SemiSerious

I’m not suggesting any cause and effect, but three weeks after trading in my gas guzzling minivan for an economy car rated at 6.2 litres per 100km, gas prices here in Ottawa are set to dip below $0.80 per litre. (Actually, it’s taken a week to get around to finishing this post, and I actually filled up at $0.795 over the weekend.) That’s territory that’s been unknown to the Canadian national capital region’s drivers since the early days of 2007. The EIA also reported that the average US retail price for gasoline dropped below US$2.40 per gallon for the first time since early 2007.

It seems that even experts in this field are not able to explain the connection between gas prices at the pump and world prices for oil, but there must be some loose correlation, maybe with a random phase term thrown in. Anyway, the gas price we are currently enjoying encouraged me to take a look at oil which appears set to drop below US$60 per barrel, a price that has not been seen since March of 2007.

So what has oil got to do with semiconductors? And no, this is not another article about Abu Dhabi buying AMD’s fabs. Global warming is a big concern and a hot button topic without a doubt. Biking to work in shorts in November is one data point supporting the theory that we are heating up. (Last winter in Ottawa, though, was an entirely different story.) It’s not just the concerns over greenhouse gas emissions and their effect on climate change that’s driving renewable energy sources like solar power though. Government policy everywhere from China to Europe has been shaped by oil price shocks in the past and the oft-referred to age of “peak oil” that is reportedly upon us. But with petroleum prices now falling, many have begun to wonder how interesting photovoltaics and other renewable energy sources will be, at least to investors.

There is no doubt that rising oil prices in the 1970’s kick-started research into photovoltaics. This is seen in the chart below that tracks world oil price (yearly average) against the number of patent applications submitted to the USPTO. With oil now dropping, what will happen to the investment in photovoltaics?

Fortunately, there is some earlier history of oil price relaxation to draw on for an answer. Going back to the eighties, oil dipped from a high of $34 in 1983 to around $13 in 1989. But interest in photovoltaics - at least as measured by patent activity - did not decline. In fact, patent applications continued to increase despite the drop in oil price. But why? It appears related to government policy as the US Congress extended legislation from the seventies to continue investment into various forms of renewables. Bill Clinton and Al Gore also wasted little time pushing renewable energy at the DOE with their appointments to that body in 1993.

The first big oil price shocks may have spawned the renewable energy industry, but what was happening around 2000 when USPTO applications began to take a nosedive? Backlogs at the patent office put a negative bias on the data, so it often appears that activity is slowing drastically as the graph approaches today’s date. Once applications in the queue finally get published, the sharp drop in patents softens or disappears. Unfortunately for analysts like me, you need to travel into the future to get that accurate data. To be on the safe side, I cut this graph off after 2005. But there’s still a dramatic decline in activity between 2000 and 2005. Why?

At a time when interest in photovoltaics appeared to be waning, oil was simmering in preparation for the insane rise in price that reached a peak of nearly $140. And now, the price has been spiralling down with the rest of the world economic indicators. Where does that leave photovoltaics?

I think the bottom line is that the idea of dependence on unpredictable, uncontrollable foreign oil and maybe even the notion that the end of the world supply might be in sight has prompted the governments of several powerful countries to enact strategic programs that have established a solid future for photovoltaic development independent of a high spot price for oil. I don’t think that even the most ardent supporter of the green movement would claim that any present-day renewable energy technology could displace traditional power plant fuels competing head-to-head on an equal economic footing. It takes time to transition, so here is one place where governments have an important role to play in ensuring that photovoltaics and other renewable energy sources are ready to meet the demand when we no longer have an option.

But there are certainly fears that the feed-in tariffs and other subsidies that have kept the solar ball rolling could be under pressure. These days, there’s lots of bad economic news and speculation of even more fear and uncertainty around the corner. Faced with the difficult times and relatively short political terms of office, governments will find it harder to continue a longer term strategic view when it comes to energy. If things get as bad as some are predicting, even a newly elected visionary US president may have to postpone spending on renewable energy.

Toshiba is the first flash manufacturer to incorporate a high-K dielectric in their product. Their innovative inter-poly dielectric has allowed Toshiba to scale their floating gate flash memory to 43nm. The 16Gbit multi-level cell (MLC) device from Toshiba sets the new high watermark for NAND flash bit density at 139Mbits/mm².

