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A ride on the business cycle


February 19, 2019

By Walt Custer

Global growth slows in fourth quarter

World electronic industry growth moderated (or contracted) in many sectors in late 2018.  Compare Chart 1 (3Q’18 vs.3Q’17) to Chart 2 (4Q’18 vs.4Q’17). The length and color of the bars tell the story. The semiconductor industry felt more of a fourth-quarter slowdown than the end markets.  Semiconductor-related products are typically much more volatile than the electronic equipment markets they serve.

In the third quarter of 2018 SEMI equipment shipments were up 10.6 percent and semiconductors grew 15.2 percent compared to the same quarter in 2017. By comparison, in 4Q’18 SEMI capital equipment shipments declined 1.6 percent and semiconductor shipments rose only 0.6 percent. For the month of December 2018 alone the results were even more sobering – SEMI equipment down 8.9 percent and semiconductors down 9.1 percent.

Such are the business cycles in the global electronics industry!

Electronic equipment, semiconductors and SEMI equipment – Historical growth comparisons

Chart 3 compares the quarterly growth of “end market” equipment to semiconductors and SEMI capital equipment for 2013 through 2018. Notice the much higher volatility of SEMI equipment in the peaks and troughs of the business cycle.

Leading indicators

Predicting the future performance of our very volatile electronics business cycle is an important challenge. Taiwan wafer fab sales and Purchasing Manager Indices are two useful tools.

Wafer foundries

Chart 4 compares the composite monthly sales of 14 Taiwan-listed wafer fabs to global semiconductor sales. The foundry composite predicts a further decline in chip sales short term.  Taiwan-listed companies report their monthly revenues about 10 days after month-close, so they can be a very timely indicator of industry performance.

Chart 5 compares the 3/12 growth of these wafer foundries to global semiconductor and SEMI equipment shipments. The data point to further slowing ahead.

This leading indicator methodology can be useful in forecasting individual company sales. For details contact [email protected].

Walt Custer of Custer Consulting Group is an analyst focused on the global electronics industry.

Source: SEMI Blog

Switching magnetic domains in magnetic memories requires normally magnetic fields which are generated by electrical currents, hence requiring large amounts of electrical power. Now, teams from France, Spain and Germany have demonstrated the feasibility of another approach at the nanoscale: “We can induce magnetic order on a small region of our sample by employing a small electric field instead of using magnetic fields”, Dr. Sergio Valencia, HZB, points out.

The cones represents the magnetization of the nanoparticles. In the absence of electric field (strain-free state) the size and separation between particles leads to a random orientation of their magnetization, known as superparamagnetism. Credit: HZB

The samples consist of a wedge-shaped polycrystalline iron thin film deposited on top of a BaTiO3 substrate. BaTiO3 is a well-known ferroelectric and ferroelastic material: An electric field is able to distort the BaTiO3 lattice and induce mechanical strain. Analysis by electron microscopy revealed that the iron film consists of tiny nanograins (diameter 2,5 nm). At its thin end, the iron film is less than 0,5 nm thick, allowing for “low dimensionality” of the nanograins. Given their small size, the magnetic moments of the iron nanograins are disordered with respect to each other, this state is known as superparamagnetism.

At the X-PEEM-Beamline at BESSY II, the scientists analysed what happens with the magnetic order of this nanograins under a small electric field. “With X-PEEM we can map the magnetic order of the iron grains on a microscopic level and observe how their orientation changes while in-situ applying an electric field”, Dr. Ashima Arora explains, who did most of the experiments during her PhD Thesis. Their results show: the electrical field induced a strain on BaTiO3, this strain was transmitted to the iron nanograins on top of it and formerly superparamagnetic regions of the sample switched to a new state. In this new state the magnetic moments of the iron grains are all aligned along the same direction, i.e. a collective long-range ferromagnetic order known as superferromagnetism.

