IGBT CoST: Tool for IGBT manufacturing cost analysis

LYON, FRANCE: Yole Développement has released the IGBT CoST, a tool for IGBT Manufacturing Cost Analysis. This tool is ideal for strategic marketing executives, process managers and R&D engineers analyzing the economic feasibility of different IGBT manufacturing approaches.

IGBT equipment suppliers can use IGBT CoST to know the operating cost of their equipment and can compare with their competitors. It is also of great help for purchasing managers who want to understand their supplier’s costs.Source: Yole Développement.

IGBT is the key transistor technology for the applications requiring high frequency switching at 900V and over voltage breakdown. In these fields, numerous growing applications are exhibiting a tremendous CAGR such as Hybrid/Electric Automotive, Rail transportation, industrial motor drives, smart power transmission, UPS, induction cookers, wind turbines and part of the PV inverter industry.

“In 2010, the market for IGBT power module should raise 1,600 M$ including market segments with more than 60% CAGR over 2007‐2012 time frame. 1.2kV‐1.4kV remains the most demand segment but 1.7kV, 3.3kV and 6.5kV look very promising in the transportation and energy sectors” says Dr Philippe Roussel, Project Manager at Yole Développement.

Powerful tool designed for power electronics community
With IGBT devices providing mission critical functionality in more applications, the need for comprehensive cost simulation is paramount.

Due to their specific manufacturing process (thin wafer, back‐face laser annealing…) the cost of IGBT devices can be difficult to estimate. Components such as PT, NPT, trench‐IGBT or Bi‐ Mode IGT involve very different process steps.

This is why a specific and very flexible tool is required for their cost estimation. Yole Développement, leader in the analysis of MEMS applications and markets, and System Plus Consulting, leader in cost analysis of electronic products have joined forces to provide this unique IGBT Cost Simulation Tool (CoST).

Multiple benefits of IGBT Cost Simulation Tool (CoST)

The use of IGBT CoST:
• Estimation of the IGBT device margin
• Understanding of the cost structure
• Competitive analysis
• Cost evaluation for different technology options
• Identification of the cost pain points in your process
• Definition of a business model (fabless, fablight, manufacturing)

Functions of IGBT Cost:
• Possibility to run the cost simulation for a variety of different conditions (region, clean
room class, process type, etc)
• Integrated Equipment, Wafer & Materials Databases
• Very high flexibility:
o IGBT CoST allows the user to enter any IGBT process flow
o The manufacturing process flows are created dynamically in a friendly hierarchical view where each process step can be moved, modified or deleted.
o The user can save an unlimited number of process flows, equipment types and materials
o A project manager function offers the possibility to save all users created data and scenarios (Wafer Fab unit, process flow, yields…) and to reuse them later.
• Two calculation modes: for dedicated fabs and non‐dedicated fabs.
• Simulation of up to five simultaneous scenarios allowing the user to run sensitivity analysis and compare results like yield improvement, manufacturing location impact on cost, etc.
• IGBT CoST uses an ExcelTM interface for maximum usability. This tool will enable you to evaluate the cost per wafer for manufacturing using your own inputs or using the predefined parameters included with the tool.

MEMS inertial sensors market: Business potential and key challenges

LYON, FRANCE: Yole Développement has released its new report dedicated to MEMS accelerometers, gyroscopes and IMU Market from 2008 to 2013. The French consulting company has presented its marketing and technological analysis on MEMS inertial market with a strong focus on the consumer market.

How is the consumer electronics changing the MEMS motion sensor industry? Does the Automotive market affect the MEMS Inertial suppliers? Yole updated its figures, marketing and technological trends. And for the second time, the market analysts are giving today its expertise on the market, which is the one of the most important in the MEMS industry.

Motion sensing devices are not new. They have been used since the 50s in aerospace and defense fields for navigation functions. MEMS versions of accelerometers and gyroscopes have only been developed more recently, bringing two key advantages: cost and size reduction.

While not as accurate as the devices used for military applications, MEMS‐type accelerometers and gyroscopes are well adapted to be integrated into cars and many consumer electronic products. MEMS accelerometers have been extensively used since the 90s in light vehicle airbags, as crash sensors.

Since then many other devices have benefited from the use of motion sensors. The latest and most striking examples are their use in Nintendo Wii game controllers and in Apple iPhone and iPod devices.Source: Yole Développement

MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes: already a 1.80B$ market in 2008
MEMS inertial sensors now represent a serious business: “752M units of MEMS accelerometers and gyroscopes were produced worldwide in 2008, corresponding to a 1.80B$ market already”, says Laurent Robin, MEMS Market Analyst at Yole. “The major part of this market still comes from automotive applications; however consumer applications should overtake this by 2011”, explains Laurent.

This is not only due to the current downturn which is impacting the automotive world: massive use of accelerometer and gyroscope is likely to stay limited to current established applications such as airbag, ESC and TPMS.

The annual growth rate will be limited to 3.6 percent up to 2013, compared to 21.1 percent for the consumer area. Indeed, the adoption rate of motion sensors on many consumer electronics products is rising faster than ever.

For example, Bosch (including its Sensortec division) and ST Microelectronics are leading the global MEMS accelerometer market with about 35 percent of market share together. Indeed, STM has recently benefited from key contracts such as the one with Apple. Its main challengers are ADI, Freescale, VTI and Infineon, and new players continue to enter the market.