Samsung claimed the first implementation of high-K dielectric for flash. However, that was for a charge-trapping (CTF) device they expected to roll out for 4Xnm. By now, we have all heard a lot about TANOS flash from Samsung. There is no floating gate with CTF, so the high-K material is in the tunnel oxide between the silicon channel and the control gate of the memory cell. The TANOS concept first announced by Samsung at IEDM 2005 was an extension to the generic SONOS approach of an oxide/nitride/oxide sandwich for charge trapping much like the so-called O-N-O inter-poly dielectric routinely used to separate the control and floating gate in traditional flash devices. The SONOS acronym was derived from the silicon on top (poly gate) of the dielectric and the silicon substrate underneath. SANOS CTF devices increased the dielectric constant of the charge trapping dielectric to allow the layers to electrically scale without sacrificing reliability by physically thinning the layers. The ‘A’ in SANOS comes from the aluminum-oxide high-K material. The last step to get to TANOS was for Samsung to substitute a tantalum-nitride metal gate in their CTF.

The bottom line from that wordy, acronym-laden paragraph is that floating gate was supposedly running out of steam and CTF devices were going to replace them. That’s what generated all the buzz and all the lovely new acronyms. Despite many “expert” predictions over the years, reports of the death of floating gate flash are greatly exaggerated. On the contrary, floating gate technology continues to dominate the market. I wonder if the floating gate technologists at Toshiba are having a good laugh because they were first to market with high-K which was a big part of the CTF that was supposed to put them out of business.

Many more details on this innovative flash process from Toshiba are available from Semiconductor Insights.

For years the question, “How much is enough?” has been debated regarding NAND flash endurance. How many write cycles do you really need over the lifetime of a camera card or memory stick? How long do you need your portable data to stay intact?

SI’s senior memory analyst, Young Choi, attended the recent Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara to hear what the vendors are saying about solid-state drives, or SSD’s. As NAND flash prepares to reach out and grab a chunk of the hard disk drive market, it will face even more scrutiny as we will all demand more endurance from the SSD’s that are just beginning to show up in select computers. As Young noted, “The overall impression is that the market is still in its infancy and it will take quite a while before enterprises and consumers adopt systems with SSDs.” And that was certainly the view of Fujitsu who cautiously observed, “the market and consumer are not happy about SSD overall.”

Participants were focused on three areas – performance, endurance and price. Many experts are calling for standardization of SSD performance metrics to eliminate the current state of confusion over SSD performance metrics. That would help avoid the “benchmarketing” we are often forced to suffer in this industry.

When I mentioned the NAND flash endurance debates of the past, I was alluding to the MLC versus SLC wars that have been waged over the years (often with Toshiba and Samsung as the respective combatants). The key information returned from the Summit was based on a usage model of 20GB per day for the typical consumer. This means that MLC NAND flash could provide sufficient lifetimes for consumer SSD products.

Several summit participants tried to predict the future of the SSD market by comparing it to the HDD market of long ago. Expect some major rounds of consolidation considering that there are more than 70 SSD manufacturers today.

But it seems like there is more driving SSD technology than simple bits and drive endurance. There is a shade of green overtaking the SSD conversation. Yes, saving energy and “going green” is a big part of the talk about SSD’s. At the Summit, the local California utility, PG&E, promoted the need to reduce energy demands through technological innovation. Their example was the power consumed by large data centers which can be reduced by transitioning to SSD.

Young mentioned that Intel will have some interesting things to discuss at the Intel Developer Forum August 19 through 21. Intel may concentrate on the controller for SSD, and this may actually be the key component to making NAND work in the SSD. The way operating systems use the hard disk is really tough on flash. For robust SSD’s in our future laptops, we will be relying on Intel and others to implement intelligent control and management of which physical memory locations are used to even out the wear over the whole flash chip over the life of the product. SanDisk has proposed their own version that they are calling LDE or Long Term Data Endurance.

David Manners recently reported in Electronics Weekly that the semiconductor materials market will grow at double the rate of the chip industry. The actual numbers quoted from the SIA and SEMI respectively shake out as 4% for semiconductors and 9% for materials. It all sounds like solid growth - right?

