Emerging Markets A Goldmine for Semiconductor Industry Date:   Wednesday , February 03, 2010 The ferocity of the economic slowdown did not spare the semiconductor industry, which was also a victim of the crisis that left business houses bleeding billions of dollars. Now that there are signs of recovery, every industry is looking for ways to come out strong from the intensive care, and emerging markets seem to be the lifeline for several industries including semiconductor. “Emerging markets like India are a huge opportunity for the semiconductor industry,” says Biswadip Mitra, President and Managing Director of Texas Instruments. Today India needs technologies to grow and the industries should make sure that these are delivered at an affordable cost. The Indian market is not only a major consumer of technology products, but the country is also a preferred destination for the development of these products, because of the cost benefits involved. “India is well known around the globe for semiconductor design, and several international and domestic companies are innovating here,” said Mitra, in the recently held 23rd International Conference on VLSI Design in Bangalore. According to a report by Indian Semiconductor Association (ISA) and the research firm Frost and Sullivan, the total market for semiconductor revenues in India is expected to touch $7.59 billion in 2010. After reaching $5.9 billion in 2008, the market was estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13.4 percent. The global semiconductor market was estimated to be $261.9 billion in 2008 and is projected to grow to $273 billion this year, which shows that the expected growth in the Indian market is 6.4 times the global market CAGR. Mobile Internet on a Growth Trajectory Today, mobile Internet is booming and the demand will be mainly driven by users in emerging countries like India. As of September 2009, India had 471 million mobile users. According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the mobile phone is emerging as the potential point of access for low PC and high mobile penetrated Indian market, although the present usage is restricted to only four percent of the total active Internet user base. The IAMAI says that currently around two million users in India access Internet from their mobile phones at least once a month and over 27 percent, or approximately 127 million mobile users, have Internet-ready mobile devices in the country. This trend comes along with a continuous cost pressure and ongoing feature integration calling for deep submicron CMOS technology. According to Hermann Eul, Member, Management Board of Infineon, the entry of powerful Internet and consumer brands, and now even luxury designer brands, into the mobile handset arena marks the start of a new era, which will change the dynamics in this space and can result in a more intense battle than ever to control the wireless value chain. The changes of the value chain have a strong impact on the semiconductor integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). “It is necessary for the IDM to rethink the value proposition on manufacturing, the entire R&D value chain, and the application support,” says Eul. He feels that differentiation must be achieved on process technologies, which are shared with partners or even competitors. Nano-Electronics, The Road Ahead Currently, CMOS technologies are unique examples of nanoscale engineering at an industrial scale, as the semiconductor industry celebrates this achievement it is also looking for ways to continue to push the envelope of nano-electronics in the coming years. “As the end of silicon field effect transistor scaling becomes more evident, searching for more scalable transistor structures in silicon and in ‘beyond silicon’ solutions have become an imperative for the industry,” says Prof. Dimitri Antoniadis of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From relatively easy transitions to non-planar silicon structures to the incorporation of high mobility semiconductors like Ge and III – V’s, and to even higher mobility materials such as carbon nanotubes, graphene, or other molecular structures the transition is multifarious. And even further, there are searches for new information representation and processing concepts beyond charge in FETs, as for example, in spin-state devices. Despite all these challenges, Prof. Antoniadis feels that declaring silicon dead is premature at best. Today, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies are bringing value to many industrial and consumer products in the form of improved functionality and miniaturization. MEMS promises to revolutionize nearly every product category by bringing silicon-based microelectronics and micromachining technology together, making possible the realization of complete system-on-a-chip (SoC). An example is the digital micromirror device (DMD), a high-density array of up to two million micro mirrors with associated CMOS memory cells integrated together on a silicon chip. “The synergistic combination of the DMD chip with optics and algorithms gives DLP projection display technology a unique nature – the versatility to be leveraged over a broad range of applications, says Larry J. Hornbeck, the inventor of DMD, who is also a Fellow at Texas Instruments. Today, DLP technology enables the tiniest products (embedded in mobile phones), the brightest products (over 30,000 lumens), and virtually everything in between – all with leading world-class image quality. Challenges and Opportunities for EDA Electronic design automation (EDA) is the category of tools for designing and producing electronic systems ranging from printed circuit boards (PCBs) to integrated circuits. Today, EDA develops automated tools for designing integrated circuits, but there is a need to address automation for electronic systems at higher levels. The proliferation of new modes of communication and collaboration has resulted in an explosion of digital information. “To turn this challenge into an opportunity, the IT industry will have to develop novel ways to acquire, store, process, and deliver information to customers - wherever, however, and whenever they need it, says Prith Banerjee, Director, HP Labs. According to him, an intelligent IT infrastructure, which can deliver extremely high performance, adaptability, and security, will be the backbone of these developments. During many instances, escalating complexity has threatened to derail the IC industry from the impressive 35 percent annual reduction in transistor pricing it has enjoyed in the past 40 years. Fortunately, in each and every instance, creative engineers and companies have seen this as a challenge and opportunity to innovate. “As a result, the electronic design automation industry has repeatedly delivered order of magnitude improvements in every aspect of the IC design cycle for over three decades,” says Walden Rhines, CEO of Mentor Graphics. Today, the exponential rise in complexity has quickened its pace as the industry moves toward adoption of 28 nm and below. According to Rhines, 10X improvements in design methodologies are needed in four principal areas, high-level system design, verification, embedded software development, and back-end physical design and test, to meet the future demand, which will be fuelled by needs of the emerging markets.