From the gyroscope side, three players dominated the market in 2008: Bosch, Systron Donner and Panasonic had, on average, 20 percent market share each. However the automotive part of Systron Donner shut down in the beginning of 2009, which is greatly impacting the automotive electronics field.

Cost and intelligence are driving development of future product generations
Successful MEMS providers will be the ones able to deal with this changing economic landscape.

Some devices now integrate MEMS sensors as a commodity product. In other cases, integration of MEMS is driven by regulation and the user is not willing to pay a price premium for additional sensors. Pressure on cost is thus enormous in the last two cases. Successful players are the ones able to decrease manufacturing costs.

One strategy is to produce on 8” infrastructure. This has been chosen by several players: ST Microelectronics, Bosch Sensortec (Fab is ready, but not in use yet), Freescale, TSMC (foundry service).

Other players have moved to a technology renowned to be more able to handle cost reduction. A nice example is Panasonic which has successfully moved its gyroscope production from quartz to silicon substrates.

When it comes to very high volumes, big IC players are often preferred. Besides been able to sustain high price pressure, they are used to delivering very reliable products, to managing efficiently the supply chain and to ramping up production easily.

Being able to add intelligence to the sensor is also a means to offer strong product differentiators. From supplying only a component, many players are now supplying a solution. Algorithms are commonly integrated at the chip level: for screen rotation, drop detection… This is why a company such as Kionix has been successful in the HDD protection market: notebook free‐fall scenarios have been successfully implemented.

Providing software and system development around the sensor is also essential. It is thus not surprising that in many companies today, more people are working on the software side than on the process side!

MEMS Inertial Sensors Market 2009 Report will be available in June 2009, The catalog price: EURO 3,990 (single user license).

How 3-D integration will challenge and reshape memory industry

LYON, FRANCE: The memory semiconductor industry is about to go through a period of major technological changes as new integration trends and disruptive packaging technologies pave the way to the future growth of this industry.
Memory Applications: Packaging & Integration Trends, a new 2009 Report from Yole Développement, presents the end applications driving the use of 3-D integrated memories and their key players. It also includes an overview of the memory packaging market, its forecasted evolutions with new applications and growth in Flash and DRAM market.

Historically, DRAM memory market has been mostly driven by computing applications, while NOR Flash has been mainly deployed into consumer and communication devices. More recently, NAND Flash memory has emerged as the most promising solid state storage solution for current consumer devices and is showing as the best candidate for hard disk drive replacement in the near future.

Integration is the next challenge
On the other hand, today wireless is growing and enabling new market segments everywhere, (smartphones, mobile pocket computing devices…). As a result, CONNECTIVIY and INTEGRATION are now new drivers to deal with.

Demand for data is increasing everywhere: Faster pipes, more pipes (WAN, LAN, PAN), HD multimedia! Current complexity and concurrency require more than ever higher data capacity, improved power consumption and is stressing existing well established architectures: new interconnects, integration schemes and packaging technologies are needed to support higher performance, breakthrough density and low power consumption devices. 3-D IC integration is showing as a major solution path to tackle these challenges and memories will be key components in achieving this successful integration.

3-D integration will open a new application space for memory market growth
Yole Developpement has followed the burgeoning 3-D Packaging industry since its early beginning. The global economic downturn is challenging the fast adoption of the “Through Silicon Vias” technology into high volume applications such as low cost memories. “However, we are seeing concrete signs that this market is definitely taking-off, with the first 3-D integrated DRAM memories being shipped this year: we estimate that about 20 000 wafers of DRAM memory will be shipped with 3D TSV by the end of 2009, with production moving forward to higher volumes in 2010” explained Jérôme Baron, Technology & Market Analyst at Yole Développement.

By 2013, Yole Développement expects that telecom and computing industries will drive more than 70% percent of the total volume for 3-D TSV stacked memories.

3-D integration with memories is a hot topic at the moment because of the challenging market conditions and of the important investment needed for building the required infrastructure. As a result, pre-competitive alliances and partnerships may be necessary to drive the risk down while accelerating product adoption. Memory manufacturers, CMOS foundries, OSAT packaging houses, Fab-less IC players and integrated device manufacturers are all concerned and actively preparing for this ultimate integration.

3D-TSV memory wafer shipmentsSource: Yole Développement

This new study aims at answering the following questions: What are the end applications driving the use of 3-D integrated memories in the Flash and DRAM market? Who are the key players doing it? How will it happen? When will the market ramp up? What is the impact of the current economic turmoil application per application? Finally, how big is this 3-D memory market going to be and at which conditions in terms of cost?

Memory applications key market metrics
To support its investigations in this complex and fast moving market, Yole Development is also distributing the “Memory LSI – 2008 Report” from Nikkei BP Consulting, a market research company based in Tokyo, Japan that has been focusing on the analysis of the key market metrics of the memory industry, based on strong interactions all the year with memory fabs worldwide. The two complementary reports are available separately or both in a bundle package.

Memory Applications: Packaging & Integration Trends Report
Catalogue price: Euros 3,690.00 (single user license). For special offers and the price in dollars, please contact David Jourdan (jourdan@yole.fr or +33 472 83 01 95)