Laura MatzAthinia provides a platform for collaborating on relevant information from participants across the semiconductor industry. The company brings manufacturers and materials suppliers together to share, aggregate, and analyze data to unlock efficiencies, improve quality, supply chain transparency, and time to market.

The insights gained with its industry-wide data ecosystem helps companies drive business decisions based on big data and chemical and process knowledge. This is done by offering a unified approach to data collection and collaborative analytics in a secure environment.

Athinia is a partnership between Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, and Palantir. The company has combined key expertise areas - the high level of data security from a renowned technology provider and the long-standing expertise in materials science in the semiconductor industry from a leading Science & Technology company, which operates independently from its Electronics business to create a company with a unique set of core competencies.

A Digital Hub Connecting Value Chain with Real-Time Data

Athinia was created to be a digital hub for the semiconductor industry, connecting participants across the value chain to a single source of real-time data. The company’s platform leverages AI to solve critical challenges as the industry navigates the chip shortage by utilizing data to improve supply chain transparency, quality and reliability of materials, and speed time to market.

Materials-related industry participants know that there is a need for data-sharing collaboration. There is a need for a new standard in quality, one based on a data ecosystem that allows for the secure and continuous sharing of data between many companies. This is why the company was launched in December 2021 and there's a looking forward to onboarding and connecting the first members of this new ecosystem.

As stated by David Anderson, President of SEMI Americas during CES 2022, “This initiative is a unique industry-wide solution to improve semiconductor materials quality. One-to-one data analysis has provided many valuable solutions in the past, but the sky's the limit when companies from across the value chain can participate and benefit from this data sharing. High volume, high-velocity data from multiple sources has huge potential for the company to again revolutionize the manufacturing industry”

An Innovative Leader with Futuristic Ideas

Laura Matz is the CEO of Athinia and Chief Science and Technology Officer of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. She has over 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, leading innovation and R&D initiatives. She has been working on the concept of Athinia for several years since she has seen the sensitivity of materials getting greater and greater. She also tested out this concept of bringing the data together, collaborating with device manufacturers.

She identified that some of the key insights can only be unlocked when someone brings data together and then applies machine learning models. Now, with Athinia, the industry can be enabled to move forward and evolve to the next generation of materials and insights.

Spearheading the Efficiency of Current Production with Disruption

Laura presumes that semiconductor companies need to be faster, more efficient, and put their focus on quality. As an industry, it is important to respond to that challenge and make sure there are no materials disruptions in the future. She adds that Athinia can help a lot here, increasing the efficiency of current production.

According to Laura, collaboration across the semi-industry will be a key and this is what Athinia is enabling as the opportunity for companies for the very first time is opened up to share data and use it for their benefit.

Pioneering Metaverse to Sophisticate Technology Usage

Over the next decade, applications like artificial intelligence (AI), big data, 6G, quantum computing, and neuromorphic computing will have even more impacts on society and the electronics consumer’s daily use, says Laura. One example is autonomous driving. Neuromorphic computing will enable much faster recognition of all kinds of objects on a street enabling safer self-driving cars. 6G or satellite networks are needed to transfer those data into the car where the passengers can enjoy virtual or augmented realities in a metaverse. Big Data analytics will further improve the quality of manufacturing processes and quantum computing will be the technology for all kinds of encryption challenges. She highlights that Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, one of Athinia’s mother companies, works on solutions to materialize the metaverse and innovate novel display and semiconductor materials to further advance existing technologies as well as to develop new disruptive technologies required in what is beyond tomorrow.

‘Data-Driven Quality’ to Nurture Materials and Solutions

Athinia connects the semiconductor industry into an entire ecosystem, offering a secure, independent, and unbiased data platform claims Laura. This is called Data-Driven Quality.

As conveyed by the company’s CEO, no one is currently offering an industry-wide, many-to-many data-sharing solution focused on materials and materials quality.

Embracing Secure Collaboration for Business Growth

Laura reveals that today, companies of different industries around the world are hesitant about sharing their data. However, a point is reached where it is needed to do things differently to revolutionize the semiconductor industry and drive it forward. Being open to secure collaboration is a decisive factor to manage this.

She adds that Athinia’s major challenge is this hesitation of companies around sharing data, which is understood. But with Athinia, they are safe because it enables collaboration while securely preserving their IP security in a way that its clients maintain full control and ownership of their data in a secure environment.

This safe collaboration is facilitated by the Foundry platform of Palantir, a world-class provider in data security, which uses military-grade security, fulfilling and exceeding the highest requirements for data security and ownership.

Opening New Doors for the Future

In the words of Laura, today, every company in the semi ecosystem collects vast quantities of data to manufacture and constantly optimize its products. But combining data streams, in a hyper-secure IP secure manner, will enable each company to be much more efficient at optimizing its products further, identify correlations between data sets that would otherwise be hidden, respond to manufacturing excursions more quickly, and ultimately increase product yield with resulting lower cost and faster time to market. As more companies join the Athinia ecosystem, the efficiency of each player and the industry as a whole will improve across all of these vectors. She adds that there is even the possibility that more precise control of the highly complex integrated chip-making process enabled by combining insights from multiple data streams can make breakthrough technologies that currently are not manufacturable but achievable in the future.