DARPA

While many pioneering women in STEM have made significant contributions to science and technology, they have not been given equal recognition for their work. Following is a short list of some of the many women who have been trailblazers in STEM and had an impact on the microelectronics industry.

The microelectronics industry is entering the era of Cloud Engineering Simulation to slash the costs and risks of new technology development and speed time-to-market in spaces like semiconductors, MEMS sensors, RF front ends, biomedical and driverless cars. In the run-up to SEMICON Europa, 12-15 November, 2019, in Munich, Germany, SEMI spoke with Ian Campbell, CEO of OnScale, about the new paradigm of Cloud Engineering Simulation. Campbell shared his views ahead of the SMART Design Forum, 14 November, 2019, 14:30 to 17:00, in Hall B1, TechARENA 1 at SEMICON Europa. Registration is open. Join the forum to meet experts from OnScale and other key industry influencers. Attendance is free of charge for all SEMICON Europa visitors.SEMI: How did your adventure with OnScale start?Campbell: I’m an engineer. When I was still in high school, I took a night class at Nashville Tech to learn AutoCAD R14, and I’ve been designing and engineering things ever since. I was introduced to Desktop Simulation in my bachelors of mechanical engineering program and used many types of simulation tools for massive design studies at the Aerospace Systems Design Lab at Georgia Tech. I’m a simulation junkie.I started my first Silicon Valley high-tech company, NextInput, in 2012 with Dr. Ryan Diestelhorst (now VP of Strategy at OnScale), to commercialize new ForceTouch and 3D Touch technologies based on our patented MEMS force sensors. At NextInput, we bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of engineering software, but were always frustrated by slow, inaccurate engineering simulation results. We dreamed about running massive simulations on Cloud Supercomputers and creating true Digital Prototypes that could replace costly, time-consuming, and risky physical prototypes.When I got the chance to join the team that became OnScale in 2017, I jumped at the opportunity. At OnScale, we took engineering simulation solvers that had been developed for the U.S. military to run on U.S. Department of Defense and DARPA supercomputers and built a cloud supercomputer platform on Amazon Web Services to run the solvers. The net-net is the world’s first on-demand, infinitely scalable Cloud Engineering Simulation platform. Now, we routinely run massive multi-billion degree of freedom simulations for Fortune 100 companies, including many from the semiconductor and MEMS industries. Since our business model is to charge per core-hour for simulations, the incredible capability we built is cost-effective and available to small startups as well. SEMI: How is the semiconductor design ecosystem evolving? How is Cloud Engineering Simulation applied to semiconductor and design industries?Campbell: The entire industry is experiencing a massive acceleration in product launch cycles and increased competition. New markets like IoT and 5G are reducing semi/MEMS product cycles from years to months. That, in turn, puts enormous pressure on semiconductor and MEMS designers. Missing a key product introduction like a flagship smartphone launch can literally make or break a company.A reliance on traditional engineering methods – schematic capture and layout of a chip, taping out (physically prototyping the chip), performing engineering validation on an e-bench, qualifying the chip (or not qualifying it and going back to the drawing board), and finally launching mass production – is no longer sustainable from a competitive perspective.Instead, market-leading firms are turning to Cloud Engineering Simulation and Digital Prototypes to explore massive design spaces, find optimum designs that beat the competition in every KPI (size, power, performance), and digitally qualify designs before ever cutting silicon, ensuring that designs are robust over their intended operating environments and performance envelopes. Large thermal analysis of a chip on a circuit board executed quickly on the OnScale Cloud Simulation Platform SEMI: Can you give us an example? Campbell: A great example is thermal analysis. Thermal effects have always had huge impacts on MEMS device performance and, more recently, they are beginning to impact performance of next-gen semiconductors, especially GaN power electronics for electric vehicles (EVs).Conducting a full system-level thermal analysis of something like an EV power management system – a power IC in a package, on a board, in an enclosure, under various loading conditions – has been a challenge from a simulation complexity perspective (degrees of freedom) and from a parametric sweep perspective (running hundreds or thousands of simulations to optimize chip placement, routing, etc.). To run these sets of simulations using legacy desktop simulation would take weeks, perhaps even a month or more. To run these massive simulations in parallel on cloud supercomputers using OnScale takes days or even hours.Our customers routinely run very large simulation studies on OnScale Cloud for thermal simulations, RF filter simulations, MEMS simulations, packaging simulations (what we call Digital Qualification), and many more use cases.SEMI: What’s one of your strategic objectives for 2020? Campbell: For 2020, we’re doubling down on MEMS and semi simulation