By Ed Korczynski, Sr. Technical Editor

Virtual Roundtable provides perspective on the need for greater integration within the “fabless-foundry” ecosystem

Q1: The fabless-foundry relationship in commercial IC manufacturing was established during an era of fab technology predictability—clear litho roadmaps for smaller and cheaper devices—but the future of fab technology seems unpredictable. The complexity which must be managed by a fabless company has already increased to justify leaders such as Apple or Qualcomm investing in technology R&D with foundries and with EDA- and OEM-companies. With manufacturing process technology integrating more materials with ever smaller nodes, how do we manage such complexity?

ANSWER: Gregg Bartlett, Senior Vice President, Product Management, GLOBALFOUNDRIES

The vast majority of Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) have either gone completely fabless or partnered with foundries for their leading-edge technology needs instead of making the huge investments necessary to keep pace with technology. The foundry opportunity is increasingly concentrated at the leading edge; this segment is expected to drive 60 percent of the total foundry market by 2016, representing a total of $27.5 billion. Yet there are fewer high-volume manufacturers that have the capabilities to offer leading-edge technologies beyond 28nm, even as the major companies have accelerated their technology roadmaps at 20nm and 14nm and added new device architectures.

This has led to a global capacity challenge. Leading-edge fabs are more expensive and fewer than ever. At the 130nm node, the cost to build a fab was just over $1B. For a 28nm fab, the cost is about $6B and a 14nm fab is nearly $10B. Technology development costs are rising at a similar rate, growing from a few $10M’s at 130nm to several $100M’s at 28nm.

On top of these technology and manufacturing challenges, product life cycles are shrinking and end users are expecting more and more from their devices in terms of performance, power-efficiency, and features. Competing on manufacturing expertise alone is no longer a viable strategy in today’s semiconductor industry, and solutions developed in isolation are not adequate. The industry must work closer across all levels of the supply chain to understand these dynamics and how they put demands on the silicon chip.

Fortunately, the fabless/foundry model is evolving to accommodate these changing dynamics. We have been promoting this idea for years with what we like to call “Foundry 2.0.” In the 1970s/1980s, the industry was dominated by the IDM. Then the foundry model was invented and grew to prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s, but it was much more of a contract manufacturing model. A fabless company developed a design in isolation and then “threw it over the wall” to the foundry for manufacturing. There was not much need for interplay between the two companies. Of course, as technology complexity has increased in the past decade, this dynamic has changed dramatically. We have entered the era of collaborative device manufacturing. Collaboration is a buzz word that gets thrown around a lot, but today it really is critical and it needs to happen across all vectors, including design flow development, manufacturing supply chain, and customer engagement.

Q2: 3D in packaging started with wire-bonded-chip-stacks and now includes silicon-interposers (a.k.a. “2.5D”) and the memory-cube using through-silicon via (TSV). How about the complexity of 3D products using chip-package co-design, and many players in the ecosystem being needed hroughout design-ramp-HVM?

ANSWER: Sesh Ramaswami, Managing Director, TSV and Advanced Packaging, Silicon Systems Group of Applied Materials

Enabling 3D requires the participation of the extended ecosystem. These include contributions from CAD, design tools for die architecture, floor plan, and layout circuit design test structures, as well as methodology wafer level process equipment and materials, wafer-level test assembly and packaging stacked die and package level testing.

Q3: Due to challenges with lithographic scaling below 45nm half-pitch, how does the need to integrate new materials and device structures change the fabless-foundry relationship? How much of fully-depleted channels using SOI wafers and/or finFETs, followed by alternate channels can the industry afford without commited damand from IDMs and major fabless players for specific variants?

ANSWER: Adam Brand, Director of Transistor Technology, Silicon Systems Group of Applied Materials

New materials and device structures are going to play a key role in advancing the technology to the next several nodes.

With EUV delayed, multi-patterning is growing in use, and new materials are enabling the sophisticated and precise extension of multi-patterning to the 7nm node and beyond. The multi-patterning schemes however bring specific restrictions on layout which will affect the design process.

For device structures, Epi in particular is going to enable the next generation of complex device designs with improved mobility and by supporting very thin precisely defined channel structures to scale to smaller gate length and pitch. For these next generation devices, the R&D challenges will be high, but the industry cannot afford to skimp on R&D to find the winning solution to the low power transistor technology required for the 7nm and 5nm and beyond nodes.

Q4: Mobile consumer devices now seem to drive the leading edge of demand for many ICs. However, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) is often spoken of needing just 65nm node chips to keep costs as low as possible, and these designs are expected to run in high volume for many years. How will these different devices that will continue to evolve in different ways get integrated together?

ANSWER: Michael Buehler-Garcia, Senior Director of Marketing, Calibre Design Solutions of Mentor Graphics

IOT has become the new industry buzz word. What it has done is spotlight the multiple elements of a complete solution that do not require emerging process technologies for their chip design. Moreover, while a chip may use a well established process node, the actual design may be very complex. For example Mentor is participating in the German RESCAR program to increase the reliability of automotive electronics using our Calibre PERC solution. The initial reliability checks written are targeted for 180nm and older process nodes. Why? Because today’s 180nm and older node designs are much more complex than when these nodes were mainstream digital nodes and as such require more advanced verification solutions. Bottom line: as opposed to a strategy of only moving to the next process node, chip design companies today have multiple options. It is up to the ecosystem to provide solutions that allow the designers be able to make trade-offs without major changes in their design flows.

http://semimd.com/blog/tag/globalfoundries/

cheers