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The promise of explosive growth associated with IoT has semiconductor unit forecasts growing at double-digit rates for key product categories.  Anything with the word ‘sensors’ seems to be in vogue today.  Sensors, image sensors, sensor hubs are all expected to benefit from the billions of connected devices that are forecasted to be in place by 2020.  Semico agrees.  Unit growth for key products will experience double-digit growth, but with capital expenditures flat to down this year, will the industry be able to support the huge growth?

I attended the Cadence CDNLive conference at the Santa Clara Convention Center on April 5 and 6, 2016 and had a chance to listen to four very thought provoking presentations given by the speakers. These presentations were combined to follow the keynote address given by Cadence CEO, Lip-Bu Tan and addressed several different aspects of the current semiconductor industry landscape.

Speakers
• Lip-Bu Tan, CEO, Cadence Design Systems
• Steve Mollenkoph, CEO, Qualcomm
• Sanjay Jha, CEO, GLOBALFOUNDRIES
• Tom Beckley, Sr. Vice President and General Manager, Custom IC & PCB Group

On March 18 to 20, 2016, the first ever Silicon Valley ComicCon (SVCC) (http://svcomiccon.com) was held in San Jose, CA. The event was the brainchild of Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Stan Lee of Marvel Comics. This ComicCon, like those held in other cities, is a convention for comic books, science fiction and fantasy, TV and movies. These are usually tied in with comics, animation and gaming. Some of these conventions, such as the largest one in San Diego, CA, have become inundated with popular culture. However, it was Steve Wozniak’s goal to have more technology at SVCC, most appropriate for Silicon Valley. Some of you have read my past posts about San Diego’s ComicCon International. Going to a ComicCon gives me the opportunity to mix business and pleasure. Yes, I actually did go to San Jose on vacation. And, no, I was not in costume. I can honestly say that Steve Wozniak, known affectionately as the Woz, was as big a draw as any other figure appearing at SVCC; as big as Nathan Fillion, Michael J. Fox, Stan Lee or even … William Shatner. The Woz is highly regarded and respected in the high tech world. A native of San Jose, he wanted a show in the heart of Silicon Valley. So many scientists and engineers have been inspired by sci-fi. Most important for this event was the emphasis on technology in addition to entertainment. Quite often these go together. This was the first SVCC. Every event has growing pains.

As the rate of growth for smartphone sales slow, questions arise regarding the impact that slower growth will have throughout the semiconductor supply chain. Over the past decade, the 1 billion-plus smartphone market has driven the need for more advanced manufacturing process technologies, new input materials and the need for more fab capacity. It has even legitimized new players into the supply chain.

Does a slower growth rate mean a change is on the horizon? What portion of the growth is due to semiconductor content versus smartphone unit growth? Semico looked at the change in smartphone silicon content over the past 10 years and the impact on wafer demand.

Although there were smartphones well before the Apple iPhone, it was the iPhone, introduced in 2007, that set the smartphone on the path to the mass adoption that we see today. Between 2005 and 2010, smartphone sales grew at a compound annual growth rate of over 50%. In addition, over that time period, silicon content in a high-end phone doubled. The amount of silicon necessary to produce all the smartphones worldwide has grown from less than 1% of total wafers in 2005 up to over 18% of wafers this year.

The only semiconductor market segment that has not been taken over by the foundries and still remains dominated by IDMs is the memory sector. The memory market is the last bastion for true IDM manufacturers who must be savvy in the changing trends in end market applications, advanced technology development , and must still determine how much and when to invest in additional capacity.

With only four major players, the decision of when to add capacity should be more straightforward; instead, it’s just as challenging as ever. Large memory fabs are inherently more expensive and riskier than ever.

At their Winter Analyst Meeting on February 12th, Micron’s executives touched on a number of trends that memory manufacturers are addressing.