Or does it? I fear that some solid-sounding numbers might be exploited to make things sound good when we might be headed for more trouble down the road. Where will the increase in tools and materials spending lead? Manners wisely attributed the more than double growth rate for materials to the combination of a rise in unit IC shipments coupled with a “steep decline in ASP…besetting the chip industry.”

Maybe I need to sign up for that remedial MBA program because I just don’t get it. What’s going to happen if the fabs’ spending rate on materials is increasing more than twice as fast as the revenues they get from the chips they manufacture?

Last week, I posted a long, wordy (your own description might not be so flattering) article about OmniVision’s OmniBSI announcement. To sum up, OmniVision appears to be first out of the gate with a backside illuminated CMOS image sensor for the mass market. Despite the length of last week’s post, I left out an important detail that every other blog or news source - regardless of credibility - mentioned. As OmniVision’s foundry partner, TSMC is obviously a key player in bringing this new technology to production.

I apologize for omitting TSMC from the discussion. Although I don’t have any details on the working relationship or particulars of the processing TSMC might be applying to the OmniBSI products, the fab is certainly a central component in this process.

Image sensor guru Eric Fossum posted some insightful comments in the dpreview forum. (For more image sensor news go to Image Sensors World where I was pointed to this particular forum post.)In Eric’s words, “consider this announcement REAL and NEAR FUTURE.” That is an even stronger endorsement of his other description of “a major achivement by TSMC.”

This week presented interesting news as two image sensor technologies I thought might one day displace traditional types appear to have made breakthroughs on the march to commercialization. NHK showcased an active layer over IC - or AIC -type of sensor while OmniVision announced they would be sampling a backside illuminated - BSI - detector next month. Junko Yoshida’s detailed article on EETimes put me onto the backside scent. 

For the traditional CMOS image sensor (front-side illuminated or FSI to use the OmniVision convention), the ratio of stack height or optical path length to pixel pitch is an important limitation. There are many drivers - both market and technical - for decreasing the pixel pitch of the image sensor. Leaving those aside for now, shrinking active pixel sensor dimensions is a given. Since the active silicon region (or photodiode) where incoming light is converted into electrical energy sits at the bottom of the metal interconnect, it’s easy to see why this dimension receives so much attention. As a result image sensor manufacturers have raced to reduce the height of the interconnect over the photodiode. This is most important with CMOS image sensors (CIS) since CCD’s do not include any processing circuits on the sensing chip. CIS devices often incorporate a great deal of signal processing on the same silicon as the sensor. Increasing integration drives more metal wiring levels if you hope to keep the total chip size under control.

About the time SoC integration on CIS was reaching a peak, a few manufacturers transitioned from aluminum to copper for the interconnect. Copper’s lower resistance allows thinner wires for a given line pitch for the same design target resistance as aluminum. Thinner metals means a shorter optical path to the photodiode. But copper integration is not ideal for image sensors since the barrier levels create unwanted interfaces resulting in reflections and optical system losses. There were also rumours of lower camera module yields for devices built with copper. Whatever the reasons, many manufacturers returned to aluminum and longer optical paths. But a few percent improvement will not eliminate the issues with optical path length, something these two new technologies avoid for the most part.

Both AIC and BSI approaches treat interconnect where it should be - literally the “back end” from the optical point of view. An AIC detector adds active silicon with photodiodes on top of the chip wiring, so light reaches it first. BSI flips the chip allowing light to hit the sensor from the back. Viewing a BSI detector in cross-section, it would like very similar to the traditional FSI device. The only differences is that light enters through the backside of the substrate opposite to the active silicon surface.

Several companies have published work on the AIC approach. The sensor in these cases is most commonly amorphous silicon patterned into detectors after traditional BEOL metal IC processing. These devices employ similar structures and materials to those used in LCD display panels. ST Micro and Samsung have been brewing this type of technology for a while. (ST and Samsung both had multiple presentations at IISW 2007. See my earlier post.)

But the NHK sensor uses an organic light sensitive layer rather than silicon. I have not been able to confirm a connection with FujiFilm, but this sounds a lot like the technology they presented at last year’s IISW. It doesn’t take too much imagination to visualize the organic sensor approach as spreading old school analog film emulsions over a state-of-the-art readout IC.

