A global recession

    A global recession just around the corner. The China, Eurozone, and the United States will continue to stall even though there were only partially healed post pandemic. The re-opening has paved the way for a recovery in some countries, but the world economy still faces serious risks. Global economic growth is expected to fall within this several years. The rise in central bank rates to fight inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine continue to worsen the economy activity.

    While there are signs that the “everything bubble” is about to burst. The leading company Intel and Hynix are heading towards a hard time in the memory negative growth. My major customer last year, Intel has fully killed off its Optane memory business on July, 2022. All the future developments within its Optane business has been ceased until now. Back in 2020, Intel sold off its NAND memory chip business to SK Hynix, I had been assigned to rotate my job function from Optane NPI to NAND CPI evaluation team through the transition. The Intel division, rebranded as Solidigm, also operates factories in China. Started from the beginning of March of 2023, our team members have been stalled over our projects as Hynix decided to simplify the process design from floating gate to charged trap flash. The problems that going to be more halted activities in assembly factories.

    Our team leader announced that our organization will be keep as the same as previous though there is so much uncertainty. It probably has a new Chinese customer or new project to be handled. A new announcement will be launched around in the middle of March, there is no any further tasks in this low seasons.

    The U.S. dollar is strengthening because the Fed adopted a Hawkish monetary policy stance in response to skyrocketing inflation from 2022. Yesterday night, I was shocked that the Ringgit Malaysia note rose to 4.58 against the greenback from 4.47 at noon on the same day.  The next day, I found the news about the U.S. durable goods orders has been slumped in a 10.1% from 5.6% to -4.5%, which means there is no demand for non-defense capital goods orders from the USA.

    The next year will be rough for the world economy, the coming slump probably is inevitably and to be considered as global recession. We would see if it would be worse than the previous Great Recession period.

Beginner of semiconductor

    To make some room for some exciting electric conductivity tranmitting from somewhere to everywhere and transferring heat from processor to outward of  packaging, my company would like to simplify the process flow to enhance the production effeciency and reduce the products cost. Changes to explaining the features in process, throughout the next few months, I will translate the simplified professional words and integrated into a journal to give me more flexibilit in how I share and confirm that I understood what it means. I could allow myself to comment on blogs by acting myself as a beginner.

Fan out Technology

    The functionality integrated in the 2.5D or 3D multi chip packaging has become increasingly diverse and crucial for specific applications. Current research and design efforts will continue to extend the breadth of the system in package composition, the next new technology could likely be the most important things to connect between dies in the package.

    In 2016, TSMC introduced the Integrated FanOut Technology(InFO), was used for Apple A10 application processor for Iphone 7. It was the first commercial InFO product in the market. InFO package is located at the bottom and memory package is stacked on top, so it makes package on package. In InFO package, die is surrounded by molding compound. Typically Fan Out uses liquid mold compound instead of solid pellet shape. At the bottom of InFO, there is redistribution layer(RDL) instead of package substrate. Therefore, there is no package substrate because it is Fan Out. When it uses through InFO via to connect bottom for application processor and top package for memory. There are some technological innovations in TSMC InFO in 2016 for Applie iphone. It was the first wafer level fan out package by foundry and applied to high volume manufacturing. Usually packaging is provided by OSAT, outsourcing assembly and test providers. But TSMC is foundry which makes chips based on customer design. Its package size is larger than 10x10mm with 8x8mm die size, and it is for high I/O device, application in smart phone

The loss of my father

    Since I was a kid, I supposed my father was authoritarian, emotionally reserved, and effectively distant. He was as stern as a teacher when he found that my school scores were not good enough or I had not finished the meal prepared by my mother. He used to hit me with clothes hangers, or his muscular hands. The bruise would remain for at least one or two days. However, my mother told me that they will become more depressed when they beat harder.

    I lived in a low-income family, but my siblings and I had graduated from the best Chinese Independent high school in Kuala Lumpur. My father would try everything to pay our school expenses and living expenses. In my memory, my father's dilapidated green pocket just reserved a few coins at the end of every month. He never buys any luxury goods or consumes any expensive things in his life. He was the kindest person who wanted to save more money for his family. Even though our family become wealthier, my father was still very careful about his spending.

    He dedicated his whole life to raising us up from elementary school, and high school to university in order to give us a better future. He had low vision sight since he was born, and even though he had high intense pain in his eyes, he would not let us know, until he lost his eyesight, and we found that he got glaucoma. He was reluctant to quit his job after putting a lot of effort to persuade him several times. However, he lost his smile and was generally low-spirited as he worried about spending money on buying medicine or treatments. 

    At the end of 2019, I vividly remembered that I and my sister brought along my father to extend his passport, but he was furious about the extension money for waste. He would not live longer and threw his passport on the floor. Some people around us were frightened about his attitude and come to comfort his emotions. Fortunately, I had an opportunity to celebrate this 69-year-old birthday before I traveled back to Taiwan. He did not like to eat cake in his life but he had finished it on that day. Before I and my sister departed from Malaysia to Taiwan and Singapore, I strongly felt that he has unwilling to let us go apart from him.

