Sony

The first day of the SOI Consortium’s recent China event – the 7th Shanghai FD-SOI Forum – was full to bursting in every way: the room, the networking, the level of expertise, the in-depth presentations and the overall energy. We covered the Samsung and GlobalFoundry keynotes in our previous post (if you missed it, read it here).This post will recap the rest of the presentations given during the day. (If your company or institution is a member of the SOI Consortium, you’ll be able to access the full presentations online.)International Business Strategies (IBS) – Impact of AI on Automotive and IoT, and Opportunities in China (Handel Jones, CEO) When it comes to deep insights on China + tech + analytics, and especially with a thorough understanding of FD-SOI markets, Handel Jones is arguably the world’s leading expert. Here are some of the observations he shared. Though the chip industry will see declines across the board in 2019 (he sees 13.5%), he sees a return to growth in 2020. By 2030, he sees it as a trillion dollar market, of which China will have half. AI is a key driver – and will become more prevalent at the edge. Major drivers will include preventative medicine, gaming, NB-IoT and 5G. At the chip level, FD-SOI has a lower cost/chip compared to bulk – you’ve got small chips and high yields. Sensors – especially image sensors – are a key area, and this is another place where FD-SOI is better than bulk. He sees chip shortages in the 2022-24 time frame (as opposed to the current oversupply), so now is the time that China should be establishing large FD-SOI capacity.NXP – Automotive, Industrial and IoT Solutions Leveraging FD-SOI (Ron Martino, VP GM) In terms of power consumption, computing is easy but data transmission is hard, Ron Martino reminded the audience at the onset. That’s why you need the edge. This is where FD-SOI comes in, and if you want to have leadership, you should be leveraging body biasing, he said. In terms of machine learning, a lot can happen at the edge on the smallest devices. NXP is now shipping a very wide range of products based on FD-SOI, including the i.Mx7 and 8 families and the new RT crossovers. The latest announcement is the i.Mx RT 1100 MCUs, a very low-cost processor solution for high volumes. The i.MX7 ULP is in mass production for wearables, with record low leakage and high performance. The i.Mx8 and 8x are going into a broad range of applications – from retail solutions for automated checkout to pasta makers, and automotive applications for full cockpits with vision detection, as well as things like parking, V2X and in-vehicle monitoring.Sony Semi – Low Power IoT Products with FD-SOI eMRAM Technology (Kenichi Nakano, GM) Chips built on FD-SOI with eMRAM are in production, said Kenichi Nakano. In GNSS/GPS, Sony is the #1 in lowest power consumption worldwide, thanks to FD-SOI, he continued. They’ve had 70 remarkable design wins, giving them over 50% market share in the sports and health watch markets, he said with a tip of the hat to the FD-SOI ecosystem and SOI Consortium. In GNSS, performance is very important – and now they can do it in water, which is huge. Development cycles are shorter than ever – for the latest chip it started in February 2018 and was in production by the spring of 2019, achieving decreases of 20% in power, 30% in area and 10% in cost. Integrating eMRAM was easy in terms of the design flow and manufacturing, with production yield of 97-100%. So with the GXD5605GF they’ve got the first GNSS chip with FD-SOI/eMRAM/RF in the world and it’s on 28FDS/eMRAM technology. It’s very reliable and very good, he concluded.Rockchip – Challenges of AIoT Chip (Feng Chen, SVP) At the beginning of this year Rockchip announced the launch of their RK1808, a low-power AIoT solution with built-in high performance (3TOPS) NPU fabbed in GlobalFoundries 22FDX, said Feng Chen. Their clients were very happy that Rockchip delivered the real power and performance numbers they’d promised. Because of the power/performance it delivers, FD-SOI (both 22 and 28nm) is very well suited for AIoT chips, he said. It’s very cost-effective in terms of NRE and die, and there’s room for further savings. While the ecosystem needs a unified push, FD-SOI is good for the market in China, and China has the volumes FD-SOI needs. Rockchip sees particular potential in retail and smartphones.Panel – Verticals Driving FD-SOI VeriSilicon CEO Wayne Dai moderated the