three full days of automotive electronics programming and features a Smart Transportation Pavilion. Other companies with experts who will speak as part of the program include XPT/NIO, Infineon, McKinsey, Voyage, GM Cruise, Bosch, Deepen AI, Airbus A3, Nvidia, Excelfore, Byton, Macronix, SK Hynix, SAP, Xilinx, Achronics, California Fuel Cell Partnership, Velodyne, Lam Research, KLA-Tencor, SCREEN, Rockwell, Versum Materials, TechSearch International, Entegris, ASE, Amazon, Continental and Wind River. www.semiconwest.orgPaul Doe, SEMI