Category Archives: LEDs

Growth of the LED industry has come initially from the small display application and has been driven forward by the LCD display application. In 2012, General lighting has surpassed all other applications, representing nearly 39 percent of total revenue of packaged LEDs. Indeed, the LED TV crisis of 2011 (following an overestimation of the market) had the benefit of decreasing LED prices and intensifying the competitive environment. As a matter of fact, LED-based lighting product prices have decreased more rapidly than expected, increasing the penetration rate of the technology.

Illustration_LED and lighting industries_YOLE DEVELOPPEMENT_September 2013

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Yole Développement estimates packaged LED will reach a market size of $13.9B in 2013 and will peak to $16B by 2018. Growth will be driven mainly by general lighting applications (45 percent to 65 percent of total revenue during this period), completed by display applications.

Other applications are still in motion

Regarding display and other applications, most products currently on the market integrate LED technology. Saturation mixed with strong price pressure and competition from OLED will make most of these markets decline starting from 2013 / 2014. Contrary to general lighting, overcapacity (inducing price pressure) has engendered a decrease in market size more rapidly than predicted.

This report presents all applications of LED and associated market metrics within the period 2008- 2020, detailing for each application: drivers & challenges, associated volume and market size (packaged LED, LED die surface), penetration rate of LEDs, and alternative technologies (…). For general lighting, a deeper analysis is developed with details on each market segment.

To keep the momentum, LED-based lighting product costs still need to be reduced

“Cost represents the main barrier LEDs must overcome to fully compete with incumbent technologies,” explained Pars Mukish, Market and technology analyst, LED at Yole Développement. “Since 2010, the price of packaged LEDs have sharply decreased, which has had the consequence of decreasing the price of LED-based lighting products.”

However, to maintain the growth trajectory, more efforts are needed in terms of price. LED still has some potential for cost reduction, but widespread adoption will also require manufacturers to play on all components of the system (drivers, heat sink, PCB…).

The report presents LED-based lighting product cost reduction opportunities, detailing: cost structure of packaged LED and LED lamp, key technologies and research areas.

Emerging substrates could change the rules in an industry dominated by sapphire

Sapphire (and SIC) remain the most widely used substrates for GaN epitaxy but many research teams are working on finding better alternatives in terms of performance and total cost of ownership. In that context, Si and GaN are the main new substrates developed in the LED industry:

Benefits of GaN-on-Si LEDs rely on decreasing manufacturing cost by using cheaper Silicon substrate but mainly by switching to an 8” substrate and using fully depreciated and highly automated CMOS fabs.

Benefits of GaN-on-GaN LEDs stem from the lower defect density in the epitaxial layers, allowing the device to be driven at higher current levels and to use a lower number of LED devices per system. 
However, several barriers need to be overcome:

GaN-on-Si LEDs are closer to GaN-on-Sapphire LED performance but increased manufacturing yields and full compatibility with CMOS fab still need to be achieved.

GaN-on-GaN LEDs suffer from GaN substrate availability and its cost. 
While GaN (GaN-on-GaN LEDs) holds some potential on specific high-end niches, we consider Silicon (GaN-on-Si LEDs) as the more serious contender as a potential alternative to the widespread use of Sapphire. But the success of GaN-on-Si LEDs will depend on the development of associated LEDs performance and development of manufacturing techniques.

 

Lighting supplier and Original Equipment Manufacturer LED Waves has announced several upcoming changes to the Genesys 3.0: their exclusive 4 foot LED T8 tube made in the USA. A retrofit solution for overhead fluorescent lighting in the home or workplace, the Genesys is designed to improve quality of light while reducing maintenance costs with its longer lasting, high performance LEDs.

The diodes used in the Genesys LED T8 tube have been updated to the Philips LUXEON M 3535L. Provided by the same makers of the LEDs used in the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball, this brand is noted for high efficacy and color consistency. The line’s “Freedom from Binning” feature provides uniform Correlated Color Temperature and flux from one LED light to the next.

Designed to make living and working environments more pleasing to the human eye, the Genesys employs 96 LEDs per board to achieve bright, even light distribution. The T8’s minimum CRI of 80 improves visibility and concentration by replicating qualities of daylight. Each LED tube features a unique overhead reflector that maximizes useful light by directing it downwards in a 120 degree beam angle, illuminating working areas of the room.

