Competition to Dominate Semiconductors

July 16, 2024

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A silent war is unfolding to take the lead in photonic semiconductors, which will become the basis for future cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), 6G, and autonomous driving. The industry predicts that if Nvidia dominates the photonic semiconductor market, it will be able to surpass the influence and status it enjoys by dominating the AI ​​semiconductor market.
 

Accordingly, not only global companies such as TSMC and Intel but also China and Japan are working hard to develop photonic semiconductors at the national level. Efforts to secure their own technology are also continuing, centered on domestic research institutes.

▶ Global companies such as TSMC and Intel are putting all their efforts into commercializing photonic semiconductors

Likewise, global semiconductor companies are actively developing silicon photonics technology to commercialize photonic semiconductors, which will form the basis of future cutting-edge technologies.

TSMC is working with major fabless companies such as Nvidia and Broadcom to jointly develop silicon photonics and packaging technologies. It is also known that an R&D team of more than 200 employees has been formed to develop related technologies. According to industry sources, it is expected that mass production will begin as early as this year or next year.

Intel is one step ahead of TSMC. In 2016, it officially launched a silicon photonics-based optical transceiver capable of transmitting data at 100 gigabits per second (Gb) over fiber optic cables.

Intel plans to secure leadership in photonic semiconductors through active cooperation with Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli semiconductor company. Intel failed to acquire Tower Semiconductor in August 2023 due to failure to obtain approval from Chinese regulators but is nonetheless continuing to strengthen cooperation with Tower Semiconductor. Tower Semiconductor is a foundry that specializes in developing analog semiconductors such as CMOS sensors and PMIC (power management semiconductors) and also has its own silicon photonics development platform. 

▶ China attempts to overcome US semiconductor sanctions with photonic semiconductors

China is also focusing on developing photonic semiconductors. With the US’s strong semiconductor sanctions restricting the development of high-performance, cutting-edge semiconductors, it appears to be using photonic semiconductors as a breakthrough. This is because photonic semiconductor production does not require advanced equipment such as EUV exposure equipment (photolithography).

Research and development results have been showing up one after another since last year.

Researchers at Tsinghua University in China announced that they have developed an ACCEL chip that uses photonic technology to increase performance with less power.

The ACCEL chip developed by the research team was manufactured by Chinese semiconductor foundry SMIC using a 20-year-old traditional transistor manufacturing process and recorded a computing speed of 4.6 petaflops (PFlops) in a laboratory environment. One petaflop (PF) is 1,000 trillion calculations per second, which is 3,000 times faster than Nvidia's A100 graphics processing unit (GPU).

Energy efficiency has been improved by using very little electrical energy. The researchers explain that ACCEL can operate for more than 500 years with the power that existing semiconductors use for one hour. As power usage decreases, heat emissions also decrease. As heat generation is alleviated, miniaturization becomes easier.

It is assessed that it is difficult for the chip to be commercialized immediately, but it is expected that through technological improvement, it can be applied to cutting-edge technologies such as wearable devices, electric vehicles, and smart factories.

Research is also being conducted for the mass production of photonic semiconductors. It is reported that a research team at the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed a photonic semiconductor mass production technology that is capable of mass production.

Existing photonic chips are made of lithium niobate, but they are difficult to manufacture, making progress difficult.

Accordingly, the Chinese Academy of Sciences research team used lithium tantalate, a single-crystal thin film that has electro-optical conversion characteristics like lithium niobate and is easy to manufacture. Lithium tantalate is a crystalline material used in optical and electronic devices and is used in fields such as ultrasonic generators, optical switches, and lasers.

Based on this, the research team applied heterogeneous integration technology to manufacture high-quality silicon-based lithium tantalate thin film wafers. In addition, an ultra-low-loss lithium tantalate photonic device nano-processing method was developed, and through this, the company succeeded in manufacturing a lithium tantalate photonic chip.

In addition, photonic semiconductor production facilities are also being prepared. Zhongkexintong, the first photonic semiconductor foundry in China, announced late last year that it would build China’s first photonic semiconductor foundry in Tianjin.

