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Internet of Things dominates SEMICON West

SEMICON West convened July 14-16 in San Francisco, with the 2015 version taking place during the 50th anniversary of Moore’s Law. Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI, said things were different in 1965. Gasoline was 31 cents a gallon, the Dow was under 1,000, and the price of a car was an outrageous $2,800. But one thing remains the same, he added: Moore’s Law is alive and well—despite frequent predictions that the end is near.

Doug Davis, senior vice president and general manager for the Internet of Things at Intel, indicated his faith in Moore’s Law by delivering a keynote titled “The Internet of Things and the Next 50 Years of Moore’s Law.” The IoT, he said, will fuel innovation in every type of industry. He urged attendees to think beyond the device to tackle problems worldwide.

If there was a word of caution relating to Moore’s Law, it was mentioned at a keynote panel session titled “Scaling the Walls of Sub-14-nm Manufacturing,” with representatives of imec, ASE,
GLOBALFOUNDRIES, Qualcomm, and Stanford University participating. Although issues such as package yield must be addressed, the general conclusion was that the physics isn’t the problem—it’s making the economic value proposition of going to a new node.

Preceding SEMICON West was the imec Technical Forum. Luc Van den hove, imec president and CEO, presented a picture of a future in which “the happy many” will be served by the myriad of interconnected devices that make up the IoT, or as he put it, the Intuitive Internet of Things, or I2oT.

And at a Leti Day event, Marie Semeria, CEO of CEA-Leti, described how her organization can help partners build wearable connected sensors and devices for home automation. Leti, she said, is active in such fields as IoT and smart objects, energy and environment, manufacturing, transport, and biology and health.

Also co-located with SEMICON West was Test Vision 2020. In a keynote address, Kaivan Karimi vice president and general manager of wireless solutions at Atmel, described how the IoT will impact the semiconductor and cloud markets. In an invited address, Thomas Burger, who leads test development and technology at ams, outlined his company’s sensor offerings and test challenges.

Participants representing companies including Advantest, AMD, Amkor, Cascade Microtech, COHU/Ismeca, Cypress, ELES Semiconductor, FormFactor, LitePoint, Optimal+, Roos Instruments, Teradyne, Texas Instruments, and Xcerra all weighed in on test challenges and strategies in papers, panels, and poster sessions.

On the exhibit floor, Advantest touted the use of its V93000 platform to test IoT devices. The V93000 offers a universal-pin architecture, providing digital operation to 1.6 Gb/s with protocol-per-pin support. It also supports accurate and fast voltage and current trimming, provides an AWG per pin, features RF spectrum-analyzer capability, and measures frequency and jitter.

In addition, Advantest described its new T5833, based on the company’s Advanced System platform. The T5833 is a cost-efficient, high-volume test system capable of performing wafer sort and final test of DRAM and NAND devices. Advantest also highlighted its new 28G OPM (28-gigabit Optical Port Module) for the T2000 system. 28G OPM is the company’s first solution designed specifically for testing optical transceivers.

National Instruments brought its Semiconductor Test System (STS) to SEMICON West for the first time. The STS is a production-ready test system that combines the NI PXI platform, TestStand test management software, and LabVIEW graphical programming inside a fully enclosed test head. NI also presented its RFIC Test System, which supports 802.11a/b/g/h/n/ac, UMTS, LTE, and LTE-Advanced technologies and includes envelope-tracking capability.

Optimal+ presented release 6.0 of its Semiconductor Operations Platform, which adds EXACT (EXtreme Analytics and CharacTerization) to the Optimal+ family of products. Based on the growing demand for greater data collection and analytic performance, EXACT delivers big data performance to semiconductor manufacturing operations, leveraging the power of the HP Vertica Analytics Platform to enable customers to take advantage of all of the data that is generated across their global distributed supply chain, including new product introduction and high-volume manufacturing. The company also touted its reception of the Frost & Sullivan “2015 Global Semiconductor Test Visionary Innovation Leadership Award.”

inTEST Thermal Solutions introduced two Temptronic ThermoSpot benchtop systems for temperature-testing integrated circuits, including high-watt-emitting devices. The company also highlighted its new environmentally friendly series of Temptronic ThermoStream temperature forcing systems, which use 50% less energy with very low audible noise.

SL Power Electronics featured its MINT1500 AC/DC power supply, which solves power challenges for next-generation medical devices and industrial test equipment. The MINT1500 is a 500-W supply that offers a flexible horizontal or vertical configuration while meeting applicable EMC requirements.

Evans Analytical Group was on hand to describe its microelectronics test and engineering lab network, which provides semiconductor and electronics design firms with test, debug, early engineering, and failure analysis support.

Pickering Interfaces and Pickering Electronics shared a booth to showcase their respective systems as well as components. In particular, Pickering Electronics featured its new high-voltage micro-SIL reed relays. Pickering says its new Series 119 range with stand-off voltage up to 3 kV is the industry’s smallest high-voltage single-in-line reed relay now available.

And finally, Marvin Test Solutions exhibited the TS-900 family of semiconductor test solutions, which are based on the PXI modular platform while providing users the features and capabilities associated with “big iron” ATE.

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