Tag Archives: letter-mems-business

mCube, provider of the world’s smallest MEMS motion sensors, today announced the company secured three awards at last week’s MEMS Executive Congress for its significant innovations in MEMS and sensors. Based on online votes from colleagues, partners, suppliers and customers, mCube was named “MEMS Start-Up of the Year” and its leading accelerometers secured runner up for “Best MEMS/Sensor Device of the Year.” In addition, mCube’s iGyro, the industry’s first software-based gyroscope, took first place in the MEMS & Sensors Technology Showcase, where six finalists competed on stage and were voted on by conference attendees.

Named MEMS Start-Up of the Year

mCube was honored as the “MEMS Start-Up the Year” in the second annual “Best in MEMS and Sensors Innovation Awards” celebrating innovation in the MEMS and sensors industry. These awards are granted to individuals, organizations and businesses that have made a positive and substantive impact on the world through their MEMS and sensors technology, and are selected via online votes by colleagues, partners, suppliers, and customers.

mCube took first place in the 4th Annual MEMS/Sensors Technology Showcase, a live demo where six finalists competed for attendees’ votes and the title of “winner.” As part of the showcase, mCube demonstrated the industry’s first software-based gyroscope optimized for Android smartphones and tablets. By enabling “virtual” gyroscope functionality on all mobile devices, mCube’s iGyro delivers immersive, 9DoF (9 Degrees of Freedom) motion gaming and augmented reality experiences to phone and tablet users, while halving the power, cost and board space compared to hardware-based discrete solutions.

With more than 70 million units of its leading accelerometers shipped, mCube was voted runner up for the “Best MEMS/Sensor Device of the Year.” The award is granted to individuals, organizations and businesses that have impacted the world with its MEMS and sensor technology, and highlights the rapid success mCube has made since its inception in 2009.

Freescale Semiconductor has been named a 2015 CES Innovation Awards Honoree for its Wearable Reference Platform (WaRP). WaRP is a community-based, Internet of Things platform offering designers unique product development flexibility in the quickly evolving consumer wearables market. It encourages design creativity by addressing key development challenges such as battery life, miniaturization, cost and usability.

Announced last night in New York City at the 2015 International CES Unveiled New York, the CES Innovation Awards is an annual competition honoring outstanding design and engineering in consumer technology products. Products entered in this prestigious program are judged by a preeminent panel of independent industrial designers, engineers and members of the trade media, to recognize cutting-edge consumer electronics products across 28 product categories.

An honoree in the Embedded Technologies category, WaRP is a flexible platform built on a hybrid architecture that enables systems designers to move from prototype to product quickly and easily for a broad range of fitness, healthcare and infotainment wearables. The system-level development kit supports embedded wireless charging, incorporates Freescale processors and sensors, and comes with open-source software, a battery and a touchscreen LCD module. WaRP is a result of collaboration among Freescale, CircuitCo, Kynetics and Revolution Robotics.

“We are proud to be among the chosen CES Innovation Honorees, and look forward to seeing many new, imaginative wearable products made possible by the WaRP platform,” said Sujata Neidig, consumer market business development manager for Freescale. “We also want to congratulate our customer and fellow awardee AMPL Labs for the creative use of Freescale technology they’ve packed into their SmartBackpack, which is a great example of adding intelligence to everyday items.”

Freescale customer AMPL Labs was named a 2015 CES Innovation Awards Honoree in the Portable Power and Computer Accessories categories. The company’s SmartBackpack provides connected, on-the-go consumers with a versatile portable charging system, advanced protection of electronics carried in the bag, and wireless connectivity with mobile devices.

Freescale’s Kinetis KL26 microcontroller enabled AMPL Labs to design the backpack’s intelligence, which monitors battery levels, controls power flow for charging devices and communicates with mobile devices using Bluetooth LE. The backpack also utilizes several Freescale sensors, including an accelerometer and pressure sensors. The Freescale Freedom Development Platform (FRDM-KL26Z) enabled AMPL Labs to prototype quickly and efficiently.

