Major stories this week: market reports, Synopsys, SMPSs, AI acceleration, batteries

Market research firms released new reports this week offering outlooks on three key industries; among them EDA, where Synopsys is making news with several announcements. Also, recent or upcoming conferences and trade shows are attracting attention on AI acceleration in servers, SMPS design and architectures, new battery technologies.

More 300mm wafer fabs as foundries slow down and EDA market grows

The worldwide number of operational 300mm wafer fabs is expected to climb to 121 this year and grow to a total of 138 fabs in 2023, according to a report recently released by IC Insights. As of today, however, this growing manufacturing capacity is being confronted by a slowing foundry business, as TrendForce points out in its newest research report. Foundries face a severe challenge in 1Q19, with global production revenue expected to decline by around 16% compared to the same quarter 2018, arriving at 14.6 billion USD. TSMC, Samsung and GlobalFoundries take first, second and third place respectively in market shares. According to TrendForce, although TSMC's market share reaches 48.1%, the foundry suffers a near 18% decline in year-on-year growth.

EDA, instead, will continue to grow at a significant pace: a recent report from ResearchAndMarkets.com values the global electronic design automation tools market at USD 9.76 billion in 2018 and predicts this figure to reach USD 17.35 billion by 2024 – with a forecasted CAGR of 10.1% during the period of 2019-2024.

Synopsys develops automotive-grade IP, celebrates 100th 7nm tapeout, halves physical signoff cycle

Among the liveliest EDA players is certainly included Synopsys, who over the past few days made four announcements: a collaboration with Globalfoundries to develop a portfolio of IP for automotive Grade 1 temperature (-40°C to +150°C junction) for the GF 22-nm Fully-Depleted Silicon-On-Insulator process; the 100^th 7nm tapeout in the first year for its Fusion Design Platform; the launch of its new IC Validator NXT physical verification solution, aiming to cut the physical signoff cycle by 2X for advanced technology nodes; the availability of the TestMAX family of products with innovative test and diagnosis capabilities for all digital, memory, and analog portions of a semiconductor device – including specific capabilities for automotive test and functional safety.

SMPSs gain new design tools, new power devices, lower switching losses

But EDA isn’t just for chip designers: at the APEC show held in Anaheim, CA, March 18th to 20th, Keysight Technologies announced a tool for switched-mode power supply designs that enables designers to visualize post-layout effects without the need to build and test time-consuming prototypes. Called PowerElectronics Professional (PEPro), the tool addresses new challenges in PCB layout that arise from high-performance semiconducting materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride. Until now, post-layout analysis of a “virtual prototype” required expertise with an electromagnetic field solver. According to Keysight, the PEPro software makes post-layout analysis easier, thanks to automatic setup and pre-built analyses of effects such as voltage spiking and electromagnetic interference.

Switched-mode power conversion has obviously been a key theme at the APEC show, where the above-mentioned new semiconductor materials confirmed their growing popularity. For example, Alpha and Omega Semiconductor introduced its AONV070V65G1 GaN 650V transistor, aimed to high efficiency and high-density power supplies in the telecom, server, and consumer adapter markets; and ON Semiconductor launched two new SiC MOSFET devices, the industrial grade NTHL080N120SC1 and the AEC-Q101 automotive grade NVHL080N120SC1, targeting applications such as onboard chargers for electric vehicles, solar, UPS, server power supplies.

Also on show at APEC, innovative gate drivers for the IGBTs and silicon carbide devices used in power converters: Pre-Switch, a Silicon Valley start-up that emerged from stealth mode last year, expanded its AI-based soft-switching power architectures that minimize switching losses, with the introduction of a solution targeted at 3-phase power systems. As the company explained, Pre-Switch uses Artificial Intelligence to constantly adjust the relative timing of elements within the switching system, thus forcing a resonance to offset the current and voltage waveforms. This minimizes switching losses and allows higher switching frequencies.

OCP to develop AI accelerator modules for servers

With Artificial Intelligence benefitting even SMPSs, it’s no surprise to find AI acceleration among the drivers of server evolution. At the recently held 2019 OCP Global Summit, the Open Compute Project Foundation announced an Open Accelerator Infrastructure sub-project with the goal of defining design specification for a compute accelerator module and a complementary set of subsystems. The new Open Accelerator Module (OAM), along with the baseboard and enclosure infrastructure, is expected to speed up the adoption of new AI accelerators and establish a healthy and competitive ecosystem. As the Foundation explained, until today various implementations have selected PCIe CEM form factor as a quick way to integrate new AI accelerators. However, PCIe solutions are not optimized for the upcoming AI workloads which require ever growing bandwidth and interconnect flexibility for data/model parallelism.

But as AI heats up, servers need an effective way to cool down. Also at the 2019 OCP Global Summit, Submer announced a new liquid immersion cooling system that conforms to standard 19-inch server formats and to Open Compute Project specifications for high-performance, supercomputing, and hyperscale infrastructures. The solution is based on horizontal racks that fully immerse computers and servers in a proprietary dielectric fluid, increasing compute densities and lowering electric consumption.

Distinct anode and cathode electrolytes for batteries with higher energy density

Innovation is progressing in batteries, too. At the upcoming International Battery Seminar & Exhibit in Fort Lauderdale, FL, the battery technology company 24M will discuss its new Dual Electrolyte System that makes it possible to manufacture cells with compositionally distinct electrolytes — anolytes and catholytes — at scale, enabling new chemistries capable of providing higher energy density (+ 350Wh/kg), while improving cycle life, safety and cost. According to 24M, the possibility of using two compositionally distinct electrolytes expands the universe of potential electrolytes, including water and other materials that to-date have not been compatible with both the anode and cathode simultaneously.

Speaking of upcoming events, next week EDAcafe will be reporting from the DATE Conference (where DATE stands for Design, Automation and Test in Europe), which will take place in Florence, Italy, March 25th to 29th.

Category: EDACafe Editorial

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 23rd, 2019 at 12:13 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.