As we enter into the new year of 2016 with the worldwide economic cloud of uncertainty hovering like an unregistered drone, particularly in China, CES was still setting records. Bustling with over 170,000 attendees and over 3600 companies displaying their new products, the event was as hectic as ever.
There was a big showing from all the major automotive manufacturers and suppliers. Companies were showing off their new electric vehicles and virtual reality displays of autonomous driving concepts.

Innovations that I found notable revolved around new dashboard layouts and instrumentation displays including avionic heads-up displays that provide the driver with navigational information, safety, speed and personal communication information. In addition, several companies are introducing night-assisted vision systems. The goal of these systems is to provide information and access to accessories without having the driver take their eyes off the road. As well as providing a safer driving experience, these systems reduce drivers’ stress and improve the driving quality and experience.

Even though Tesla has located its battery manufacturing plant in Nevada, and they just recently announced a new vehicle, they were conspicuously absent at CES. . While Tesla is leading the industry in the vehicle electrification race, many of the big players are directly targeting them.

CES is the event that usually gets me energized about the upcoming year; however, this year I almost didn’t attend because I didn’t think there was going to be anything new that would shake up the industry. At the last minute I decided to put on my best walking shoes and fight the crowds. Unfortunately, I think my initial gut feeling was correct.

Sure, there were a lot of people waiting in lines to sit in the new self-driving and electric vehicles or eager to put on the new VR headsets, but there were still several things missing. IoT and power for our mobile electronics need a revolutionary innovation to attain the next level of ubiquitous technology.

First of all, I was disappointed to see so many booths still touting wireless charging solutions aka Powermat. I still have too many charging cables and every month that my phone or Fitbit device ages, the life of the battery charge declines. There were a number of people walking around with a cute, bright green bag that was plugging its ‘Big power, small cells’ product. I wasn’t sure what their product was, but I was definitely curious and feverishly looked for their booth. I was hoping they’d have a product that provided a breakthrough in battery technology or possibly an energy harvesting option. Unfortunately when I got close to their booth, I was handed the cute bag which included a USB charger that was powered by two rechargeable AA batteries. Really?

Whether it’s the Internet of Things, wearables, or industrial automation, many new devices and applications are portable and battery-operated. Wireless connectivity is required for connecting to the Internet. Today’s devices collect and transmit data from sensors, are always or almost always on and require power. The semiconductor industry has met the challenge to design devices for low power operation. Low-power microcontrollers and low-power RF are now available from many semiconductor vendors. But eventually batteries still run out of energy and have to be replaced or recharged.

The term energy harvesting, also known as power scavenging, is used to describe the creation of energy derived from a variety of external sources such as solar power, thermal energy, wind energy, kinetic energy or electromagnetic sources. Energy harvesters accumulate the wasted energy in a system, such as heat given off by motors or semiconductors, or the vibrations of motors or other moving objects. The basic technologies for generating energy are: mechanical vibration (kinetic energy), thermoelectric, solar (photovoltaic), and RF/Inductive.

If there is one constant in our mobile, connected society today, it is the continual demand for moving more data, more efficiently and at less cost.  This dynamic underscores virtually every technology and end market. It is a trend that is proving to be critical to the semiconductor industry as well as companies like Facebook and Google that participate in the efforts to create the standards necessary to deploy 400G data channels for data centers.
 
The high speed channel initiative is aimed at the data center. It is a certainty the high targeted speeds will allow more data to be moved more quickly into edge devices and eventually smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices. While the transition to these speeds by devices is still in the future, there is market pressure to increase the data communication capabilities of the SoCs in mobile systems.
 

In the past, integrated circuits, packages and boards were all designed independently and yet in most cases still managed to fit together with very few functional or technical problems. However recent advances in chip performance have changed this process dramatically. New designs, processes and materials have already been seen in packaging as high performance semiconductor chips need to carefully match the size, power and performance requirements of more demanding end applications. For optimal system performance, specific information related to material, speed and stability has created the need to improve information exchange and collaboration for successful board design. While collaboration is not new to the industry, we are now at a point where collaboration needs to be extended to all parts of the electronic ecosystem in order to maximize system performance while minimizing costs.