“We are honored to win this prestigious CES award and to highlight the innovative ways we are using Freescale chips, technology and tools to make common, everyday things smarter,” said Michael Patton, CEO of AMPL Labs.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and design, today applauded a long-sought deal between the U.S. and China to expand the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), a key trade pact that promotes fair and open trade by providing for duty-free treatment of certain information and communications technology (ICT) products, including semiconductors.

Following negotiations on the sideline of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ meeting in Beijing, President Obama announced a bilateral agreement on the product scope of an expanded ITA that includes next generation semiconductors, static converters and inductors, and an array of technology products including medical devices, GPS devices, software media, ICT testing instruments, and others. This breakthrough bilateral agreement will enable all negotiators to return to Geneva to finalize a pluri-lateral ITA deal, with full talks targeted for December.

“The ITA has played a central role in helping the U.S. semiconductor industry drive innovation, create jobs, lower consumer prices and connect communities throughout the world,” said Brian Toohey, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Today’s agreement between the U.S. and China to expand the ITA is a hard-fought victory for the U.S. semiconductor industry and a big win for the U.S. economy and consumers around the world. We look forward to all ITA countries finalizing a deal as soon as possible.”

An expanded ITA – with an estimated value of over $1.4 trillion of annual world trade – represents one of the most valuable agreements for the global high tech industry in nearly two decades. It provides the first opportunity to include newly developed products resulting from the dynamic technological developments in the information technology sector since 1996, when the ITA was originally concluded.

U.S. negotiators sought expanded coverage for new and innovative semiconductor products, including multi-component semiconductors (MCOs). MCOs comprise a growing share of the global semiconductor market, and will be key to continued growth and innovation in a vast range of downstream products, services, and sectors, providing the basis for much needed economic growth and jobs. Inclusion of MCOs in an expanded ITA would save the industry $150 to $300 million in global annual tariffs. U.S. semiconductor companies stand to benefit significantly from expanding the ITA, given that semiconductors are one of America’s top exports.

As the trend toward “smart” products continues, demand for advanced semiconductor products like MCOs has been growing consistently in the past few years and will continue to do so in the future. According to industry experts and SIA estimates, global sales of MCOs are estimated to grow by 10 percent annually over the next 5 years.

“Expanding the ITA to keep pace with the latest technologies will fuel foreign and domestic semiconductor design and manufacturing investments, reduce costs for consumers, promote exports, and strengthen overall semiconductor sector development and growth,” said Toohey. “SIA would like to extend sincere thanks to President Obama and the U.S. negotiating team for achieving this strong and successful outcome for American businesses and consumers.”

Cavendish Kinetics, the provider of high-performance RF MEMS tuning solutions for mobile and wearable devices, today announced the closing of a $7 million funding round as well as the appointment of Gilles Delfassy to its board of directors. The round was co-led by Tallwood Venture Capital and Wellington Partners, with participation from Qualcomm Ventures and other existing investors.

The funding will be used to support Cavendish’s growing number of customer design-wins, following Cavendish’s first commercial product launch earlier this year. The nubia Z7 LTE smartphone for China Mobile uses Cavendish’s RF MEMS tuner to exceed China Mobile’s radio performance requirements for the 2GHz LTE frequency bands.

“The explosive growth of smartphones and wireless network traffic is driving the use of additional spectrum, which traditional smartphones cannot support efficiently. Cavendish’s innovative RF MEMS solutions are dramatically improving smartphone connection speed and battery life over the entire LTE spectrum, resolving this conundrum.” said Paul Dal Santo, CEO of Cavendish Kinetics. “The continued support of our investors and the addition of industry veteran Gilles Delfassy to our board is a strong endorsement of our roadmap and achievements thus far.”

Gilles Delfassy is a highly experienced and respected expert in the semiconductor and mobile/wireless industry. He began his career with Texas Instruments, where he created and built the company’s wireless business, which has helped to shape the industry. He has also served as president and CEO of ANADIGICS and ST-Ericsson.

