Set network news, according to foreign media reports, smartphone sales slowed and the bottleneck of Moore's law, the semiconductor industry for the new process node can provide the power consumption, efficiency and cost to improve cognition, change after 22 nm process, due to the need to use multiple exposures and fin type transistor (FinFET), design and manufacturing costs continue to increase.
And climate change, from the mainframe computer, desktop computer, laptop all the way evolution to smartphones and tablet, after have fault, lack of dominating the market with a single device, but increases many vertical markets customized solutions.
According to Semiconductor Engineering, Semiconductor industry after entering 10 nm process again faced the problem of static power, not only need more color and image layer, chip design and manufacturing are time consuming than ever before. Dynamic power density and the static power consumption caused by overheating also exacerbated as nodes, and much harder to predict and verify.
Companies must improve chip sales, investment cost can be recycled. Environment, however, to the customization, not only can't with a single design applied to billions of devices, design and technology there is less usage and generality, while design programs become more complex, the total number of chips continue to grow, but each kind of design of production decline in the number.
New technology (Synopsys) CEO and chairman Aart DE Geus, according to the semiconductor industry in the past, there are two main stages, the first is the operation, after the killer applications for personal computers and network, server and cloud; The second is mobile, smart phones become a large number of application platform.
This two stages for the development of technology has a great influence, but the growth rate has been. Geus forecast, it will need several years to see the semiconductor industry economic benefit after transformation.
In addition to the change of environment, semiconductor technology itself, such as new tools, materials, methods, standards, and the method of production and packaging chip, also in transition. For one thing the Next Generation Mobile Networks group set 5 g wireless transmission specifications, can promote the network download speeds to 10 GBPS, delay is less than 1 millisecond.
Intel (Intel) think, 5 g can open network virtualization functions (NFV) and software defined network (SDN), Qualcomm, Qualcomm is bullish about 5 g can bring new service, link new industries and device and change the user experience.
In addition to data transmission, data storage also began to appear new technologies, such as 3 d NAND Flash, high frequency width (HBM), mixed cube storage memory (HMC), the magnetic resistance type random access memory and 3 d XPoint technology, etc.
Another piece of the puzzle is encapsulated way, although the FinFET and surround type FET can solve the problem of power consumption and improve performance, but also relatively increases the difficulty and cost of the design and manufacture. Alternative is to use 2.5 D or type fan out such advanced packaging technology, the semiconductor industry are put into research, hope to find the ideal packaging solutions.
Looking forward to the future, semiconductor and system level of demand will continue to grow, and security will be incorporated into the design of the parallel and vertical components. As for the change is the biggest computing power will no longer be the final goal, because operation function will gradually spread to different device, and across different networks, market and location. In the past by the device performance driven design, will also be changed to the design of terminal market demand drive technology.
