WaferCatalyst â Towards Promotion of IC Design in the Middle East using Virtual ... methods along with a fully custom web based portal for the complete automation of services and as a tool for community capacity building. The portal supports ...
2014 9th International Design and Test Symposium
WaferCatalyst – Towards Promotion of IC Design in the Middle East using Virtual Community Approach Shahab A. Najmi, Abdulfattah M. Obeid and Mohammed S. BenSaleh National Center for Electronics, Communications and Photonics Research King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia {shahmed,obeid,mbensaleh}@kacst.edu.sa
Abstract— WaferCatalyst is an initiative of King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) aimed at promoting integrated circuit (IC) design and related technologies in Saudi Arabia and the surrounding regions. KACST has undertaken a virtual community building approach utilizing conventional methods along with a fully custom web based portal for the complete automation of services and as a tool for community capacity building. The portal supports features like E-Learning, support services, video conferencing, order management and secure file transfer. These features are used to achieve high efficiency in providing services, creating an online community and to provide a mechanism for knowledge transfer and sharing. The results of this technology based approach in the second year are already very encouraging with participation from more than fourteen universities and organizations from four countries and a large number of users have signed up and are utilizing the system, thus contributing to the development of the ecosystem. Keywords— Ecosystem Development, E-learning, IC design, Integrated Circuit, Support, Training, Web Portal.
I. INTRODUCTION Semiconductor industry is one of the keys to enhancing global productivity in the last fifty years. The tremendous impact of the industry can be gauged from the fact that the semiconductor industry along with electronics industry which it powers, contributed 25% of the total United States productivity growth from 1995 to 1999, according to an analysis by McKinsey Global Institute [1]. Due to the strategic nature of this industry many countries have invested in building a vibrant economy through investments in semiconductor industry. Taiwan is considered a case study in successful development of semiconductor industry. In a paper by Chang et al. while discussing the strategies undertaken by Taiwan in the development of Semiconductor industry have categorized the industry development in three distinct stages of initiation, burgeoning and growth [2]. It is noted that in all of the three stages the government had an important role to play in making Taiwan a key player in the semiconductor industry. Many other governments have been actively working to promote Semiconductor industry as a strategic technology for
national productivity enhancement. China is pursuing a policy to focus on short term, medium term and long term development till 2020 in semiconductor technology by ‘streamlined R&D chain by creating effective and efficient innovation mechanism based on the cooperation among industries, universities and research institutes’[3]. Malaysian government plan, which aspires to propel the country to a high income economy by 2020, has identified twelve National Key Economic Areas (NKEA) one of which is electrical and electronics, with emphasis on semiconductor technology [4]. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest producer of crude oil in the world. The country's economy is currently dominated by the oil production where the oil sector accounts for 45% of the Gross Domestic Product and 90% of the export earnings of the country [5]. In order to diversify the economy the country has identified fifteen (15) areas which are of strategic nature. Electronics, Communications and Photonics has been included as one of the strategic areas in the National Science, Technology and Innovation Plan (NSTIP). King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) which is a government organization working on the promotion of science and technology in Saudi Arabia, has the task of the overseeing of the implementation and coordination of the NSTIP. KACST has recognized the importance of a community based approach focusing on the Middle East, North Africa region rather than only on Saudi Arabia to create a vibrant and sustainable ecosystem for IC Design. The main objective of this paper is to provide information on the virtual community development approach taken by KACST through its initiative called 'WaferCatalyst'. The paper is organized into seven sections. Section II describes multi-project wafer consolidation service and the different approach to community building by KACST. Section III describes the general approach of WaferCatalyst to use the World Wide Web through a website and social media to reach out to potential and current community members in a ‘social’ world. Section IV explains the various features of the WaferCatalyst web portal and how it is used to build and add value to an international semiconductor community. Section V describes some trends to show the global nature of the
978-1-4799-8200-4/14/$31.00 ©2014 IE
89
2014 9th International Design and Test Symposium community and some figures on the impact of this approach. Section VI proposes future improvements to the approach for community building and the lessons learnt. Section VII concludes the paper. II. MULTI-PROJECT WAFER CONSOLIDATION FOR IC DEVELOPMENT
Multi-project wafer (MPW) is a well-known technique to reduce cost and share wafer space between many clients. A number of initiatives use this technique to allow research and development organizations to have access to cost effective IC fabrication services. Some services like MOSIS (USA) [6] and Europractice (European Union) [7] provide this service to both academia and industry to facilitate the fabrication of a large number of IC designs every year. However most of the MPW services are working in countries with an established ecosystem and community in IC related technologies [8]. Thus the MPW service by KACST needs to have a different approach to make an impact. The service needs to not only address the manufacturing needs of the local and regional community but actually help stimulate it. Thus the service has to concentrate on a number of additional aspects including: 1) creating a regional community through the use of information technology; 2) provide a unified platform for knowledge creation and knowledge sharing of the community; and 3) stimulate the community to work on commercially viable areas and projects. III. GENERAL COMMUNITY OUTREACH APPROACH WaferCatalyst is an international initiative to enhance the ecosystem of integrated circuit (IC) design and related technologies in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region as well as globally. There are a number of important objectives of this initiative including improving access to semiconductor manufacturing technologies, encouragement of design activities and enhancing collaboration between organizations in the region. In order for this initiative to gain traction it is essential that the facilities provided through the initiative are highlighted to all the stakeholders including universities, research organizations, government agencies and commercial organizations to maximize participation and increasing synergy. WaferCatalyst has undertaken a comprehensive approach to reach out to the community and develop various mechanisms to allow various entities to work together. The discussion of the various mechanisms is not within the scope of this paper but the approach to community building is described below. A. Website A comprehensive website has been created to detail the various programs, initiatives and collaborative mechanisms to reach out to all stakeholders across the region and the world.
