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Market Review


Gordon Aspin, CEO, Cognovo


“I have been working in wireless and cellular for the last 25 years and it continues to be a fascinating and dynamic market, and 2011 was no exception. Some would claim that the market is consolidating but I see it as opening up, with new players entering: Google acquiring Motorola Mobility, nVidia acquiring Icera, and at a much smaller scale Huawei acquiring M4S in Belgium. The latter two highlight a technology trend close to my heart in Cognovo – the move to realise more flexible, software defined radio solutions in commercial cellular products. Looking forward to 2012, I think we will see soft radio solutions become an increasingly significant part of mainstream cellular chipsets. One of the more interesting and ambitious wireless start-ups in 2011 was Neul, led by ex-CSR founder James Collier. The opening up of the TV whitespace bands in the US and the UK represents a great opportunity to define new services,


Greg Sutch, CEO of Intralink


“As a company that helps others do business in Asia, 2011 has been a year of extremes. It would be impossible to look back on the year without mentioning the devastating Japanese tsunami back in March and the recent floods in Thailand, which have added further woes to those with manufacturing bases and customers in the region.


However on the flip side, the year has seen a massive increase in demand for western IP and technologies, with the strong local currencies and the weak pound, dollar and Euro making it much more affordable to buy from the west. After the tsunami some grave


predictions were made about the impact on the Japanese electronics market, but what we’re seeing now, almost a year on, is a country determined to get back on its feet stronger than ever. The Japanese government is now focussed on green and renewable energy technologies, and a


Bryn Parry, CEO, Amantys


“As we come to the end of 2011, the power electronics industry still appears to be battling against the challenges it always has done, facing intense pressure for greater reliability and efficiency, driven by the need to reduce costs and meet carbon reduction targets. Combating this requires a change at the very core of power conversion.


However as we enter 2012, we are seeing a transition towards a much more intelligent way of power control, offering programmable dV/dt and clamp voltages, simple design through a digital interface a high degree of observability by exporting data from the switch as well as independence from the material technology of the power switch (silicon, silicon carbide, GaN). We have to also address the on-going


concern in the industry that the number of power electronics design engineers is falling at an alarming rate. By moving to a more intelligent way of working, through simplifying the design process and making


12 December 2011/January 2012


the switch programmable for changing requirements and environments, we can encourage more graduates to become involved in the industry and drive innovation from within Europe.”


Components in Electronics


recent government bill has set ambitious targets for their move away from nuclear power.


The move to green is also taking place in China, but now with renewed emphasis on making the manufacturing process itself (not just the end product) as ‘clean’ as possible. In China 2012 is the year of the dragon, a year when population growth usually surges and one associated with prosperity (China’s GDP is expected to grow by 8.7% next year), promising some great opportunities for western technology companies. 2012 promises further opportunities for


western technology companies in Asia, with the currency situation not looking likely to improve any time soon and the push to green technologies still strong. For companies with the right technologies and IP, looking east in 2012 must be a smart move.”


Andy Groom, Managing Director, America II Europe


“In the past 12 months the electronics industry has experienced some exceptional ups-and-downs, significantly introduced by the events of March 2011. The loss of confidence in the electronics supply chain, caused by the Japan Tsunami, resulted in OEMs buying electronics in excessively large quantities to prevent supply shortages. It soon became clear that the expected shortage was only short-term and the ‘Tsunami-effect’ turned out to be somewhat overhyped. As a result, the year for the electronics industry ended with inventory figures plateauing as a recent report from Gartner has shown. Manufacturers are now slashing their


supported by new standards and new technologies. The release of the 1800MHz band for cellular in the UK in the early 1980’s was a huge spur to the UK cellular industry. TV whitespace could do the same again and we could be seeing a plethora of similar start-ups in 2012.”


production capacity in light of anticipated weak demand for the upcoming months, according to the IHS iSuppli Inventory Insider. We are expecting the global supply chain to become increasingly complex and fragmented in 2012, and the industry will see a similar pattern of order cycles with steep increases followed by sharp drop in order numbers, which makes reliable forecasts hard to predict. Key The key to overcome shortages of excess of inventory is to react nimbly. Even the best forecast in the world is useless when the supply chain is unable to react accordingly.


It’s a brave manager who would venture any firm predictions for the coming year against the background of such massive fiscal uncertainty. The turmoil in the Eurozone, fears of key economies lapsing back into recession and the stubborn refusal of USA unemployment rates to reduce paint a picture of uncertain times for manufacturing businesses. Governments seem at a loss to discover ways to stimulate growth and so long as this continues, both consumer and commercial confidence is likely to remain depressed.”


Stuart Hutchings, Marketing Manager with Elektron Technology plc


"2011 saw a surge in demand for customisation. Whereas historically customers assessed component parts for functionality, performance and cost efficiency, we’ve seen design engineers move beyond the out-dated ‘one size fits all’ model and become more vocal about their specific design needs. The physical characteristics of component parts are now more important than ever – we can customise the size, aesthetic appearance and overall design of a component part to meet the particular challenges of our customer’s end user environments, something our clients


Ivo Bolsens, Xilinx Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer


“2011 was a big year for 3D ICs. Companies like Intel, IBM, Micron, Samsung and Xilinx all shipped their first 3D products based on TSV (through silicon via) technology. Why now? Because Moore’s Law is suffering from mounting die costs, while no longer delivering traditional performance increases or keeping pace with the insatiable demand for bandwidth. So what does 3D IC technology buy us? Connectivity: 3D enables thousands of low latency, low power die-to-die connections that provide 100x bandwidth/watt of conventional PCBs or MCMs; Capacity: No longer limited by the die size and defect density that Moore’s Law dictates, you can interconnect multiple smaller die and achieve greater capacity and higher yield than are possible with a monolithic IC and Crossovers: With 3D you can mix and match different types of die (e.g. processors, memories, FPGAs, analog) in order to produce SoCs that were never before possible.


While 3D offers significant benefits, it also presents new design and manufacturing


continue to see value in as we move into 2012.


Over the next twelve months we expect to see increased demand for component parts that not only meet expected standards of functionality, performance and cost efficiency, but can also add competitive or strategic advantage to OEMs. Across all our component ranges,we’re expecting customers to be looking for component parts which will enhance aesthetic design, improve functionality and add value to high performance electronic products."


challenges. The precision alignment of TSVs and solder microbumps is critical during assembly. The differing thermal coefficients of silicon substrates and microbumps causes reliability challenges because mechanical stress and cracking. A simpler approach known as “2.5D”


offers many of the benefits of full 3D, but without some of the drawbacks. In 2.5D die slices are mounted side-by-side on a passive silicon interposer that is used just to connect the active die. This year Xilinx employed 2.5D technology to ship the world’s largest FPGA with a capacity of 2 million logic cells – roughly 20M ASIC gates. It enables companies like ARM to build prototypes of their next generation multi-core processors that will run at or near full speed, and it is helping some aerospace/defense companies eliminate ASICs altogether.


So will 2.5D technology be eclipsed by full 3D? Not any time soon. 2.5D offers many of the benefits of 3D without many of the challenges (e.g., complex design rules, co-design of the different stacked die, heat dissipation, integration of TSV with deep submicron active devices). 2.5D is a perfect fit for applications like FPGAs and will continue to have power, cost and reliability advantages for many years to come.”


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