The experiments were performed at a temperature slightly above room temperature. “This lets us hope that the phenomenon can be used for the design of new composite materials (consisting of ferroelectric and magnetic nanoparticles) for low-power spin-based storage and logic architectures operating at ambient conditions”, Valencia says.

Controlling nanoscale magnetic bits in magnetic random access memory devices by electric field induced strain alone, is known also as straintronics. It could offer a new, scalable, fast and energy efficient alternative to nowadays magnetic memories.

IC Insights recently released its new Global Wafer Capacity 2019-2023 report that provides in-depth detail, analyses, and forecasts for IC industry capacity by wafer size, process geometry, region, and product type through 2023.  Figure 1 shows the world’s installed monthly wafer production capacity by geographic region (or country) as of December 2018.  Each number represents the total installed monthly capacity of fabs located in that region regardless of the headquarters location of the company that own the fab(s).  For example, the wafer capacity that South Korea-based Samsung has installed in the U.S. is counted in the North America capacity total, not in the South Korea capacity total.  The ROW “region” consists primarily of Singapore, Israel, and Malaysia, but also includes countries/regions such as Russia, Belarus, and Australia.

Figure 1

As shown, Taiwan led all regions/countries in wafer capacity with 21.8% share, a slight increase from 21.3% in 2017 (Taiwan first became the global wafer capacity leader in 2015.)  Taiwan’s capacity share was only slightly ahead of South Korea, which accounted for 21.3% of global wafer capacity in 2018, according to the Global Wafer Capacity 2019-2023 report.  TSMC in Taiwan and Samsung and SK Hynix in South Korea accounted for the vast share of wafer fab capacity in each country and were the top three capacity leaders worldwide. TSMC held 67% of Taiwan’s capacity while Samsung and SK Hynix represented 94% of the installed IC wafer capacity in South Korea at the end of 2018.

Japan remained firmly in third place with just over 16.8% of global wafer fab capacity.  Micron’s purchase of Elpida several years ago and other recent major changes in manufacturing strategies of companies in Japan, including Panasonic spinning off some of its fabs into separate companies, means that the top two companies (Toshiba Memory and Renesas) accounted for 62% of that country’s wafer fab capacity.

China showed the largest increase in global wafer capacity share in 2018, rising 1.7 percentage points from a 10.8% share in 2017 to a 12.5% share in 2018.  It nearly tied North America as the fourth-largest country/region with installed capacity.  A lot of buzz circulated about China-based startups and their new wafer fabs during 2018. Meanwhile, other global companies expanded their manufacturing presence in China last year so it would be expected that the country’s capacity share would show a significant increase.  China’s percentage gain came mostly at the expense of ROW and North America.  The share of capacity in the ROW region slipped 0.8 percentage points from 9.5% in 2017 to 8.7% in 2018. North America’s share of capacity declined 0.4 percentage points in 2018.

By Maria Vetrano

As group vice president of the Analog & MEMS Group and general manager of the MEMS Sensor division at STMicroelectronics, Andrea Onetti brings nearly three decades of experience in MEMS, sensors and audio systems to his leadership role at one of the world’s most successful electronics and semiconductor manufacturers. During his keynote at FLEX and MEMS & Sensors Technical Congress 2019, February 18-21 in Monterey, Calif., Onetti will address the criticality of sensor accuracy in advancing automotive, industrial and consumer applications. SEMI’s Maria Vetrano spoke with Onetti recently to give FLEX/MSTC attendees a preview of his presentation.

SEMI: What are some promising advancements in sensors for autonomous cars?

Onetti: The avionics industry is already successfully applying sensors for autonomous operationl. Inertial navigation systems (INS) support the operation of planes during flight, both after takeoff and before landing. Unfortunately, the technology in these navigation systems is expensive and not scalable, and they are hampered by reliability limitations in an automotive environment.

Following the steady progress that we have made with MEMS inertial sensors in consumer applications, we are on the cusp of realizing greater accuracy in temperature and time – finally delivering the performance required for autonomous driving. Because we can scale in production – we’re now manufacturing more than a billion units a year – we can select the cream of this production crop for adoption in cars. Consequently, we should see Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous driving for consumers very soon.

