Ledtech opens new facility in UK
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Ledtech opens new facility in UK

　　Ledtech, one of the world’s largest capacity LED manufacturers, has announced the opening of a European facility in the UK.　　The new facility adds a range of value-added manufacturing services, design-in support, volume availability and security of supply across a wide range of opto parts including discrete LEDs, LED displays, lighting components and luminaires. In addition, later this year, the company will be installing a full LED production line in the UK facility.　　Commenting Frank Liu, Founder, Group Chairman and CEO, Ledtech said: “We constantly invest in people, technology and research & development to ensure that we can offer the solutions our customers need. The opening of our UK facility in Redruth, Cornwall, UK means that we now have design centres in Europe, Asia, and the USA, available to develop custom solutions for applications that require a specialised approach.”　　Ledtech, which offers abroad range of solid-state lighting products and components and addresses sectors that include commercial, consumer, industrial, office, retail, business & finance, among others, has also recently launched a new LED series that operates in the UVC, deep-ultraviolet wavelength band and is targeted at applications including air purification and water and surface disinfectant systems.　　Offered in two current levels, 30mA and 150mA, the Ledtech UVC series LEDs have a wavelength of 265-285nm, deep in the ultra-violet range. This wavelength band is understood to have applications in ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) systems, a disinfection method that uses ultraviolet light to eliminate or deactivate microorganisms by destroying nucleic acids and disrupting their DNA.　　The LEDs have a footprint of 4.4mm and a height of 4.45mm and can operate in temperature ranges from -40 to +60°C and the devices have a max power consumption of 0.3W (30mA version) or 1.5W (150mA version).　　According to William Heath, director at Ledtech UK, “UVGI is used in a variety of applications, including medical sanitation and sterile work facilities. Increasingly it has been employed to sterilize drinking and wastewater and in air purifiers. Early research indicates that UVC band LEDs could have significant uses in this area, as well as in the fields of chemical and biological analysis.”
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Release time：2018-03-27 00:00 reading：2745 Continue reading>>
EUV, 7-nm Roadmaps Detailed
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EUV, 7-nm Roadmaps Detailed

　　Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) is set to enable 10-nm and 7-nm process nodes over the next few years, but significant work is still needed on photoresists to enable 5-nm chips, according to an analysis released at the Industry Strategy Symposium here.　　At the same time, EUV maker ASML announced that it shipped 10 EUV systems last year and will ship 20 to 22 more this year. The systems will have, or at least support, a 250-W laser light source needed to produce 125 wafers/hour.　　“The main pieces for EUV at 7 nm are in place, and we will see some volume of wafers this year … but photoresist defects are still an order of magnitude too high for 5 nm,” said Scotten Jones, president of IC Knowledge.　　The new and expensive systems, in development more than 20 years, help make the fine features needed for next-generation chips and reduce the time required to make them. They will first be used on logic chips such as microprocessors and later applied to DRAMs but are not needed by today’s 3D NAND flash chips, said Scotten.　　“EUV provides a tremendous reduction in cycle time and edge placement errors … but not much cost reduction, at least initially. There are so many other benefits that even if the cost is neutral, it still makes sense.”　　Jones expects that ASML will ship another 70 systems in 2019–2020. That’s enough to support production nodes that he detailed in the works at Globalfoundries, Intel, Samsung, and TSMC.　　ASML has plans in place to increase uptime of the systems from about 75% today to 90%, a top concern for lithographers, said Jones. In addition, he expressed confidence that the company will release in time a pellicle needed to protect some EUV wafers from contamination.　　To enable resists for 5 nm, “we have 12 to 18 months to make a big improvement. The industry will run lots of wafers next year, and that will help,” said Jones, estimating that fabs will make nearly 1 million EUV wafers in 2019, and 3.4 million by 2021.　　ASML aims to boost the 145 wafers/hour throughput that it can get with its 250-W light source to 155 w/h in 2020. It has demonstrated a 375-W light source working in the lab, said Peter Jenkins, ASML’s vice president for corporate strategy and marketing, in a talk here.　　The company’s pellicle passes through 83% of light today and withstands a 245-W light source over 7,000 wafer exposures. However, the most aggressive 7-nm nodes need a 90% transmission used with a 250-W or greater light source.　　One of the most interesting parts of Jones’ talk was a detailed analysis of 10-, 7-, and 5-nm nodes. TSMC qualified last fall a 7-nm process that is ramping now using existing optical steppers. Globalfoundries will ramp a similar process later this year, he said.　　Both companies plan to ramp early next year a second-generation 7-nm process using EUV to make contacts and vias, reducing 15 optical layers to five EUV layers. The process does not provide a shrink, but it shortens cycle times and does not need a pellicle.　　GF announced last June its 2019 plan for 7 nm with EUV. “TSMC has privately told customers that they will do this, too,” said Jones.　　Chipmakers will probably have to use 30-ml/cm2 doses of resists, higher than the 20 ml/cm2that they target. They also will likely have to use e-beam systems to insect masks for defects rather than more accurate actinic systems still in the works that look for defects using the same 13.5-mm wavelength as the EUV systems, said Jones.　　In addition to the work with cuts and vias, GF, Samsung, and TSMC plan 7-nm variants that use EUV with a pellicle to make a first metal layer. These processes will provide a shrink and reduce 23 optical layers to nine EUV layers.　　This is the approach that Samsung will use for its first 7-nm node, called 7LPP, due early next year. TSMC will call its version 7FF+ and ramp it in mid-2019, and GF will follow with its 7LP+ late next year, said Jones.　　The 10-nm process that Intel is currently ramping using optical steppers offers similar density to what its rivals plan with their best 7-nm variants, said Jones. He expects that Intel will adopt EUV for a 10-nm+ upgrade in 2019.　　Samsung and TSMC are already talking about 5-nm processes that could be available before the end of 2019. They could be the first to use EUV for 1D metal layers. The processes could use EUV to reduce up to five cut masks for FinFETs down to one cut mask if better resists emerge, he said.　　Separately, Jenkins said that ASML completed the optics design for its follow on EUV systems supporting a high numerical aperture, and its overall design is “well along.” The company announced in late 2016 plans for the system that should be in volume production in 2024.　　Although EUV is a big milestone for enabling the semiconductor industry to make smaller chips, it is not expected to disrupt existing markets for chipmaking equipment and gear. Fabs will continue to need lots of existing capital equipment and supplies in tandem with EUV for future process nodes, said Jones.