first panel, asking first why China should adopt FD-SOI. Soitec CEO Paul Boudre said because it is a big, dynamic market (noting that Sony’s first FD-SOI GPS win was in China). Handel Jones said that at the wafer level, there was cost parity, but with FD-SOI chips are smaller and higher yield. The main reason it’s taken so long to get going was IP, but that’s changing now, he added. Dai’s next question was about the top application fields the panelists predicted for 2020. Sony’s Kenichi Nakano said wearables with connectivity, low power consumption, small size and high levels of integration; Rockchip’s Feng Chen agreed. NXP’s Ron Martino said FD-SOI for automotive, machine learning and edge computing was shipping now, with wearables ramping.VeriSilicon – Low Power IoT Connectivity IP Design Based on FD-SOI (Yi Zeng, Director, IoT Connectivity Platform) The “value” of IoT data is not yet being generated, noted Yi Zeng but AI can help here. The IoT industry needs innovation for both chips and networking. SiPaaS – which stands for Silicon Platform as a Service – as offered by VeriSilicon can help lower the barrier to entry. [In the SiPaaS model, VeriSilicon has its own IP-based core. Based on the company's advanced chip design capabilities and mass production service experience, it has created a variety of silicon-proven chip design platforms that can significantly reduce the customer's chip design cycle.] They have FD-SOI IP for NB-IoT, BLE, GNSS and sub-1 GHz. The BLE (Bluetooth) RF IP is a complete offering optimized for low power on GlobalFoundry’s 22FDX. The NB-IoT IP is also optimized on their 22FDX ZSPNano, an energy efficient general purpose MCU+DSP core on 22FDX. And they’ll have results of test chips for GNSS RF IP on 22FDX by the end of this year.Secure-IC – AIoT Embedded Security Using FD-SOI (Hassan Triqui, CEO) While AI enables products and services, it’s important to plan for security early in the design cycle, said Hassan Triqui. Software is not enough to protect edge-to-cloud. Secure-IC’s hardware security module, Securyzr, is an IP block that can be embedded into every device to answer security functionalities such as root-of-trust and key management. In sleep-mode/tunable cryptography, FD-SOI allows the creation of physically secure systems. (Note that designers are leveraging FD-SOI’s unique body biasing for ultra-low-power deep-sleep modes.) Because safety and privacy require a combined solution, Securyzer is particularly well-suited to IoT chips built on FD-SOI, he concluded, so that IoT adds value to AI, and not just the other way around.Soitec: FD-SOI – The 5th Gear for mm-Wave Radio (Michael Reiha, GM FD-SOI Business Unit) There are four key areas to 5G, explained Michael Reiha: coverage, number of antennas, frequency and traffic density. 5G mmW access architectures are currently inefficient in terms of power and performance, but FD-SOI is ready for 5G access as both an analog and hybrid beamformer. For MU-mMIMO (massive MIMO), the RF front-end modules (FEMs) and transceiver will fully exploit FD-SOI. Sensing, calibration and control enabling hybrid beamforming and multiple users is easy in FD-SOI. The adaptive body biasing on the horizon will reduce power of FEM mixed-signal circuitry, and be a disruptive technology.STMicroelectronics – Automotive MCUs in 28nm FD-SOI for ePCM NVM (Shan-Lin Liu, Automotive Marketing Manager) As a leader in the automotive market, ST has seen that increased data flows in automotive are driving demand for higher performance and bigger memory in automotive MCUs, said Shan-Lin Liu. ST has taken a unique approach to NVM with embedded PCM (phase change memory) on 28nm FD-SOI. This gives them energy-efficient, high-performance cores with larger NVM memories, and it’s already qualified up to auto grade-0. PCM (vs MRAM) is BEOL. It uses two cells, so it’s more reliable and is good at high temperatures, he said. With FD-SOI, they can go up to 165o, and it’s soldering compliant. The preliminary results of the first MCU chip are excellent. It’s now running in a car, replacing the previous generation 40nm eFlash product.Leti – Advanced FD-SOI for Edge AI (Emmanuel Sabonnadiere, CEO) To fully run artificial intelligence on the edge, research powerhouse Leti is working on an unsupervised learning neural network using advanced FD-SOI and a mix of other technologies. These include embedded non-volatile memory (NVM), 3D integration, and new design