LED Waves has made two driver options available for the Genesys 3.0 LED T8 tube light. The 20 Watt version provides the most energy savings and produces approximately 1,700 lumens. The 38 Watt version delivers an industry-leading 2,500 lumens. The LED driver, which is used in place of the ballast in a fluorescent fixture, comes bundled with each T8 tube to make installation simple.

These features enhance the other advantages LEDs hold over fluorescent technology. Composed of mercury and other toxic gases encased in fragile glass tubes, fluorescent T8s are prone to breakage and have a typical operating life between 6,000 and 15,000 hours. The sturdy, glass-free construction of the Genesys T8 tube, combined with the 50,000 hour lifetime of the components inside, significantly reduces maintenance costs associated with replacing burnt out ceiling lights. Like their other LED lights made in the USA, LED Waves places a five year warranty on the Genesys T8 tube. (Read more about the benefits of replacing ballasted technologies with solid state lighting retrofits at LEDwaves.com/Fluorescent-Replacement.)

Installed in pairs, the Genesys 3.0 meets DesignLights Consortium criteria for a two by four foot LED troffer light fixture to qualify for non-residential building rebates. LED Waves plans to release this retrofit unit in 2014.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.06 billion in orders worldwide in August 2013 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.98, according to the August EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.   A book-to-bill of 0.98 means that $98 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

The three-month average of worldwide bookings in August 2013 was $1.06 billion. The bookings figure is 11.9 percent lower than the final July 2013 level of $1.21 billion, and is 2.7 percent lower than the August 2012 order level of $1.09 billion.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in August 2013 was $1.08 billion. The billings figure is 10.1 percent lower than the final July 2013 level of $1.20 billion, and is 18.7 percent lower than the August 2012 billings level of $1.33 billion.

Read more: Book-to-bill ratio: Six consecutive months above parity

“The SEMI Book-to-Bill ratio slipped below parity as the three-month average bookings declined in August,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI.  “While some investment activity may be slowing, we see spending by foundries and flash memory suppliers to be key drivers for investments for the remainder of the year and into 2014.”

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

 

Billings
(3-mo. avg)

Bookings
(3-mo. avg)

Book-to-Bill
March 2013

991.0

1,103.3

1.11
April 2013

1,086.3

1,173.9

1.08
May 2013

1,223.4

1,321.3

1.08
June 2013

1,213.7

1,334.2

1.10
July 2013 (final)

1,204.0

1,207.2

1.00
August 2013 (prelim)

1,081.9

1,063.9

0.98

Source: SEMI, September 2013

It’s apparent that the world’s appetite for electronics has never been greater. That has increasingly taken the form of mobile electronics, including smartphones, tablets and tablets and the new “phablets.” People want to watch movies and live sports on their phones. They want their mobile devices to be “situationally aware” and even capable of monitoring their health through sensors. That drives higher bandwidth (6G is on the drawing board), faster data rates and a demand for reduced power consumption to conserve battery life. At the same time, “big data” and the internet of things (IoT) are here, which drives the demand for server networks and high performance semiconductors, as well as integrated sensors and inventive gadgets such as flexible displays and human biosensor networks.

All of this is pushing the semiconductor manufacturing industry and related industry (MEMS, displays, packaging and integration, batteries, etc.) in new directions. The tradeoffs that chipmakers must manager between power, performance, area and cost/complexity (PPAC) are now driven not by PCs, but by mobile devices.

In a keynote address at Semicon West 2013, Ajit Monacha, CEO of Global Foundries, expanded on his Foundry 2.0 concept, talking about how the requirements of mobile devices were, in fact, changing the entire semiconductor industry. He noted that the mobile business is forecast to be double the size of the PC market in 2016. The mobile business drives many new requirements, said Manocha, including power, performance and features, higher data rates, high resolution multicore processors and thinner form factors.

Manocha presented the audience with what he sees as today’s Big Five Challenges: cost, device architectures, lithography and EUV, packaging and the 450mm wafer transition. I don’t recall when cost wasn’t an issue, but an audience poll revealed that most people believe economic challenges will be the main factor limiting industry growth, not technical challenges. I agree, but I’m also thinking new applications will emerge particularly in the health field that could push the industry in yet another new direction.