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Release time：2018-01-19 00:00 reading：1348 Continue reading>>
Plessey Rolls Micro<span style='color:red'>LED</span>, Moves to Licensing Model
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Plessey Rolls MicroLED, Moves to Licensing Model

　　Plessey Semiconductor said it expects to be the first to market with a monolithic microLED based display on its GaN-on-Silicon technology. The company also moved to a technology licensing model (as opposed to just manufacturing), to become a key technology platform provider for the photonics industry.　　At CES this week, Plessey is engaging with various display manufacturers and OEMs with a demonstrator to help prove its monolithic approach, and proving the brightness and addressability of the device. The company says it expects to have a prototype microLED fabricated using a GaN-on-Silicon approach at the end of this month and a product by the end of the first half of 2018.　　MicroLED displays came to the forefront this week at CES in Las Vegas, with Samsung announcing its 146-inch TV using microLED technology, which enables luminous efficiency, longer light source lifetime and lower power consumption.　　One of the main challenges to manufacturing microLED displays using non-monolithic methods is the placement of LED chips onto a CMOS backplane, currently achieved using pick and place equipment. This involves the individual placement of every LED on a pitch of less than 50 micron, requiring new and expensive equipment that is subject to productivity issues. As the pixel density of displays increases and pitch reduces, pick and place becomes less feasible both commercially and technically.　　Moving to a monolithic process removes the need for chip placement and will enable smaller and higher resolution displays for a range of applications, including virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and head-up displays. As the only monolithic solution commercially available, Plessey says its technology doesn’t require pick and place equipment and isn’t subject to the associated productivity issues.　　A fully monolithic approach also supports the integration of the standard CMOS circuitry necessary for driving microLED displays, as well as the close integration of high-performance GPUs, all of which can be carried out using standard CMOS manufacturing methods. By solving all the major challenges, licensees will be able to gain instant access to a technology platform that is ready for volume production.　　"We made the decision to become a technology platform provider in order to get our technology out to the widest possible manufacturing base to meet this growing demand," said Michael LeGoff, Plessey's CEO. "By being the first to market with a monolithic microLED display we will be demonstrating our expertise and the ability to access our proven turnkey solution, enabling manufacturers to ramp up the development and production of microLED displays to address emerging applications."　　The new licensing business model is a significant new direction for the company. "The challenge with manufacturing is in scaling production, as well as investment," said Myles Blake, Plessey's marketing director. "Hence Plessey has commenced an extensive licensing program that will see the company license out its GaN-on-Silicon expertise to microLED manufacturers in line with this new strategy of becoming the photonic industry’s foremost technology platform provider."　　Demand for microLED displays is accelerating, with research consultancy Yole Développement forecasting that the market could reach up to 330 million units by 2025. GaN-on-silicon is the only technology platform capable of addressing all the challenges involved with manufacturing microLED displays in high volumes and cost-effectively.　　Yole says microLED displays could have a profound impact on both the LED and display supply chains. The development of large scale microLED displays requires the combination of three major disparate technologies: LED, TFT backplane and chip transfer. The supply chain is complex and lengthy compared with that of traditional displays. Each process is critical and managing every aspect effectively will be challenging.　　"No single player can solve all the issues and it seems unlikely that any will fully vertically integrate", said Eric Virey, senior technology and market analyst at Yole.　　Virey added that while small companies could bring together the different technologies to serve the AR/MR (augmented reality / mixed reality) market, high volume consumer applications such as mobiles or TVs, really need a strong push from a leading OEM to enable the supply chain. He said that Apple has a unique market positioning and appears to be the most likely candidate with enough leverage and financial strength to bring all partners together, with other candidates including Oculus for example, who have also invested in microLEDs for AR/MR applications.
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Release time：2018-01-15 00:00 reading：1403 Continue reading>>
Report: <span style='color:red'>LED</span>s Cut 570 Million Tons of CO2 in '17
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Report: LEDs Cut 570 Million Tons of CO2 in '17

　　The efficiency of LEDs compared to traditional incandescent and fluorescent lighting is one of the most highly touted benefits of the technology. According to a new report by IHS Markit, the use of LEDs to light buildings and outdoor spaces reduced the total carbon dioxide emissions of lighting by some 570 million tons in 2017.　　This reduction, roughly equivalent to 162 coal-fired power plants, enabled LED component and lighting companies to reduce the global carbon footprint by about 1.5 percent this year, IHS Markit(London) estimates.　　Jamie Fox, a principal analyst for the market research house's lighting and LED group, believes LEDs have enabled LED component and lighting companies to transform their industry. These companies, he said, "are fighting climate change much more effectively than other industries, and they should be given credit for it."　　Fox added: "Unlike in other industry sectors, workers at LED companies can honestly say that by selling more of their products, they are helping to reduce global warming."　　LED lighting uses an average of about 40 percent less power than fluorescent  and 80 percent less than incandescents to produce the same amount of light, according to Fox. He expects the impact of LEDs on the global carbon footprint to become more pronounced as more LEDs are installed around the world.　　Based on IHS' analysis of market share data for LED component suppliers, Nichia Corp., a Japanese supplier of LEDs, can saved the most carbon overall. The firm accounted for about 10 percent of all carbon dioxide reduced through the use of LEDs in 2017, or roughly 57 million tons, according to IHS.　　Cree followed Nichia with 8 percent, while Lumileds, Seoul Semiconductor, MLS, Samsung and LG Innotek each have a share in the range of 4 percent to 7 percent, according to IHS.