“The growth opportunities for Cavendish are very exciting as the wireless industry is beginning to push for better radio performance,” said Delfassy. “Cavendish solutions have the potential to disrupt the LTE RF component market by significantly improving signal strength, data throughput and battery life of mobile devices.”

The influx of wireless technologies and intelligent devices has resulted in the rapid evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), a disruptive cross industry force expected to transform the manufacturing value chain into a state of hyper-connectivity. While it is only a matter of time before end users see the compelling benefits of real-time data collection and in-depth analysis of multiple process variables from diverse distributed assets, several roadblocks remain to enforce high-level business continuity.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Internet of Things (IoT)—Challenges and Impediments, finds that improving the speed and reliability of communication, enforcing a single standard across the enterprise, maintaining a robust security platform and managing high volume datasets are paramount to the success of the highly dynamic IoT landscape.

“Security, particularly for critical infrastructure, is a key concern for end users owing to the number of attack points and potential magnitude of impact,” said Frost & Sullivan Industrial Automation and Process Control Senior Research Analyst Rahul Vijayaraghavan. “As the IoT market moves towards semi- and fully-autonomous control networks, end users will have limited awareness and control in the event of targeted attacks, heightening the risk of sudden disruptions.”

While IoT provides benefits like responsiveness, collaboration, and visibility, there remain concerns surrounding management of high volume data traffic from multiple connected assets.  End users must decide what mission-critical data (safety, financial, and operational) to manage in-house and what data should be progressively farmed out to service-platform providers.

Additionally, to derive value from the data amassed, development of extensible, industry-specific platforms that offer actionable, real-time insights to improve operational productivity should be a focal point for solution providers.

“As data becomes the currency of the future, vendors must further invest in meeting critical end user data storage, management, analytics and ownership requirements,” noted Rahul. “The ability to establish robust strategic partnerships with IoT ecosystem value chain participants will determine if solution providers can sustain growth in the fast-evolving IoT domain.”

Internet of Things (IoT)—Challenges and Impediments is a Market Insight that is part of the Industrial Automation & Process Control Growth Partnership Service program. This Insight provides value chain participants in the IoT ecosystem an overview of the key business drivers fueling IoT adoption, applications of IoT across the manufacturing value chain, and a detailed analysis of critical concerns and road blocks.

For complimentary access to more information on this research, please visit: http://bit.ly/1zyTljI.

MEMS Executive Congress — Karen Lightman, executive director of MEMS Industry Group (MIG), today announced the first open-source algorithm cooperative, Accelerated Innovation Community (AIC), during her opening remarks at MEMS Executive Congress US 2014.

Facilitated by MIG with support and innovation from inaugural AIC member, Freescale Semiconductor, the purpose of AIC is to reduce time-to-market, startup costs, risk and barriers-to-entry by encouraging inputs and collaboration from across the MEMS/sensors supply chain.

“When companies are developing products that use MEMS/sensors, they often have to develop algorithms from scratch. This inhibits innovation by compelling designers to reinvent the wheel on common algorithms every time they want to add or change functionality in their product,” said Karen Lightman, executive director, MEMS Industry Group. “Giving them access to an open-source library of introductory algorithms fundamentally changes the development paradigm. Product designers can use field-proven, open-source algorithms supplied by MIG member companies to jumpstart their development process, enabling them to gain all the benefits of MEMS/sensors that much faster.”

Steve Whalley, chief strategy officer at MIG and a former director of sensors at Intel, foresees the evolution of AIC: “Freescale played the role of catalyst in first realizing AIC, and we have been working closely with them to launch the MIG Open Source Sensor Fusion site. The site already includes open-source algorithms from Freescale, including C source library for 3-, 6- and 9-axis sensor fusion. Freescale will continue to populate the site over the coming months.”

