Oh-Hyun Kwon

Perspective of the Future Semiconductor Industry: Challenges and Solutions

The semiconductor industry currently faces serious challenges and changes on both the business and technology fronts. The business environment is becoming more difficult. The huge investment required for new fabrication facilities is forcing many IDMs (Integrated Device Manufacturers) to change their business model to either fablite or fabless. The significant costs to develop the next generation process technologies are necessitating joint development between various companies. Furthermore, due to severe competition in the mobile and digital consumer markets, low chip prices and short time-to-market are both essential for survival. To satisfy these market requirements, heavy R&D expenses and resources are needed. However, its return on investment is becoming marginal and even uncertain. To overcome this difficult situation, the industry is experiencing consolidation of once proudly independent companies. On the technical side, controlling chip yield, power consumption and design complexity have become extremely difficult in the nano-technology era. This talk will present a perspective on how the semiconductor industry must respond to these challenges by developing new markets, new products, and new technologies. The solutions will come from (i) collaborations with key customers for new markets and products, as well as, with key partners for new technologies, and (ii) technology breakthroughs with innovative ideas, such as 3-D package, fusion technologies (OneDRAM, OneNAND), variation-tolerant designs, and low leakage devices. These approaches can lead to lower chip costs and relieve physical uncertainty problems.

A 35 ns 64 Mb DRAM using on-chip boosted power supply

An on-chip boosted power supply is necessary for ease of layout and high speed in high density DRAMs. The technique of TTL conversion is a key to designing high speed DRAMs for 3-V operation. The authors present the generation and regulation of an on-chip power supply (V/sub pp/) within 50 mV of the optimum level during operation for a given V/sub cc/. In addition to the regulated V/sub cc/ scheme, improved interface circuit techniques are employed to achieve fast input and output conversion with good noise margins. An experimental 64-Mb DRAM is designed. A typical access time of 35 ns is obtained by measurement.<<ETX>>

Eco-friendly semiconductor technologies for healthy living

In the history of human kind, we have witnessed remarkable development and growth of industry. Everywhere, from home appliances to space shuttles, such industrial growth has made our lives more productive and comfortable. However, this comes with an alarming increase in energy consumption, primarily involving fossil fuels, and increasing greenhouse-gas emissions. Such activity has led to unprecedented levels of pollution, environmental destruction and climate change, and, ironically, has become a serious threat to human health [1].

A 2&#181;m poly-gate CMOS analog/digital array

The development of a 2μm poly-gate CMOS array which combines digital gate array together with stacked-layout analog capability will be covered. Up to 10 sections of a biquadratic switched-capacitor filter can be implemented in the analog section.