Evaluation Boards Now Available for Flex Logix EFLX® 4K eFPGA on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ Most Advanced FinFET Platform
Flex Logix Technologies, Inc., the leading supplier of embedded FPGA (eFPGA) IP and software, today announced that it has received working first silicon of its validation chip for the EFLX 4K eFPGA IP cores running on GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) 12nm Leading-Performance (12LP) FinFET platform and newly announced 12LP+ solution. The chip is currently in characterization and Flex Logix will be demonstrating the evaluation board at the GLOBALFOUNDRIES Technology Conference (GTC 2019) on Tuesday, September 24 in Santa Clara California.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ GlobalFoundries Technology Conference 2019 in Silicon Valley to Spotlight Specialized Solutions for Emerging Markets
A rich program of talks, panels and partner exhibits will provide 700+ attendees with insights and networking opportunities in 5G, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles and other emerging areas
Santa Clara, Calif., September 24, 2019 – At its annual Global Technology Conference (GTC) today, GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), the world’s leading specialty foundry, will feature its wide range of specialized application solutions for the industry’s fastest-growing market segments. More than 700 expected attendees will be able to gain insight into how GF is helping clients shape our world, from the solutions we create to enabling the products they deliver.
GF’s CEO Tom Caulfield will kick-off the event with a keynote address on, ‘The Future of Innovation,’ which will explore how there are – and always have been – many different paths toward true innovation. Dr. Aart de Geus, Chairman and co-CEO of Synopsys will then take the stage to share how technology is changing the way we live and work, and how strategic partnerships are critical to helping clients innovate from silicon to software.
The conference stage will feature GF executives who will share insights on how GF’s multiple technology platforms plus a host of specialized features and turnkey services from GF and its ecosystem partners lead to unique, innovative solutions. Speakers include:
‘High-Growth Markets Enabled by Specialized GF Solutions,’ by Dr. Bami Bastani, Sr. VP and GM of Mobile and Wireless Infrastructure SBU
‘Si Technology Innovation in the Era of Specific Application Solutions,’ by Gregg Bartlett, Sr. VP of Global Engineering and Technology
‘The Journey to a Differentiated Ecosystem,” by Mike Cadigan, Sr. VP of Customer Design Enablement
In the afternoon, talks and panel discussions with industry leaders including executives from Lightmatter, Marvell, NXP and VeriSilicon along with members of GF’s management and technical teams will detail the specific needs and opportunities in emerging market segments. In addition, these presentations will showcase how GF’s platforms and application solutions are enabling three targeted market segment groups, automotive, industrial and multi-market (AIM); mobile and wireless infrastructure (MWI); and computing and wired infrastructure (CWI).
Attendees will experience a full day of tech that will feature more than 35 event sponsors and GF ecosystem partners, giving attendees the opportunity to learn about their offerings. Platinum sponsors for GTC 2019 are Analog Bits, Cadence Design Systems, Mentor and Synopsys. Gold sponsors are Arm, Dolphin Integration and Flex Logix™.
About GTC
GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ annual Global Technology Conference features keynotes from industry leaders and presentations from senior members of the GF management and technical teams, with a special emphasis on how the company achieves time-to-volume leadership by leveraging global collaboration with clients and partners. GTC 2019 began Tuesday, September 24 in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, kicking off a series of GTC 2019 events at strategic international venues including Munich, Singapore and Taiwan. For more information on GTC 2019, visit: https://www.globalfoundries.com/.