    For the sake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I could not travel back to Malaysia, and I just could online talk with him, but until the March of 2022, he cannot hear anything as aged-related. We halted talking anymore until he was sent to the hospital in Jun, he was diagnosed with delirium and needed special medical treatment. He never feels curious about the updated news and was reluctant to eat or drink after taking the medicine, always sleeping for a whole day. He chose to adopt the kindest method to leave us, no more burden for us, he was our angel in our family.

Father Radiology report

Heart is enlaeged, pulmonary vasculature prominent, and interstitial markings are prominent

心脏肥大,顯著的肺血管疾病,顯著的間質性肺病

No consolidation 無肺實變

Left costopheric angle is blunted 左肋膈角變鈍

Degenerative changes of thoracic spine 胸椎退行性疾病

Impression:印象診斷

Features suggestive of Congestive cardiac failure 心臟無力

Manners

    From a year ago, I was fond of joining the international meeting, with all the westerners and some few Koreans and Japanese, but few Taiwanese only joined for a meeting. Pleased with the westerners, my recognition was learners from South Africa, South America, Columbia, Venezuela, Brazil, Iraq, Egypt, and etc. They usually greet each other with questions: “How was your day?”, “How are you?”, “How do you do?”. In Chinese culture, the questions “Have you eaten? Or “Where have you been?” are pleasantries equivalent to those of Westerners’ questions.

    Exchanging ideas, agree or disagree is very common in Western countries, but Chinese is trying to avoid political-related discussion, transgender, human rights or gay relationship issue. We are deeply careful about strong negative statements, even though we already knew that, like other countries, are working hard to deal with issues, but still seen as sensitive and should be avoided.

    Westerners have a hard time figuring out all the customs and formalities in Chinese cultures, they almost assume that Chinese customs are like Japanese or Korean ones. When you come to customs in detail, there are some big differences between doing and don’t to do.

    The rules of meeting new friends in a meeting, refrain from asking them about age, salary income, private matter, or unnecessarily questions. Some people may do not feel comfortable answering a question, but they just do not let them know about their feelings. Getting angry or raising your voices is considered a loss of face in our culture. However, Chinese would like to write their emotions in their face when they are irritated. 

NAND memory

     The three main parts of SSD: controller, DDR memory, and flash memory. DDR memory usually present when is a cache which speeds up frequency accessed data. The controller just the main controller between the chip inside and the device where you are adding storage device, but not least is the NAND flash, this is most essential part of the SSD.

    NAND memory is a type of non-volatile storage, which means it is unlike the volatile storage devices, it does not depend on any power to retain data. The entire purpose behind NAND flash devices is not only reduce the cost per bit but also increase maximum chip capacity. This will allow memory to come closer to other storage devices like hard disk drives. NAND uses electrical circuits to store the data as blocks, once the electric circuit is broken and the power is detached. NAND storage continues to retain the data, using semiconductor. Each NAND essentially has two gates control and floating gates. These gates ensure that data flows perfectly and if you want to program one cell, a voltage charge is sent to the control gate, and the electrical charge is stored in the floating gate.

    There are 4 main types: SLC, MCL, TLC, and QLC. The main thing that distinguishes them is how many bits that each cell can store inside. As the name suggests SLC or single level cells store one bit of data per cell. MLC or multi-level cells store two bits of data per cell. The number keeps climbing, and in the case of TLC or triple level cells, we get three bits of data per cell and then in QLC or quadruple level cells, we can get four bits of data per cell. The greater number of bits, the more capacity each cell can hold. This means QLC can hold the maximum level of storage and SLC can hold the least. Unfortunately, the maximum amount of storage comes at a cost, and that is speed and endurance. This means that even though SLC flash can hold the least capacity and it also the fastest, and more precise, and of course, the most expensive. Due to its cost, these chips are mainly used in industrial use, not in the consumer space. On the other hand, MLC is much cheaper than SLC, and it has far greater capacity as well. However, its durability and speeds are not up to SLC’s level. As we keep going up to TLC, and the QLC, the price does get lower but so does the durability and speeds comparatively. This is why TLC and QLC are mainly reserved for consumer level usage while the former 2, the MLC and SLC are mainly used by enterprise. However, TLC SSDs are now being introduced in enterprise. Up until now, we need to talk about how the cells are arranges.

    Originally, memory cells were arranged side by side which was called 2D NAND. Nowadays, we have 3D NAND technology. The memory chips are stacked on top each other. The whole point of this is to make the device run much faster and more efficient while simultaneously holding more information. Here at Sabrent our drives use 3D NAND, 3D NAND has many advantages over the traditional 2D NAND as it has higher density and can be written and raised more times than 2D NAND, because it has larger memory cells while 3D NAND has existed for more than a decade now. It has recently entered the market with some incredible developments as it has been able to provide lower power consumption, better performance and lower cost per bit of storage. As TLC and QLC memory with 3D NAND grows increasingly popular. One cannot help but wonder which is better and what are the pros and cons of each. In some cases, bigger might be better but when comparing QLC and TLC, TLC is able to tolerate a much higher number of write and arrays operations due to its fewer bits written per cell.