SEMI: How are companies using sensors to monitor and track their assets in industrial applications?

Onetti: Predictive maintenance and asset tracking are the two main verticals in Smart Industry. The adoption of multiple sensors for condition monitoring is helping to detect the faulty operation of equipment and to detect early signs of issues that are otherwise difficult to capture.

Ultrasonic microphones can detect leaks in a pipe at an early stage, accelerometers with high bandwidth can act as micrometers, and accurate temperature sensors can catch overheating.

Similarly, in asset tracking, we use temperature monitoring in combination with inertial sensors to detect problems during the transport of goods. Shock sensors with extremely high full scale (up to 8000g) can tell whether a lightweight envelop has been dropped. Pressure sensors can switch off a radio system when a cargo plane takes off and can mute smart trackers in compliance with flight regulations. We really can do almost anything!

A full slate of ST sensors and microcontroller units (MCUs) enable WEG’s small but powerful motor sensor, which listens to a motor, feels its pain, and shares that information with engineers, operators and others to diagnose problems before they happen. Image courtesy of STMicroelectronics.

High-accuracy motion, environmental and proximity sensors are crucial to VR/AR. Image courtesy of STMicroelectronics.

SEMI: How will sensors advance user experiences in consumer electronics, such as VR/AR systems?

Onetti: Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are great examples of promising consumer technologies that will become pervasive as performance of inertial sensors improves. First, we need super accuracy in time and temperature to provide the right experience to users. To achieve this level of accuracy, we need a major step forward in performance, and that includes power consumption and miniaturization. Fortunately, we are constantly making progress in the high-accuracy motion, environmental and proximity sensors that are critical to these systems. While the scale is vastly different between VR/AR and automotive, the requirements for AR/VR systems are pretty similar to those that will enable autonomous cars.

A growing variety of sensors (environmental, microphone, proximity, motion) – combined with a sensor hub in an MCU – are central to VR controllers (above) and VR head mounted displays (below). Images courtesy of STMicroelectronics.

SEMI: We don’t hear much about the criticality of higher accuracy in sensors. Why is improving accuracy in sensors especially important – and what role do calibration routines play in achieving higher accuracy?

Onetti: A sensor is more than just the performance of the relevant function. It is also the intrinsic accuracy that it brings. This accuracy is tuned by calibration, which is typically an expensive process done at the end of product manufacturing or – better still – during earlier stages of manufacturing.

Today more applications require sensors with higher accuracy, which necessitates investing more time in calibration, leading to higher cost.

MEMS technology can help by offering solutions with intrinsic higher accuracy, which reduces the cost of calibration for product manufacturers. This naturally delivers major benefits to OEMs and, ultimately, their customers.

SEMI: What would you like FLEX and MSTC attendees to take away from your presentation?

Onetti: As attendees explore the wide variety of available sensor solutions for their end products, I would ask them to prioritize the role of accuracy in sensor selection – because improved accuracy means higher quality data, and higher quality data means better decisions with reduced need for data processing.

While designers understand the role of calibration routines in qualifying individual components for specific applications, it is the continuous evolution of MEMS technology that offers the best possibility of breakthrough reductions in time and cost of these calibration routines. This makes MEMS sensors more attractive and affordable than similar sensor components based on different technologies.

Source: SEMI Blog

The RF GaN industry is showing an impressive growth with a 23% CAGR between 2017 and 2023, driven by telecom and defense applications. By the end of 2017, the total RF GaN market was close to US$380 million and 2023 should reach more than US$1.3 billion with an evolving industrial landscape (1). Telecom and defense are looking for innovative technologies and RF GaN-based devices are directly answering to the market demand.

Figure 1

Defense remains a major RF GaN market segment, as its specialized high-performance requirements and low price sensitivity offer many opportunities for GaN-based products. In 2017-2018, the defense sector accounts for more than 35% of the total GaN RF market, and the global defense market shows no signs of slowing down (1).