tools. Sabonnadière said this new approach is expected to exceed the performance levels of current digital deep learning with neural networks that are capable of handling time-domain signals, sound and speech—and may produce a first "killer app" for advanced SOI. AI will require compact and power-efficient circuits for the inference phase, when neural networks infer things based on new data they receive, close to the end user. The combination of FD-SOI, 3D integration, and NVM opens a path towards dedicated circuits with major performance improvement within the limited power budgets of distributed electronics. In Europe, he noted, privacy concerns are driving the move from the cloud to the edge. On the Leti roadmap, they’ve broken through the 10nm limit for FD-SOI, using strain and body biasing to compensate for transistor mismatch. Also of note: since 2016 Leti has had an ongoing collaboration with SITRI, the Shanghai Industrial μTechnology Research Institute, an international innovation center focused on globally accelerating the innovation and commercialization of More than Moore technologies to power IoT.GlobalFoundries – GF Fab 1 Dresden: Delivering Differentiation with FDX for the Future of Automotive (Thomas Morgenstern, SVP GM Fab 1) Dresden Fab 1, Thomas Morgenstern reminded the audience, is the biggest in Europe, where it is part of the Saxony ecosystem. GF is moving advanced mask-making to Dresden, which is the lead site and Center of Competence for FD-SOI. With the “pivot”, GF is providing platforms. Fab 1 is automotive certified for 22FDX (GF’s 22nm FD-SOI technology), with automotive tapeouts in 2019. “Automotive is a journey,” he said, of continuous improvement, and a mindset: it’s a zero defects culture. The ramp to volume production is well underway, with 26 tapeouts of 22FDX products this year – almost double that of last year. He showed high yield data of about a dozen products, adding that since the beginning of the year every tapeout was first-time right with decreased cycle time. The key specifications for 22FDX with eMRAM for Auto Grade-1 have all been demonstrated, and customer feedback has been excellent.Next: Shanghai International RF-SOI Workshop recap As you can see, it was a packed day for the FD-SOI part of the SOI Consortium’s Shanghai event. In fact the room was still packed at the very end of the day. Several hundred VIPs then headed out for the ever-popular and festive evening riverboat dinner cruise, where the non-stop networking continued.A big shout-out to our sponsors and supporters: VeriSilicon, Simgui, SIMIT, Soitec, Samsung, IBS Ion Implant, ShinEtsu, GlobalFoundries and NXP.The next day of the event was devoted to RF-SOI. That will be the subject of our next post.

The MCU at the heart of Sony's new smart-sensing SPRESENSE™ for IoT is built on FD-SOI. Why? Low operating voltage and low power consumption, of course! Sony's got two cool new products going on sale in July 2018: the SPRESENCE main and extension boards for IoT applications, equipped with a smart-sensing processor (read the full press release here). A CXD5602PWBCAM1 camera board for sensing cameras will go on sale in August. All were on display at the SF Maker Fair '18, where they were an instant hit. [caption id="attachment_11931" align="alignright" width="300"] Here are the main features of Sony's CXD5602 MCU for IoT, which is built on FD-SOI. (Courtesy: Sony Semiconductor Solutions)[/caption] The main board (it's open source, btw) will run about US$50. You'll find the specs and main features here. Spresense is powered by Sony's FDSOI-based CXD5602 MCU (ARM Cortex-M4F × 6 cores), with a clock speed up to 156 MHz. The main board utilizes a multi-CPU structure equipped with Sony's state-of-the-art GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System – which they talked about at the most recent SOI Symposiums in SF and Tokyo) receiver. A variety of systems for diverse applications, including drones, smart speakers, sensing cameras and other IoT devices, can be built by combining these boards and developing the relevant applications. The new board can be used to control a drone, for example, using GPS positioning technology and a high-performance processor, voice-controlled smart speakers, low-power consumption sensing cameras and other IoT devices, etc. It can also be combined with various sensors for use in systems that detect errors in production lines on the factory floor.

