RFSOI

The SOI Consortium’s China 2019 event ran for two days, and it’s taken four (!) posts to cover all the presentations. In this final post we cover the afternoon RF-SOI sessions, which were dedicated to the China RF-SOI ecosystem and the RF value chain. In case you missed them, our previous posts recapped: 1. major keynotes from both the FD-SOI and RF-SOI days; 2. the FD-SOI presentations; 3. the morning sessions of the RF-SOI day; and 4. (this post) the RF-SOI day afternoon sessions. As we noted in Part 1 of our RF-SOI coverage, there were over 500 attendees for the RF-SOI day. And impressively, the room was still packed right through to the very end of the afternoon. Read on! SESSION 2: CHINA RF-SOI ECOSYSTEMSuzhou HunterSun Electronics: Super Opportunity for Integrated RFFE (“Jacky” Yujun Ding, COO)This talk had two parts. First, how is 5G changing the world, and second, what are the RFFE opportunities? He cited IHS data indicating that 5G will create tens of millions of jobs. New products include NB IoT, cellular V2X, as well as traditional PC/tablets and smart phones. But you still need to cover 2/3/4G with 5G. Major growth will happen in 2025-27. In terms of opportunities for RFFE, you've currently got 550mm2 going for $8; in 5G, you'll need 600mm2, but it will cost $16. You need RFSOI for filters and antenna switches, which are in high demand. Parts of the supply chain have no China players. Revenue for BAW is higher than SAW, but there's more SAW. He sees the industry moving heavily into integrated FEM (versus chip-on-board). He finished by itemizing different parts of the RFFE, indicating where the opportunities are (citing some data from Yole), with a special emphasis on integrated products for Chinese companies, with continued investor confidence. SmarterMicro: RF-SOI: Key Technology of Smart Connection (Yangyang Pen, Director) RF-SOI is an enabler of smart connections. However he sees GaAs as better for power, so SmarterMicro has a solution combining RF-SOI and GaAs. They've developed the world's first mMTC RFFE for high-performance upgrades on a single die and software reconfigurable. He notes that for IoT, lifetimes will be longer than 10 years, and that terminals are becoming more powerful. CanaanTek: Critical SOI CMOS Blocks in the 5G NR Sub-6GHz RF Front-End Architectures (Wayne Ni, CTO Board Chairman) CanaanTek is a fabless company working in consumer markets, with switches, tuners and LNAs in SOI-CMOS. He wants to capture 10% of the market with a focus on sub-6. The antenna/tuner is a must, and they've developed solutions for switches here. The figure of merit is RonCoff. He showed a product roadmap on SOI-CMOS. Xpeedic: Innovative EDA Solutions to Enable Differentiated RF-SOI Designs (Feng Ling, CEO)RF-SOI is growing, but there are still design challenges in process, models, filters and packaging. To design a good front end, you need better models and filters. People think passives are easy, but you need accurate models here. Xpeedic has developed design flows that include the effects of packaging early in design. Their products include IRIS, iModeler and Metis (for packaging). They've also introduced substrate modeling in partnership with CWS in France. The product is called SiPEX: it can address linearity in switch or PA designs. You need accurate substrate models to do this. Customers indicate they're seeing big improvements as well as reductions of 25% in chip area. IDP filters is another place they're working, to provide RF filters to fabless IC or module companies. No single filter technology can fit all the needs – IDP is one of them, so they have a broad portfolio of IDP filter technologies. He closed by saying that especially in China, the SOI ecosystem is really growing. SESSION 3: RF VALUE CHAINTowerJazz: Specialized RFSOI Foundry Technology to Support Rapid New Product Development (Paul Hurwitz, Director of RF Technology Development)This presentation gave a full overview of what TowerJazz offers in terms of RF-SOI foundry services with its fabs in Isreal, the US and Japan. What's new in 2019 is a diversifying of 200mm and 300mm. 200mm is best for power handling (for infrastructure/basestation antenna tuners and switch power handling, for example). 