“We believe this important GaN market segment will continue growing along with GaN’s overall penetration rate,” asserts Hong Lin, PhD. Senior Technology & Market Analyst at Yole Développement (Yole), part of Yole Group of Companies.

Under this dynamic ecosystem, Yole’s partner, Knowmade, has deeply analyzed the RF GaN IP landscape and proposes today a dedicated report, RF GaN 2019 – patent landscape analysis. This report reveals the competitive landscape from a patent perspective. Key patent owners, IP & technology strategies, and future intents have been deeply analyzed by Knowmade’s analysts. This report details competitors’ strengths and weaknesses in terms of patents and technologies. It also proposes a comprehensive description of the technology trends and emerging technologies status.
GaN RF has been recognized by industrial companies and has clearly become mainstream. Leading players are increasing revenue very rapidly and this trend will remain for the next several years. From an IP perspective, American and Japanese players dominate the RF GaN IP ecosystem. So who are the leading RF GaN companies? What is the status of their patent portfolio? Do they have the right IP portfolios to face huge opportunities?…

Knowmade’s analysts invite you to discover the status of the RF GaN IP landscape.

“Cree (Wolfspeed) indisputably has the strongest IP position, especially for GaN HEMTs on SiC substrate,”comments Nicolas Baron, PhD., CEO and co-founder of Knowmade. “Sumitomo Electric, the market leader in RF GaN devices, is well positioned but far behind Cree.”

Furthermore, Sumitomo Electric has been slowing down its patenting activity while other Japanese companies like Fujitsu, Toshiba and Mitsubishi Electric are increasing their patent filings and thus today have strong patent portfolios as well.

Intel and MACOM are currently the most active patent applicants for RF GaN, both especially for GaN-on-Silicon technology, and are today the main IP challengers in the RF GaN patent landscape.
Other companies involved in RF GaN market, such as Qorvo, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, NXP/Freescale, and Infineon, hold some key patents but do not necessarily have a strong IP position. CETC and Xidian University dominate the Chinese patent landscape with patents on GaN RF technologies targeting microwave and mm-wave applications. And the emerging foundry HiWafer, entered the IP landscape three years ago, is today the most serious Chinese IP challenger… American and Japanese companies are playing a key role on the RF GaN IP playground.

From a device perspective, Cree (Wolfspeed) has also taken the lead in the GaN HEMT IP race for RF applications… “The analysis of Cree’s RF GaN patent portfolio shows it can effectively limit patenting activity in the field and control the freedom-to-operate of other firms in most key countries,” explains Nicolas Baron from Knowmade.

Intel, which entered the GaN HEMT patent landscape later, is currently the most active patent applicant and it should strengthen its IP position in coming years, especially for GaN-on-Silicon technology. New entrants in the GaN RF HEMT related patent landscape are mainly Chinese players: HiWafer, Sanan IC and Beijing Huajin Chuangwei Electronics.
Other noticeable new entrants are Taiwan’s TSMC and Wavetek Microelectronics, Korea’s Wavice and Gigalane, Japan’s Advantest, and America’s MACOM and ON Semiconductor…

Under this new IP report, the technology intelligence and IP strategy consulting company, Knowmade, has selected and analyzed more than 3,750 patents published worldwide up to October 2018. These patents pertain to RF GaN epiwafers including GaN-on-SiC and GaN-on-Silicon, RF semiconductor devices, including HEMTs and HBTs , integrated circuits, including RFICs and MMICs , operating methods and packaging, for all functions, such as RF PAs , RF switches and RF filters and from radio frequencies <6GHz to microwaves >6GHz and mm-waves >20GHz. A detailed description of this IP report is available on Knowmade’s website.

Robust demand for more content for mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), automotive and industrial applications will drive production of 700,000 200mm wafers from 2019 to 2022, a 14 percent increase, reports SEMI, the global industry association serving the electronics manufacturing supply chain, in its latest Global 200mm Fab Outlook. The increase brings total 200mm wafer fab capacity to 6.5 million wafers per month as many devices have found their sweet spot with 200mm wafer fabrication.