Fig. 1 WaferCatalyst website
The website provides information about all the services available to the various universities and organizations through WaferCatalyst initiative. This website also allows the users to sign in to the WaferCatalyst Portal. A snapshot of the website is shown in Fig 1. B. Social Media Using popular social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, WaferCatalyst has been using the social media to build a community and to reach out to all potential and current users in the community.
Fig. 2 Usage of Facebook to share information with community
The social media allows adding value to the community through providing information on the latest addition to the knowledge base (videos, tutorials, articles), promotions and initiatives with reference to the website and web portal for more details. A snapshot of the WaferCatalyst’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages are depicted in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 respectively.
90
2014 9th International Design and Test Symposium
Fig. 3 Usage of LinkedIn to reach professionally integrated networks
IV. COMMUNITY PORTAL A dedicated web portal has been created that provides a large number of facilities to help create, sustain and support capacity building for the community involved in IC design in the region. The portal has features for training and teaching; community based learning; support and consultancy; collaboration between entities; and to avail the commercial aspects of the service. This makes it a single destination for the community to come, engage and support the development of the entire ecosystem. Fig. 4 shows a screenshot of the system with a list of courses that can be offered to signed-in users.
Fig. 4 WaferCatalyst Portal
Brief description of the various system features is provided in the later part of this section. C. E-Learning One of the major goals of the WaferCatalyst initiative is to enhance the expertise in IC design of the entire ecosystem. This requires a common platform where all users can interact and add to a common knowledge base.
The portal enables this interaction by providing a strong Elearning capability to instructors, consultants and end users to contribute to the ecosystem development in IC design. The users are provided access to various courses or collaborative workspace as per requirement, interest and subscription status. The system hosts large number of courses related to various detailed aspects of IC design. A number of the courses are available to all users to contribute to the general knowledge base in the system. Various collaborative mechanisms are available like forums, live discussions and WIKIs for users to enrich the perspective of other users of the platform. All the courses have a coordinator or instructor. Such person(s) can make use of a powerful content management platform which allows the collection of useful external links, videos and custom files generated in any format quickly. In addition to the courses, collaborative workspaces are created to share knowledge about various projects which are offered by WaferCatalyst to both undergraduate and postgraduate students in various universities. Presentations and reports on the various stages of project design are shared for other users with similar interests. This enriches the ecosystem and creates a sustainable mechanism for knowledge sharing. D. Consultation and Support system WaferCatalyst provides consultation and support services to its ecosystem partner in many aspects to facilitate their entry into the ecosystem. This includes various aspects of infrastructure setup like process design kit setup, design process and taping-out of the design to manufacturers. The support process is facilitated by a comprehensive support ticketing system in the portal. This ticketing system allows users to seek support from the support staff and is able to track all conversations in the portal. Each individual thread is presented an independent ‘ticket’ number. At the support staff side, the system presents a consolidated view of all pending tickets, along with alerts for delayed tickets so none of the service requests are missed accidently by the support staff. This boosts the efficiency of the support process by allowing transparency and accountability for the support staff, encouraging them to provide better support to end users. E. Request for video support / video conferencing In a complex field like IC design a number of scenarios are efficiently dealt with by a “face-to-face” discussion. This may not be possible to do physically due to the large geographical spread of the client base and thus video support is the best mechanism to solve such issues. The portal allows the system users to request for video support with time preference. The support staff can accept, reject and invite specialists to assist with the support query through the portal thus coordinating this expert session with any expert available in the ecosystem. The system also allows screen sharing, session recording and video sharing to effectively solve any support related matters. These features have been very useful to solve support related problems efficiently and in a timely manner.
91
2014 9th International Design and Test Symposium F. Process kit transfer request Process development kit (PDK) is a fundamental kit required to design manufacturable ICs. Manufacturing or fabrication of an integrated circuit requires that the designer incorporates the models of the basic building blocks (like transistors, resistors, capacitors, etc.) and builds design meeting all the physical constraints of the manufacturing process. All this information is included in PDK. Thus, PDK is highly confidential information owned by the manufacturer of ICs. WaferCatalyst ensures that transfer of such sensitive information to end users is performed in a secure manner with the consent of the manufacturer. The users of the portal can request for PDK through the portal. A list of all consolidated requests is presented to the manager in WaferCatalyst responsible for releasing the PDKs. The manager may discuss the required security and agreement requirements with the requester and on meeting the requisite criteria can upload the PDK through a secure link to the user. G. Quotation and Order Management WaferCatalyst services include fabrication area in MPW, trainings, design and consultancy services. The portal allows the users to find the prices for various services, create quotations and to order services online. Moreover the users are able to track the order status i.e. ordered, accepted, pending payment, paid, etc. through the system. For the relevant manager, the portal provides all quotations and orders from users. The payment status for each order is also tracked in the system.
population countries in the region like Pakistan and Egypt. This is shown by the Table I and Fig. 5 which show the number and percentage of users from various countries that have signed up on the WaferCatalyst Portal. TABLE I GEOGRAPHICAL PROFILE OF USERS
S.No.