Zhongkexintong was founded in 2020 by Chairman Sui Jun, who has 20 years of experience in the semiconductor business. It has its own multi-material photonic semiconductor process and process design kit (PDK). The company plans to manufacture photonic semiconductors using multi-materials such as thin-film lithium niobate and silicon nitrogen.

▶ Japan Attempts to Revive Semiconductors with Large-Scale Investment

Japan, which used to dominate the global semiconductor market but lost its position to Korea, is also making unusual moves. Recently, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has been developing the semiconductor industry in three areas, namely Kyushu, Tohoku, and Hokkaido, with the aim of reviving the Japanese semiconductor industry. Japan is also considering photonic semiconductors as the main item for this semiconductor industry. 

According to the "Semiconductor Strategy" of the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan is currently pursuing a three-stage semiconductor reconstruction. The first stage is to secure domestic production capacity, the second stage is to establish next-generation semiconductor technology, and the last stage is to establish a global future technology foundation. In the third stage, Japan plans to regain leadership in the semiconductor industry, focusing on optoelectronic semiconductor technology. 

As the Japanese government makes large-scale investments, private companies are also showing an active attitude toward developing photonic semiconductors.

Japan's largest telecommunications company, NTT, is pursuing cooperation with domestic companies as well as Korean and American companies to develop optical semiconductors, the core technology of the next-generation communication platform 'IOWN'.

IOWN is expected to be used in 6G, which is expected to be popularized around 2030. This requires photonic semiconductors to replace electronic processing with light and reduce power consumption. 

The companies that will be cooperating this time are Japanese companies such as Shinko Electric Industries, a semiconductor substrate manufacturer, and Kioxia, a semiconductor memory manufacturer; Intel, an American company in the computing semiconductor field; and SK Hynix, a Korean company that is strong in memory semiconductors.

▶ Domestic researchers are also securing technology... speeding up infrastructure construction

Efforts to develop and commercialize photonic semiconductors are continuing in Korea.

In 2022, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) developed a silicon photonics photonic semiconductor chip that can transmit 100 gigabits of data per second (100 Gbps). This is twice the transmission speed of existing electronic semiconductor chips.

In addition, the research team jointly developed a 100Gbps optical transceiver module capable of 2km transmission in a data center with Oisolution by utilizing core photonic semiconductor technology and also developed an optical interconnection module that links four channels to achieve 400Gbps performance, verifying its usability.

Last year, a research team led by Professor Sang-Sik Kim of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at KAIST discovered a new optical coupling mechanism that can increase the integration of photonic semiconductor devices by more than 100 times.

The higher the integration level of semiconductors, the more calculations they can perform and the lower the process cost. However, it is difficult to increase the integration level of photonic semiconductors because crosstalk occurs between photons between adjacent elements due to the wave nature of light.

Meanwhile, the research team discovered a new optical coupling mechanism and developed a method to increase integration even under polarization conditions that were previously considered impossible.

Professor Kim Sang-sik said, “What’s interesting about this study is that it paradoxically eliminated confusion by using leaky waves (light that has the property of spreading out to the side), which were previously thought to increase confusion in light.” He added, “If we apply the optical coupling method using leaky waves discovered in this study, we will be able to develop a variety of optical semiconductor devices that are smaller and have less noise.”

The construction of infrastructure for the commercialization of optical semiconductors is also accelerating.

The Nanotechnology Direct Center of the Southwest Commercialization Headquarters of the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology recently successfully completed a project to build infrastructure for the commercialization of high-value-added optical semiconductors based on micro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology and began full-scale operations.

This project, which invested a total of KRW 9.8 billion, including KRW 6.9 billion in national funds and KRW 2.9 billion in municipal funds, from June 2020 to September of last year, aims to build infrastructure for the development, verification, testing, and evaluation of MEMS-based optical semiconductors to advance the optical semiconductor industry, and to promote the advancement of domestic products and their entry into the global market.

The integrated process line was completed by newly installing 8-inch corresponding equipment such as plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PE-CVD), high-speed etching equipment (Deep RIE), and exposure equipment (Stepper) as core equipment. Through this, it is expected that the technological level of small and medium-sized companies related to optical semiconductors, such as MEMS sensors and 5th generation (5G) corresponding devices in the region, will be greatly improved.

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