Strong 200mm wafer growth mirrors sound capacity demand seen across various industry segments. From 2019 to 2022, for example, wafer shipments for MEMS and sensors devices are expected to increase 25 percent while shipments for power devices and foundries are forecast to jump 23 percent and 18 percent, respectively, the SEMI Global 200mm Fab Outlook shows. The increases in 200mm fab count and installed capacity reflect continuing 200mm industry strength as it continues to add capacity and even open new fabs.

The SEMI Global 200mm Fab Outlook report has added seven new facilities, with 160 updates to 109 fabs, since its most recent publication in July 2018. A total of 16 new facilities or lines, 14 of them volume fabs, are expected to begin operation between 2019 and 2022. The report takes into account both equipment transferred from one fab to another and equipment revitalized after being held in storage, such as for SK Hynix and Samsung.

Across the industry, recent sudden changes in investment plans for leading-edge devices such as memory have triggered a projected double-digit decline in spending in 2019. However, with demand for mature devices using wafers 200mm and smaller stable or evening growing, it would be no surprise to see plans emerge for even more 200mm capacity and new fabs to meet growing demand.

More information about the SEMI Global 200mm Fab Outlook report from 2019 to 2022 is available here.

Samsung Electronics and Apple remained the top two semiconductor chip buyers in 2018, representing 17.9 percent of the total worldwide market, according to Gartner, Inc. This is a 1.6 percent decrease compared with the previous year. However, the top 10 OEMs increased their share of chip spending to 40.2 percent in 2018, up from 39.4 percent in 2017.

“Four Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) — Huawei, Lenovo, BBK Electronics and Xiaomi — ranked in the top 10 in 2018, up from three in 2017. On the other hand, Samsung Electronics and Apple both significantly slowed the growth of their chip spending in 2018,” said Masatsune Yamaji, senior principal analyst at Gartner. “Huawei increased its chip spending by 45 percent, jumping in front of Dell and Lenovo to the third spot.”

Eight of the top 10 companies in 2017 remained in the top 10 in 2018, with Kingston Technology and Xiaomi replacing LG Electronics and Sony (see Table 1). Xiaomi rose eight places to the 10th position, increasing its semiconductor spending by $2.7 billion in 2018, a 63 percent growth year over year.

Table 1. Preliminary Ranking of Top 10 Companies by Semiconductor Design TAM, Worldwide, (Millions of Dollars)

2017 Ranking 2018

Ranking

 Company 2017 2018  2018 Market

Share (%)

Growth (%) 2017-2018
1 1 Samsung Electronics 40,408 43,421 9.1 7.5
2 2 Apple 38,834 41,883 8.8 7.9
5 3 Huawei 14,558 21,131 4.4 45.2
3 4 Dell 15,606 19,799 4.2 26.9
4 5 Lenovo 15,173 17,658 3.7 16.4
6 6 BBK Electronics* 11,679 13,720 2.9 17.5
7 7 HP Inc. 10,632 11,584 2.4 9.0
13 8 Kingston Technology 5,273 7,843 1.6 48.7
8 9 Hewlett Packard Enterprise 6,543 7,372 1.5 12.7
18 10 Xiaomi 4,364 7,103 1.5 62.8
    Others 257,324 285,179 59.8 10.8
    Total 420,393 476,693 100.0 13.4

TAM = total available market

*BBK Electronics includes Vivo and OPPO

Note: Numbers may not add to totals shown because of rounding

Source: Gartner (February 2019)

The continued market consolidation in the PC and smartphone markets had a significant impact on the semiconductor buyers’ ranking. The big Chinese smartphone OEMs, in particular, have increased their market domination by taking out or purchasing competitors. As a result, semiconductor spending by the top 10 OEMs increased significantly, and their share reached 40.2 percent of the total semiconductor market in 2018, up from 39.4 percent in 2017. This trend is expected to continue, which will make it harder for semiconductor vendors to maintain high margins.

