Intel continues to support its foundry business while making a concerted effort to get the company back on track with leading silicon processes for fabless customers. As with IC design, the EDA and IP industries are an intrinsic part of the IC manufacturing ecosystem; and fabs are taking the lead. This begs a fundamental question: How will Intel's fab business impact these two important areas of the semiconductor industry?
Intel says an open, thriving ecosystem is critical to its broader IDM 2.0 strategy. So the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker has launched a new program to empower its ecosystem partners and foundry customers: the Intel Foundry Services (IFS) Accelerator. "IFS Accelerator is a consortium designed to provide access to design services, IP, and tools and processes to support next-generation ICs," said Randhir Thakur, president of Intel Foundry Services.
To accelerate innovation, Thakur added, this ecosystem alliance program aims to bring together the brightest minds and broadest capabilities to provide a seamless interface to Intel's process and packaging technologies.
Figure 1 Several EDA tool makers and semiconductor IP vendors have joined the IFS Accelerator Program.
So, as competition in the fab business heats up, what kind of ecosystem-level innovation can we expect in the near future? According to Laurie Balch, research director at Pedestal Research, more competition in an industry generally means greater product stability and customer certainty. "The semiconductor ecosystem will undoubtedly benefit from Intel's foundry business."
First, Intel's foray into the foundry model will facilitate integration between different elements of IC design and manufacturing, she said. "What's particularly interesting about Intel being a foundry is that it opens the door to a variety of integration services offerings, because Intel is very proficient in technology from design to manufacturing."
Balch added that while Intel has been working with EDA tool vendors, manufacturing equipment companies, IP vendors and other semiconductor technology businesses, such alliances and partnerships are sure to grow and become more valuable.
To understand all of this, let's first take a closer look at how the EDA tools space is likely to evolve with the significant growth of the foundry services business. After all, Intel is committed to adopting the industry's best in EDA, devices, and research.
Intel Fab Impact on EDA
With the addition of Intel, fab services are taken to the next level, what kind of shift can we see in the EDA industry's relationship with the fab? Specifically, as Balch pointed out, when Intel is closely related to the EDA business as a top customer and development partner of the EDA vendor.
Additionally, Intel has an in-house CAD team and even sells some niche EDA tools itself. So it's no surprise that Intel's entry into the foundry industry has been a relief for the IC development community and EDA vendors.
However, according to Michael Buehler-Garcia, vice president of product management at Siemens Digital Industries Software Calibre Design Solutions, the introduction of each new process node presents a set of physical and design complexity challenges and will increase the number of new process nodes. design rules. “To address these challenges, there is a need for increased collaboration and communication between EDA, IP and fab companies to ensure IP is of the highest quality and sign-off for each new foundry process in time for the first time at each new process node Streaming."
Figure 2 EDA companies provide DFM tools to fabs to help them roll out new processes faster, and test tools to find problems to further increase yields.
So, what does this shift require? Greater and earlier collaboration, including early sharing of IP data, Garcia said. "This will benefit the three in helping their mutual customers introduce innovation faster."
Therefore, in addition to providing signoff, DFM and testing tools, Siemens EDA also provides new tools for embedded analysis. This is basically when you are able to plug monitoring IP into the design, as you would do with built-in self-test (BIST) IP. "Embedded analytics IP is more than just plugging IP into post-silicon test equipment to read and find problems," Garcia said. "It enables companies to monitor the health and safety of the IC and its power supply system over the life of the IC."
This, in turn, will allow design engineers to detect field problems, schedule better preventive maintenance, and develop next-generation ICs and end products. "We believe there will be ways to share this silicon performance data with our foundry partners, allowing them to further tune and improve their manufacturing processes," Garcia added.
The above information on EDA's trajectory in new fab orders shows the presence of another key element: semiconductor design IP. Like EDA, new fab expansions can significantly impact the IP industry.
IP in new fab orders
The current IC manufacturing model for fabs working with IP suppliers is very flexible. Therefore, with more fabs, the need for IP to support more and more process nodes will become more critical. Over the past decade, as Laurent Moll, COO of Arteris IP, pointed out, when the number of fabs dwindled, the core semiconductor DNA remained. "As a result, the IP ecosystem will be able to easily scale as the fab grows."
IP companies either provide superior computing power associated with the protocol or work closely with foundries to provide highly optimized PHYs. As the number of fabs increases, cooperation between different IP vendors is likely to increase, Moll said. "The wider range of foundry process nodes to serve may result in some IP providers having partial product portfolios and expanding them with partners to provide customers with complete solutions."
As for what it takes to deal with this shift in the IP industry, Garcia from Siemens Software, for example, Moll's message is clear: Collaborate, collaborate and collaborate. "This is already starting to accelerate, especially below 28 nm, and optimized IP and tuned EDA products and processes are as important as new nodes." He added that this trend will only accelerate to ensure that the core of the system-on-chip (SoC) Features meet the growing demand for innovative electronic products.
Figure 3 The production of large SoCs raises the bar for increased collaboration between fabs and IP suppliers.
Here, it's important to note that EDA and IP vendors are already working with partners on the manufacturing side. However, due to the imbalance of the foundry industry dominated by relatively few players in Asia, IP companies in particular have been able to choose to form partnerships with specific foundries.
"With Intel as a major foundry, EDA and IP vendors will be forced to forge closer relationships with more foundry partners," said Pedestal Research's Balch. On the other hand, it also presents Intel with a significant opportunity to grow its own targeted IP and EDA businesses that could threaten incumbents in these industries, she noted. "But in the long run, it will actually benefit the entire semiconductor ecosystem by increasing healthy competition and fostering technological progress."
IC Ecosystem Advancement
Arteris IP's Moll is as optimistic as Balch. "As more fabs come online and heterogeneous computing becomes the new standard for high-end SoCs, we may see more collaboration between fabs," he said. "This will lead to faster and more efficient integration of silicon from multiple sources into a single product."
So, as Intel tries to create a new foundry culture, its connections to EDA and IP vendors will be critical. The two adjacent industries could also benefit from Intel's huge spending on the fab business. But, more importantly, greater collaboration between the foundry, EDA, and IP industries, as described in this article, can lead to valuable ecosystem innovation.
This will also benefit IC developers in the long run.