Peter Singer, Editor-in-Chief

By inserting platinum atoms into an organic semiconductor, University of Utah physicists were able to “tune” the plastic-like polymer to emit light of different colors – a step toward more efficient, less expensive and truly white organic LEDs for light bulbs of the future.

University of Utah physicist Z. Valy Vardeny works in a glove box where light-emitting polymers are studied under clean conditions.

University of Utah physicist Z. Valy Vardeny works in a glove box where light-emitting polymers are studied under clean conditions.

“These new, platinum-rich polymers hold promise for white organic light-emitting diodes and new kinds of more efficient solar cells,” says University of Utah physicist Z. Valy Vardeny, who led a study of the polymers published online Friday, Sept. 13 in the journal Scientific Reports.

Certain existing white light bulbs use LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, and some phone displays use organic LEDs, or OLEDs. Neither are truly white LEDs, but instead use LEDs made of different materials that each emit a different color, then combine or convert those colors to create white light, Vardeny says.

In the new study, Vardeny and colleagues report how they inserted platinum metal atoms at different intervals along a chain-like organic polymer, and thus were able to adjust or tune the colors emitted. That is a step toward a truly white OLED generated by multiple colors from a single polymer.

Existing white OLED displays – like those in recent cell phones – use different organic polymers that emit different colors, which are arranged in pixels of red, green and blue and then combined to make white light, says Vardeny, a distinguished professor of physics. “This new polymer has all those colors simultaneously, so no need for small pixels and complicated engineering to create them.”

“This polymer emits light in the blue and red spectral range, and can be tuned to cover the whole visible spectrum,” he adds. “As such, it can serve as the active [or working] layer in white OLEDs that are predicted to replace regular light bulbs.”

Vardeny says the new polymer also could be used in a new type of solar power cell in which the platinum would help the polymer convert sunlight to electricity more efficiently. And because the platinum-rich polymer would allow physicists to “read” the information stored in electrons’ “spins” or intrinsic angular momentum, the new polymers also have potential uses for computer memory.

Not quite yet an OLED

In the new study, the researchers made the new platinum-rich polymers and then used various optical methods to characterize their properties and show how they light up when stimulated by light.

The polymers in the new study aren’t quite OLEDs because they emit light when stimulated by other light. An OLED is a polymer that emits light when stimulated by electrical current.

“We haven’t yet fabricated an OLED with it,” Vardeny says. “The paper shows we get multiple colors simultaneously from one polymer,” making it possible to develop an OLED in which single pixels emit white light.

Vardeny predicts about one year until design of a “platinum-rich pi-conjugated polymer” that is tuned to emit white light when stimulated by light, and about two years until development of true white organic LEDs.

A sample of the yellowish-colored, platinum-rich polymer known as Pt-1, emits light as a laser beam hits it at a University of Utah physics laboratory.

A sample of the yellowish-colored, platinum-rich polymer known as Pt-1, emits light as a laser beam hits it at a University of Utah physics laboratory.

“The whole project is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy for replacing white light from regular [incandescent] bulbs,” he says.

The University of Utah conducted the research with the department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory. Additional funding came from the National Science Foundation’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center program at the University of Utah, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and China’s Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

Using platinum to tune polymer color emissions

Inorganic semiconductors were used to generate colors in the original LEDs, introduced in the 1960s. Organic LEDs, or OLEDs, generate light with organic polymers which are “plastic” semiconductors and are used in many of the latest cell phones, digital camera displays and big-screen televisions.

Existing white LEDs are not truly white. White results from combining colors of the entire spectrum, but light from blue, green and red LEDs can be combined to create white light, as is the case with many cell phone displays. Other “white” LEDs use blue LEDs, “down-convert” some of the blue to yellow, and then mix the blue and yellow to produce light that appears white.

The new platinum-doped polymers hold promise for making white OLEDs, but can convert more energy to light than other OLEDs now under development, Vardeny says. That is because the addition of platinum to the polymer makes accessible more energy stored within the polymer molecules.

Polymers have two kinds of electronic states:

A “singlet” state that can be stimulated by light or electricity to emit higher energy, fluorescent blue light. Until now, OLEDs derived their light only from this state, allowing them to convert only 25 percent of energy into light – better than incandescent bulbs but far from perfect.