capabilities. We will be launching additional solver capabilities like EM that will be critical in our strategic markets like 5G. We will also be launching a Cloud API so that engineers can integrate OnScale directly into their existing engineering workflows (e.g. MATLAB or EDA/CAD tools) with just a few Python commands.SEMI: Can you share one prediction for the future of semiconductor design solutions? share?Campbell: I think we will continue to see MEMS and semi designers push the envelope and bring smaller, more performant, more cost-effective solutions to market. I’d like to see more highly cost-effective flexible semi/MEMS designs come to market to enable next-gen IoT and IIoT applications. I’d also like to see more biomedical applications – biomems, microfluidics, and labs on a chip for all sorts of life-enhancing applications.SEMI: What are your expectations regarding the SMART Design Forum at SEMICON Europa 2019 in Munich? Campbell: I’m looking forward to getting back to my roots in MEMS/semi design and chatting with other designers about the future of engineering and the future of semi! Ian Campbell is a twice venture-backed Silicon Valley CEO and expert in MEMS sensors, semiconductor technology, and engineering software. Most recently, Ian co-founded OnScale, a Cloud Engineering Simulation startup backed by Intel Capital and Google’s Gradient Ventures. OnScale is revolutionizing engineering by combining world-class multiphysics solvers with Cloud supercomputers, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Prior to co-founding OnScale, Campbell served as founder and CEO of NextInput, where he led the startup through multiple rounds of funding – totaling $12 million and an additional $4 million in research contracts with government and industry partners – and built a world-class team of engineers and scientists who developed 3D Touch and ForceTouch technologies for smartphones, wearables, industrial, and automotive interface applications. He also secured the first major smartphone OEM design wins in Asia. Campbell earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Middle Tennessee State University, and his MSAE in aerospace engineering and MBA from Georgia Institute of Technology.Serena Brischetto is senior manager, marketing and communications, at SEMI Europe.

SEMI-MEMS Sensors Industry Group (MSIG) welcomed a global group of industry executives to its 14th annual MEMS Sensors Executive Congress (MSEC), October 29-30, 2018 in Napa, Calif. MEMS and sensors represent a robust sector of the electronic industry. Analyst firm Yole Développement expects the global market for MEMS and sensors to double in the next five years, reaching $100B by 2023, spurred by growth of autonomous mobility products such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, autonomous cars, fitness and healthcare wearables, and agricultural sensors.“From drones that navigate any terrain in all lighting conditions, robo-taxis that ‘smell’ cigarette smoke, and sensors that monitor animal welfare and food safety, MSEC speakers shared inventive use cases representing new opportunities for MEMS and sensors suppliers,” said Carmelo Sansone, director, MEMS Sensors Industry Group. “Our keynote speakers spurred attendees to collaborate for the greater good. MITRE Corp. cybersecurity expert Cynthia Wright exhorted attendees to proactively address cybersecurity. DARPA Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) program manager Ron Polcawich invited participation in a rapid innovation and production concept that could dramatically speed design cycles for new MEMS. They exemplify the cross-pollination among commercial industry, government and academia that will continue to advance MEMS and sensors.”Getting serious about cybersecurityMITRE cybersecurity expert Cynthia Wright opened MSEC 2018 with a keynote on cybersecurity, alerting attendees to a topic that few in the industry have explored in-depth — but to which they need to pay attention.“Billions of connected mobile devices democratize knowledge, diversity and boost economies, and accelerate innovation by connecting humans to one another and to our environments,” said Wright. “At the same time, they easily create huge networks that carry operationally and personally sensitive data.”Because MEMS and sensors are deeply embedded into this vast array of connected devices, industry needs to get involved now or risk potentially grave consequences, claimed Wright. “From the destruction of critical infrastructure, cyberattacks on life-critical medical devices such as insulin pumps and heart monitors, and intrusions on autonomous vehicle safety systems, MEMS and sensors suppliers have a responsibility to help improve cybersecurity of connected devices,” she added.Allaying the potential fears of a roomful of suppliers envisioning complete redesigns of their products, Wright said that not every device requires the same level of security, and suppliers can make a difference with even “minor tweaks.” Wright suggested encryption at the edge and process authentication. She also gave MSEC attendees a list of design precepts: Build it in. Don’t bolt it on — Design your device with security in mind instead of retrofitting it after-the-fact to realize the most elegant design. Beware of shadow IT — You can’t protect what you don’t know about. Consider physical asset security; software/sensor-guided decision-making; personal or operational data collection; and key process control. Realize your points of vulnerability — because MEMS and sensors are susceptible to spoofing. Learn from cyberattacks of the past — even if they have not been tied directly to MEMS/sensors. Understand IoT software — Realizing that IoT software acts on what the hardware tells it, pay attention to altered sensor data that can lead to altered system performance. When asked about the role of US government regulation on the security of connected devices, Wright acknowledged that Europe has more restrictive cybersecurity guidelines than the US.