Another factor impacting the market was memory prices. While the DRAM average selling price (ASP) has been high in the past two years, it is now declining. However, the impact is limited, as OEMs will increase their memory content when the ASP declines and also invest in premium models. Gartner predicts that the share of total memory chip revenue in the total semiconductor market will be 33 percent in 2019 and 34 percent in 2020, higher than its 31 percent share in 2017.

“With the top 10 semiconductor chip buyers commanding an increasing share of the market, technology product marketers at chip vendors must allocate a majority of their resources to their top 10 potential customers,” said Mr. Yamaji. “It is crucial that they take advantage of the open budget that is available due to the weakening memory ASPs and encourage customers to use advanced chips or increase memory content.”

China has been the largest consuming country for ICs since 2005, but large increases in IC production within China have not immediately followed, according to data presented in the new 500-page 2019 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry (released in January 2019).  As shown in Figure 1, IC production in China represented 15.3% of its $155 billion IC market in 2018, up from 12.6% five years earlier in 2013.  Moreover, IC Insights forecasts that this share will increase by 5.2 percentage points from 2018 to 20.5% in 2023.

Figure 1

Currently, China-based IC production is forecast to exhibit a very strong 2018-2023 CAGR of 15%.  However, considering that China-based IC production was only $23.8 billion in 2018, this growth is starting from a relatively small base.  In 2018, SK Hynix, Samsung, Intel, and TSMC were the major foreign IC manufacturers that had significant IC production in China.  In fact, SK Hynix’s 300mm China fab had the most installed capacity of any of its fabs in 2018 at 200,000 wafers per month (full capacity).

Intel’s 300mm fab in Dalian, China (Fab 68 that started MCU production in late October 2010), was idled in 3Q15 as the company switched the fab to 3D NAND flash manufacturing.  This conversion was completed in late 2Q16.  Intel’s China fab had an installed capacity of 70,000 300mm wafers per month in December of 2018 (full capacity).

In early 2012, Samsung gained approval from the South Korean government to construct a 300mm IC fabrication facility to produce NAND flash memory in in Xian, China.  Samsung started construction of the fab in September of 2012 and production began in 2Q14.  The company invested $2.3 billion in the first phase of the fab with $7.0 billion budgeted in total.  This facility was the primary fab for 3D NAND production for Samsung in 2017 with an installed capacity of 100,000 wafers per month as of December 2018 (the company plans to expand this facility to 200,000 wafers per month).

Significant increases in IC sales over the next five years are also expected from existing indigenous Chinese companies including pure-play foundries SMIC and Huahong Group and memory startups YMTC and ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT, formerly Innotron). DRAM startup JHICC is currently on hold pending the sanctions imposed on the company by the U.S.  Moreover, there are likely to be new companies looking to establish IC production in China like Taiwan-based Foxconn, which announced in December of 2018 that it intended to build a $9.0 billion fab in China to offer foundry services as well as produce TV chipsets and image sensors.

If China-based IC production rises to $47.0 billion in 2023 as IC Insights forecasts, it would still represent only 8.2% of the total forecasted 2023 worldwide IC market of $571.4 billion.  Even after adding a significant “markup” to some of the Chinese producers’ IC sales figures (since many of the Chinese IC producers are foundries that sell their ICs to companies that re-sell these products to the electronic system producers), China-based IC production would still likely represent only about 10% of the global IC market in 2023.

Even with new IC production being established by China-based startups such as YMTC and CXMT, IC Insights believes that foreign companies will continue to be a large part of the IC production base in China.  As a result, IC Insights forecasts that at least 50% of IC production in China in 2023 will come from foreign companies with fabs in China such as SK Hynix, Samsung, Intel, TSMC, UMC, GlobalFoundries, and Foxconn.

