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.
The MEMS and sensor market continues to be a hotbed for innovation, new opportunities and, as with most new frontiers, there are also some disparate views on market dynamics and strategies. All this was evident at the 2016 MSIG Executive Congress last week in Scottsdale, Arizona.
First, I’ll cover the pioneering and fun subjects. In addition to the Technology Showcase demos and member presentations there were a couple of “outside-the-box” topics such as 3D-printed cars. Co-create was the buzzword on Day 2 and was used by Local Motors General Manager, Philip Rayer, as he showed off several 3D-printed vehicle designs which reduce manufacturing time while integrating a totally digital process and open sourcing options such as an OS battery management system. The company is co-creating an autonomous, electric car with partners such as IBM Watson, Siemens, NXP and Meridian. Rayer challenged the audience to consolidate the MEMS and sensors into a simplified suite of assemblies and reduce the wiring necessary.
One of the mainstays of the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) market is the continued growth of the 3rd Party Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) market. The products developed and marketed by the SIP market enable SoC designers to create amazing cutting-edge silicon solutions employed in every niche of today’s semiconductor market.
The 3rd Party Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) market has seen great innovation in the products it offers to System-on-a-Chip (SoC) designers over the last ten years. If any market segment in the semiconductor industry typifies the intense evolutionary pressures that the entire electronics market has undergone, it is the 3rd Party SIP market.
Total wafer demand is expected to return to historical growth rates over the next five years. However, what is uncharacteristic of the past is the wide range of decline and growth that will be logged by specific product categories and technologies.
Sonics, Inc. and Semico Research Corporation have launched the “On-Chip Power Management Best Practices” survey. The purpose of this industry survey is to understand how chip designers are managing power consumption and contrast that with expected future best practices. The companies will publish results of the survey on their web sites in the fall of 2016.
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.
Silicon wafers are the basic building block for the semiconductors used for the smallest sensor in a light bulb to the most advanced electronic system in the space shuttle. It all starts from semiconductor grade polysilicon and is processed precisely to fit the needs of each application. One of the main concerns is whether existing silicon wafer manufacturers can adequately supply 200mm and 300mm wafers to support expected demand from IoT-related devices. There are only a handful of wafer manufacturers in the industry today. New research from Semico,
published by Adrienne Downey on Thu, 2016-09-08 19:52
Well, now we know all about the iPhone 7. Having watched the announcement this morning, I am left with more questions than I had beforehand, however. First and foremost, why does the iPhone 7/7 Plus not include iris recognition? We’ve seen this feature added to several Android phones over the past year and a half or so. I think it’s time for a premium phone like the iPhone to have this feature. It was great that Apple inspired widespread use of fingerprint authentication on smartphones, but it’s time to catch up with iris recognition. It is, after all, a more secure biometric method; if you’re interested in learning more about biometrics and sensors, Semico just released a report on the topic.