Country
Number of projects/design groups
Portal User profile
Design kits support
1
Saudi Arabia
36
7
4
2
Pakistan
46
5
3
3
Egypt
25
3
3
4
India
9
0
0
5
UAE
4
1
1
6
Others
21
Total
141
Unknown
0
16
11
Another important matrix for the success of the regional approach to promotion and collaboration in IC design is to see the number of project groups that are utilizing WaferCatalyst services in the region. This has been estimated from general support and process development kit (PDK) support provided to research groups. This is depicted in Fig 6.
H. E-bidding A unique feature of WaferCatalyst is that it allows its users to bid for some space that is unutilized in the MPW. This allows some users to be able to participate in the fabrication with costs which are much lower than the standard fabrication costs. The portal allows the relevant manager in WaferCatalyst to create new bids and publicize them in the portal. The users of the portal can bid for the space based on their budget constraints. The top bidder is automatically declared the winner at the end of the bid time. V. SNAPSHOT OF ACHIEVEMENTS The WaferCatalyst initiative had been launched in April 2013 and is just over a year old but the focus on a regional web based community has seen it gaining regional acceptance in a short time. WaferCatalyst social sites, websites and its portal have seen consistent growth in the number of users benefiting from it. It is a testament to the web based community development approach that the geographical spread of the users shows that a strong regional acceptance almost at par with the national users in Saudi Arabia. The current percentage of users based in Saudi Arabia is around 25% with a comparable number of users from larger
Fig. 5 Country wise signed up user distribution
Fig 6 also shows a strong regional bias similar to the number of portal users from various countries. Here Saudi Arabia still has the highest number of groups working, followed closely by Pakistan and Egypt. Thus the current data indicate a strong trend towards the creation of a regional ecosystem in IC Design in the MENA region.
92
2014 9th International Design and Test Symposium through a public website and other social media with the aim to make a virtual community involved in the promotion of IC design in the region. In the first year since the inception of this initiative a regional user base has started being formed. Further efforts are being made to further increase the diversification and number of the user base.
Fig. 6 Country wise projects and PDK support provided
VI. FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS Despite a strong start to the development of ecosystem in IC design in the MENA region, WaferCatalyst can still improve in a number of areas using and refining its web based approach and mixing with traditional marketing methods. Currently, the major percentage of users as well as design groups is concentrated in a few countries in the region. The user demographic needs to be diversified by effectively reaching out to potential users in other countries in the region. It is recommended that the E-learning content development needs to be prioritized to attract more international users and to create the web portal as an international hub for IC design activities regardless of the region. This would help create a completely self-sustaining and growing ecosystem.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was financially supported by King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) under SAMAH project. We would like to acknowledge our design partners, Ur Edge Private Limited and Smart Business Solutions, who worked with WaferCatalyst team to conceive and implement the WaferCatalyst portal.
REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
VII. CONCLUSIONS WaferCatalyst is a new regional initiative in IC ecosystem development which has been utilizing an innovative web based community approach to reach user base across the Middle East, North Africa region. A web portal is the backbone of the collaboration approach taken by KACST which is used to provide a number of facilities like E-learning, technical support, user collaboration and business features. Moreover users are also reached
[6] [7] [8]
Stefan Heck, Sri Kaza and Dickon Pinner, Creating Value in the Semiconductor Industry, McKinsey Global Institute, 2011 Pao-Long Chang and Chiung-Wen Hsu, The Development Strategies for Taiwan’s Semiconductor Industry, IEEE transaction on Engineering Management, 1998. Ran Liu, Research and Development Strategies to Fast Advance China's Semiconductor Industry, Ext. Abs. the 9th International Workshop on Junction Technology, 2009. Masuri BinOthman, An Overview of Innovation Ecosystem in Malaysia, IEEE Regional Symposium on Micro and Nanoelectronics (RSM), 2013. Nahla Samargandi, Jan Fidrmuc amd Sugata Ghosh, Financial development and economic growth in an oil-rich economy: The case of Saudi Arabia, Economic Modelling, Volume 43, December 2014. MOSIS, The MOSIS Service, Retrieved from http://www.mosis.com/what-is-mosis, 24 August 2014 Europractice, Europactice Homepage, Retrieved from http://www.europractice-ic.com/, 24 August 2014 IC Insights, 2012 Top 25 Semiconductor Sales Leaders by IC insights’ Strategic Review Database, Retrieved from http://www.eeherald.com/section/news/onws2013032803.html, 24 August 2014
93