Whalley added that MIG is already seeing more industry support for AIC: “Analog Devices, Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC), Carnegie Mellon University, Kionix, and NISThave already come on board, and PNI Sensor Corp. will contribute three algorithms: quaternion to heading pitch and roll; heart rate monitoring using PPG sensor; and step counting. We also fully expect other MIG member companies to add further algorithms to AIC over the next 30 to 60 days, providing a rich baseline algorithm capability to assist developers with sensor fusion solutions.”

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $87 billion during the third quarter of 2014, an increase of 5.7 percent over the previous quarter and a jump of 8 percent compared to the third quarter of 2013. Third quarter sales outperformed the latest World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) industry forecast. Global sales for the month of September 2014 reached $29 billion, 8 percent higher than the September 2013 total of $26.9 billion and 1.9 percent more than last month’s total of $28.5 billion. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by WSTS and represent a three-month moving average.

“Through the third quarter of 2014, global semiconductor sales remain strong and well ahead of last year’s pace,” said Brian Toohey, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “The industry has now posted seven consecutive months of sequential monthly growth, and year-to-year growth has been strong across nearly all semiconductor product categories, with DRAM and Analog leading the way.”

Regionally, sales were up compared to last month in the Americas (2.8 percent) and Asia Pacific (2.5 percent), but down slightly in Europe (-0.1 percent) and Japan (-1.3 percent). Compared to September 2013, sales increased in Asia Pacific (12 percent), Europe (7.9 percent) and the Americas (3.7 percent), but decreased in Japan (-3.7 percent). All four regional markets have posted better year-to-date sales through September than they did through the same point last year.

September 2014      
Billions      
Month-to-Month Sales      
Market Last Month Current Month % Change
Americas 5.60 5.76 2.8%
Europe 3.22 3.22 -0.1%
Japan 3.07 3.03 -1.3%
Asia Pacific 16.57 16.99 2.5%
Total 28.46 29.00 1.9%
       
Year-to-Year Sales      
Market Last Year Current Month % Change
Americas 5.55 5.76 3.7%
Europe 2.98 3.22 7.9%
Japan 3.15 3.03 -3.7%
Asia Pacific 15.17 16.99 12.0%
Total 26.85 29.00 8.0%
       
Three-Month-Moving Average Sales      
Market Apr/May/Jun Jul/Aug/Sep % Change
Americas 5.24 5.76 9.8%
Europe 3.19 3.22 0.9%
Japan 2.97 3.03 2.2%
Asia Pacific 16.04 16.99 5.9%
Total 27.44 29.00 5.7%

 

Today, SEMI announced an exceptional lineup of speakers for SEMICON Japan’s Opening Day — Accenture, Applied Materials, ARM, IBM Japan, Intel K.K., NIICT, Scripps, Toshiba, and Toyota.  SEMICON Japan 2014, the largest exhibition in Japan for semiconductor manufacturing and related processing technology, will take place at its new venue in Tokyo Big Sight in Tokyo on December 3-5. A deep program spans from the 33rd annual SEMI Technology Symposium (STS) which begins on December 3, includes sessions on power devices, DFM, lithography, MEMS, packaging, and more to the new World of IoT (Internet of Things).

While the semiconductor and IC manufacturing industries have undergone consolidation, a surge in new investment points to a rebound in related spending in Japan. The semiconductor equipment market in Japan is forecast to grow both in 2014 and 2015.  Drivers for the increased investment are: memory devices, power semiconductors and “More than Moore” semiconductor technologies.  According to the SEMI World Fab Forecast, in 2014, Japan will spend more than $10 billion in 2014 on semiconductor equipment and materials.  The projection for 2015 is to more than double semiconductor equipment spending to $4.2 billion.