A normally inaccessible “triplet” state that theoretically could emit lower energy phosphorescent red light, but normally does not, leaving 75 percent of electrical energy that goes into the polymer inaccessible for conversion to light.

Vardeny says he and his colleagues decided to add platinum atoms to a polymer because it already was known that “if you put a heavy atom in molecules in general, it can make the triplet state more accessible to being stimulated by light and emitting light.”

Ideally, a new generation of white OLEDs would not only produce true white light, but also be much more energy efficient because they would use both fluorescence and phosphorescence, he adds.

For the study, the researchers used two versions of the same polymer. One version, Pt-1, had a platinum atom in every unit or link in the chain-like semiconducting polymer. Pt-1 emitted violet and yellow light. The other version, Pt-3, had a platinum atom every third unit, and emitted blue and orange light.

By varying the amount of platinum in the polymer, the physicists could create and adjust emissions of fluorescent and phosphorescent light, and adjust the relative intensity of one color over another.

“What is new here is that we can tune the colors the polymer emits and the relative intensities of those colors by changing the abundance of this heavy atom in the polymer,” Vardeny says. “The idea, ultimately, is to mix this polymer with different platinum units so we can cover the whole spectrum easily and produce white light.”

Vardeny conducted the new study with former University of Utah postdoctoral researcher Chuanxiang Sheng, now at Nanjing University of Science and Technology in China; Sergei Tretiak of Los Alamos National Laboratory; and with University of Utah graduate students Sanjeev Singh, Alessio Gambetta, Tomer Drori and Minghong Tong. The physicists hired chemist Leonard Wojcik to synthesize the platinum-rich polymers.

Commercial uses for ultraviolet (UV) light are growing, and now a new kind of LED under development at The Ohio State University could lead to more portable and low-cost uses of the technology.

The patent-pending LED creates a more precise wavelength of UV light than today’s commercially available UV LEDs, and runs at much lower voltages and is more compact than other experimental methods for creating precise wavelength UV light.

The LED could lend itself to applications for chemical detection, disinfection, and UV curing. With significant further development, it might someday be able to provide a source for UV lasers for eye surgery and computer chip manufacture.

Read more: Imec and Veeco to collaborate on GaN-on-Si devices for LEDs and power electronics

In the journal Applied Physics Letters, Ohio State engineers describe how they created LEDs out of semiconductor nanowires which were doped with the rare earth element gadolinium.

The unique design enabled the engineers to excite the rare earth metal by passing electricity through the nanowires, said study co-author Roberto Myers, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State. But his team didn’t set out to make a UV LED.

“As far as we know, nobody had ever driven electrons through gadolinium inside an LED before,” Myers said. “We just wanted to see what would happen.”

When doctoral students Thomas Kent and Santino Carnevale started creating gadolinium-containing LEDs in the lab, they utilized another patent-pending technology they had helped develop—one for creating nanowire LEDs. On a silicon wafer, they tailor the wires’ composition to tune the polarization of the wires and the wavelength, or color, of the light emitted by the LED.

“We believe our device works at significantly less voltage precisely because of the LED structure.”

Gadolinium was chosen not to make a good UV LED, but to carry out a simple experiment probing the basic properties of a new material they were studying, called gadolinium nitride. During the course of that original experiment, Kent noticed that sharp emission lines characteristic of the element gadolinium could be controlled with electric current.

Different elements fluoresce at different wavelengths when they are excited, and gadolinium fluoresces most strongly at a very precise wavelength in the UV, outside of the range of human vision. The engineers found that the gadolinium-doped wires glowed brightly at several specific UV frequencies.

Read more: Demand for key raw material set to double as LED market booms

Exciting different materials to generate light is nothing new, but materials that glow in UV are harder to excite. The only other reported device which can electrically control gadolinium light emission requires more than 250 volts to operate. The Ohio State team showed that in a nanowire LED structure, the same effect can occur, but at far lower operating voltages: around 10 volts. High voltage devices are difficult to miniaturize, making the nanowire LEDs attractive for portable applications.

Read more: Device for capturing signatures uses tiny LEDs created with piezo-phototronic effect

“The other device needs high voltage because it pushes electrons through a vacuum and accelerates them, just like a cathode ray tube in an old-style TV. The high-energy electrons then slam into gadolinium atoms, which absorb the energy and re-emit it as light in the UV,” Myers explained.