I guess it’s obvious that substrate processing must be adapted for the BSI device. That is almost assuredly based on SOI technology. The leading SOI substrate provider is Soitec. CEA-LETI spawned another company in the SOI space in 2003. Tracit Technologies offers layer transfer technology to IC’s onto SOI substrates. Last year, they helped e2V bring backside detectors to the “medium volume professional image sensor market.” I think TraciT will be an important factor in getting BSI into the high volume consumer market.

There has been a lot of news this year about the wafer-level camera (WLC) and through-silicon vias (TSV) to facilitate it. Even some reverse engineering blogs have something to say about TSV! BSI offers an interesting packaging option in addition to the many performance advantages as well. It lends itself well to flip-chip packaging. Perhaps the cost adders that have maligned the BSI approach in the press will be more than compensated by the cheaper flip chip packaging it will allow.

OVT now calls this technolgoy “BSI” for back-side imager, but it seems to have been previously called “BID” as I learned at IISW 2007. Dr. Bedaprata Pain should now be very happy that his attempts to jump-start the transition to back-side illumination may have sparked commercialization of the technology.

OmniVision’s PR states:

OmniBSI architecture delivers a number of performance improvements over FSI, including increased sensitivity per unit area, improved quantum efficiency and reduced cross talk and photo response non-uniformity, which all lead to significant improvements in image quality. Since light directly strikes the silicon, the fill factor of the image sensor is significantly improved so as to deliver best-in-class low-light sensitivity. A much higher chief ray angle enables shorter lens heights which in turn allows for thinner camera modules, which are ideal for use in the next generation of ultra-thin mobile phones. Finally, BSI technology affords a much larger aperture size, which allows for lower f stops facilitating the development of better performing camera modules with superior camera performance.

Even though this is written by the spin doctors, their statements are absolutely correct. The improved low-light sensitivity will be especially important for cameraphones as users, and therefore designers, are demanding improvements to images acquired in pubs, restaurants and parties. Nokia made this very clear at Image Sensors Europe, and those sentiments were echoed by a number of sensor manufacturers including Aptina and OmniVision.

As for the suggestion that there is little novelty to the BSI detector approach, I can’t argue that the idea was around for a while (check Stern, Proc. SPIE, vol. 1071, 1989). For example, MIT Lincoln Labs has a long history in this field. But then again, how long did it take the laser to make its way into a useful consumer product?

There are more rumors this week about AMD’s manufacturing strategy. Tony Smith of The Register cited a DigiTimes report that AMD will be adding TSMC as a production partner. Fusion processors are scheduled for late 2009. If you think about it, you could say that AMD already has a long-standing relationship with TSMC. After all, ATI was one of the foundry giants biggest customers for years, and this has continued to manufacture GPU’s at TSMC since AMD acquired them almost two years ago. So it’s not a stretch (or such big news) that AMD would consider moving a chunk of its microprocessor production to TSMC as well.

AMD is part of the Common Platform technology consortium that leverages research and development from IBM and volume manufacturing expertise from Chartered. The idea is sound but may require some more time to mature and pay dividends for some of the partners. I have heard that Chartered’s past experience has been centered around the copy exact mentality and running wafers through without trying to improve yields. If a customer such as AMD developed a new process, it was moved into Chartered ‘as is’ on the identical toolset with no continuous process improvement.

The need to maintain an open dialog between the fab and the design team is now broadly accepted including Chartered, and this has prompted their involvement in the Common Platform. On the other hand, TSMC recognized this need much earlier than their foundry competitors (at least in Asia). TSMC has done an outstanding job of closing the loop between design and fabrication often taking the next step of mask editing for layout optimization to improve the yield of its customers designs. TSMC designs, acquires and maintains a large library of IP cores with guaranteed yield in its fabs. Not only can they provide these IP blocks as plug-in modules to customers, but the knowledge they gained developing those cores can help designers to optimize layouts for leading-edge TSMC processes. TSMC has a knack for squeezing out those last few percent of yield.