300mm is best for SW and LNA integration and higher digital densities. They've got new SOI models for the latest technology generations, and physics-based modeling of RF breakdown for accuracy. With more die being flipped, they needed new substrate modeling. For LNA and switch integration in 300mm, they invested in RF modeling. They also have an in-house MPW (multi-project wafer) program. He noted that customers in China are moving quickly in response to their customer requirements. Okmetic: Tailored Silicon Substrates for RF Applications (Atte Haapalinna, CTO)Okmetic Oy is a niche player in the substrate materials market, with specialties in sensors and MEMS, where they are the market leader. Now part of China’s NSIG group, they are expanding their manufacturing facility in Finland. In this presentation, their CTO talked about their current offerings as well as what they have under development. They do 150-200mm wafers, with a special emphasis on thick SOI. In terms of silicon substrates for RF, ultra-high resistivity is key. Their wafers are also used in IDP – integrated passive devices – for RF and acoustic filters. They are continually improving their high resistivity Magnetic Czochralski (MCz) silicon wafers, and are developing substrates for RF passives for automotive V2X. For RF beyond 6 GHz, they are looking at customized high resistivity silicon wafers for mmWave with researchers and customers. For sensors, they do SOI wafers with built-in cavities. Incize: RF SOI Ecosystem – History Challenges (Mostafa Emam, CEO)The world is exceeding expectations in terms of data usage. While the CAGR for devices is 27%, for data it’s 46%. Therefore each device needs to be faster and more power efficient. Incize recognizes RF as an art, with each piece hand crafted. But artists need to see the whole picture: at Incize, they help 17 companies – including wafer suppliers, foundries and fabless – see that big picture, especially in measurement, characterization and modeling for RF. For wafer suppliers, they do very high-power and very precise on-wafer testing to determine things like intermodulation distortion and substrate interference. For foundries, their specialty is in RF switches, for whom they do harmonics testing and thermal noise management. With those insights, Incize foundry customers have drastically increased the performance of the RF chips they’re manufacturing on trap-rich, high-resistivity SOI wafers. Meanwhile, Incize is also preparing PDKs for future potential substrate generations including GaN-on-Silicon, silicon-on-porous, and new contactless testing techniques for piezoelectric-on-insulator (POI – used in filters in 4/5G). “There’s a really big business opportunity for RF-SOI,” concluded Emam, “and room for everyone.” Cadence: SOI Technology in Intelligent and IoT/Vision/AI Systems (Jonathan Smith, Senior Director)Cadence does SOI enablement at advanced nodes. Smith shared three recent success stories. First, there’s the Musca-S1 test chip they did with Arm, Samsung and Sondrel this past spring. Second, there’s the Tensilica DSP for automotive vision on GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX, which uses 1/10th of the power of existing solutions and was demonstrated at CES. And finally there’s the i.MX line from NXP. In recent news, there’s a new version (18.1) of Virtuoso RF. Though it’s been on the market for 30 years, they’ve added advanced methodologies so that system design and analysis are on the same platform. They’ve also announced National Instruments’ analysis solver, the Clarity 3D solver for next-gen 3D solutions, the integration of multiple electromagnetic (EM) solvers, and advance SiP options. Silvaco: Xena-IP Management Infrastructure for the SOI Ecosystem (Babak Taheri, CEO)Every multi-core SoC today has as many as 200 IPs, if not more. How do you manage that? Tracking and traceability of IP is complicated but important. For IP providers, how do they track where its being used? And for IP consumers, they need to know what they’ve used and where. What’s required is an IP management system to keep track of the different functions and different concerns. Today’s tracking systems don’t talk to each other. Silvaco’s Xena IP management solution organizes all IP data, accounts, products, contracts, devices, support, compliance and reporting. For compliance in particular, they do IP “fingerprinting” and “DNA analysis”, which they’ve patented. The fingerprint is a digital representation of the IP: it’s not just software. It is secure, and can’t be reverse engineered. It’s not a tag: a tag is inserted into the IP, whereas fingerprints are extracted. DNA analysis flags discrepancies and quickly identifies where they are and which files to look in. Xena works in the cloud, enterprise systems or hybrids. The SOI ecosystem will be hearing a lot more about this. ~~ Please note that the China event presentations are all available on our website to anyone whose company or organization is a member of the SOI Consortium.