SEMICON Japan 2014 will bring Japan’’s rebounding semiconductor equipment market into focus and the underlying technology and business drivers.  SEMICON Japan will enable attendees to explore key technologies and business models necessary to grow in the coming years. On December 3, SEMICON Japan opens at 9:30am with a full day of speakers including:

  • Accenture Japan Ltd — Chikatomo Hodo, president and country managing director
  • IBM Japan — Chieko Asakawa, IBM fellow
  • Scripps Translational Science Institute — Donald Jones, chief digital officer
  • Toyota — Tokuhisa Nomura, executive general manager
  • Intel Japan — Makiko Eda, GM and president of Intel Japan
  • ARM K.K. — Yuzuru Utsumi, president
  • Toshiba — Yasuo Naruke, executive officer, corporate EVP and CEO, semiconductor & storage
  • National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NIICT) — Miwako Doi, auditor

SEMICON Japan will also highlight emerging opportunities in its workforce composition.  In Japan, 14.7 percent of the students in science and engineering departments are women (source: Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology). SEMI will host a forum on “Women in Business” in Tokyo for the first time to discuss the gender diversity strategy, featuring women executives.

SEMICON Japan 2014 is the place for information exchange and networking opportunities for people interested in semiconductor-related businesses in Asia through the opening keynotes, pavilion and exchange networking events. SEMICON Japan 2014 also provides exhibitors an excellent opportunity to meet major device companies through the Suppliers Search Program. Japanese-English simultaneous translation will be available for many of the events and sessions at SEMICON Japan.

For further information on SEMICON Japan, visit www.semiconjapan.org/en/.

United Microelectronics Corporation, a global semiconductor foundry, and Lantiq, a supplier of broadband access and home networking technologies, today announced that UMC has entered volume production for Lantiq’s SPT170 high voltage Power Management ICs (PMIC) used for landline applications. The SPT170 offers the industry’s highest breakdown voltage of all subscriber line interface circuit (SLIC) technologies used in the market, incorporating a custom 2.0um process developed by Infineon Technologies that can handle voltages of up to 170 volts. This high voltage durability provides a robust and reliable interface solution for landlines, which face notoriously harsh environments that include lightning strikes and unintended power contact to the line.

J H Shyu, senior vice president of Production and Operation Integration at UMC said, “Although UMC has been an integral player in the mobile communication revolution, we are also addressing the requirements of landlines, which remain the practical choice for use in homes, offices and institutions. With over 1 billion landlines in operation across the globe, we are happy to address this market with UMC’s volume production of Lantiq’s SPT170 ICs. We look forward to bringing Lantiq’s other products to fruition in the near future.”

Dominik Bilo, COO of Lantiq, “With the delivery of highest quality semiconductor production and excellence in leading-edge processes, UMC is an extremely valuable partner for our manufacturing strategy. We rely on their high-tech expertise and proven processes. With the successful transfer of our SPT170 technology, we ensure consistent production of our mature and field proven voice solutions for many years to come – standing firm behind our product roadmap.”

IMAPS Award Winners for 2014


October 24, 2014

By Dr. Phil Garrou, Contributing Editor

At the IMAPS (International Microelecronics & Packaging Society) meeting last week, several of their key annual awards were given out.

IMAPS 1Dr. Harry Charles of Johns Hopkins was given the IMAPS Lifetime Achievement Award for “for a lifetime of achievement and invaluable contributions to microelectronics technology; the microelectronics industrial development; and IMAPS.”

 

 

IMAPS 2Dr. Andy Mackie of Indium Corp. received the William Ashman Achievement Award “for his technical contributions in solder joint reliability and emerging microelectronics packaging and semiconductor technologies.”

 

 

 

IMAPS 3Dr. Jeff Gotro, retired VP of Technology at Ablestick and currently consultant at Innocentrix, received the John Wagoner technical achievement award for  “…his numerous technical contributions to Microelectronics and Electronics packaging.”

 

 

IMAPS also awarded the following individuals the level of Fellow of the Society: Ken Kuang – Torrey Hills Technologies; Dr. Robert Dean Jr – Auburn; Dr. Ivan Ndip – Fraunhoffr IZM and  Dr. Jeff Gotro – Innocentrix