About GF
GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) is the world’s leading specialty foundry. We deliver differentiated feature-rich solutions that enable our clients to develop innovative products for high-growth market segments. GF provides a broad range of platforms and features with a unique mix of design, development and fabrication services. With an at-scale manufacturing footprint spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF has the flexibility and agility to meet the dynamic needs of clients across the globe. GF is owned by Mubadala Investment Company. For more information, visit globalfoundries.com.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Introduces 12LP+ FinFET Solution for Cloud and Edge AI Applications
Innovative solution based on GF’s most advanced FinFET platform offers best-in-class performance, key new features to address evolving AI requirements, compelling economics and industry-leading physical IP from Arm
Santa Clara, Calif., September 24, 2019 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), the world’s leading specialty foundry, announced today at its Global Technology Conference the availability of 12LP+, an innovative new solution for AI training and inference applications. 12LP+ offers chip designers a best-in-class combination of performance, power and area, along with a set of key new features, a mature design and production ecosystem, cost-efficient development and fast time-to-market for high-growth cloud and edge AI applications.
Derived from GF’s existing 12nm Leading Performance (12LP) platform, GF’s new 12LP+ provides either a 20% increase in performance or a 40% reduction in power requirements over the base 12LP platform, plus a 15% improvement in logic area scaling. A key feature is a high-speed, low-power 0.5V SRAM bit cell that supports the fast, power-efficient shuttling of data between processors and memory, an important requirement for AI applications in the computing and wired infrastructure markets.
Other key features of 12LP+ that enable clients to capitalize on AI market opportunities are a design reference package for AI applications and design/technology co-development (DTCO) services, both of which allow clients to look at AI circuit designs from a holistic perspective in order to achieve lower power budgets and reduced costs. Another key feature is a new interposer for 2.5D packages, which facilitates the integration of high-bandwidth memory with processors for fast, power-efficient data processing.
The 12LP+ solution makes use of Arm® Artisan® physical IP as well as POP™ IP for AI applications, developed for GF by Arm. Both solutions from Arm will also be applied to GF’s original 12LP platform.
“AI, automotive and high-end consumer mobility are just a few of the growing applications creating urgent demand for high-performance SoCs,” said Gus Yeung, general manager and fellow, Physical Design Group, Arm. “Supported by the widely-used Arm Artisan physical IP and advanced processor designs, GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 12LP+ will help designers deliver products that monetize this demand easily, quickly and cost-effectively.”
“The rollout of 12LP+ is a result of GF’s strategy to provide clients with differentiated solutions that extend the ability to scale designs with no disruption to work flows very cost-efficiently compared to alternatives,” said Michael Mendicino, vice president of Digital Technology Solutions at GF. “For example, as an advanced 12nm technology, our 12LP+ solution already offers clients a majority of the performance and power advantages they would expect to gain from a 7nm process, but their NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs will average only about half as much, a significant savings. Additionally, because the 12nm node has been running longer and is much more mature, clients will be able to tape-out quickly and take advantage of the growing demand for AI technology.”
The 12LP+ PDK is available now and GF is already working with several clients. Tape outs are expected in the second half of 2020 and volume production is set for 2021 from GF’s Fab 8 in Malta, New York.
About GF
GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) is the world’s leading specialty foundry. We deliver differentiated feature-rich solutions that enable our clients to develop innovative products for high-growth market segments. GF provides a broad range of platforms and features with a unique mix of design, development and fabrication services. With an at-scale manufacturing footprint spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF has the flexibility and agility to meet the dynamic needs of clients across the globe. GF is owned by Mubadala Investment Company. For more information, visit globalfoundries.com.
Analog Bits and Aragio Solutions Team Up with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to Deliver Automotive IP Solutions
IP providers further strengthen ability to serve clients’ automotive IP needs on GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 22FDX® platform
Santa Clara, Calif., September 24, 2019 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), Analog Bits and Aragio Solutions (Aragio) announced today at GF’s annual Global Technology Conference (GTC) that they are collaborating to develop a portfolio of I/O libraries on GF’s 22nm FD-SOI (22FDX®) platform. The portfolio is designed to maximize energy efficiency and reliability while creating differentiated IP solutions that meet the varying standards of automotive applications. This latest collaboration extends GF’s ecosystem of suppliers for its 22FDX platform, with Synopsys being the first IP partner to announce development of its automotive-grade DesignWare® IP on this process.