The SOI Industry Consortium awarded two luminaries of the semiconductor industry for pioneering advances in RF-SOI, a technology now found in all cellphones. Jim Cable (shown on the left in the photo above), Chairman and CTO of pSemi, a Murata Company, and Herb Huang, CEO and GM of Ninbo Semiconductor received the awards during a gala following the SOI Consortium's 2019 RF-SOI Workshop in Shanghai. "Thanks in large part to the innovation, dedication and perseverance of men like Jim Cable and Herb Huang, RF technology based on SOI is now ubiquitous," said Carlos Mazure (on the right in the photo), Chairman and Executive Director of the SOI Consortium. "Jim Cable drove the development of SOI and RF switches that are now in every cellphone, and Herb Huang has been a key contributor to SOI technology and a champion of the SOI foundry ecosystem in China. We are happy and honored to recognize the contributions they have made to advancing RF-SOI globally." Jim Cable joined pSemi (formerly Peregrine Semiconductor) in 1996 and held technical leadership roles before serving as CEO from 2002 to 2017. An early pioneer of SOI technology, Cable believed SOI would ultimately replace other technologies in the RF front end, and he pushed his team to innovate. Cable is a co-inventor on more than 70 semiconductor and technology patents, including breakthroughs in SOI-based processes for CMOS RF switch linearity and integration that are used by all smartphones today, and will become even more mission-critical in 5G and millimeter-wave markets. He received his B.S. in physics from UC Riverside and his master's degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from UCLA. Herb Huang is CEO of Ningbo Semiconductor International Corporation (NSI), which is based in Ningbo, China. A driver of the RF-SOI ecosystem in China, he spent much of his career at SMIC, the largest semiconductor foundry company in mainland China. In 2016, SMIC created NSI as a joint venture subsidiary with China IC Investment Fund, Ningbo Economic Development Zone Industrial Investment Company, Ltd. and other IC investment funds. Under Huang's leadership, NSI optimized the process and model of a 0.13um RF-SOI technology platform transferred from SMIC. Now in mass production, the RF-SOI technology platform supports customers in IC design and product development for new generations of radio communications. Huang holds both a Ph.D in Materials Science and Engineering and an MBA from the University of Minnesota.

The 2019 International RF-SOI Workshop in Shanghai was packed to overflowing, with over 500 attendees, noted SOI Consortium Chairman Executive Director, Carlos Mazure. There were 16 presentations over the course of the day – every one of them excellent – so it will take two posts to cover them all. We covered Danni Song's compelling keynote in a previous post – see it here. In this post, we’ll cover the remaining keynotes and the morning session, which was dedicated to 5G deployment. In the next post, we’ll cover the afternoon sessions, which were dedicated to the China RF-SOI ecosystem, and the RF value chain. PDFs of the presentations are not yet posted, and then they will only be available to those whose companies belong to the SOI Consortium. But we’ve summarized them all for you, so read on! KeynotespSemi: 30 Years of RF-SOI – Past, Present and Future (Jim Cable, Chairman and CTO, pSemi (a Murata company))The keynote by RF-SOI legend Jim Cable chronicled his always-innovating journey from digital to RF via sapphire then SOI. (Cable's work was recognized in an award that evening.) His original vision back in the early days was for a RF front-end module (FEM) + CMOS transceiver. At the time, doing it on sapphire (an insulator) rather than bulk made it much easier, as sapphire eliminated the non-linear capacitances. That was the beginning of their UltraCMOS technology, and though it did very well, sapphire was only available in 6” wafers. So pSemi (or Peregrine, as it was known at the time), engaged with Soitec on bonded-SOS. “It was a killer technology, and the marketshare we won was staggering,” he recalled, and helped convince Soitec RF-SOI was worth looking at. The goal is to handle high RF power levels: you can use SOI to handle higher voltages than you'd think were possible. They added an invention they called HaRP, that dealt with accumulated charges and enabled them to hit the linearity specs on silicon. With that, he explained, they came to completely dominate the switch industry. UltraCMOS evolved, getting 60% smaller with 20x better linearity – but now of course you have 50 switches, not six. He heralded the great partnership they have with GlobalFoundries, noting, “We were pioneers in this field.” In fact, in 2017 they were in the top 10 for IP generation in semiconductor manufacturing. Now comes mmWave, where he says, “We see everything we believed and more.” They're currently sampling an 8-channel mmWave RFFE (RF Front End). Soitec: 5G-on-Insulator: the 5th Gear In Mobile Radio (Michael Reiha, GM, Soitec)Michael Reiha's talk centered on how SOI wafer-leader Soitec is positioning itself on 5G, which, he explained, demands a wider portfolio. Soitec looked at what they could do to make 5G ready for sub-6GHz. Massive MIMO (mMIMO) is an efficient technique to improve throughput. With SOI, you can reduce the power it takes, making it a good choice for urban environments. RF-SOI is a candidate for power amplifiers, and FD-SOI is enabling more users to be added. The concept of network sharing is an opportunity for compact, low-cost filters that can meet the requirements with simpler, lower-cost, higher-efficiency