But what about SOI at TSMC? The SOI processes used by AMD are tightly bound to IBM and its partners. TSMC has worked on SOI in the past, but I’m sure licensing talks related to SOI will be a big part of any move to TSMC-fabbed MPU’s. Or maybe TSMC will convince AMD to transition MPU chips over to bulk silicon (where the GPU’s are now) and cut Chartered, IBM and the Common Platform out completely. Is that what Hector Ruiz means when he says, “our plans are bold?”
 

From all the rumor and conjecture we hear, AMD’s manufacturing strategy could well be running out of steam. Could this be another case of milking the local government and low-priced labor in a geography and then pulling up stakes once the subsidies run out or local salaries get too high? There are reports of labor strife in Dresden. The days of cheap labor in Eastern Germany are gone and so with them possibly AMD fabs. That would be an unfortunate loss for Europe and AMD.

AMD had success in previous years by creating a superior CPU design to Intel’s. The tables have been turned recently with Intel using their teams in Israel to produce first-class designs. With so much capital and research behind manufacturing at Intel, maybe AMD should re-focus their efforts in design where they have proven that they can outperform their huge rival.

But I think that AMD’s design and manufacturing are both technically sound. The Common Platform Technology consortium with IBM research driving innovation is definitely providing enough horsepower to stay at the leading edge of the technology curve. High volume manufacturing was reliable at Chartered through 90nm and 65nm. Perhaps AMD’s difficulties lie with a marketing or management-level decision to put four processor cores on one die. Intel packages two dual core dies together to create their quad core MPU. Although, there is a slight performance benefit to getting all the cores onto a single piece of silicon, is it really worthwhile in today’s world with very little software written that’s able to take advantage of multi-core processing power? For the kind of performance gains possible, the costs are just too high. Lower yields for a much larger quad core die mean either higher production costs now or waiting to improve yield and pushing out volume production to a later date. Lose money or lose market share, that’s your choice with the bigger chip.

Perhaps AMD has learned some hard lessons regarding procs per die. As Rick Merritt just reported in EETimes, AMD has announced a 12 core server chip that contains two six-pack processor die.

Intel blew it with the Prescott, but grabbed back market share in the server market by adopting AMD’s design strategy. So even when they lost, Intel had enough clout to grab back what it lost while heading back for a ground-up redesign. It’s obviously not fun being in a cage match with Intel every day. AMD deserves respect for staying in there, round after round.

I’m not sure I would go so far as to agree with many of the allegations AMD has made against Intel in the anti-trust suit, but then again, it’s hard to say. Intel is just so big, rich and powerful, there’s a lot they can do. They probably have more PR firms under contract than they can even remember. Even if you argue the allegations of a conspiracy to lock out AMD with the major PC makers, I’m sure you would agree that there has been a lot of bad press circulating about AMD. It never takes much of a spark to create a wildfire of news reports on something like this, but as each flame dies out, it seems that there is a new story popping up somewhere else. Don’t financial analysts have other stocks or markets to consider? Or just maybe there are people working hard to keep up this negative momentum in the press.

Why does it work for Intel - keeping fab operations inside the US? For now, they have that luxury because of overwhelming market share, but I would guess their time will come as well. If AMD can transition successfully to a fab-lite model, perhaps they will grab enough of the microprocessor market to get Intel (or the analysts) talking about fab-lite as well. I hope AMD can increase market share one way or another because competition is a healthy thing - even for Intel.

Maybe I missed the point of Web 2.0, or maybe I just don’t have enough bandwidth available at my desktop to make it viable. Either way, it looks like videoconferencing is a technology worth watching.

Our friends at iSuppli recently announced that video conferencing was set to emerge as a major application. Their forecast suggests sales of over $500M and 113 million units this year growing to $664M and 236.7 million units in 2012.

But regular video conferencing is not going to give us any new technology. In fact, the iSuppli numbers point to a low cost imaging platform akin to cameraphones as they predict the per unit price to fall from $4.42 today down to $2.80 in 2012.

My own company, now TechInsights, experimented with Second Life as a platform for virtual events like presentations and meetings. Now the big boss at UBM which owns TechInsights, David Levin, has begun to use “telepresence” to describe how things will get done in the future. In other words, don’t confuse this with tele presents. It’s not the gifts your grandma orders by phone from the Home Shopping Network.

