We have spoken about consolidation many times in IFTLE. Most recently in IFTLE 148, “The Future of Packaging: A Look From 50,000 Feet” we predicted significant consolidation for both equipment and materials suppliers. To be honest this has been focused on the front end equipment suppliers buying up their back end brethren. What happened this week was even more significant.
The $29B merger of Applied Materials with fellow front
end equipment supplier Tokyo Electron was
an all-stock merger, which, if allowed by the courts, will create a global powerhouse in semiconductor
and display manufacturing technology. The company will have a new name, dual
headquarters in Tokyo and Santa Clara, a dual listing on the Tokyo Stock
Exchange and NASDAQ, and will be incorporated in the Netherlands. Under the
terms of the deal, AMAT shareholders will own 68% of the new company and TEL
shareholders 32%. Tetsuro Higashi, chairman, president and CEO of TEL, will
serve as chairman of the new company, while Gary Dickerson, president and CEO
of AMAT, will serve as chief executive officer of the new company.
We should not view this as “Fait accomplis” because I’m sure the antitrust paperwork is being filed as we speak by their remaining competitors.
The Leading Edge
When I started this blog as “Perspectives From the Leading
Edge” back in 2008 in Semiconductor International, I noted that we would be focused
on the leading edge because “..that’s where
the money is made”. Further evidence of that came from IC Insights last week
when they provided the headline “Leading edge
technology to be responsible for entire 2013 increase in pure-play foundry
sales” [link]
It appears that 51% of TSMC’s revenue and 50% of GlobalFoundries’ sales in 2013 are expected to be from ≤45nm processing.
In 2012, only TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC had significant sales of ≤45nm technology. In 2013, TSMC is expected to have about 4x the dollar volume sales at ≤45nm as compared to GlobalFoundries and about 12x the ≤45nm sales of UMC ($10.33 billion for TSMC, $2.53 billion for GlobalFoundries, and $0.89 billion for UMC). In contrast, SMIC only entered initial production of its 45nm technology in early 2012, more than three years after TSMC first put its 45nm process into production and is forecast to sell only $0.22 billion of ≤45nm technology this year. In fact, only 22% of UMC’s 2013 revenue and 11% of SMIC’s 2013 sales are forecast to come from devices having ≤45nm feature sizes, which is why their revenue per wafer is so low as compared to TSMC and GlobalFoundries.
Despite continued rumors of process and yield problems in
the 28nm TSMC fab, TSMC is forecast to have about $6.33 billion in sales of
28nm devices in 2013and as a result, TSMC is expected to hold a 78% share of
the pure-play foundry industry’s $8.10 billion of ≤28nm sales this year.
EMPC Grenoble
The recent European Microelectronics Packaging Conference,
EMPC, was held in Grenoble Fr. We will be taking a look at some of the key
papers from the conference over the next few weeks.
IMEC
IMEC reported on electrical
characterizations done to identify the impact of typical 3D processes on CMOS
devices. They report
on studies done to assess the effects induced by TSV, wafer thinning and
stacking.
The Figure below
shows measurements done for PFET transistors ( 2 channel lengths (50nm and
300nm) with TSV of 5um diameter). They conclude that the longer channel is more
sensitive to TSV presence, i.e. at a distance of 5um from TSV center, they
measure ION variation of 7% in the case of 300nm channel and 2.5%
variation in case of 50nm channel. NFET transistors are less sensitive to TSV
proximity. At a distance of 5um from TSV center, they measure a max ION
variation of 2.5%. Similar to PFET, NFET transistors with longer channels are also
more sensitive to TSV proximity.
No relevant
change in the device drive current and therefore no major effect induced by the
thinning or stacking processes.
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