NVM on Advanced Nodes for Smartphone & HPC Platforms
In the applications of high-performance computing and high-end smartphones, chip designers are chasing high-profit margins, and customers are looking for products with the best performance and security. These demands create a powerful driving force, pushing foundries to keep up with Moore’s Law and IP vendors to keep providing high-performance IPs. Among the IP demands, the embedded nonvolatile memory family is one of the key fundamental IPs in the advanced nodes.
With EUV photolithography technology’s maturity, TSMC is adopting more EUV steps on the N7 platform and rolling out more cost-effective and higher transistor density N6 solutions for mainstream products, including smartphones and consumer electronics, base station, networking communication, AI, and autonomous applications. eMemory, the leading and reliable, pure eNVM IP provider, works closely with world foundries and provides the best high reliable/secure NeoFuse/NeoPUF IPs on the most advanced and up to date FinFET processes for trimming, function selection, key storage, and inborn secure key functions.
Because of the extremely high price of product development and reticles in advanced nodes, fabless design houses tend to include multiple functions into one single SoC to lower the average cost. These multi-function chips are divided into different market segments or grades via function setting flow at the wafer sorting stage or after packaging. A truly reliable and easy-to-use embedded OTP plays a crucial role in realizing the function selection features. Other scenarios like chiplets used in data centers, the interface and communication protocols revised regularly, and the system operators are forced to keep upgrading the firmware and hardware settings. Therefore, adopting embedded OTP in the chiplet in chip architecture design is the most cost-effective way to minimize the chip replacement cost and increase the maintenance efficiency
Compared to 4G smartphones, the power demands in 5G are getting much higher along with the exponential growth of data communication, processing, and reaction. An embedded or discrete, multifunctional, and smart power management function, can provide a precise regulated voltage source to increase system performance and lower down the overall power consumption. A high-quality embedded OTP is always equipped with these kinds of chips to execute analog trimming duties.
Besides the fundamental function selection and trimming purposes, data and entity security is gaining attention in automotive, cell phones, communication, and consumer chips in the modern digital world. A secure and certified embedded OTP can store UID, HUK, public keys, and private keys to realizing entity identification, authentication, anti-counterfeiting, data protection, and secure boot functions to construct a “security everywhere” digital world....More