“We believe our device works at significantly less voltage precisely because of the LED structure, where the gadolinium is placed in the center of the LED, exactly where electrons are losing their energy. The gadolinium atoms get excited and emit the same UV light, but the device only requires around 10 volts.”

Because the LED emits light at specific wavelengths, it could be useful for research spectroscopy applications that require a reference wavelength, and because it requires only 10 volts, it might be useful in portable devices.

The same technology could conceivably be used to make UV laser diodes. Currently high-powered gas lasers are used to produce a laser at UV wavelengths with applications from advanced electronics manufacturing to eye surgery. The so-called excimer lasers contain toxic gases and run on high voltages, so solid-state lasers are being explored as a lower power—and non-toxic—alternative.

As to cost, Kent pointed out that the team grows its LEDs on a standard silicon wafer, which is inexpensive and easily scaled up to use in industry.

“Using a cheap substrate is good; it balances the cost of manufacturing the nanowires,” he said.

The team is now working to maximize the efficiency of the UV LED, and the university’s Technology Commercialization and Knowledge Transfer Office will license the design—as well as the method for making specially doped nanowires—to industry.

This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Ohio State’s Center for Emergent Materials, one of a network of Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers funded by NSF.

Nanoelectronics research center imec of Belgium and Veeco Instruments Inc. are collaborating on a project aimed at lowering the cost of producing gallium nitride on silicon (GaN-on-Si) -based power devices and LEDs.

Barun Dutta, imec’s Chief Scientist, commented, “The productivity, repeatability, uniformity and crystal quality of Veeco’s metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) equipment has been instrumental in helping us meet our development milestones on GaN-on-Si for power and LED applications. The device performance enabled by the epi has helped us realize state-of-the-art D-mode (depletion mode) and E-mode (enhancement mode) power devices. Our goal is to establish an entire manufacturing infrastructure that allows GaN-on-Si to be a competitive technology.”

Imec‘s multi-partner GaN-on-Si research and development program gathers the industry to jointly develop world-class GaN LED and power devices on 200 mm silicon substrates compatible with a 200 mm CMOS-compatible infrastructure. By joining forces at imec, companies share costs, talent and intellectual property to develop advanced technologies and bring them to the market faster.

Jim Jenson, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Veeco MOCVD, commented, “We have been working with imec on this program since 2011 and are encouraged by our progress. Our work is mutually rewarding, as we are both focused on being able to realize lower costs while maintaining world-class performance on GaN-on-Si devices. This technology can be used to create lower cost LEDs that enable solid state lighting, more efficient power devices for applications such as power supplies and adapters, PV inverters for solar panels, and power conversion for electric vehicles.”

Veeco’s MOCVD equipment features excellent film quality and low defects, which are key for effective GaN-on-Si processing. It also incorporates Veeco’s Uniform FlowFlange technology for superior uniformity and excellent run-to-run repeatability. Low maintenance TurboDisc technology enables highest system availability, excellent particle performance and high throughput.

The market for lighting controls in commercial buildings has entered a period of dramatic transformation, as the demand for both local controls, such as occupancy sensors and photosensors, and networked controls, rises and the adoption rate of light-emitting diode (LED) lighting systems begins to climb as well. According to a new report from Navigant Research, worldwide revenue from networked lighting controls will grow from $1.7 billion annually in 2013 to more than $5.3 billion by 2020.

“Building owners and managers, who are accustomed to the idea of centrally monitoring and managing their heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, are beginning to expect the same level of control from lighting systems,” says Jesse Foote, research analyst with Navigant Research. “To meet this growing demand, a number of different types of vendors – including pure-play startup companies and traditional lighting vendors – are moving aggressively into the lighting controls market.”

As falling prices for LEDs drive up adoption rates of LED lamps, the adoption of lighting controls will also accelerate, the study concludes. The semiconductor nature of LEDs makes them inherently controllable, with a high degree of dimmability, easy integration of controls with drivers, and instantaneous startup. In fact, many LED lamps are being sold with built-in controllability, whether or not there are plans to make use of those features.