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Release time：2017-12-28 00:00 reading：1455 Continue reading>>
5G Baseband Dialed in at 3GPP
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5G Baseband Dialed in at 3GPP

　　The 3GPP announced with a tweet from a meeting in Portugal it finished the first standard for a 5G cellular radio. The effort was on an accelerated path to define a spec before the end of the year for baseband chips that are now on their own accelerated path to market before July.　　The milestone concludes a process that attracted as many as 800 engineers submitting up to 3,000 proposals per meeting.　　“Given operator interest, we’ve been doing everything we can to improve the time from spec freeze to commercialization, it is a race to launch 5G devices…so as decisions were made in meetings, we shared them with the ASIC team implementing hardware — it’s all pipelined to incorporate the final changes,” said John Smee, a vice president of engineering for corporate R&D at Qualcomm.　　Details of the Release 15 physical-layer standard were essentially complete after final work group meetings that concluded Dec. 1. That enabled Qualcomm and Ericsson to announce today they already have tested the final spec in their labs running on handsets and base stations using FPGAs.　　“After Release 14, we had an idea what we were shooting for in terms of a general architecture, but the specifics of slot structures, signaling, channel coding, pilot structures and so on were gelling through 2017,” said Smee.　　The current 3GPP spec enables 5G connections over today’s LTE core networks that carriers are expected to offer as commercial services in 2019. The 3GPP aims to deliver next fall a spec for 5G core networks enabling so-called standalone 5G links.　　“A few thousand nodes of the [LTE-based standard] will be deployed in the U.S. by the end of next year for fixed-wireless access with Ericsson and Nokia in the driver’s seat,” for last-mile access services planned by Verizon and others, said Stephane Teral, an analyst at IHS Markit.　　The standalone version will enable broadband mobile services expected for “commercial launch in Korea in 2019 as well as a massive trial in China — then we’ll get Samsung, Huawei and ZTE on board to shake up the market,” Teral said.　　Another market researcher forecasts a 5G build out won’t return the base station market to growth until 2021 given the decline in LTE build outs.　　In separate announcements over the past year, Intel and Qualcomm discussed their plans for their competing 5G baseband chips for smartphones. Base station OEMs typically design their own ASICs as part of their secret sauce.　　Qualcomm ships about half of the client-side LTE basebands today, followed by Samsung and Mediatek. Intel has been leaping up from far behind in the rankings thanks to its design wins in the latest Apple iPhones, said market watchers at Strategy Analytics.　　The 5G baseband race will be measured in the quality of the implementations as well as their time to the finish line. Vendors will differentiate their chips, in part, by the numbers of global frequency bands and receive/transmit antennas they support as well as their latency, throughput and energy efficiency — especially in their power amplifiers, said Qualcomm’s Smee.　　Looking ahead, Release 16 is expected to enable next-generation modems supporting shared licensed/unlicensed spectrum, ultra-low latency links and a capability for base stations to talk with each other to coordinate their efforts, he said.　　In U.S and Sweden labs earlier this month, Qualcomm and Ericsson tested the Release 15 spec over 3.5 and 28 GHz bands. Nine carriers provided input on or observed the tests including AT&T, NTT Docomo, Orange, SK Telecom, Verizon and Vodafone.　　The effort followed a test late last month at a China Mobile lab using a prototype base station from China’s ZTE. Qualcomm has announced plans to test its prototype baseband with Nokia’s base stations.　　“Over the next few months, we will add functions and get ready for over-the-air trials with operators, taking the technology from the lab to the field,” said Smee.