“The ecosystem is ready. The focus is now on applications and products.” And with those words, SOI Consortium Executive Director Carlos Mazure opened the annual Silicon Valley SOI Symposium. As promised, the day was packed with presentations about products on FD-SOI – some from big players like NXP and Sony, some from names new to the FD-SOI ecosystem like Audi and Airbus, and some from start-ups just getting into the game. The event got excellent coverage in EETimes/EDN – including in their editions across the globe in China, Japan, Taiwan, India and more. Samsung, GF Ramp FD-SOI, heralded the headlines. It was a full day of excellent presentations. In this post, I'll chronicle the morning presentations. The next post(s) will cover the afternoon session. Note that as of this writing, the ppts are not yet posted on the SOI Consortium website, but many will be. Keep checking back under the Events tab, and look under “past Events”. Andes Technology As semiwiki noted a few years back, Andes Technology is “...the biggest microprocessor IP company you've never heard of.” Based in Taiwan, Mediatek is one of their big customers; they've got a strong client base across Asia/Pacific, and are now making inroads into North America. Last year they announced with GF their 32-bit CPU IP cores had been implemented on GF's 22FDX® FD-SOI technology. In his symposium keynote, CEO Frankwell Lin said that in the test chip they're doing with GF and Invecus, they're seeing a 70% power savings compared with what they'd gotten in 28ULP. Their newest products are the N25 32bit and NX25 64bit RISC-V based cores, and in July they'll announce a core that runs on Linux. NXP “With FD-SOI we're enabling the future of embedded processing,” the always-quotable (and keynote speaker) NXP VP/GM Ron Martino told us. NXP's i.MX7ULP, i.MX8, i.MX8X and i.MXRT are all FD-SOI based. They all share fundamental building blocks, so NXP can build platforms, scale and re-use IP. “It's better than any technology I've worked on in my 30 years in the industry,” he said. They're seeing much higher performance with on-chip flash. And the RT “crossover” processor boasts 3x higher computing performance than today's competing MCUs. This is going to be critical for edge computing going forward, to which end NXP is working very closely with foundry partner Samsung. FD-SOI is not just helpful for the logic part of these chips – memory technologies also share in the benefits. They get much higher performance with on-chip flash. Leakage is cut by a factor of ten with biasing techniques, and the enhancements mean that memory can operate at very low voltages. NXP is increasingly sophisticated with how they use body biasing, applying high-granularity techniques to independent domains in different parts of the chips. Getting sub-0.6 Vmin delivers value at multiple levels: on battery life, on total system cost, and on system enablement. Invest in body biasing if you want to get leadership results, advised Martino. Edge computing – including machine learning and neural networks for things like image classification – is a big target, he continued. At the last CES they did a proof-of-concept “foodnet” where two appliances talked to each other without having to go to the cloud. In that case it was an i.MX8 in a fridge and an i.MXRT in a microwave, but he explained that the same concept can be applied to a car for driver awareness, where you don't want to take the extra time for or don't have a connection to the cloud. iMX and FD-SOI enable scalable solutions, he concluded. Audi What's a metal-bending company doing talking about electrons? asked Audi Project Manager Dr. Andre Blum. And why SOI? Well, for Audi, he said, SOI stands for Solutions, Opportunities and Innovation. [caption id="attachment_11790" align="alignleft" width="300"] Audi Project Manager Andre Blum says SOI stands for Solutions, Opportunities and Innovation -- at the 2018 SOI Symposium in Silicon Valley.