Analog Bits and Aragio will develop a portfolio of automotive Foundation, Analog and Interface IP for GF’s 22FDX process. The addition of Aragio’s silicon-proven low-leakage libraries and Analog Bits’ programmable interconnect solutions on GF’s 22FDX, is expected to further reduce design effort and accelerate AEC-Q100 qualification of system-on-chips (SoCs) for automotive applications such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and infotainment.
“Analog Bits’ industry-leading PLL and sensor technology, in combination with sophisticated circuit techniques and innovative I/O design, provide area- and power-efficient IP solutions that customers can easily integrate into their SoC designs,” said Mahesh Tirupattur, executive vice president at Analog Bits. “Our close collaboration with GF gives us the opportunity to help our mutual customers deliver a unique low-power capability with the best possible PPA for demanding applications such automotive.”
“GF’s advanced 22FDX platform gives our IP circuit designers the flexibility to be creative as they push for state-of-the-art performance in terms of speed, power, low-leakage, functionality and I/O size,” said Glen Haas, Aragio Solutions’ Chief Technologist. “GF provides a range of solutions that enable Aragio to address the full complement of world-wide market segments from Automotive G1 and G2 to battery-powered IoT applications. The flexible reverse body bias gives our designers another tool to use to provide unique solutions to our clients.”
“Customers are expanding their product portfolios and are looking for connectivity solutions to match the evolving needs of power-sensitive applications in rapid-growth markets,” said Mark Ireland, vice president of Ecosystem Partnerships at GF. “Our collaboration with Synopsys, Analog Bits and Aragio will help us to deliver a strong IP portfolio of differentiated power, performance and reliability designs while shortening our clients’ time-to-market for automotive SoCs on 22FDX.”
GF’s 22FDX provides a fast path-to-product solution that includes silicon-qualified IP. The platform is in volume production on GF’s 300mm line at Fab 1 in Dresden, Germany.
Design kits with these additional features will be available on GF’s 22FDX starting Q4 2019. For more information on GF’s automotive solutions go to globalfoundries.com.
About Analog Bits
Founded in 1995, Analog Bits, Inc. is a leading supplier of mixed-signal IP with a reputation for easy and reliable integration into advanced SOCs. Our products include precision clocking macros such as PLLs, Sensors, programmable interconnect solutions such as multi-protocol SERDES and programmable I/O’s as well as specialized memories such as high-speed SRAMs and TCAMs. With billions of IP cores fabricated in customer silicon, from 0.35- micron to 7nm processes, Analog Bits has an outstanding heritage of “first-time-working” with foundries and IDMs.
About Aragio Solutions
Aragio is an industry leading provider of I/O library solutions focused on robust ESD and LU immunity. Our I/O library solutions enable dependable high-performance operation. We provide uniform I/O pad sets for a wide range of CMOS process technologies and applications, and our I/O library solutions feature unique macro cell designs as well as general-purpose and specialty I/O libraries.
Aragio Solutions is the registered tradename of Solid Silicon Technology, LLC.
To learn more about the company, please visit: www.aragio.com
About GF
GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) is the world’s leading specialty foundry. We deliver differentiated feature-rich solutions that enable our clients to develop innovative products for high-growth market segments. GF provides a broad range of platforms and features with a unique mix of design, development and fabrication services. With an at-scale manufacturing footprint spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF has the flexibility and agility to meet the dynamic needs of clients across the globe. GF is owned by Mubadala Investment Company. For more information, visit globalfoundries.com.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Achieves More Than $1 Billion in Design Wins for 45RFSOI Solution for Mobile and Wireless Infrastructure Applications
Enhanced transistor performance, greater RF-centric enablement and comprehensive turnkey testing/packaging services provide a truly differentiated solution that more than 20 clients are using for 5G/mmWave applications
Santa Clara, Calif., September 24, 2019 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), the world’s leading specialty foundry, announced today at its annual Global Technology Conference (GTC) that since its launch in 2017, more than 20 clients representing more than $1 billion in design win revenue are now working with GF’s enhanced 45RFSOI solution for 5G/mmWave mobile and wireless infrastructure applications.