Living arrangement

     I have been lived in a rural area in West of Taiwan. I rented a house and live with my landlord and his wife in a terrace house.

The world is not a safe place anymore

    The world was never a safe place again. There are millions of creatures, animals, plants are living in this planet. The majority species is the people, they want to use you, to trick you, to steal you, to rob you, they want to manipulate others no matter on micro or macro scales. They govern, enact laws, and process all the harmful things to people.

    Some 20 million people died during the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, latest news released some variant virus at the latest series estimated of the double or triple times the death toll. No matter how serious of the report said, people still deliberately travel around anywhere for their own satisfaction.

    Climate change have dried up rives across the continent of Europe, which it is in the grip of its most extreme drought in decades-record breaking heat waves. The drier winters will more likely to become the new normal due to human-induced global warming. The situation is unprecedented, even more catastrophic drought happened in Middle East countries. The people living there have no chance to survive, it is the matter of time until they die.

    The death from wars have gone down dramatically over this decade.  There is always some dictator president will come to power everywhere actually break out a lot of families in this world. The food prices rocketing by the conflict in Ukraine, leaving many families unprotected and increasing displacement. Wars are inherently violent, but destruction of resources can create more devastating harm than weapons and bullets. Refugees are often fragile to be provided the shelters and food, as well as disease.

    I believe that the world began becoming a more dangerous and unsafe place. Conflicts, wars, along with weather events associated with climate change, are the main concerns for living in this planet. I felt lucky that I never had a kid, I do not need to worry about his/her environment in the future. The world will keep getting worse until people realized why so many things are out of control.

Dementia

     There are various disorders and factors contribute to the development of dementia. Most of the common forms of dementia cannot be cured or irreversible brain damage. Early detection of symptoms is crucial which can help you to manage the condition and plan ahead, as some causes can be treated. If your family member has this kind of medical history, it can provide important tips about the risk of getting dementia. It might ask about how and when symptoms began, changes in behavior and personality. Dementia affects patient’s working memory, processing speed, executive function which include the ability of focusing or paying attention.

    I became obsessed with this topic when my father got the delirium, it might run in the family. I strongly believe that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. It will never too young or too old to begin thinking about prevention. I am trying to understand to the best of my ability the kind of foods and lifestyle modifications that I might be able to integrate into my life to help minimize my risk of developing any kind of dementia.

    If you exercise regularly, get the good quality sleep every night, you will find the way of managing your stress, anxiety or depressed. There are some foods that we can eat that can help protect your brain as ages.

    Start with almonds, all nuts are healthy but almonds particularly will be highlighted because they are a top source of dietary magnesium. Almonds are also very rich source of vitamin E. Second with blueberries, blue corns, purple potatoes, and red onions, mostly blue colors which rich in anthocyanin. The most rejoice choices are dark chocolates, it provides the abundant source of dietary magnesium, and full of cocoa flavanols that can have protective effects on cardiovascular health. But need to make sure that the chocolate has 85% or higher over it.  The cruciferous vegetables are also important, low calorie, but rich in folate, various of vitamins, and fiber which can provide the antioxidant and the elements of detoxification. Up next, avocado is an all in one brain food that contains the highest concentration of fat protecting antioxidants of any fruit or vegetable. Avocados are packed with carotenoid, lutein and zeaxanthin which can help boost processing speed in the brain. The next meat is the wild salmon, it provides omega-3 fatty acids, which its compound can create brain healthy new cells.

Retirement

     Retirement is totally different than in the past. My mother is hardly to retire at 70 years old, because she loves mingling with people and rambling around any places. She can choose to work or not to work, not because she has to, but she is willing to earn more for her needs. There is nothing can define as the retirement age. It may fluctuate by country’s economic stability.

    As a worker in Taiwan, the mandatory retirement age is 65 years old but you should not be forced to retire unless disability to perform his or her duties. If I want to retire at the earlier ages, I must have worked over 25 years. I am afraid to be bored after retirement. I have a higher opportunity to meet the goal to retire at 55. Usually, I will end our career based on how steadily you have been employed and your healthy status, particularly after 55 years old. I always tried to do the work my boss requested. Learning how to work in effective and essential ways and keep curiosity in learning new things. I always enjoyed what I did as always, which meant fun at work, better output, better paycheck. I can make some meaning contributions, stay busy at something. Many are still working into their 60’s or 70’s, it is an enormous change for them. I was lucky that I didn't have the child and over 20 years in the service industry. If I have made a lot of money, I will spend my rest of my time doing charity works especially in improving the lives of stray dogs or cats and abandoned animals. I do not mind if I stay in the city or in the rural place, no matter the places or income, but I intend to look for another job, I just want to find my values of work-life balance.