Reliability and Physics-of-Healthy in Mechatronics

1Basic Reliability Tools for SHM Protocols

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

Albert EINSTEIN Address to the Prussian Academy of Sciences, January 27, 1921

1.1. Introduction

Trending articles and news related to the semiconductor industry have been published on various websites. Khaveen Jeyaratnam, a specialist in financial analysis, valuation and investment research, presented the semiconductor industry value chain and discussed the top three semiconductor foundries in the world in a paper presented in March 21, 2019¹. He highlighted that:

[…] the semiconductor industry is experiencing heavy growth in demand from the onset of the fourth wave of technology which includes robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things, fifth-generation wireless technologies (5G), augmented/virtual reality, 3D printing, and autonomous vehicles.

The top four worldwide semiconductor foundries by revenue for 1H18 are TSMC (56.1% market share), GlobalFoundries (9.0%), UMC (8.9%) and Samsung (7.4%). Currently, TSMC ($32B+) is the number one foundry by a very large margin, with GF ($6B+), UMC (>$5B+), Samsung (>$5B+) and SMIC ($3B+) barely visible in the rearview mirror. The Semiwiki website presents the full year 2018 revenues of TSMC broken down into the various technologies, with 9% for the 7-nanometer node size (25% in 2019), 11% for ...