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Release time：2017-12-25 00:00 reading：1252 Continue reading>>
2017 Watson AI XPrize Top 10 Revealed at NIPS
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2017 Watson AI XPrize Top 10 Revealed at NIPS

　　The $5 million IBM AI Watson XPrize is revealing the top 10 finalists for the 2017 round and awarding a total of $15,000 in prize money to the top two finishers today (Dec. 8) at the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NIPS 2017; Long Beach, Calif.). Amiko AI (Milan), which is upgrading respiratory care with sensor technologies and digital health tools, has come in first and is being awarded the $10,000 top prize for this year. The $5,000 second-place prize goes to aifred Health (Montreal), which is using deep-learning algorithms to personalize treatments for depression. The two top finishers also were scheduled to present detailed descriptions of their projects on stage at the event.　　“The 32 judges — who are all independent of IBM, as am I — narrowed the 147 first-year contestants down to 59 second-year contestants [based on] who has made the most progress on the most helpful-to-world-society projects,” Amir Banifatemi, prize lead for the IBM Watson AI XPrize and managing partner of K5 Ventures, told EE Times in advance of the announcement at NIPS.　　Here are the other top 10 finishers, in alphabetical order:BehAIvior (Pittsburgh) is combining data from wearables and smartphones to create an early-warning system that predicts addiction relapses — especially overdoses — with the intent of preventing them.Brown University's Human Centered Robotics Initiative (HRCI; Providence, R.I.) is creating a three-phase program to identify the social and moral norms that robots should be designed to internalize.DataKind (New York) is developing artificial-intelligence models using high-resolution satellite imagery that can help alleviate poverty in underdeveloped regions by monitoring crops for disease while they can still be saved.Deep Drug (Baton Rouge, La.) is working on AI drug design software that learns from both the successes and the failures of previous clinical trials to shorten the development time for new, more-targeted drugs.The EmPrize team at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Design & Intelligence Lab (Atlanta) is aiming for smart virtual tutors that will answer questions, provide feedback, and perform other functions for online education.EruditeAI (Montreal) is creating a free peer-to-peer math tutoring platform to match students who are struggling to understand a given mathematical concept with students who have demonstrated proficiency in that concept.Iris.ai (Oslo, Norway) is automating a systematic mapping solution for scientific papers that will help AI researchers with the literature discovery phase of their projects.WikiNet (Quebec City) is working on a solution that learns from past environmental-cleanup efforts to provide expert recommendations for cleaning up other contaminated sites.　　The 59 teams selected to move forward from 2017 to 2018 come from Australia, Barbados, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam. The categories their projects cover include Health & Wellness, Learning & Human Potential, Civil Society, Space & New Frontiers, Shelter & Infrastructure, and Energy & Resources. The criteria used to assess the projects include the standards they intend to set; the performance and scalability of their application; and, most important, their potential to achieve an exponential societal improvement. “The judges this year recognized those teams that have emphasized man-machine collaboration and are furthest along in their projects,” said Banifatemi.　　In a nod to the rapid pace of breakthroughs in AI, the AI XPrize added a wild-card round this past fall to accommodate teams working on concepts that were not foreseen in the competition’s first year. The top 10 finishers among the wild-card teams that applied for inclusion this year will inflate the total field of contenders to 69 in 2018. A second wild-card round will be held next year. In an interview with EE Times when the first wild-card round opened, Banifatemi said that, based on how many wild cards are approved to compete this year and next, “we expect to have half of the total teams in competition by September 2018 moving into 2019.” No wild cards will be added in 2019, and at the end of that year the field will be halved again.　　Further prize money will be awarded to the top 10 finishers in 2018 and 2019, with the three top-10 rounds (2017-2019) collectively accounting for $500,000 of the $5 million total allotted for the XPrize. In 2020, at the Grand Prize event on the TED2020 stage, the remaining $4.5 million will be awarded to the top three finalists: $3 million to the first-place finisher, $1 million for second place, and $500,000 for third place. The third-prize winner will be selected with the help of voters at TED2020.
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Release time：2017-12-11 00:00 reading：1368 Continue reading>>
5G Sprint Led by Marathon Man
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5G Sprint Led by Marathon Man

　　Wanshi Chen is on the hot seat for 5G.　　The chairman of the 3GPP’s RAN1 committee is tasked with delivering by the end of the year a draft for the next-generation cellular radio. The spec will form the blueprint for silicon needed to make the first standard 5G connection.　　On one side, carriers and their vendors are calling for the specs ASAP so they can test and launch 5G services as early as next year. On the other side, as many as 800 engineers are showing up at meetings of Chen’s group, submitting as many as 3,000 proposals per meeting in hopes of getting a feature in the spec.　　“Some sessions have run as late as 1 a.m., but a typical day is 12 hours,” said Chen, a principal engineer at Qualcomm who was elected chair of RAN1 in August after nine years attending meetings, four of them as a vice chair.　　“We only have two [plenary] meetings to go and tons of stuff to work out. It’s hard to predict how late the meetings will run … I hope we can make it. In the last meeting, people tried to emphasize the sense of urgency.”　　In an effort to increase their chances of finishing on time, engineers agreed at that meeting two weeks ago in Sapporo, Japan, to postpone until June at least 10 features originally in the spec. “I expected more reduction of the scope … it’s not to the level I’d like to see … [the still-large feature set] makes it difficult for me to get things done,” he said.　　(For a full list of proposed and postponed features, find and click on document RP-172108 at this 3GPP page.)　　The idea is to capture in the December draft everything required in hardware. “Anything after December has to be optional … with no hardware impact, but it’s hard to be 100% sure we’ve done the full due diligence … different features have different interest levels from different operators and vendors,” he said. “It’s hard to converge.”　　Given the uncertainty, Verizon and KT (formerly Korea Telecom) launched separate efforts developing their own specs. KT defined in June 2016 its Pyeongchang spec named for the county where it aims to provide 5G-like services during the Winter Olympics in February.　　For its part, Verizon rallied Cisco, Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, and others around its 5GTF in late 2015. The spec aims to be the foundation for a last-mile wireless service for consumers that Verizon hopes to switch on next year.　　“We had to have something to test … the 3GPP timing is still suspect,” said Sanyogita Shamsunder, executive director of 5G ecosystem planning at Verizon, in a brief interview on the show floor of the Mobile World Congress Americas earlier this month.　　“We will track [the 3GPP work] and we want to work with the ecosystem, but we don’t want it to be the long pole, so we will continue to develop 5GTF,” she said, noting that she still has an option of using either one as the basis for planned 5G fixed-wireless access services next year.　　Efforts at Verizon and KT helped motivate a consensus earlier this year to accelerate the 3GPP effort. At that time, a majority of stakeholders agreed to move the date for completing the first draft of the radio spec to December 2017, up from June 2018.　　