“At the same time, it does not make sense to have two different approaches to cybersecurity of devices. US suppliers who implement more security measures can sell to both markets and to other parts of the world.”If she could leave MSEC attendees with a closing thought, it might be that companies “don’t need to put a firewall on a toaster.”“Not every chip has to be secure-foundry secure, but it would be nice if even 10% could hit that mark,” added Wright.Rapid Innovation through CollaborationIC designers typically enjoy three to four design cycles in a calendar year, leading to swift advancement of electronics over subsequent years.Designers in the MEMS community, however, generally have access to one design cycle or less per year, and typical time-to-market is four years for a new product. That slow fabrication pace has hindered deployment of innovative MEMS designs — and it’s something that MSEC closing keynote speaker, Ron Polcawich, program manager, DARPA MTO, would like to change.Polcawich’s vision of government collaboration with industry and academia spawned the investigational Rapid Innovation through Production MEMS (RIPM) Workshop, which Polcawich and his team held in May 2018. During his keynote, Polcawich shared lessons learned from the workshop while inviting MSEC attendees to get involved.Before RIPM can become a program, Polcawich knows it will require definition. What would a program concept look like? What is the best way to articulate the potential benefits to the MEMS community, and what additional inputs would be needed?“This is a daunting challenge from a program planning perspective,” said Polcawich. “In developing RIPM, we realized that we needed representatives from the entire MEMS ecosystem – integrated device manufacturers, or IDMs, equipment suppliers, foundries, and materials’ providers — to literally come to the table to tackle a common goal. Given the potential for the MEMS industry at large to benefit from rapid innovation and production, we hoped that competitors would realize that leveraging established MEMS processes could deliver significant benefits over the historically entrenched approach: one product, one process.”Polcawich believes that MEMS suppliers might relinquish the one product, one process paradigm if they knew that their IP were secure.“While technical challenges to realizing RIPM abound, we knew that we could tap the MEMS industry’s vast knowledge base to address them,” he said. “IP protection is an equally complex issue, and one that may bear a range of approaches. One model could ensure that each IDM owns their IP while the foundry owns the process technology, which it licenses to other companies through process development kits. In addition to speeding innovation, it also provides new revenue sources for the industry.”Polcawich sees RIPM as a win-win for both commercial industry and for the DoD. Speeding design-to-deployment of new MEMS devices could open new and larger markets to MEMS suppliers. It could also support greater product-line diversification and new revenue streams for foundries and other ecosystem members. The DoD could tap new MEMS devices for strategically important applications like tactical radios, unmanned aircraft systems such as drones, and image autofocus for cameras. Polcawich encouraged SEMI-MSIG members to get involved by emailing his group: [email protected] Hall of Fame MembersThree new industry leaders joined the SEMI-MSIG Hall of Fame, first established in 2011 as a means of honoring those who have made a substantial contribution to SEMI-MSIG. Selected by members of the Governing Council, 2018 Hall of Fame inductees include: Michelle Bourke, strategic marketing director, Customer Support Business Group, Lam Research Eric Pabo, business development manager, MEMS, EV Group Yoshio Sekiguchi, senior strategic advisor, TDK InvenSense Technology Showcase WinnerMSEC recognizes the latest advancements in applications enabled by MEMS and sensors — including those demonstrated by entrepreneurs competing in the Technology Showcase. Selected by a committee of industry experts, five finalists did their best to impress attendees with their technical approach and go-to-market strategies. The 2018 Technology Showcase winner, Alertgy, presented a biosensor-based wristband device that provides non-invasive, real-time blood glucose monitoring for people with type 2 diabetes, which affects more than 20 million Americans and hundreds of millions more worldwide. MSEC 2018 Sponsors MSEC 2019 Location and DatesMSEC 2019 will take place October 22-24, 2019, at the Coronado Island Marriott Resort Spa in Coronado, Calif., just minutes from downtown San Diego.For more information on MSEC 2019 and other SEMI-MSIG events and programs, please follow @MEMSgroup on Twitter, visit MSIG at SEMI and subscribe to SEMI’s weekly newsletter, SEMI Global Update.Maria Vetrano is a public relations consultant at SEMI.