Among the enhancements to GF’s 45RFSOI solution are two new features, which add to the inherent advantages of SOI technology to deliver optimized, unparalleled RF performance:
An enhanced power amplifier (PA) field-effect transistor (FET) feature provides 2X higher PA output power, resulting in a lower number of phased array antenna elements needed to achieve the system Effective Isotropic Radiated power (EIRP). The enhanced PA FET feature also enables users to integrate the PA, low-noise amplifier (LNA) switch and phase shifters for a 5G beamformer application on a single chip using the same technology. The result is a more compact design at lower cost resulting from fewer components and less board space for 5GmmWave fixed wireless and mobility applications. Compact design coupled with cost efficiency is an extremely important requirement for slim and sleek smartphone designs.
A higher level of IP and RF-centric enablement including the Virtuoso RelXpert Reliability Simulator, a simulation tool from Cadence Design Systems, Inc., which is used to analyze potential FET device degradation across a user-defined set of use cases to ensure that specified performance and reliability targets are met for these critical applications. The result is fewer design cycles, thus lowering engineering costs and enabling faster time-to–market, as well as achieving increased device reliability confidence. GF’s 45RFSOI PDK models are now qualified on this tool.
“Meeting tight design schedules while keeping development costs down is no easy task when it comes to exceedingly complex 5G/mmWave requirements,” said Wilbur Luo, vice president, product management in the Custom IC & PCB Group at Cadence Design Systems, Inc. “We take a holistic approach to integrated circuit design enabling SoC design excellence, and we’re very focused on providing differentiated solutions that truly benefit our customers. Cadence provides the Virtuoso RelXpert Reliability Simulator, which is used by GF for reliability model development, and Spectre native reliability, which is used for circuit design and verification for reliability analysis. Both of these tools are now tightly integrated with the PDK for GF’s 45RFSOI solution.”
GF has a long history of high-frequency RF wafer and module test development and implementation experience. This experience, along with the industry’s most differentiated RF technology platform spanning advanced and established technology nodes, helps clients develop 5G connectivity solutions for next-generation products. For example, through GF’s turnkey testing and packaging services, GF can perform accurate phase measurements between antenna ports for phased array multi-RF channel designs of 16, 32, 64 or more antenna elements, enabling clients to rapidly ramp and deploy radio access infrastructure necessary for high-bandwidth 5G cellular systems.
Moreover, GF’s engagement model provide clients with comprehensive package design, thermal and electrical modeling services, in partnership with leading outsourced assembly and test companies (OSAT).
“At GF, we continue our commitment to providing differentiated RF platforms, feature sets and solutions that allow our clients to build innovative products for evolving high-growth wireless applications,” said Dr. Bami Bastani, senior vice president and general manager of Mobile and Wireless Infrastructure, SBU at GF. “The numerous design wins we’ve received for our enhanced 45RFSOI solution early in its lifecycle reflect the high value our clients place on our RF solutions.”
About GF
GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) is the world’s leading specialty foundry. We deliver differentiated feature-rich solutions that enable our clients to develop innovative products for high-growth market segments. GF provides a broad range of platforms and features with a unique mix of design, development and fabrication services. With an at-scale manufacturing footprint spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF has the flexibility and agility to meet the dynamic needs of clients across the globe. GF is owned by Mubadala Investment Company. For more information, visit globalfoundries.com.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES Appoints Michael Hogan as SVP and General Manager to Support New Market Engagement Strategy
New business segments and leadership appointments further position the company for long-term growth and value creation
Santa Clara, Calif., September 24, 2019 – Reinforcing its commitment to deliver specialized solutions to targeted market segments, GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) announced today, at its Global Technology Conference (GTC) in Silicon Valley, the appointment of Michael Hogan as senior vice president and general manager of the company’s newly established automotive, industrial and multi-market (AIM) strategic business unit (SBU). Hogan will be responsible for driving market strategy, defining GF’s roadmap for differentiated features and the resultant global expansion for the AIM SBU.
