Integrated Circuits 2010s

The world is in a race for cutting-edge technology, while Japan is moving towards special applications

While the proliferation of former structures challenged the limits of miniaturisation, the shift to power-saving and new structures was also progressing. The spread of smartphones drove the development of many semiconductor products, with ARM-based SoCs making great strides, and dedicated chips such as GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and TPUs (Tensor Processing Units) emerging in response to growing AI and Big Data demand. In the memory field, 3D NAND and HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) were put to practical use, and higher speeds and capacities were developed. The international division of labour in manufacturing and design was established, with Taiwanese and Korean-based companies leading advanced manufacturing.
In Japan, there was a gradual retreat from the race for advanced mass production of processors and general-purpose DRAMs, and a shift in emphasis to specific-use LSIs and power devices for automobiles, industrial equipment, sensors and other applications. In this context, Renesas Electronics maintained its leading global market share in the field of in-vehicle microcontrollers in the first half of the 2010s, and made its presence felt as the shift to automotive electronics progressed. In addition, KIOXIA (formerly Toshiba Memory), as the world's second largest NAND flash manufacturer after Samsung, developed and mass-produced 3D NAND (BiCS FLASH) and played an important role in the smartphone and data centre storage markets. Furthermore, Sony expanded its global market share in the image sensor field and enhanced its reputation as a high-value-added semiconductor from Japan.
In general, the global market is simultaneously becoming more advanced and more diversified, and Japan is in an era of shifting its focus from advanced logic and general-purpose memory to specific fields of high-reliability, special applications and the world's top market share.

2017Mass production of FeRAMｓ that can operate at temperatures of up to 125℃ started (RAMXEED)

FeRAM (Ferroelectric Random Access Memory) is a nonvolatile memory which enables high-speed data rewriting equivalent to SRAM and has an almost unlimited number of guaranteed rewrites (10¹³ times or more). It is widely used in drive recorders, smart cards, and other applications where data rewriting occurs in real-time frequently. While the operating temperature of standard memory was capped at 85℃, RAMXEED (formerly Fujitsu Semiconductor Memory Solutions) has improved ferroelectric capacitors to extend the operating temperature range to 125℃. RAMXEED developed 256kbFeRAM in 2017, and succeeded in mass production of 4MbFeRAM in 2021 which can operate at temperatures of up to 125℃. It conformed to the high-quality standard AEC-Q100 Grade 1, which is called automotive grade, and is applicable to advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS: Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) and high-performance industrial robots.