Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NEREID (NanoElectronics Roadmap for Europe: Identification and Dissemination)

Teaser

\"For more than 20 years, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors has helped the industry to follow Moore’s Law, with a constant reduction in device costs and an exponential growth in semiconductor market. The main role of ITRS has been in providing research...

Summary

\"For more than 20 years, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors has helped the industry to follow Moore’s Law, with a constant reduction in device costs and an exponential growth in semiconductor market. The main role of ITRS has been in providing research guidance for the many actors of the semiconductor ecosystem, in synchronizing the technology development and the timely availability of manufacturing equipment and methods and in providing focus on critical bottlenecks.
However, the “technology push” that has been at the base of ITRS is showing its limits: device size is no longer the only parameter of importance, and the integration of new functionalities, required by new applications, needs the incorporation of special metrics in the roadmap process. This new trend, called “More than Moore”, refers to technologies that do not necessarily scale according to \"\"Moore\'s Law“ and requires expanding the focus from chips to systems and opening the doors to new markets.
This trend has been especially relevant for European semiconductor industry that has stepped out of the markets for extremely advanced logic and memories, to focus of segments of greater relevance for the European applications industry, like Automotive, Industrial and Medical.
Following the Nanoelectronics call “H2020 ICT 25 – 2015: Generic micro- and nano-electronic technologies”, the Coordination and Support Action NEREID (NanoElectronics Roadmap for Europe: Identification and Dissemination) has been submitted with the aim to develop a long term roadmap for Nanoelectronics focused on European needs. The NEREID proposal has been accepted with Grant Number 685559 for a duration of 3 years, and has been launched at the European Nanoelectronics Forum in Berlin in December 2015.
The roadmap for Nanoelectronics developed by NEREID will combine an “application pull” approach, focussing on the requirements of European semiconductor and applications industry and main societal challenges, with the “technology push” coming from the advanced concepts developed by Research Centres and Universities in order to achieve an early identification of promising novel technologies, and cover the R&D needs all along the innovation chain. The final result will be a roadmap for European Micro- and Nano-electronics, covering the R&D needs all along the innovation chain, with a clear identification of medium and long term objectives. The strong link between short/medium term (e.g. More Moore and More than Moore) and long/very long term (e.g. Beyond CMOS) activities is also very important to speed-up technology transfer between academia and industry using disruptive technologies leading to possible new large future markets.
The NEREID roadmap has the purpose to improve the coordination between academic and industrial research in Nanoelectronics, and to provide guidelines for future research programmes at European and National level. It covers the main technology sectors: More Moore (Innovative FETs and Memories), Connectivity, More than Moore (Smart Energy and Smart Sensors), Beyond-CMOS, Heterogeneous Integration, System design, Equipments and Manufacturing Science.

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Work performed

The project relies on a wide basis of application and technology experts, coming from leading research actors in industry and academia, and combines a top-down with a bottom-up approach. The first uses three general Workshops with the participation of application experts to provide a top-down view of application requirements, while the latter uses technology Domain Workshops (for WPs and Tasks) in dedicated sectors, which provide a bottom-up view of technology evolution.
A certain degree of flexibility is foreseen in the composition of the expert groups and even in the definition of application sectors, to match the fast evolution of the field. An international Advisory Board insure the link with roadmap activities in other areas, like US and Japan. A strong link has been already established with IRDS (International Roadmap of Devices and Systems) that is the follow-up of ITRS.
Two General Workshops, with the attendance of more than 50 experts from application and technologies, have already been organized in April 2016 in Grenoble and in April 2017 in Athens, stimulating convergence between applications and nanoelectronic technologies. Many Domain Workshops for Tasks, WPs or cross-WPs (with about 10 high level experts per NEREID Task, i.e. 20 experts per WP) have also been organized, or are planned.
The scenarios given for the evolution of the products/applications will help defining common requirements for major functions, from which the evolution of the underlying technologies and devices can be elaborated. A first draft of the roadmap is in preparation and will be released in Summer 2017.

Final results

NEREID roadmap starts from a few key European application areas (Energy, Automotive, Medical/Life science, Security, IoT/Smart connected objects, Mobile convergence, Digital Manufacturing), while, for what concerns sectors like data processing where Europe is not playing a leading role, a strong connection has been established with roadmap initiative taking place in other regions, like IRDS. The fact that potential users of Nanoelectronics provide insight on the technology requirements in terms of both performances and timescale for the future products, while technology experts illustrate the potential for new breakthrough innovations, is the original contribution of NEREID and goes beyond the traditional methods that have been used up to now.
This interaction between technology and application experts can thus lead to the early identification of future technology bottlenecks, needing focused R&D activities, and, at the same time, make application experts aware of the potential of emerging technologies for breakthrough products. The NEREID roadmap will therefore play an important role in increasing the competitiveness of European companies, leading to a strong impact on the European economy and society.
The NEREID Roadmap, focused on medium and long term time horizons, is complementary to the AENEAS Strategic Agenda and the ECSEL MASRIA, which are focusing on shorter terms. The fact that several experts participated to both roadmap activities insures a seamless link among the different time horizons. NEREID is also developing a joint collaboration with the new International IRDS Roadmap especially in the field of More Moore, Beyond CMOS and computing systems, where there is a strong interest in Europe for specific activities dealing with very low power systems, like IoT. On the other side, NEREID is also complementary to IRDS in the More than Moore domain (e.g. Smart Sensors, Smart Energy, Energy Harvesting), which are recognized as sectors of sound European competence. Therefore, NEREID represents an unprecedented European effort to envision and plan the evolution of the most important Nanoelectronic technologies, which will lead to disruptive applications and many new markets, strengthening the international position of the European economy and having a great potential impact on the European society.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.nereid-h2020.eu/.