Hogan is a 30-year semiconductor technology veteran and has successfully led premiere companies, including Cypress Semiconductor and Broadcom, in executive-level general manager and senior vice president roles. Most recently, Hogan was the senior vice president and general manager of the IoT, Compute & Wireless business unit at Cypress Semiconductor, where he shaped strategy for the company’s largest and fastest-growing business.
“By aligning our leadership structure around the client experience, our team’s diverse talents and market insights will be leveraged to transform our go-to-market strategy and deliver specialized application solutions that provide real value to clients,” said Thomas Caulfield, CEO of GF. “The addition of Mike Hogan comes at a time when GF is positioned for strong growth and requires seasoned leaders to further enhance and scale our capabilities. Mike’s vast knowledge in the semiconductor space especially in automotive and wireless connectivity, as well as his proven track record of success, will bring great value that will drive growth today and into the future.”
In conjunction with Hogan’s appointment, GF has established dedicated strategic business units around three core market groups, automotive, industrial and multi-market (AIM); mobile and wireless infrastructure (MWI); and computing and wired infrastructure (CWI) to grow market share in the large and growing $47 billion addressable foundry market for 12nm technologies and above. Hogan will work in close collaboration with Bami Bastani, who has been appointed senior vice president and general manager of the MWI SBU; and with Mike Mendicino, who has been appointed interim vice president for the company’s CWI SBU.
These new strategic business units and leadership appointments position the company for greater scalability and growth, building upon the strategy that began in 2018 with the company’s pivot and continuing into this year with its transformational transactions.
About GF
GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) is the world’s leading specialty foundry. We deliver differentiated feature-rich solutions that enable our clients to develop innovative products for high-growth market segments. GF provides a broad range of platforms and features with a unique mix of design, development and fabrication services. With an at-scale manufacturing footprint spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF has the flexibility and agility to meet the dynamic needs of clients across the globe. GF is owned by Mubadala Investment Company. For more information, visit globalfoundries.com.
Dave Lammers是固态技术特约撰稿人，也是格芯的Foundry Files的特约博客作者。他于20世界80年代早期在美联社东京分社工作期间开始撰写关于半导体行业的文章，彼时该行业正经历快速发展。他于1985年加入E.E. Times，定居东京，在之后的14年内，足迹遍及日本、韩国和台湾。1998年，Dave与他的妻子Mieko以及4个孩子移居奥斯丁，为E.E Times开设德克萨斯办事处。Dave毕业于美国圣母大学，获得密苏里大学新闻学院新闻学硕士学位。
GF Plays a Role in Quantum Ecosystem
By: Dave Lammers
I first met Sorin Voinigescu in 1995, when – with a newly minted Ph.D. in hand — he was at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) presenting some of the early work on RF circuits crafted in CMOS technology.
Nearly 24 years later, Voinigescu is doing equally innovative pathway research in quantum computing, using the 22FDX® process from GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) to investigate how to integrate qubits with the RF control and readout circuits. And Voinigescu sees a type of Moore’s Law for quantum devices, in which scaled-down qubits and support circuits are able to operate at higher temperatures, perhaps obviating the need for the scarce helium consumed in today’s cryogenics.
Quantum devices today are largely Josephson Junction superconducting devices operating at milliKelvin temperatures, with wires connecting the qubits to the control and measurement electronics. Voinigescu’s lab at the University of Toronto is studying how to create semiconductor-type qubits that could be controlled with millimeter wave signals. The present-day superconducting qubits have quantum energy separation levels in the 5-10 GHz range. In order to operate the quantum gate, the microwave control signals need to be at that frequency, the 5-10 GHz range.
