3-D Integration Development Threatened by Economic Uncertainty
As presenters and attendees prepare for the opening of this year's 3-D Architectures for Semiconductor Integration and Packaging conference, which starts today in Burlingame, Calif., confidence in the technology's future is mixed with concern about survival in the current economy.
Alexander E. Braun, Senior Editor -- Semiconductor International, 11/17/2008 7:53:00 AM
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“We expect some excellent plenary sessions,” said session chairman Philip Garrou, consultant for Microelectronics Consultants of North Carolina (Cary), and a leading blogger on 3-D integration for Semiconductor International. “Among the participants will be IBM (Armonk, N.Y.), Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.) and Micron (Boise, Idaho). Unfortunately, TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) had to withdraw at the last moment.” Garrou, the only interviewee willing to go on the record, added that he will be looking out for new 3-D announcements. “It will be telling because it will show whether things will be moving ahead, or if the recession will delay commercial developments for a couple of years.”
Looking back some three years ago, very few in the industry appeared interested in, or even understood what 3-D architectures were supposed to be all about. Since then, a wealth of information and results has been developed about all aspects of the technology. There are no doubts as to whether the techniques and applications are doable. The big question now is how the recession will affect their progress. Garrou and others — in and out of the semiconductor industry — think that it is very likely that these kinds of developments will be delayed or arrested by the shaky economy, especially because it has become abundantly obvious that this is no localized recession, but one of global proportions; the fact that economic analysts predict that it may last from 18 months to as long as three years is not helpful, either.
Garrou bases some of his expectations for 3-D on what he has observed in the case of the development of CMOS image sensors. “Their pricing was in significant decline last year, so not much was expected to happen there. But then Toshiba (Tokyo) not only announced that they would be the first to put through-silicon vias (TSVs) into their CMOS image sensor to reduce the size, but that they were selling it essentially at the same price. This forced the other players to jump on the bandwagon over the next 12 months. So Samsung (Seoul, South Korea), Micron, Oki (Tokyo) — all the big players in CMOS image sensors — followed suit at a time when the price was significantly deteriorated. They did this only because Toshiba made the first move, and they had no choice but to follow.”
Although inventory levels generally tend to serve as a moderating factor to the purchase of new devices, in the case of the new CMOS image sensor the OEMs that did not have it found that they were stuck with their inventories of non 3-D devices. Meanwhile, those who were able to acquire and use them made a considerable profit based on the architecture’s smaller form factor.
These happenings could be echoed by the memory market. Because of the way in which memory prices have plunged, not many industry observers expect much to happen. However, if one of the leaders were to make a preemptive move in this direction, the entire landscape could change. While it is unlikely that this step will be taken by memory giant Samsung, because of its commanding market share, some of the other players might be willing to consider it to chip away at that enormous market share. “If that happens,” Garrou said, “then everyone else will have to make the move within a period of six months; otherwise, they will lose their market share instead of growing it.” Garrou conceded, however, that if none of the major memory manufacturers takes the step, the implementation of the technology will be delayed two or more years.
A possible indication of the implementation of 3-D integration is which way the wind blows for equipment manufacturers. OEMs are the first to find out about what shape production will take, because manufacturers have to order their processing equipment ahead of time. And whenever there is a large order because someone is preparing to put a new line in place, this news always manages to leak out. “We all know that the qualification of both processes and products each take about a year-and-a-half to two years,” Garrou said. “I always get heartburn when some of the marketeers try to tell us that this is going to happen by 2010 — we know that this is impossible because nothing is being done yet in the way of orders.”
While there is no question that the semiconductor device road leads to 3-D integration, it seems extremely unlikely that there could be double-digit penetration into the markets over the next two or three years. The technology is here, but its timeline and the manner of its application is going to directly depend on the direction taken by the faltering world economy.