“We think we will see real 5G in mobility in 2019 … a year ago or less, it would have been 2020 or 2021,” said Rick Corker, head of Nokia in North America, one of Verizon’s top vendors.　　Major developers of 5G silicon such as Ericsson, Intel, Nokia, and Qualcomm have all started work on chips. They need the final spec before they can freeze feature sets and start implementing their designs. To date, they have been providing carrier systems using FPGAs for their trials.　　“The amount of pressure to have a spec to let silicon be developed is enormous,” said Michael Murphy, chief technology officer for Nokia North America. “With all the comments and change requests, it’s very, very challenging for the chair to manage.”　　The tight deadline cuts into the time that engineers have to run simulations in the lab between 3GPP meetings, work that sometimes spawns new proposals. “As engineers, we want to get it right,” said John Smee, who works on 5G at Qualcomm Research. “These days, everything is simulated and evaluated.”　　“Just from an engineering perspective, I’d rather have the deadlines more relaxed,” said Chen, who is taking a practical approach to the challenge.　　For example, he asked participants from multiple companies to team up on proposals, hoping to spark strategic compromises. He also started assigning engineers to act as lead representatives for features “to manage and summarize what needs to be addressed and lead offline discussions so online talks can be more focused,” said Chen.　　“Discussions can get out of control. The last meeting was my first as chair, so I provided a lot of my thoughts on how RAN1 should be managed, how online and offline discussions should be carried out, and how contributions should be written.”　　“The key thing is making meetings more efficient and contributions more self-contained with the background needed for good solid proposals,” he added. “People want to hold on to their own proposals, but when it comes to compromise, there’s a good spirit of being flexible.”　　To manage his own stress, Chen tries to start his day with a run of about six miles.　　“I’m a very good runner,” said Chen, who finished the Boston Marathon in three hours and eight minutes back in April, about the time that the 5G schedule was kicked into high gear. “This pressure has cut into my mileage a little, but it’s still an effective way to relieve the stress.”
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Release time：2017-09-29 00:00 reading：1423 Continue reading>>
Toshiba Inks Acquisition Deal with Bain-led Group
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Toshiba Inks Acquisition Deal with Bain-led Group

　　Toshiba Corp. said it inked an $18 billion agreement to sell its semiconductor business to the consortium led by private equity firm Bain Capital — a deal structured to proceed even if Toshiba is still engaged in litigation and arbitration with Western Digital Corp. on the matter.　　However, Toshiba added that the sale will not be consummated if the shares of Toshiba Memory Corp., the subsidiary it established to facilitate the sale of the chip business, is blocked by an injunctive order. Western Digital has said it will seek such an order and that a decision could be handed down early next year.　　Western Digital and Toshiba are engaged in litigation in multiple venues and arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce on the question of whether Toshiba can transfer assets used in the joint ventures between the firms to a third party. Western Digital, which last year acquired SanDisk, Toshiba's longtime partner in NAND flash memory development and manufacturing, maintains that the agreements specify that Toshiba cannot sell the assets without its permission.　　Western Digital said earlier this week that an arbitration request it filed in May seeks an injunction that would require Toshiba to unwind the transfer of its semiconductor assets to Toshiba Memory and prevent Toshiba from selling the assets until the matter is resolved. A ruling on the request for an injunction is not expected until early next year, Western Digital said.　　Western Digital tried for months to hammer out a deal to acquire Toshiba Memory along with partners, but lost out to the Bain-led consortium. Toshiba board members were reportedly concerned about the size of the stake that Western Digital might ultimately hold in Toshiba Memory.　　The legal tussle between Toshiba and Western Digital may jeopardize the longstanding partnership between Toshiba and SanDisk if the sale to the Bain-led group is consummated. But Jim Handy, principal analyst with market research and consulting firm Objective Analysis, believes that a deal would not necessarily spell doom for the partnership.　　"If you pull it apart, the people that approved the consortium's offer, they are Toshiba Corporation, not Toshiba Memory," Handy said. "These are not the people that SanDisk and Western Digital are going to be dealing with. The JV could hold together because their might be a very good relationship between SanDisk and Toshiba Memory."　　But Handy points to something else that may undermine the joint venture and Toshiba Memory. The Nikkei news organization reported last week that the bidding process over Toshiba Memory has paralyzed the unit and caused employees to bolt for competitors including South Korea's Samsung Electronics and sk Hynix.　　"The rank and file Toshiba employees have lost faith in management," Handy said. "Meanwhile you have China's Yangtze River Storage Technology dangling huge incentives at established NAND flash manufacturers to get them to defect. The longer this is unsettled, the more likely it is that there will be people who flee from Toshiba."　　The Bain-led consortium also includes sk Hynix as well as several Japanese and U.S. firms.　　Under the structure of the agreement announced Thursday (Sept. 28), Japanese firms will hold more than 50 percent of the common stock in the new firm — an important consideration for the Japanese government. Toshiba itself will provide about 18 percent of the capital for acquisition and would hold about 40 percent of the shares. Japanese photomask maker Hoya Corp. will provide about 1 percent of the funding but own about 10 percent of the shares, according to the terms of the deal.　　A group of U.S. firms — including Apple, Dell, Seagate Technology and Kingston Technology — would provide about 21 percent of the funding but would not acquire any common stock or voting rights in the firm under the terms of the deal.　　Handy called the structure of the deal — in which Japanese firms get a sizable percentage of the voting rights in exchange for a relatively lower level of investment — "a very Japanese thing to do." But he said that he was surprised that Bain would agree to such a structure.　　"Bain probably wants to find a way to get a quick return," Handy said. "They are probably already lining up someone that is going to acquire their share or they believe the stock price is depressed enough that they will get a quick return."　　Toshiba said sk Hynix would be "firewalled" from accessing proprietary information about Toshiba Memory and would not be permitted to own more than 15 percent of the common stock or voting rights in the venture for a period of 10 years. Hynix will provide about 20 percent of the funding for the acquisition, according to the terms of the deal.　　A special purpose acquisition vehicle known as Pangea, formed and controlled by Bain Capital, intends to finance about 30 percent of the purchase price of Toshiba Memory through obtaining about 600 billion yen (about $5.3 billion) in loans from financial institutions and banks, Toshiba said.　　Innovation Network Corp. of Japan (INCJ) — a public-private partnership between the Japanese government and 19 Japanese corporations — and the state-backed Development Bank of Japan will not initially participate in the acquisition consortium, but "have expressed interest in investing" at a later time, Toshiba said. These organizations have been weary of the legal challenges posed by Western Digital, and Toshiba said last week that they would invest in the venture after the arbitration and litigation is resolved.　　Toshiba said it hopes to close the deal by the end of its fiscal year in March 2018.