“All qubits, regardless of implementation, mimic a spin, and the control is performed with a signal that must resonate with the electron spin resonance frequency of that qubit,” Prof. Voinigescu explained. One way of thinking of it, he said, is that each quantum gate could require the equivalent of a 5G cellular signal, perhaps in the 60 GHz range. In fact, he was attracted to the field of quantum computing a few years ago, when he attended a session on quantum computing at IEDM and realized that his two decades of research in high-frequency circuits could play a role in the quantum computing field.
22FDX at 3.3 degrees Kelvin
There is what he calls a “trinity” in the search for higher-temperature quantum computing, where devices must be isolated from any heat or disturbances. The smaller the gate width of the transistor, the higher the frequency required to excite the qubit gate, and the higher temperature it can be operated at. Now, the 22FDX-based devices the Voinigescu lab is investigating have a gate width of 50 nm (the gate length is 18nm, and the channel thickness is 6-7nm). As the gate width is reduced, a somewhat higher temperature environment can be used for the qubits, control, and measurement circuits.
And the cool (excuse the pun) thing about the 22FDX process is something the Toronto lab and its partners recently discovered: at the extremely low temperatures required of quantum systems, the performance of the active and passive high-frequency devices actually improves.
The University of Toronto team, working with GF and industrial partners Lake Shore Cryotronics and Keysight Technologies, among others, reported at the 2019 RFIC conference, held in Boston in June, how the 22FDX process was used to create monolithically integrated double quantum dots with readout transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs), with the output matched to 50 Ω.
More importantly for circuit design, the researchers found that the high-frequency performance of all the active and passive devices created in a production-type 22nm 22FDX technology improved at 3.3 degrees K, with no variance of the polysilicon resistors and improved quality factor of the MOM capacitors.
“What is unique to FD-SOI is that at low and high frequencies, the circuits are not affected by de-ionization, as bulk MOSFETs are known to be affected. Because of that we essentially get significantly better performance at low temperatures, as measured down to 2 degrees Kelvin. In fact, we see significant improvements down to 60-70 degrees K, and below that performance essentially remains flat,” he said. Transconductance, mobility, and fmax all improved, and that has important implications for space, satellites, and other low-temperature environments as well.
At low temperatures, threshold voltages increase for n-MOSFETS and decrease for p-MOSFETs, regardless of the technology. With FD-SOI, the back gate can be used to adjust the Vts to the optimal operation point. Circuits can be designed at room temperature, and then at low temperatures can be “validated,” tuning the Vt’s with back-gate biasing. Circuits that find a “sweet spot” at room temperature, Voinigescu said, can maintain that current density down to 2 degrees Kelvin.
Source: International Workshop on Cryogenic Electronics for Quantum Systems, Professor Sorin Voinigescu, University of Toronto, June 2019
Smaller Dimensions Help Raise Temps
Jamie Schaeffer, the product offering manager for the 22FDX and 12FDX FD-SOI platforms at GF, said the qubits are created in the six or seven-nanometer active layer, providing confinement for Coulomb and spin blockade devices that are, in a sense, boxed in by the buried oxide. “We have to get the spin layers to interact, and with more advanced dimensions we can get those closer. As we are going from 22 to 12 FDX, the smaller dimensions serve the goal of higher temperature quantum computing,” Schaeffer said.
Nigel Cave, a technologist who works in the CTO office at GF, said as semiconductor-type qubits are scaled to smaller dimensions, it may be possible to bring the quantum system’s operating temperature above 4 degrees Kelvin, from the 10-100 milliKelvin in today’s systems. This would enable the use of a standard helium cryostat versus a dilution cryostat, thus reducing costs and also allowing 1-2 watts of total power to be removed from the system. “The ability to remove more power potentially paves the way to co-integrate the Qubits and their control circuitry in the same FDX based device” Cave said.