filters. That's why they've just announced a new substrate called piezo-on-insulator (POI). However, total cost-of-ownership is not just how much a product costs, but how much it costs to run it.. Currently, RF and mechanics dominate the bill-of-materials, so you need to decrease the number of RF FEM components and get savings scaled with the array size. The main challenge of SOI is in efficiency, but the advantage is that it can be used in integrating digital with analog sensing and RF. Then you can use AI sensing for tracking temperature, for example, and control for 5G optimization. In short, with RF-SOI, you apply AI to the radio head, especially for things like mMIMO. And btw, he added, Soitec currently has capacity of two million wafers per year. SESSION 1 – 5G DeploymentYole: 5G is ON. Which Impact for RFSOI Technologies? (Cederic Malaquin, Technology Market Analyst)There are over a thousand 5G networks available today worldwide, said Cederic Malaquin. Adoption is accelerating, driven by 5G cloud gaming, AR/VR/XR, 5G multi-video calling and stadiums. However, carriers need better ROI. 5G should address this so that customers are better served. MIMO and carrier aggregation (CA) are the main techniques supporting network capacity and coverage improvements. 5G NR will bring more spectrum. With each generation putting more content in phones, new spectrum is happening in sub6 and mmWave. The impact of 5G on mobile phones is huge in terms of both content and complexity. Some phonemakers (like Apple and Samsung) are moving towards increased integration. Others (like Huawei) are going more for discretes. Yole sees tuners, switches / LNA as addressable by RF-SOI, but they are less convinced about power amplifiers. They also see SiP (system in package) as prevailing over integration. The 5G mobile and base station markets will really build up in 2022-25. RF-SOI will remain the mainstream technology for switches and antenna tuners through at least 2025: they don't see anything else replacing it. There is still increasing demand for 8” wafers. 12” wafers growth comes from integrated switch/LNAs, which comes from the Tier 1's. In the front-end space, Murata leads in dollars by far, followed by Skyworks and others. Though mmWave is not yet clear, there are opportunities for RF-SOI. ST: 5G Deployment Driving RF and SOI Technology Opportunity (Laura Formenti, Sr. Director)STMicroelectronics has a long history in RF-SOI, noted Laura Formenti, dating back to 2000 when they started collaborating with Soitec and Leti. An IDM, ST also offers foundry services. For 5G, their foundry offering includes H9SOIFEM, C65SOIFEM and SOI mmW for high-performance analog, dedicated RF processes for RF switches, LNA, PA plus RFFEM. Then they have FD-SOI for RF, mixed signal and digital integration. From antennas to transceivers there's an opportunity for full integration. For infrastructure, it depends on the customer preferences. 12” C65SOIFEM was introduced in 2019, and 12” SOIMMW will be introduced in 2020. Both their fabs at Crolles and Rousset, France, are in production. H9SOIFEM is for 4G and 5G sub-6GHz RF FEMs, enabling monolithic integration of the PA, LNA and switches, which is especially good for wifi. The C65SOIFEM is high-performance. Panel: 5G Deployment in China, Jeffrey Wang, CEO, Simgui Technology, moderatorWith Danni Song (China Mobile), Jim Cable (pSemi), Peter Rabbeni (GF), YangYang Pen (SmarterMicro), Paul Hurwitz (TJ), Michael Reiha (Soitec)Q: Why sub-6GHz and not mmWave?Danni Song said its a question of available spectrum. In sub-6, you get the same level of coverage with fewer base stations; also, sub-6 is much more mature. When will mmWave be ready? It depends. In the US, yes, but in China the spectrum allocation for mmWave has not yet been done. So it's a wait and see for the industry to be ready. Peter Rabbeni agreed, adding that in the US sub-6 is crowded and conflicts with military bands. Paul Hurwitz added that mmWave is for fixed wireless access. Michael Reiha added that mmWave has advanced a lot even in the last few months (Verizon in Washington, DC, for example), so there is momentum.Q: Does China lead in the sub-6GHz opportunity?Jim Cable said that at pSemi they have two business models: mobile and infrastructure. He sees massive MIMO in base stations as huge (though in mobile their role is more supporting Murata). Peter Rabbeni added that they're working with innovative partners in China, and that GF also offers skills in services and packaging. Yangyang Peng sees big opportunites with 5G for SmarterMicro and China. Paul Hurwitz has seen an increase in the capabilities of RF companies in China, and that the market in China moves faster than elsewhere. Michael Reiha sees China as strategic, and because there is central deployment, they can plan with the right partners.Q: Data usage will be huge – what will it cost to individual users?Danni Song said 5G phones will be expensive, but consumers want them, so we need to bring down costs and increase performance – but what about power consumption? Power needs to come down, maybe levering things like sleep mode more. For 3G 4G, she noted, they had lots of time. People are pushing hard for 5G, but there's a need for patience. Yangyang Peng said he didn't want to pay more than for 4G. In summary, Jim Cable noted that mmWave will demand huge amounts of silicon, to which Paul Hurwitz agreed, and Michael Reiha said Soitec will be ready. Everybody agreed that 3D packaging would be very important, especially for mmWave. And that's it for our coverage of the morning. Next up we'll cover the presentations given during the afternoon.