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Release time：2017-09-29 00:00 reading：1622 Continue reading>>
Toshiba Agrees to Sell Chip Unit to Bain-led Group
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Toshiba Agrees to Sell Chip Unit to Bain-led Group

　　Toshiba said it signed an agreement to sell its semiconductor unit to a consortium led by private equity firm Bain Capital for about $18 billion, the latest twist in a months-long saga over the Japanese conglomerate's effort to sell its prized NAND flash business to offset massive losses incurred by its U.S. nuclear power subsidiary.　　Toshiba said the deal is based on the premise that the sale would move forward even if courts impose an injunction against Toshiba in response to legal challenges brought by Western Digital, the parent company of Toshiba's long-time partner in the NAND flash business, SanDisk.　　The deal, agreed to by Toshiba's board of directors at a meeting Wednesday (Sept. 20), came just hours after the Retuers news service, citing anonymous sources, reported that Toshiba was once again leaning toward accepting a rival bid from Western Digital.　　Toshiba said it hoped to sign a final agreement "soon" in hopes of closing the sale by the end of its fiscal year in March. However, it is unclear how the legal action brought by Western Digital — which contends that Toshiba needs SanDisk's permission to sell the unit — would affect the potential sale.　　Western Digital said in a statement that it was "disappointed Toshiba would take this action despite Western Digital’s tireless efforts to reach a resolution that is in the best interests of all stakeholders."　　Western Digital also reiterated that it expected to win its arbitration against Toshiba at the International Chamber of Commerce. The company said the cases "continue to move forward," but did not say when it expects the arbitration hearing.　　"The arbitration process is ongoing and there is no specific calendar set, but the company will provide updates as appropriate," a spokeswoman for Western Digital said in an email exchange with EE Times.　　The Western Digital statement read, in part, "It is troubling that Toshiba would pursue this transaction without SanDisk’s consent, as the language in the relevant JV agreements is unambiguous, and courts have entered multiple rulings in favor of protecting SanDisk’s contractual rights. Toshiba has also acknowledged and validated SanDisk’s legitimate consent rights on multiple occasions."　　A California court ordered in July that Toshiba must provide Western Digital with at least 14 days of notice prior to close the sale.　　Toshiba and SanDisk have been partners in NAND technology development and manufacturing since the late 1990s. The relationship has been strained in recent months as Toshiba has been in negotiations to sell the business to multiple parties, including the Bain-led group and another led by Taiwanese contract manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision, which operates under the trade name Foxconn.　　A consortium led by Western Digital also submitted multiple bids in order to win the business. Toshiba's board reportedly has been wary of selling to Western Digital because of possible antitrust issues that could lead to prolonged review of the deal and concern about the size of the stake in Toshiba Memory Corp. that Western Digital would ultimately hold.　　The Bain consortium also includes the involvement of both Apple Inc and Dell Inc. as well as South Korean memory chip vendor sk Hynix. According to a report by the Nikkei news service, the deal is structured so that state-backed entities Innovation Network Corp. of Japan (INCJ) and the Development Bank of Japan can participate in funding after the potential litigation with Western Digital is resolved.　　The consortium led by Western Digital's latest bid was also reportedly about $18 billion and included limits on the size of Western Digital's stake in the business, according to the Reuters news service.　　The bidding war over Toshiba's chip unit comes during a year when NAND flash is in tight supply and sales are up dramatically. Toshiba is the No. 2 supplier of NAND, trailing only South Korea's Samsung.　　Toshiba said it selected the Bain-led consortium's mid based on multiple factors, including its valuation of Toshiba Memory, impact on customers and probability of obtaining regulatory approval.　　Toshiba also raised questions about the future of the collaboration between Toshiba Memory and SanDisk, saying it intends to consult with Western Digital "earnestly" about the prospects for continued cooperation in the future.　　Toshiba announced last month it would go it alone in investing in equipment for Fab 6 at its Yokkaichi operations site. Western Digital said Wednesday that this also constituted a breach of the JV agreement between the firms and said it had filed an additional request for arbitration with the International Chamber of Commerce on the matter.
