2016 Industry Outlook

By Tony McKie, CEO, memsstar

While the Internet of Things (IoT) and achieving a “trillion sensors” dominated the industry conversation for most of 2015 in regard to what is driving the market; we expect that the 2016 discussion will delve deeper into how the semiconductor and MEMS manufacturing community can best serve the IoT.

While the Intels and Samsungs of the world continue to push for further scaling with Moore’s Law, it’s become clear to most that the low-cost and low-power requirements for IoT devices will not be met with leading-edge CMOS, but rather legacy node silicon. Further, not all products are manufactured in silicon, but also in alternative materials, such as gallium arsenide, that aren’t suited to 300mm wafer sizes. As such, most of these devices are manufactured at 200mm, providing opportunity for 200mm fabs. This is particularly true for those located in Europe, where the offshore migration of leading-edge silicon manufacturing left behind niche market oriented fabs fulfilling a need. “System scaling” through heterogeneous integration is the new buzz-phrase we can expect to hear a lot in 2016.

These 200mm fab owners need to cost effectively add capacity to, and generally repurpose, tools that have 10-15 year old processing capabilities. Used, refurbished, remanufactured, certified and other classes of secondary equipment remain essential to the production strategies for these 200mm fabs, many of which are turning to secondary equipment suppliers for the solution.

Collaboration is another trend we see as a result of the IoT, as successful implementation requires an integrated supply chain. It seems every keynote at every industry event is driving home the need to collaborate across the supply chain, and we at memsstar couldn’t agree more.

If we can create an environment based on close collaboration and strategic co-operation that forms successful relationships, we, as an industry, can improve productivity, create efficiencies, and reduce costs to provide our customers with a valuable supply chain enabling continued growth on this exciting new playing field.