DARPA’s Vision of Cross-CollaborationRon Polcawich, program manager, DARPA Microsystems Technology Office, will give the closing keynote at MEMS Sensors Executive Congress on October 29-30, 2018 in Napa, Calif. SEMI’s Nishita Rao spoke with Polcawich about the MEMS workshop on rapid innovation that he held earlier this year and his interest in continuing that conversation with a broad audience of MEMS and sensors suppliers attending MEMS Sensors Executive Congress. SEMI: What is your vision for the Rapid Innovation through Production MEMS (RIPM) concept and why does the MEMS and sensors industry need it?Polcawich: The goal behind our RIPM concept is to advance the state of MEMS device technology by creating enhanced access to mature process flows for utilization by military, academic and commercial MEMS designers.Compare MEMS to IC development and you will see much more rapid innovation in ICs. In many cases, IC designers can get through four design cycles in a calendar year because the process technologies are so mature.In contrast, it can take three to four years to develop the process flow for a MEMS device. I believe that we can do better. With so much process-flow development in MEMS having taken place over the past 15 years, we now have plenty of commercial designs out there. How do we capitalize on these existing production process flows so we can rapidly innovate to avoid those painfully long production cycles?With this question in mind, we launched a campaign to solicit feedback from small, medium and large foundries, integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), systems designers and integrators, and academic stakeholders. Our effort culminated in a May workshop where we were able to bring many of the same groups to the table. During one intensive day, we discussed challenges to the RIPM concept and what we would need to make it work.SEMI: What were some of your areas of focus?Polcawich: We covered a range of topics, from improving access to sophisticated packaging technology, such as advanced interposer technologies, to IP entanglement and the role of process design kits (PDKs).SEMI: In an industry historically defined by competition over collaboration, how do you hope to convince MEMS supply-chain members to work together?Polcawich: We see benefits from the proposed RIPM concept across the board. Foundries would benefit from outputting higher volumes of devices as well as charging for more sophisticated PDKs and process flows — which would comprise a new source of revenue for them.From our discussions at the workshop and throughout the summer, we understand that certain technology sectors are going to be more willing to engage with the community than others. Notional examples that we highlighted at the workshop include the possibility of manufacturing high-performance inertial sensors, oscillators and pressure sensors within the same process flow. The challenge to the community is having the MEMS designers work within a locked-down process flow and not requesting different material layers, gaps and critical feature dimensions for each device type, which is very common within our industry. We asked everyone the question, “If there were broader access to production process flows, would faster technology transition and innovation cycles enable a more rapid time-to-market for a wider range of products?”SEMI: What would you like MEMS Sensors Executive Congress attendees to take away from your presentation?Polcawich: We welcome additional feedback on the RIPM concept to help shape any potential program ideas. Furthermore, we would like assistance in identifying tipping-point technologies on each sector’s/foundry’s/IDM’s technology roadmap. We could use that information to determine mutual investment opportunities that could shift the roadmap timelines to the left, enabling more rapid production and commercialization timelines. Dr. Ronald Polcawich joined DARPA as a Program Manager in the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) in August 2017. His research interests include advanced materials processing, micromechanics for small-scale robotics, device designs, and miniaturized position, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems. Read more.Polcawich will present Rapid Innovation with Production MEMS Workshop Outbrief on Tuesday, October 30 at MEMS Sensors Executive Congress in Napa Valley, Calif.Register today to connect with Ron and learn about DARPA’s rapid innovation in MEMS concept.Nishita Rao is a marketing manager at SEMI.