[/caption] Audi is working on the various levels of autonomous driving, and they want it to be without design limitations. That means being able to hide sensors wherever they're needed. They'll create a cocoon around the car for the best driver experience. He showed a fun video Audi's made to illustrate their concept – it's the Invisible Man video, which you can check out on YouTube. But those new architectures can't up the power budget (think heat): rather they need to cut power drastically while increasing performance. And with FD-SOI, they see an opportunity to do just that, he said, while integrating the sensors. Audi is one of 25 partners in a heavily funded ( 100 million Euros) brand new EU Horizon 2020 program called Ocean12 (lead by Soitec). The launch was only May 1st 2018 (so as of today it doesn't even have a website yet), and it will run for about 4 years. It is described by ECSEL (a public-private entity that puts together the big EU research projects) as an “opportunity to carry European autonomous driving further with FDSOI technology up to 12nm node”. One to watch! Airbus For Airbus, it's all about increased connectivity and communications that are trusted and secure, said company expert Olivier Notebaert. Since their chip runs are low, NRE – non-recurring engineering costs – are very important; and they need flexible systems. SOI has a long history in aerospace – in fact that's originally where it got its start, since it can handle radiation and is immune to latch-up. Notebaert says that even for Airbus, IoT is their future. The developments they pioneer will be part of it. Airbus is a partner in the EU Horizon 2020 DAHLIA project – which stands for Deep sub-micron microprocessor for spAce rad-Hard appLIcation Asic. The project is, “...developing a Very High Performance microprocessor System on Chip (SoC) based on STMicroelectonics European 28nm FDSOI technology with multi-core ARM processors for real-time applications, eFPGA for flexibility and key European IPs, enabling faster and cost-efficient development of products for multiple space application domains. The performance is expected to be 20 to 40 times the performance of the existing SoC for space.” According to another recent presentation, DAHLIA is prototyping an FPGA this year that will be in production in 2019. Sony For Sony GM Kenichi Nakano, FD-SOI has big potential for low-power products. And he should know. Sony has been an FD-SOI pioneer, using it as the basis for GPS chips that are now in a growing number of cool products, especially watches. They're getting good feedback from the market and see good opportunities across a diversified global customer base, he said. Their CXD5603, for example, is the lowest power GNSS (GPS) chip worldwide. In mass production since 2015, it is now dominating world wearable markets like trackers -- such the popular Amazfit line. Running through their various FD-SOI based GPS offerings, he noted that the GPS is a pretty simple chip. But now customers are asking for more, like for it to work in the water (where a GPS typically doesn't). So Sony has partnered with triathalon teams and are seeing good results. With success, of course, comes greater demands: for greater accuracy, for more precise positioning in motion, for increased height accuracy, for even lower power – and Sony is meeting these demands with FD-SOI, in solutions like the new CXD5602. The CXD5602 product configuration covers audio/video/communications: key factors in IoT. A camera version is releasing this summer, as are main and extension boards. An LTE module will be released at the end of 2018. And now they're using those FD-SOI chips in audio applications. You'll find it in the Xperia™ Ear Duo, he said. The MWC press release noted that Xperia Ear Duo “... is driven by Sony’s ultra-low power consuming “CXD5602” chip and a sophisticated multi-sensor platform, the “Daily Assist” feature will recognize time, location and activities to offer relevant information throughout the day – reminding you what time your next meeting is when you reach the office or narrating the latest news headlines.” Also in that PR, Hiroshi Ito,Deputy Head of Smart Product Business Group at Sony Mobile Communications, said, “Ear Duo is the first wireless headset to deliver a breakthrough Dual Listening experience – the ability to hear music and notifications simultaneously with sounds from the world around you.” The highly anticipated wireless “open-ear” stereo headset started rolling out to select markets in Spring 2018. There's a great info page with video here. https://youtu.be/1lKo9acJDPs So that's what we heard in the morning. My next post (or posts?) will cover the afternoon. That includes Dan Hutcheson's excellent talk updating his FD-SOI survey, presentations from Samsung, Globalfoundries and Simgui, plus some from very cool start-ups, and the final panel presentation.