Now I’m sucking up to the big boss, but this is a technology that is bound to catch on – both in the boardroom and with anyone trying to go green. But the Cisco Telepresence idea offers more than saving on airfares and airplane exhaust. Although the video below does reflect today’s technology, it is an exciting view into what third or fourth generation technology might look like. It is quite exciting to think about.

Cisco’s present system uses either an IP phone or MS Outlook to schedule the video conference. It relies on various pieces of mature technology. If you watch some of the other YouTube videos or demos at Cisco’s website, the software and system integration of the audio and video systems actually enables the telepresence experience.

Image sensors are only a small piece of the puzzle for spreading videconferencing into the mainstream. Obviously Cisco’s interest is not in the imagers. They are looking at ways to increase internet bandwidth and packet handling demands. But there are some interesting drivers for imager technology nonetheless. This application will benefit from larger sensors. The users will be interested in high-def video on larger displays. (Cisco will be too with 720 or 1080 lines of video sucking up a lot more bandwidth than VGA.) Beyond display resolution, features like digital pan, tilt and zoom will enhance the telepresence experience. Although these features are not entirely new, it will require some engineering effort to integrate them with other improvements like face recognition and eye tracking to make telepresence more like being there.

When weighed against the costs in either dollars or travel delays associated with traditional face-to-face meetings, telepresence technology might be able to demand a price premium in order to provide users with the most seamless and natural experience possible. That might help some imaging chip makers to keep their heads above the commodity water line that iSuppli predicts just a little longer.

On March 20, the famous Gibson Guitar Corporation sued Harmonix, MTV, and EA for infringement of US Patent 5,990,405 – System and Method for generating and controlling a Simulated Musical Concert Experience. The defendants named are meant to cover the entire Guitar Hero series as well as the newer Rock Band game. Gibson has since expanded its suit to cover various retailers who sell the games including Wal-Mart.

Gibson Guitar Corporation’s complaint, filed in the Nashville Division of Tennessee District Court (courtesy of Wired’s Game|Life) specifies the alleged infringement like this:

THE INFRINGING PRODUCTS AT ISSUE
16. Defendants have and continue to manufacture and/or sell products that infringe, contribute to the infringement of and/or induce the infringement of at least claims 1, 13-15, 25 and 28 of the ‘405 Patent and/or have no other substantial noninfringing uses.

Considering how the music industry works today, you have to assume that Harmonix spent a lot of time and legal fee dollars working out licensing deals with record labels for the songs that appear in Guitar Hero. After all that work, it’s no surprise that they may have overlooked the possibility of a company outside the gaming world developing the concept first.

But that’s not all. According to SI device sourcing guru, Allan Yogasingam, ActiVision has already paid a license fee to Gibson for use of the signature Les Paul style of guitar for its game controller. The Les Paul image and brand is a lot more valuable (and stronger) than the patent cited in this case.

Before reading the complaint above, I read through the claims of the ‘405 patent trying to determine what angle Gibson’s lawyers were taking. There are four independent claims and 26 supporting claims. At least one independent claim needs to be map to the game system for Gibson to have a case.

Claim 13 is the broadest, but will it hold up to prior art scrutiny? How do karaoke machines fit in? Wikipedia suggests that the first machine was invented in Japan in the 1970’s. The entry for Karaoke history points out that the original inventor did not patent the machine. The Philippines granted a Letters Patent (UM-5269) in 1983 to its most famous inventor, Roberto del Rosario, for a system originally prototyped in 1975.

But one key element of ‘405 in all the claims is the use of a video interface as well. Although the earliest karaoke machines relied on singers to know the words or read them from a paper song sheet, video teleprompting entered the fray some time in the eighties. I may not be young and hip and part of today’s crowd of gamers, but I wasn’t quite hitting the karaoke bars back then. Perhaps one of my blogging elders could help me sort out more accurate dates for the introduction of video into the karaoke system. The ‘405 patent was filed in 1998 years after video technology was readily available to the karaoke set.

Claim 21 maps most directly to the game. It specifies a guitar. That is the focal point. Gibson’s lawyers arguments against the prior art hinge on the definition of “musical instrument.” It won’t be the first time a huge bill gets rung up over semantics, but this case will come down to whether singing into a microphone constitutes a musical instrument or not. Your favorite singer won’t get a vote.