Semico is a semiconductor marketing & consulting research company located in Phoenix, Arizona. We offer custom consulting, portfolio packages, individual market research studies and premier industry conferences.
published by Tony Massimini on Mon, 2016-01-11 23:08
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.
Semico tracks over 900 semiconductor fabs in its Fab Database. The database includes detailed information about the fabs, including the operating status of the fab, its location, process and products, wafer size and capacity, and more. The other document included with the database is a Word file containing a summary of updates made to fabs by company type: Memory, Foundries, and Other.
The Wafer Demand Summary and Assumptions is a quarterly publication. It includes an excel spreadsheet with annual wafer demand by product by technology from 2010-2020. Product categories include DRAM, SRAM, NAND, NOR, Other Non-volatile, MPU, MCU, DSP, Computing Micro Logic, Communications, Other Micro Logic, Programmable Logic, Standard Cell, Gate Array, Analog, Discrete, Optoelectronics, Digital Bipolar. In addition, there is a summary write-up providing the major assumptions behind the forecast and changes from the previous quarter.
The Internet of Things is a growing market driver, key to the continued success of the semiconductor industry. With applications ranging from medical and sports monitoring/diagnostics to automotive to industrial and agricultural, there are plenty of opportunities for wide range of semiconductor devices, especially sensors, MEMS and MCUs. In fact, the market for sensor hubs, one of the basic building blocks for IoT, will grow from 1.1B units in 2014 to 6.9B by 2020, a CAGR of 36%.
Analog ICs are critical to nearly all electronic devices. The world electronics market will consume over 121 billion analog ICs in 2015. This translates to several analog ICs per electronic device.
Analog ICs are critical to nearly all electronic devices. The world electronics market will consume over 121 billion analog ICs in 2015. This translates to several analog ICs per electronic device.
published by Rich Wawrzyniak on Wed, 2015-10-07 15:38
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.