Materials innovation has always been vital to the semiconductor industry. In the past, it was high-κ gate dielectrics. Today, Cobalt is seen as a replacement for Tungsten in middle-of-line (MOL) contacts.What materials innovation will the future bring?A likely answer is Graphene, the wonder material discovered in 2004.Graphene is one atomic layer of carbon, the thinnest and strongest material that has ever existed. It is 200 times stronger than steel and the lightest material known to man (1 square meter weighing around 0.77 mg). It is an excellent electrical and thermal conductor at room temperature with an electron mobility of ~ 200,000cm2.V-1.s-1. At one atomic layer, graphene is flexible and transparent. Other notable properties of Graphene are its uniform absorption of light across the visible and near infrared spectrum and its applicability towards spintronics-based devices.Graphene and Moore’s LawMoore’s Law scaling can be broken down into 4 key areas: Lithography FET Advanced Packaging (2.5D and 3D IC) Interconnect Material Solutions for upcoming nodes are starting to emerge in the first two areas (EUV and Nanowire- or Nanosheet-based FET respectively). Graphene play an important role in the latter two areas. For advanced packaging, Graphene can be used as a heat spreader (to lower overall thermal resistance), or as an EM shield (to lower crosstalk) as part of a 3D IC package.Active Graphene device layers can potentially be stacked on top of each other using a low-temperature transfer process ( 400°C) to allow for a dense heterogeneous “memory near compute” configuration. This is an area DARPA is actively researching as part of its new $1.5 billion Electronics Resurgence Initiative.Regarding interconnects, Copper interconnects are running out of steam and becoming a major IC bottleneck (projected 40% total delay for 7 nm node). Graphene’s high electron mobility and thermal conductivity make it an attractive interconnect material for MOL and back-end-of-line (BEOL), especially at line widths 30 nm.Graphene Device ApplicationsGraphene-based semiconductor applications are already starting to hit the market. A fully integrated optical transceiver (with a Graphene modulator and photodetector) operating at 25 Gb/s/channel was on display at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. San Diego-based Nanomedical Diagnostics is selling a medical device that uses a Graphene biosensor. Europe-based Emberion is building Graphene optoelectronic sensors that might find a home in LIDAR applications, where there is currently a focus on improving sensing in low-light conditions.What will the overall Graphene roadmap in the semiconductor industry look like? The history of ion implantation serves as a good example of how a fundamental scientific discovery moves from the lab to the foundry floor.The dominant view in the semiconductor industry at the time was that ion implantation would not work in practice (vs. thermal diffusion) and that, if it did, it would only marginally improve the manufacturing yields of existing products. There was nothing obvious about the transfer of ion bombardment techniques from nuclear physics research to semiconductor production.Varian (led by British physicist Peter Rose) built a new, advanced ion implant tool that Mostek (DRAM manufacturer based in Texas) was able to use to create MOS ICs with clear competitive advantages. The successful collaboration between Varian and Mostek was the turning point in the development of ion implantation as a major semiconductor manufacturing process. Over the next few years, semiconductor firms used ion implantation in a growing number of process steps and, by the late 1970s, it became one of the main processes used in semiconductor manufacturing.Likewise, the Graphene world needs to work closely with the semiconductor industry to develop the tools and techniques required to solve fundamental issues around Graphene growth (good uniformity over large area, low defect density) and Graphene transfer (high throughput, CMOS compatible). It is only then will we fully realize a future that includes 2D materials.The first step in this process is cross-industry education and initiating the dialogue between semiconductor industry and graphene companies. The National Graphene Association will be hosting the largest gathering of graphene companies and commercial stakeholders at the Global Graphene Expo Conference, October 15-17, 2018, in Austin, Texas.Learn more about graphene at the upcoming Global Graphene Expo Conference with dedicated panels of experts and investors, and roundtable discussions on how Graphene will impact the semiconductor industry. The event promo code is SEMINGA. About the AuthorAnand Chamarthy is the CEO and Co-Founder of Lab 91, an Austin-based startup that is working towards Graphene/CMOS integration at the foundry level. Anand can be reached at [email protected]. About the National Graphene AssociationThe National Graphene Association is the main organization and body in the U.S. promoting and advocating for commercialization of graphene and addressing critical issues such as standards and policy development.