Taipei, Oct. 18 (CNA) Foxconn Chief Technique Officer Chiang Shang-yi (蔣尚義) showcased the “System Foundry Enterprise Mannequin” which the corporate believes meets the various semiconductor calls for of the IoT (Web of Issues) market, at Hon Hai Tech Day on Wednesday.
The IC (built-in circuit) is reaching its bodily restrict right now “as we discuss 2 nanometer know-how,” Chiang mentioned.
“Earlier than, after we talked about 40 nanometer, we meant the smallest dimension [of the transistors patterned on wafer] was 40 nanometer, however 2 nanometers is only a advertising and marketing time period,” he added.
The most effective answer is to develop a brand new know-how platform to switch the prevailing silicon IC, Chiang mentioned, however as that’s not on the close to horizon, he believes different potential options have to be sought.
“If the silicon chip has begun to achieve its bodily restrict, let us take a look at the complete system to see if we are able to make any enhancements,” he mentioned.
He proposed revisiting packaging know-how and printed circuit boards (PCBs) for alternatives, as “performance-wise they haven’t improved a lot – they did a really excellent job in decreasing the price however not efficiency.”
Though discovering that the efficiency of packaging and PCBs may be enhanced is wanting on the drawback from a know-how viewpoint, Chiang mentioned there may be additionally a necessity and room for enchancment, from the attitude of demand and utility.
“The silicon know-how is superior however very costly on the identical time. The price of a wafer is about US$10,000; a set of photomasks prices near US$20 million; most significantly to design a product in 4 nanometers is about US$2 billion,” he mentioned.
“For those who spent US$2 billion to design a product, you need to promote no less than US$10 billion to cowl your price. However the [kind of] merchandise you may promote for such a big quantity is restricted,” he careworn.
The chief strategist mentioned merchandise that had been bought at such volumes embrace mainframe computer systems, private computer systems, laptops, and sensible telephones.
Nonetheless, the subsequent wave might be dominated by IoT or AIoT (Synthetic Intelligence of Issues), “which is a really scattered market,” he mentioned.
There are sensible houses, sensible automobiles, sensible cities, for instance, and in every class there are a whole lot of merchandise. “It is tough to have all of them lined by 3 or 4 nanometer know-how,” Chiang mentioned.
The system foundry enterprise mannequin proposed by Hon Hai seems to be to resolve the issue from each the know-how and utility perspective, he mentioned.
Packaging know-how may be superior by changing the substrate of a PCB with silicon, he added.
With this superior packaging platform, one can join many chips they usually perform very very similar to one single chip, Chiang mentioned.
This know-how would additionally present an answer for “scattered IoT market demand,” he added, as all IoT merchandise are structured equally, with central processing items, sensors, energy administration, reminiscence, and communication instruments like WiFi and Bluetooth.
Nonetheless, whereas the merchandise are structured equally, the necessities for every part are totally different. “For instance the CPU for an electrical automotive requires a excessive performing unit for autonomous driving perform, however the processing unit for a private machine may be easy.”
Chiang mentioned what he proposed is to take aside the system of every part and use a “Lego strategy” to rebuild them.
“For every subsystem, we provide totally different performance chips and we name this a chiplet die financial institution,” he added.
“With this die financial institution ready prematurely, after we design a specific IoT machine, we are able to simply choose [one functionality chip] from every class” and put them collectively utilizing superior packaging know-how into one built-in chip.
“As a substitute of the ‘built-in circuit’ that we used to have, we now have built-in chips,” Chiang mentioned.
By integrating the chips on one platform, the scattered market demand for IoT may be addressed, he famous, including that performance-wise it’s also similar to one single chip.
This might be a brand new enterprise mannequin what he referred to as a “system foundry” mannequin.
On this mannequin, Hon Hai can present the mentioned chiplet die financial institution, superior package deal platform, system partitions and system design, even working software program.
This mannequin might assist a buyer with a good suggestion for a product shrink manufacturing time. “For those who come and work with Hon Hai, it can save you your manpower, capital funding and most significantly product time to market,” Chiang mentioned.
He additionally careworn that Hon Hai must construct an ecosystem with many companions, equivalent to “wafer foundries, design home, and EDA (digital design automation) distributors, all working along with agreed normal. So that is our long run technique, which is a brand new enterprise mannequin for system foundry.”
(By Alison Hsiao)
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