China Mobile is the world's largest* telco. So when Danni Song, one of the company's high-level project managers presented at the SOI Consortium's 5th International RF-SOI Workshop in Shanghai, you can bet people listened. With each new slide, a glowing sea of cell phone cameras rose over the heads of the audience in the huge, packed ballroom. [caption id="attachment_11612" align="alignleft" width="300"] (Photo courtesy: SOI Consortium, Simgui)[/caption] Over the last month, there's been a lot more coverage of 5G in the press (especially after the recent Mobile World Congress (MWC) – check out Junko Yoshida's EETimes piece for example). For ASN readers who want to know more about 5G and RF-SOI in China, here's a reminder that Song's presentation, and many of the others given by leading companies at the RF-SOI Workshop last fall, are now posted on and freely available the Consortium website Events page. Click here for the listing and links.The theme of the workshop was IoT, mobile, 5G connectivity, and mmW. As Dr. Xi Wang, Director General of SIMIT/CAS (the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem Information Technology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences), said in his opening keynote, China is strong in RF-SOI. RF-SOI will be growing at a CAGR of over 15% for the next five years, and China has production, design, wafer manufacturing and good momentum. “We will make a great contribution to the whole IC industry,” he predicted.Of note, too, Russell Ellwanter, CEO of TowerJazz, gave what turned out to be a very inspirational keynote about Value Creation, and the importance of treating your suppliers with respect. He credits his company's close relationship with RF-SOI wafer-supplier Soitec for TJ's claim to the world's best linearity. Five of their seven fabs do RF-SOI. LNA (low-noise amplifers) are a big market driver, and with RF-SOI they can integrate the LNA with the switch.Here are some more highlights from the day – but by all means check out the presentations for details. (You can click on the illustrations to see them in full screen.)China MobileIn her presentation, Embrace a Brand New Cooperation in 5G Era, Song asked where RF-SOI could help in her wish list. Could it increase integration and decrease cost and power consumption? Can it help improve NB-IoT device performance? The supply chain needs to come back around into a circle, so that the telcos are connected to and get insights from the wafer substrate providers, she said. [caption id="attachment_11608" align="alignright" width="300"] (Courtesy: China Mobile, SOI Consortium)[/caption] China Mobile has a 5G Innovation Center, and has established test labs in 8 cities. And the government has announced a 5G launch in 2020, with pre-commercial trials now going into 20 cities. So she was at the RF-SOI Workshop as much to listen and learn as to share China Mobile's vision.Sony [caption id="attachment_11613" align="alignleft" width="300"] (Courtesy: SOI Consortium and Sony)[/caption] The presentation by Kidetoshi Kawasaki, GM of Sony Semiconductor Solutions, focused on antenna tuning, which he said is one of the fastest growing things in cell phones. Antenna Tuning Progress SOI Single Chip Integration for 4G/5G UE (note that UE = user equipment) looks at antenna aggregation, and why it is important for carrier aggregation (CA) and MIMO. Sony has developed an SOI-based next-gen process for 5G integrating passive components. That's why RF-SOI is important and will be continued to be used in the mobile market, he said.GlobalFoundriesGF has developed demo vehicles to help customers, said Sr. Director of the RF Business Unit, Peter Rabbeni. (Over the years they've shipped over 32 billion RF-SOI devices, btw.) In his presentation, RF-SOI: Delivering Performance Integration for the Next Generation of Mobile,he noted that RF is becoming more complex than digital. As a result there is a need to integrate to help reduce cost: this is a direct correlation to the standards that are driving complexity. At the same time, performance requirements are increasing, so the challenge is driving increased performance at the same or lower cost than previous generations of products. [caption id="attachment_11609" align="alignright" width="300"] (Courtesy: GlobalFoundries and SOI Consortium)[/caption] To meet 4G/LTE and 5G's evolving performance demands, GF has recently introduced two new RF-SOI platforms, which he detailed in the presentation. 