The report, “Intelligent Lighting Controls for Commercial Buildings,” analyzes the global market for lighting controls for commercial buildings, including both new construction and retrofits. Sensors, ballasts, drivers, switches, relays, controllers, and communications technologies are examined, with a specific focus on networked lighting controls. The report details the market drivers for these technologies, as well as barriers to adoption, and includes profiles of select industry players. Market forecasts for unit shipments and revenue for each type of equipment, segmented by region and building type, extend through 2020. Forecasts are also broken out for control equipment in buildings with networked lighting controls, as well as for wireless lighting controls and LED drivers.

Villemain-2083Michel Villemain, CEO, Presto Engineering, Inc.

The semiconductor industry is moving from a PC-centric, digital era to a communication and mobile world. This, combined with integration, is driving chips to interact more with the real world and to become increasingly analog. It has a profound impact on test and automated test equipment (ATE). Test equipment used to be rated by speed and timing accuracy, and priced by pins, but those are no longer defining features. The ability to support a wide range of analog and RF measurements is now the critical specification of a modern test solution.

Not so long ago the critical elements were the timing chip and the pin electronic IC. Both were advanced ASICs and defined the price of the equipment. Today, FPGAs support most speed and timing test requirements of current system on chip (SOC) devices, while bench instruments support most analog and RF demands. Bench systems are expensive and do not scale cost-effectively—especially for parallel test. The challenge is therefore to package instrumentation into application-specific test hardware that offers a cost-effective, per-channel solution that can be scaled into multi-site test solutions. The successful test solutions of tomorrow will be those that can offer a portfolio of dedicated analog and RF options, and provide variations as quickly as the market itself evolves.

The second major back-end transformation, driven by communication and mobility, is packaging. More analog circuitry means not only new, multidimensional packages (including 2.5D and 3D), but also more bare die that are directly integrated into modules. As traditional test flows include wafer sort (primarily for fab yield control) and final test (quality insurance), bare die require a known-good die flow implemented by wafer-level test (WLT).  New standards (802.11ad, 100/400G) and new RF bands will require probe technologies that can support up to 90GHz, combining reliable ohmic contact (signal integrity) with a gentle mechanical touch–especially on aluminum pads used by SiGe and CMOS processes.

Addressing these two challenges, for quickly deployed, dedicated analog/RF test solutions and reliable probing technologies, will allow cost-effective semiconductor solutions, then, in turn, deployment in volume of high-speed, high-bandwidth electronics solutions for communication and mobility.

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RichGoldmanRich Goldman, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Strategic Alliances, Synopsys

Keeping up with Moore’s Law has always required significant investment and ingenuity, and this era brings additional challenges in device structures, materials and methodologies. As costs rise, a dwindling number of semiconductor companies can afford to build fabs at the leading edge. Those thriving include foundries, which spread capital expenses over revenue from many customers, and fabless companies, which leverage foundries’ capital investment rather than risking their own. Thriving, leading-edge IDMs are now the exception. From a market perspective, companies focused on segments such as mobile, automotive, mil-aero and medical are prospering.

With this environment as a backdrop, we see five trends dominating the year ahead and expect companies leading in or well positioned to address these areas to do well.

FinFETs. Chipmakers will no doubt keep us well informed as they progress through FinFET tapeouts and deliver production FinFET processes, touting their power and speed advantages for customers. Those early to market will press their advantage by pursuing aggressive FinFET roadmaps.

IP & subsystems. As devices grow more complex, integrating third-party IP has become mainstream. The trend for reuse of integrated, tested IP is beginning to expand upwards to systems, so that designers no longer need to redesign well-understood systems, such as memory, audio and sensor systems.

Internet of Things/sensors. The Internet of Things is poised to ignite huge growth in 2014. Sensors will emerge as a key enabler, connecting our physical world to computation in products that allow us to remotely control our surrounding environment. Meanwhile, a wide variety of sensor types will enable the mobile phone to continue subsuming and disrupting markets from cameras, satellite navigation systems and fitness devices, to flashlights and other applications.

Systems companies bringing IC design in house. Large companies successful in system-level design and development, such as Google, Microsoft and others, are bringing IC specification and/or design in house in the belief that that they can do the best job of IC design for their specific needs.

Advanced designs at both emerging and established process nodes. While leading-edge semiconductor makers drive forward on emerging process nodes, others are finding success by focusing on established nodes (28nm and above) that deliver required performance at reduced risk. Thus, challenging designs will emerge at both ends of the spectrum.

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