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Release time：2017-09-21 00:00 reading：1445 Continue reading>>
Micro<span style='color:red'>LED</span> Pits Big Apple VS. Tiny <span style='color:red'>LED</span> Chips
Trade news

MicroLED Pits Big Apple VS. Tiny LED Chips

　　Differentiating one smartphone from another is no easy feat. A display, however, is the one constant that smartphone vendors believe they can depend on to wow their customers. A new display technology with visible differences in a screen size, resolution, brightness and power consumption could scramble the market.　　Apple’s anxiously awaited iPhone X, unveiled just this week, is the first iPhone to feature an OLED display — long after competitors Samsung and LG brought to market smartphones with OLED. Of course, unlike Samung and LG, Apple doesn't have its own display technology. Yet.　　What if Apple were to develop a display technology of its own, featuring all the advantages of OLED but even better … like microLED? While the company has remained tight lipped — as is its custom — Apple has amassed an impressive portfolio of micoLED patents and there is speculation that it is using a Silicon Valley fab it bought from Maxim in 2015 to develop the technology. And Apple isn't the only big name tech company working on microLED.　　MicroLED displays consist of an array of microscopic LEDs forming individual pixel elements. Unlike OLED, microLED uses conventional gallium-nitride LED technology. MicroLED promises range from high brightness, high dynamic range and a wide color gamut to fast refresh rates, wide viewing angles and lower power consumption. MicroLED proponents claim their total brightness can be 30 times that of OLED products while offering higher efficiency in lux per watt.　　Whether Apple will trigger the shift to microLED has long been a topic of intense discussion among Apple watchers and display technology experts, not to mention driven speculation that Apple would soon use microLED in Apple Watch. (Much to the chagrin of microLED proponents, the Apple Watch Series 3, unveiled this week, features an OLED display).　　EE Times this week talked to Eric Virey, senior market and technology analyst at Yole Développement. We asked him to break it all down, and tell us about where he thinks the display market is with this mythical microLED technology.　　Why do we care?　　Fully aware of all the hype that has gone into the new display technology, Virey understands what we all want to know: “Does microLED even exist? Why do we care?”　　Yole does not expect microLED to arrive in the wearable device market, such as Apple Watch, until the end of 2019. Setting the timeline aside, though, Virey believes the electronics industry should pay even more attention today, because microLED’s emergence is going to change not only the face of mobile devices but also the Who’s Who of the display industry.　　Now Google jumps in　　The race to secure key patents, manufacturing knowhow and expertise in microLED doesn’t involve the usual suspects — traditional consumer display manufacturers based in Asia. Instead, big guns like Google, Apple and Huawei are driving microLED investment.　　Most recently, Google entered the microLED fray by investing in Glo, a spin-off of Lund University. Google led Glo’s latest round of investment in August. One Swedish website reported that Glo received $15 million through a rights issue directed entirely to Google. This makes the Mountain View-search engine giant an owner of just over 13 percent of Glo’s capital.　　Although it did not generate much media coverage beyond Sweden, Google’s investment in Glo reflects the industry’s increasing interest in the new display technology for VR glasses, mobile phones and tablets.　　Glo today has a team of 40 to 50 engineers working in Silicon Valley, according to Yole’s Virey. Last February, Glo teamed up with Jasper Display Corp. in Taiwan to show full color microLED demo at Photonics West 2017, and later also at Display Week in May, he added.　　The deal that initially put microLED on the map was Apple’s 2014 acquisition of startup Luxvue, a developer of low-power, microLED-based displays for consumer electronics applications. Apple’s investment in Luxvue has generated a feeding frenzy for rumors and speculation on Apple’s big push for microLED.　　Not to be outdone by Apple, Facebook’s Oculus Rift virtual-reality business unit also bought, about a year ago, a startup called InfiniLED, spun out of the Irish technology research lab Tyndall National Institute in 2011.　　Earlier this year, Foxconn, too, revealed its interest in microLED. Teaming with its display subsidiary Sharp, Foxconn acquired a 31.82 percent stake in eLux, a Delaware-based startup engaged in R&D of micro-LED technology focused on virtual reality and augmented reality devices. eLux was founded in October 2016 by researchers formerly employed at Sharp’s research arm in the United States.　　A host of investment and acquisition activities around microLED startups reflects the tech industry’s never-ending quest for a new generation of display technologies.　　Challenges all along the supply chain　　Yole’s Virey noted, “We’ve seen proof of concept, prototypes of microLED displays. The technology is here.” What’s not here, though, is “cost and yield” critical for high-volume manufacturing of microLED.　　Further, challenges for microLED exist all along the supply chain, he added.　　But before getting into further discussion on microLED, here’s a primer on differences between LCD, OLED and microLED.　　LCD is a flat-panel technology that depends on an LED backlight for illumination. The light passes through a matrix of liquid crystal “light switches” and color filters consisting of individual subpixels, Virey explained.　　In contrast, OLED is an emissive display technology in which each sub-pixel is a tiny light emitter. Brightness can be individually controlled.　　MicroLED is similarly self-emitting. But it uses individual, small LED chips as its emitters.　　LED chip production challenge　　In theory, microLED manufacture should be no different from fabricating LED chips. But regular LED manufacturing facilities don’t fit the job, largely because microLED chips are a lot smaller than regular LED chips. This means every LED chip fab needs a new infrastructure with a “much cleaner clean room,” and “higher resolution lithography,” Virey explained.　　A better fit would be semiconductor foundries, observed Virey. “It would make sense if Apple teams up with TSMC,” for example, to eliminate the first hurdle of microLED manufacturing.　　