Schaeffer said IBM, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and others have large quantum research programs underway. “In our case, we believe we can contribute something that is enabling for our partners who are doing meaningful work in the quantum sciences. We have a toolset that is manufacturable and leveraging our process integration capabilities is a way to get to lower costs.”
Source: International Workshop on Cryogenic Electronics for Quantum Systems, equal1.labs https://equal1.us/technology
Two Camps in Quantum Ecosystem
Ted Letavic, a vice president and senior fellow at GF, said from a ten-thousand-foot level, the quantum compute community can be divided into two camps: those who are pushing for ways to create thousands of qubits in order to increase the quantum compute power; and a camp that argues more attention needs to be paid to how to use the roughly 50-100 qubit systems that now exist in order to solve real-world problems.
“One faction says we need thousands of qubits, the other faction says we have 50-100 qubit systems now and don’t know what to do with them. One answer is to provide free access in consortia, and together we can best figure out how to use them, how to create economic value and advance our economy,” he said.
GF has “some key technologies that can help,” acting as a foundry for startups, universities, and others as they investigate different approaches. Letavic, along with Cave and John Pellerin, deputy CTO and vice president of worldwide R&D, provided input to the Department of Energy, which earlier this year put out a Request for Information regarding how best to organize the Quantum Information Science Centers (QISCs).
They argued that while current exploratory R&D is largely being done in non-standard university labs, GF could provide a process integration and early manufacturing effort for researchers, startups, and others participating in the QISCs. Working with foundries would ensure that “devices intended to unlock the promise of quantum systems can be fabricated in volume within existing manufacturing assets.”
Letavic pointed to the work being done with Prof. Voinigescu as one real-life example, where the FD-SOI devices proved advantageous for I/O at 4 degrees Kelvin, and hold promise as a source of qubit transistors confined in the very thin FD-SOI layer. The Toronto effort used wafer shuttles that were processed at GF’s Dresden, Germany fab.
GF also has a silicon germanium platform, as well as a silicon photonics capability, that could play a role in “unlocking the promise of quantum.”
“I do believe in quantum, but it is going to be additive to classical compute,” Letavic said. “The society that gets to a quantum compute infrastructure first will have a very large economic advantage over the rest. And whether you are in the camp of ‘let’s chase the maximum number of qubits,’ or the camp that says ‘let’s figure out how to best use quantum systems to the best of our ability,’ GF is playing in both.”
About Author
Dave Lammers is a contributing writer for Solid State Technology and a contributing blogger for GF’s Foundry Files. Dave started writing about the semiconductor industry while working at the Associated Press Tokyo bureau in the early 1980s, a time of rapid growth for the industry. He joined E.E. Times in 1985, covering Japan, Korea, and Taiwan for the next 14 years while based in Tokyo. In 1998 Dave, his wife Mieko, and their four children moved to Austin to set up a Texas bureau for E.E. Times. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Dave received a master’s in journalism at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
格芯的客户解决方案副总裁
晶圆厂IP和客户工程副总裁
“All qubits, regardless of implementation, mimic a spin, and the control is performed with a signal that must resonate with the electron spin resonance frequency of that qubit,” Prof. Voinigescu explained. One way of thinking of it, he said, is that each quantum gate could require the equivalent of a 5G cellular signal, perhaps in the 60 GHz range. In fact, he was attracted to the field of quantum computing a few years ago, when he attended a session on quantum computing at IEDM and realized that his two decades of research in high-frequency circuits could play a role in the quantum computing field.
Ted Letavic, a vice president and senior fellow at GF, said from a ten-thousand-foot level, the quantum compute community can be divided into two camps: those who are pushing for ways to create thousands of qubits in order to increase the quantum compute power; and a camp that argues more attention needs to be paid to how to use the roughly 50-100 qubit systems that now exist in order to solve real-world problems.