By: Wallace Pai

Earlier this year GLOBALFOUNDRIES announced plans to build a 300mm fab in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in southwestern China, in a joint venture with the Chengdu municipality.

We did so to take advantage of the fact that the Chinese semiconductor industry is undergoing radical change. The national imperative is to increase self-sufficiency in semiconductors dramatically in the next few years, because while China is the world’s fastest-growing semiconductor market, it currently must import about 80 percent of the chips used in equipment manufactured by Chinese OEMs.

Chengdu sees this move toward self-sufficiency as an opportunity to turn itself into the Silicon Valley of the budding Chinese semiconductor industry. While tourists may be familiar with the ancient city for its giant Pandas, spicy foods, cultural heritage and natural appeal, from a business perspective it is a thoroughly modern, cosmopolitan city with world-class infrastructure, a business-friendly attitude and a large, technology-savvy workforce.

Many foreign multinational companies are located there, such as Intel, Texas Instruments and Siemens, along with large Asian enterprises such as Foxconn, which builds about two-thirds of the world’s iPads there.

Accordingly, Chengdu is providing attractive financial, educational and other incentives to prospective industrial partners, with the goal of developing an entire chip design and manufacturing ecosystem to serve the Chinese market.

That presented GF with an incredible ground-floor opportunity, not only to manufacture the chips required by the country’s electronics manufacturers, but also to play a key role in supporting the developing Chinese semiconductor industry as a trusted partner with uniquely advantageous, world-class technical resources.

Thus, we chose to build our fab in Chengdu despite strong interest from other cities. Fab 11 will be the largest and one of the most advanced 300mm fabs in China upon completion next year, and will be the center of our 22FDX® production for that market.

Initially we will produce 130nm-180nm mainstream technologies there, with a capacity of 20,000 wafer starts per month (wspm). Then, in the latter part of 2019, we will begin volume production of our highly differentiated 22FDX (FD-SOI) technology, with an anticipated capacity of 65,000 wspm. Ultimately some 3,500 employees will be involved in Fab 11 operations.

Fab 11 adds to the resources we already have in China. We started with a sales office in Shanghai several years ago, where there are now 50 people in various roles including field application engineers, sales, marketing and other technical support functions.

But as a result of the IBM Microelectronics acquisition, we now also can offer a highly differentiated portfolio of RF technologies and a very large ASIC design/development team, with about 150 people in Shanghai and another 40-50 in Beijing. As our ASIC business continues to grow, so too will these numbers. This ASIC offering is a very powerful one, with one of the industry’s broadest ranges of ASIC design services, differentiated intellectual property (IP), custom silicon and advanced packaging for true end-to-end solutions.

Building a 22FDX Ecosystem, Leveraging ASIC Capabilities

The Chengdu government rightly sees our 22FDX technology as a key advantage in its efforts to become a center of gravity for the growing Chinese chip industry, and our presence as a magnet that will attract even more technology companies and make the city an international center of excellence for semiconductors.

That’s because 22FDX, with its unique combination of performance, RF capabilities, power, size and cost, is a perfect match for the end-markets on which China is focusing – battery-powered, wireless computing devices for mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), driver assistance/autonomous driving and 5G applications.

Beyond the fab, and along with our joint venture partner, we are helping to develop an entire 22FDX-based ecosystem comprising IP, EDA and design services companies, who will be our customers and partners going forward. This ecosystem will play a critical role in the eventual launch of 22FDX technology in China because these companies will already know how to work with it and will be familiar with its benefits as they design innovative electronic products.

For example, there are more than 700 fabless semiconductor companies in China, and that number is growing fast. While some are more technically advanced than others, on an overall basis there is a strong need for expert help and technical assistance. Our in-country ASIC engineers are already working on-site with some of these companies on 22FDX projects which means, in effect, that we’re already open for business in that technology even though Fab 11 itself is still under construction.

Throughout greater China, our existing customers range from Tier One companies to many of these smaller companies, but as we bring on more capabilities and technologies such as 22FDX, opportunities are opening up with customers we weren’t able to serve previously.

It’s Just the Beginning

The Chinese semiconductor industry is really only in its infancy. More than 10 fabs are now under construction throughout the country, including ours, and an entire industrial infrastructure is being established.

Seen in that light, our new fab is not simply a manufacturing facility, but rather is a tangible symbol of a bright future for us in China.

By: Dave Eggleston

There’s been a lot of news recently about embedded MRAM (eMRAM), and for good reasons.  The technology is rapidly accelerating from research and development to commercialization at multiple foundries, and is now being adopted by chip designers. Most notably, GLOBALFOUNDRIES just announced the availability of its 22FDX® 22nm FD-SOI eMRAM for system-on-chip (SoC) designers, with released PDKs, off-the-shelf macros, and MPWs for customer prototyping. With risk production expected from GF and other foundries by the end of 2018, MRAM is shaping up to be a big technology and market disruptor right now, promising to replace embedded Flash, and augment SRAM in MCUs and SoCs for automotive, IoT, consumer and industrial systems. Over the horizon, FinFET processes with eMRAM will also appear, bringing new capabilities to future storage, networking and datacenter systems.