Given the sheer size of China’s investment plans over the next five years, it is likely that China will achieve some level of success with their strategy to become less reliant on IC imports.  However, given increased government scrutiny of Chinese attempts at purchasing foreign technology companies and the legal challenges that the Chinese startups are likely to face in the future, IC Insights believes that China’s current strategy with regard to the IC industry will fall far short of the level of success that China’s government has targeted with its “Made in China 2025” plan (i.e., 40% self-sufficiency by 2020 and 70% by 2025).

By Heidi Hoffman, senior director of technology community marketing, SEMI

This year’s MEMS & Sensors Technical Congress(MSTC), February 19-20, 2019, features a deep dive into the changing automotive sensor landscape, a look at emerging MEMS technologies, and an exploration of integration standards. The more technically focused of SEMI’s annual MEMS events, MSTC returns to Monterey, California, in conjunction with FLEX, the conference that highlights new form factors enabled by advances in flexible, printed and hybrid electronics.

What’s next for automotive sensors

Leading technologists from across the automotive sensor value chain will share their views on emerging opportunities and challenges in that rapidly evolving market. Ford Motor Co. Executive Technical Director, Palo Alto Research Center, Dragos Maciuca will give an update on the changing demands of the market in his keynote. Another keynoter, ON SemiconductorCTO Hans Stork will focus on recent developments in sensors and integration technology, and the remaining challenges to integrate these complex data streams into cost-effective intelligent sensor fusion.

PNI Sensor President & CEO Becky Oh will report on advancements in smart parking sensor solutions and their deployment in smart cities. VerizonProduct Manager Nancy Ranxing Li will introduce Verizon’s data-driven approach to reduce injury and death in traffic accidents. Featuring an integrated sensor system that detects and analyzes conflicts among pedestrians, vehicles and cyclists, the Verizon system identifies potentially dangerous situations at intersections. Cities can use the data to make changes to improve safety while 5G-enabled self-driving cars can use the data to prevent accidents. Fabu Head of Marketing Angela Suen will discuss Fabu’s experience in applying machine learning to sensor integration data. Analog Devices, GM, Inertial Sensors, Tony Zarola will address nuances of autonomous transportation, including maintaining navigation assistance when vehicle sensors “go blind” as well as vehicle health-monitoring.

Emerging MEMS technologies

Other sessions feature major MEMS makers and researchers sharing innovations on a wide range of technology challenges: from reducing power consumption and increasing intelligence in sensors to MEMS motors, analog in-memory computing, and human/electronics interfaces.

UC Berkeley Professor Kristofer Pister will introduce the next generation of low-power wireless sensor networks, which now featuring self-contained power, MEMS sensors, microwatt computation and communication hardware. Now being demonstrated at UC Berkeley, the ultra-high-reliability devices offer the 10ms latency suitable for factory automation. Pister will also discuss ultra-efficient MEMS motors for wirelessly controlled haptics as well as micro robots for precision manipulation.

Syntiant Corp. VP of Product Mallik Moturi will report on the company’s neural decision processors, which use analog in-memory computing for ultra-low-power parallel processing. The company says that the devices are being designed into multiple kinds of edge devices, particularly for always-on speaker identification and key-word spotting for under 40µW—reportedly 50-100X more efficient than a GPU.

STMicroelectronic sSenior Manager, MEMS, Jay Esfandyari will discuss how the integration of logic into MEMS inertial measurement units (IMUs) enables independently programmable gesture recognition algorithms on the IMU – enabling a range of motion-detection gestures at a fraction of the power of running the algorithms on an external microcontroller. InvenSense CTO Peter Hartwell will share his company’s vision of the future in which sensors bridge the real and virtual worlds. Arm Senior Product Manager Tim Menasveta will explore Arm’s work in extending machine learning to resource-constrained embedded devices.

Georgia Tech Research Fellow Yun-Soung Kim will present a new wireless skin-like electronics platform for persistent human-machine interfaces. The platform — SKINTRONICS — combines thin-film processes, soft material engineering and miniature chip components to adapt electronics that conform to the soft, curvilinear and dynamic human body. Georgia Tech researchers have demonstrated using SKINTRONICS-enabled wireless human-machine interfaces to send electrical signals from the human body to control remotely a car and a wheelchair.