Energy efficiency challenge　　The production of LED chips causes some insignificant “sidewall” damage, usually one to two micrometers on a regular 250 micrometer x 250 micrometer LED chip. But for a LED chip as small as 5x5 micrometers — necessary for microLED — a two-micrometer sidewall defect would have a devastating impact, leaving a tiny usable area, only 4 percent of the total chip size, explained Virey.　　To solve such energy-efficiency issues, the microLED industry needs “a two-pronged approach,” the Yole analyst noted. That could involve the development of both new chip designs and manufacturing technology. For example, Glo is working on nanowire. Aledia in Grenoble, spun out of CEA-Leti, is similarly working on microwire technology, observed Virey.　　Aledia claims it has developed a way to “grow high-density, coaxial gallium nitride (GaN) microwires directly onto large-diameter silicon wafers by using processes that are fully compatible with today's CMOS semiconductor foundries.”　　Virey sees such an approach — “growing epitaxial layers in a tube” — as a disruptive technology that could bring a breakthrough.　　Assembly challenges　　Let’s say we now know how to manufacture tiny LED chips. The next — bigger — problem, said Virey, is the assembly challenges associated with microLED. The question is, “How do you transfer these tiny chips to the back of a display?”　　To transfer individual LED chips to a 6-inch microLED display would take four days, Virey calculated.  In fact, more than a dozen companies are trying to solve this “chip transfer technology” issue, he said. One way to beat the problem is what Virey calls “the monolithic approach.”　　The monolithic approach allows microLED to grow directly onto the wafer at the pitch of the final display. “This way, instead of cutting and transferring each individual microLED onto the display backplane, you can cut a large array in the wafer, let’s say up to 1 inch lateral dimensions, and assemble this array (which will contain hundreds of thousands or millions of LEDs) directly onto the driver backplane,” Virey explained.　　In this case, chances are that this backplane will be made from a traditional silicon CMOS wafer, rather a glass-based TFT, he noted. Conceptually, it's possible to assemble the entire wafer and cut the displays afterward. Alternatively, rather than bonding and interconnecting the array, you can grow the pixel driver circuits directly on top of the MicroLED wafer, he added.  “Lumiode, a New York-based startup, is doing just that,” he said.　　While the monolithic approach is good for very small displays (“microdisplays”) with very high pixel density, such as >2000 PPI (pixel per inch), this is not a universal answer for microLED.　　Why? Because the LED wafer size would be limited to 4x6 inches. If the display pitch is too large, most of the precious wafer real estate goes to waste, Virey said. “Imagine 5 um microLED positioned at a 100 um pitch at the surface of the wafer. You’re wasting 99.75 percent of the wafer surface!”　　For lager displays — necessary for mobile devices, TVs and monitors — most microLED display players are using “pick and place” methodology to put tiny LED chips on the back of the display.　　Meanwhile, key players in monolithic integration include: Lumiode, Ostendo, Aledia, mLED, Nth Degree and probably Facebook/Oculus, Virey said. Various research organizations such as LETI, ITRI and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology are using the monolithic approach to make microdisplays, which could serve applications such as augmented and mixed reality headsets or micro-projectors such as head up displays.　　Defect management and repair strategy　　Among the issues related to manufacturing microLED displays, the industry needs to put in place a defect management and repair strategy, Virey said. At a time when most high-end displays are guaranteed with zero defects, microLED displays will have a tough time competing in terms of PPM (parts per million).　　Assume that microLED’s yield — which combines both epitaxy and chip manufacturing — is 99.9 percent, as a result of dead or dim microLED pixels. Then the transfer and interconnect yield — that includes dies not properly picked or placed, or faulty connection to the TFT — is also 99.9 percent, due to missing, dead, or “always-on” pixels. Multiply the two yield rates, the combined defect rate of microLED results in 2000 ppm. This certainly isn’t good enough.　　Numbers like this are triggering massive research to develop microLED testing methods, Virey concluded.　　Who’s winning?　　Having followed patent activity in microLED, Virey explained that it isn’t just Apple, Google and Facebook that are working on the technology. Many research institutes, display makers, LED makers, semiconductor companies and startups — “a lot of smart people” — are also heavily involved.　　Among these players, Virey observed that Apple (after its Luxvue acquisition) “has by far the broadest patent portfolio” in microLED. LG and Huawei are also strong contenders, he added.　　Sony is also an early developer of microLED technology. The Japanese company, said to be engaged in microLED innovation since 2008, showcased a 55-inch full HD microLED TV prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2012. But since then, Sony hasn’t said much, said Virey. Their focus seems to be more on the industrial/commercial market for big screens, he added.　　Remember Maxim’s Fab Apple bought in 2015?　　As simple an idea as microLED display seems (a display made of LED chips), the technology is stymied by manufacturing challenges. Accordingly, many microLED companies are dwelling on problems like assembly and testing.　　Apple for instance.　　In December 2015 Apple bought a wafer fab in San Jose, Calif. from analog and mixed-signal chip vendor Maxim. What Apple intends to do with that fab has stirred a lot of speculation. But now we seem to have a fairly credible answer.　　Apple’s Luxvue appears to have MEMS-based printing technology to place those LEDs precisely onto backplanes. Yole’s Virey believes Apple is developing a specific MEMS-based technology to transfer these tiny LED chips and place them onto backplanes of microLEDs. What used to be Maxim’s small MEMS fab would be perfect for Apple to do test runs, as the company perfects the technology of those “transfer heads.”　　Yole acknowledges that microLED’s remaining technical and manufacturing challenges could prove too difficult to lick. This is a haunting possibility.　　Yole sees smartwatches as the “low-hanging fruit” for microLED. Ultimately, though, Yole noted that microLED “won’t completely displace OLED and LCD, but could end up with a strong position in niche applications such as wearable, augmented reality, mixed reality and heads-up display.”
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Release time：2017-09-19 00:00 reading：4218 Continue reading>>

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