Supercharged Performance

MRAM technology has been under development for decades – in parallel with several other non-volatile memories including RRAM, Phase Change, Carbon Nanotubes, Ferroelectric – and recently, eMRAM has clearly taken the lead position among all emerging embedded memory technologies. Why? eMRAM offers SoC designers very significant performance advantages:

• Very fast write speeds (<200ns)
• Extremely high endurance (~10E8 cycles)
• Operation from logic Vcc (no high voltage pumps needed)
• Low energy writes (10x lower than eFlash)
• Zero bitcell static leakage (0 pA vs. >50pA for a SRAM bitcell)

Coupled with the performance advantages, eMRAM enjoys a significantly higher level of technology maturity versus other emerging NVM options, featuring:

• Well understood magnetism physics
• Simple, controllable switching mechanism (no forming, or stepped writes needed)
• Low incidence of single bit failures
• Demonstration of multi-Mb arrays at sub-28nm
• Achieving high yield, with excellent reliability
• Full integration into advanced foundry production processes

eMRAM simultaneously delivers bit density, speed, endurance, coupled with low power consumption and non-volatility. The combined advantages of superior performance and technology maturity for eMRAM are key factors for foundry customers deciding to use eMRAM for their sub 28nm products.

Hit the Road Running

eMRAM simultaneously delivers bit density, speed, endurance, coupled with low power consumption and non-volatility. The combined advantages of superior performance and technology maturity for eMRAM are key factors for foundry customers deciding to use eMRAM for their sub 28nm products.

Historically, eMRAM has not been perceived as ready for commercialization because of several manufacturing and reliability barriers: material complexity, poor data retention at hot temperatures, susceptibility to external magnetic fields, and finally, difficult and expensive manufacturing.

Tough challenges to overcome, but to move the needle from an unreliable to reliable technology the industry has directly tackled the issues of materials and manufacturing complexity. As a part of this effort, major fab equipment makers, along with foundries, pioneered eMRAM specific PVD and Etch equipment that achieves 20 wafers per hour (wph) throughput, which enables a competitive manufacturing cost.

Moreover, GF has specifically improved eMRAM reliability, by modifying the magnetic materials to deliver outstanding data retention and magnetic immunity, including:

• Less than 10ppm bit error rate through 260°C solder reflow
• 15 year data retention at 125°C
• More than 1000 Oe magnetic immunity

In other words, many of the past barriers for eMRAM commercialization have now been overcome – solved by the collective efforts of the foundries and major fab equipment makers in making eMRAM reliable and manufacturable.

Crank up the “Killer Combo”

In light of these new advancements in reliability and manufacturability, high-volume market opportunities have now opened up for eMRAM. The market opportunity further expands with the widespread commercialization of fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) as a substrate.

eMRAM on FD-SOI brings together best-in-class capabilities, creating an irresistible “Killer Combo” vs. other bulk silicon offerings. Unlike eFlash, which is built down into the silicon, eMRAM’s magnetic element is built up in the metal layers, so it is more easily implemented into a logic process such as FD-SOI with no impact on FEOL transistors. Additionally, eMRAM’s higher endurance, faster write speed increases SoC performance, and the low write energy reduces power consumption by more than 80 percent (vs. 28nm bulk silicon with eFlash).

In particular, GF’s industry leading 22FDX eMRAM platform provides excellent scaling, outstanding RF IP, ultra-low leakage, power island control – and (finally!), eMRAM macros with either eFlash or SRAM interfaces. For the first time, the versatility of GF’s 22FDX eMRAM enables ultra-efficient memory subsystems that power cycle with no time or energy penalty, making it suitable for a broad spectrum of applications.

eMRAM is finally here; ready for SoC designers to take advantage of the superior performance and technology maturity, with GF’s 22FDX eMRAM delivering excellent reliability and manufacturability.

Design your Killer Product today, using GF’s 22FDX “Killer Combo”!

To test drive GF’s 22FDX and embedded memory offerings:

• GF’s Embedded Memory Technology Brief
• GF’s VLSI Symposium Technical paper on eMRAM for GP-MCU Applications
• GF’s IMW Technical paper on eFlash for Automotive MCUs
• GF’s 22FDX Technology Brief

About Author

Dave Eggleston

Dave Eggleston is the Vice President of Embedded Memory at GlobalFoundries, which he joined in 2015. Dave has responsibility for the embedded volatile and non-volatile memory businesses at GlobalFoundries, as well as the related strategic direction and initiatives. Dave is the former CEO and President of Unity Semiconductor, a RRAM industry pioneer acquired by Rambus. He has held technical executive management roles at Rambus, Micron (where he built and spearheaded the NAND systems engineering organization), SanDisk, and AMD. He holds 28 patents in NAND flash and next-generation ReRAM memory, storage system usage, and high volume manufacturing. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of two NVM start-up companies. He received his MSEE from Santa Clara University and his BSEE from Duke University.