A Study on the Collaboration between Foundry and IC Design House from Open Innovation Platform: A Case Study of TSMC

• Main Authors: Tse-Horn Cheng, 鄭澤鴻
• Other Authors: Cheng Hung WU
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/bvfa5j

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 工業工程學研究所 === 104 === Local Foundry TSMC in Taiwan is developing the deep sub-micro 7nm/10nm in year 2015 and has achieved the 16/28nm FINFET volume production with high speed, low power and cost effective to customers and become the largest revenue of worldwide wafer foundry. The overall Taiwan semiconductor foundries contribute total revenue over 50B USD. Despite the progress that has been achieved, most major foundries (TSMC, Intel, Samsung etc.) keep invest enormous capital expense (CAPEX) continuously on leading edge technology include mature (or specialty process) and new emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technology for booming business and new era of big data. Moreover, the leading technology for ultra-low power and sensors and System in Package (SiP) assembly need been integrated vertically with upstream equipment, material manufacturer and EDA tool vendor on supply chain through IP Alliance to serve the new opportunity by new advance process technologies and IC design open innovation ecosystem to speed up the design and shorten the product time to market. TSMC drives the open innovation platform in order to inject new process technology requirements into design ecosystem so the TSMC customers can design into TSMC technology early and have smoother and faster production. As the technology moving to most advance technology, the design requirements, challenges and complexity have been increasing dramatically. It’s difficult for customer to find out , validate and integrate by themselves. TMSC provide the platform to enable design ecosystem to find out solution. To validate their solutions, and to provide customers one-stop shopping solution. Such design platform deliverables includes design collaterals of qualified EDA tools and corresponding tech files , process design kits. DFM (design for manufacturing) data kits, reference flows, foundation IPs of standard cells, I/Os, memory compilers, foundation and specialty IPs. All customers use commercial EDA tools to design in TSMC process technology, and the majority and increasing number of customers use commercial IPs in their designs. That validated the importance of timely completion of design infrastructure through the collaboration with design ecosystem partners. The key to the success of design ecosystem partnership is enablement collaboration. Base on TSMC in-house design knowhow and expertise, the ecosystem act as the focal point for ecosystem partners to interface with TSMC process technology, bridges the gap between new technology and design requirements and ecosystem’s existing capabilities, identifies enhancements needs, provides partners with EDA ( electronic design automation) and IP enablement kits for customer to effectively implement the needed changes timely. As a result, TSMC and partners jointly create synergy combining innovation and strengths of the whole design ecosystem to collectively deliver complete solutions for customers to use. Recently TSMC announce 7nm process has entered try run phase and 16nm volume production number of tape outs has emerging much faster comparing to 28nm(HKMG) at the same time. Through Design ecosystem collaboration with partners and participated the upcoming design challenges associated with 7nm technology. On the EDA sides, the efforts include enhancement in various EDA tools, creation of tech files/PDKs associated with those tools, and design methodology innovation for customers to design in 7nm. On another IP sides, early availability of critical IPs with competitive PPA (power, performance and area) is the key to enable customer design work. Moreover, the interoperable design package for different design environments migration are essential to meet design accuracy also reduce the design cycle time and transaction cost and IP reusability. Building the ecosystem and partnership with trust remains one of the greatest problems within the open innovation platform by game theory, risk management and transfer cost to enhance the strength to resolve customer competition. The strategy of technology roadmap and design collaboration become challengeable and essential to practical methods of projects and partnership for all stakeholders with a relatively high rate of effectiveness. This study aims to build the entry barrier to keep leading position and to examine (1) qualified IP and design methodology to speed up the industrial development and product platform (2) the evolution of resource and information integration; (3) Eliminate potential risks and trust the proven design system to engage customers (4) resource planning by innovation and value service of design support. Case study methodology was conducted for this interview survey with CEO of semiconductor technology incorporation in Taiwan. Partnership, EDA flow and design environment and technology were observed as three principals in this investigation. Results reveal that the strengths of Open innovation platform action are (1) integrated modularized manufacturing ability; (2) Align core competence with customer; (3) setup value chain and alliance to build robust platform; (4) cost-effective customized products and design support. The findings were summarized as the following statements, the business strategy encompasses three dimensions: Interoperable design platform, core technology competence strengthening, and partnership and complementary establishment. The entire advanced open innovation system can be conveyed to emerging markets successfully. Driving process-design co-optimization to assure TSMC’s leadership in technology, and reducing design barriers for customer to adopt TSMC technology, design ecosystem is the platform for TSMC to actively engage the design ecosystem. This leverage TSMC superior ROI through design collaboration model, and has been proven to enable customers to achieve silicon success by synergizing the innovations TSMC & partners