RF-SOI is in every smart phone out there, and with 5G, there are lots more applications on the horizon. If you’d like to learn more about designing in RF-SOI, there’s a great short course coming up the day before and in conjunction with the EuroSOI-ULIS Conference in Granada, Spain.The title of this short course is RFSOI: from basics to practical use of wireless technology. Program and registration details can be found here. The course runs for the full day on Sunday, 18 March 2018.The talks, which are being given by a stellar line-up of experts, include: RF SOI, fabrication, materials and eco-system - Ionut Radu Director of Advanced R D, Soitec Fundamentals of RF SOI technology - Jean-Pierre Raskin, Professor, UCL 22nm FDSOI Technology optimized for RF/mmWave Applications - David L. Harame, RF CTO Development and Enablement, GlobalFoundries RF SOI technology and components for 5G connectivity - Christine Raynaud, Program Manager (Business Development – Technology to Design), CEA-Leti Analog and RF design on SOI - Barend van Liempd, Senior Researcher, imec Techniques and tricks for RF measurements on SOI - Andrej Rumiantsev, Director RF Technologies, MPI Corporation FOSS TCAD/EDA tools for advanced SOI-device modeling - Wladek Grabinski, R D CM Manager, MOS-AK RF design flow for SOI - Ian Dennison, Design Systems Senior Group Director, Cadence The course is being organized by SOI Consortium members Incize and Soitec. BTW, this year marks the 4th joint EUROSOI – ULIS Conference. The EuroSOI Conference, which has been ongoing for decades, is well paired with the ULtimate Integration on Silicon Conference. The joint conference provides an interactive forum for scientists and engineers working in the field of SOI technology and advanced nanoscale devices. One of the key objectives is to promote collaboration and partnership between different players from academia, research and industry. As such, it covers technical topics, industry trends and updates from pertinent European programs. EuroSOI-ULIS will take place 19–21 March 2018 at the University of Granada in Spain. For information on the program and how to register, see the website. Following the conference, the papers will be available at the IEEE Xplore® digital library, and the best papers will be published in a special issue of Solid-State Electronics.

GlobalFoundries has announced availability of its 45nm RF-SOI technology (read the press release here). Dubbed 45RFSOI, the company says it’s the first 300mm RF solution for next-gen mmWave beamforming applications in future 5G base stations and smart phones. The technology supports mmWave spectrum operation from 24GHz to 100GHz band, 5x more than 4G operating frequencies. Skyworks’ CTO Peter Gammel says that the 45RFSOI process, “…is enabling Skyworks to create RF solutions that will revolutionize emerging 5G markets and further advance the deployment of highly integrated RF front-ends for evolving mmWave applications.” The news was quickly picked up by publications across the industry, with EETimes noting that RFSOI has been a big GF success story. Production will be at the company’s East Fishkill fab. The PDKs are available now. The 45RFSOI news follows hard on the heels of GF’s announcement a few days prior that the company is teaming up to build a fab offering 22nm FD-SOI in western China, that it’s expanding its Dresden FD-SOI capability by 40 percent, and that it’s adding new RF-SOI capabilities to its fab in Singapore. GlobalFoundries is a member of the SOI Industry Consortium.