In the area of improving manufacturing technology and standards, Siemens/Mentor GM Greg Lebsackwill discuss the challenges and opportunities of co-design of MEMS and ICs for a more robust system and faster time to market. Lebsack will look at the design flow and the ecosystem of mixed-signal design tools and IP blocks for innovative system solutions for the IoT. NIST Project Leader Michael Gaitan will discuss improved test protocols for tri-axis MEMS accelerometers that better determine cross-axis sensitivities and are less sensitive to misalignment of devices on the test equipment, promoting more accurate testing in laboratory comparisons. Intel Platform Manager Ken Foust will discuss the impact and future of the MIPI I3C standard — a two-wire interface developed to address many key pain-points universally felt by system developers struggling to integrate broad sensor capability into their platforms.

MSTC is organized by MEMS & Sensors Industry Group, SEMI technology community.

 

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, today announced the global semiconductor industry posted sales of $468.8 billion in 2018, the industry’s highest-ever annual total and an increase of 13.7 percent compared to the 2017 total. Global sales for the month of December 2018 reached $38.2 billion, a slight increase of 0.6 percent over the December 2017 total, but down 7.0 percent compared to the total from November 2018. Fourth-quarter sales of $114.7 billion were 0.6 percent higher than the total from the fourth quarter of 2017, but 8.2 percent less than the third quarter of 2018. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average.

“Global demand for semiconductors reached a new high in 2018, with annual sales hitting a high-water mark and total units shipped topping 1 trillion for the first time,” said John Neuffer, SIA president and CEO. “Market growth slowed during the second half of 2018, but the long-term outlook remains strong. Semiconductors continue to make the world around us smarter and more connected, and a range of budding technologies – artificial intelligence, virtual reality, the Internet of Things, among many others – hold tremendous promise for future growth.”

Several semiconductor product segments stood out in 2018. Memory was the largest semiconductor category by sales with $158.0 billion in 2018, and the fastest growing, with sales increasing 27.4 percent. Within the memory category, sales of DRAM products increased 36.4 percent and sales of NAND flash products increased 14.8 percent. Logic ($109.3 billion) and micro-ICs ($67.2 billion) – a category that includes microprocessors – rounded out the top three product categories in terms of total sales. Other fast-growing product categories in 2018 included power transistors (14.4 percent growth/total sales of $14.4 billion) and analog products (10.8 percent growth/total sales of $58.8 billion). Even without sales of memory products, sales of all other products combined increased by nearly 8 percent in 2018.

Annual sales increased substantially across all regions: China (20.5 percent), the Americas (16.4 percent), Europe (12.1 percent), Japan (9.2 percent), and Asia Pacific/All Other (6.1 percent). For the month of December 2018, year-to-year sales increased in China (5.8 percent), Europe (2.8 percent), and Japan (2.3 percent), but fell in Asia Pacific/All Other (-0.7 percent) and the Americas (-6.2 percent). Sales in December 2018 were down compared to November 2018 across all regions: Japan (-2.2 percent), Asia Pacific/All Other (-3.1 percent), Europe (-4.9 percent), China (-8.1 percent), and the Americas (-12.4 percent).

“A strong semiconductor industry is critical to America’s economic strength, national security, and global technology leadership,” said Neuffer. “We urge Congress and the Trump Administration to enact polices in 2019 that promote continued growth and innovation, including robust investments for basic scientific research, long-overdue high-skilled immigration reforms, and initiatives that promote free and open trade, such as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). We look forward to working with policymakers in the year ahead to further strengthen the semiconductor industry, the broader tech sector, and our economy.”

For comprehensive monthly semiconductor sales data and detailed WSTS Forecasts, consider purchasing the WSTS Subscription Package. For detailed historical information about the global semiconductor industry and market, consider ordering the SIA Databook.