8SW enables increased integration of front-end modules (FEMs), while 45RFSOI is for mmWave FEMs. (In a separate presentation, IDDO-IC CEO Denis Masliah presented a Differential Complementary Millimeter Wave Power Amplifier for 5G using 45RFSOI process, which is currently being fabbed by GF.)RF-SOI Wafer SuppliersThe two leading RF-SOI wafer suppliers, Soitec and partner Simgui, both gave excellent presentations. Though Soitec EVP Bernard Aspar's presentation Engineered Substrates as Foundation of Innovation in RF is not posted, he made some important points. Up til now, RF-SOI has mainly been about switches and tuners, he said, but there are other opportunities that offer the potential for huge growth. The full supply chain needs to be prepared, he said, and suppliers need to understand each other. Each technology requires the right substrate – and even as we move into sub-6GHz 5G, there is still work to be done in 4G. In fact Soitec is now offering services to help customers better understand new substrate options. [caption id="attachment_11611" align="alignright" width="300"] (Courtesy: Simgui, SOI Consortium)[/caption] Soitec's partner in China, Simgui, now uses Soitec's Smart CutTM technology for RF-SOI wafer production. Together the two are now producing over a million 200mm RF-SOI wafers/year, said Simgui Sr. Director, Kerui Wang. His presentation, RF-SOI – a Secured Substrate Supply Chain, looked at their strategic partnership with Soitec, wherein they use the same tools and processes to deliver the same products meeting the same specs.Fabs and FablessTwo leading fabless companies – RDA Microelectronics (which was acquired by Spreadtrum) and SmarterMicro also presented their RF-SOI activities. Although their ppts are not posted, here are a few highlights.Longtime ASN readers will recall that RDA has been shipping high-volume, RF-SOI based chips to Samsung and others for over five years. In the presentation, RF-SOI in Current and Future RFFE Solutions, Engineering AVP Joseph Jia said that over last two years alone they've released almost 50 RFFE (front end) chips on RF-SOI. They see RF-SOI as the right match for switches, tuners and NB-IoT because of the low-voltage and tunability advantages.SmarterMicro's CTO, Peter Li, sees RF-SOI as a cornerstone of 5G. In his presentation, Reconfigurable RFFE in 5G, he said the goal is smart systems on fewer dies to decrease size and cost.Jeff Zhu, assistant director at SMIC, presented SMIC, 0.13um RF-SOI Platform Updates. Mainland China's largest foundry has recently moved its RF-SOI process from 180 to 130um, and he walked us through some chip designs.Throughout the day, presenters noted that RF is a great opportunity for China to take a leadership position. As one panelist at the end of the day noted, RF depends more on expertise and talent than digital, which depends more on manpower.Nanjing: A China RF CapitalJust before the Shanghai events, there was a 2-day event sponsored by the City of Nanjing, co-organized by SOI Industry Consortium and the City of Nanjing. Over 200 participants attended the workshop and tutorials on SOI applications, SoC development and manufacturing, EDA IP ecosystem, as well as a design tutorial for More than Moore SOI ecosystem. Almost all of those presentations are now posted on the Consortium – click here to get them.Some of the participants in the SOI Consortium's delegation also had the opportunity to visit the enormous Nanjing Sofware Park. Nanjing, we learned, is often considered China's “RF capital”. The list of the world's major RF players working in partnership there is certainly an international who's who.So, lots of good RF-SOI/5G info on the SOI Consortium website – check it out!~ ~ ~*in terms of market value and subscribers.