siliconindia|37|January 2013siliconindia|36|January 2013VViieeww PPooiinnttTrends in the semiconductor industryThe demand for small, smart, mobile, powerful and low-power devices that can access data whenever and whereverwill drive the semiconductor industry to come up with in-novative solutions. The continued advances in lithographictechniques enable the fabrication of devices with finer andfiner geometries. Several companies have announced themanufacturing of devices at the 14nm node within the next12 to 18 months. This coupled with advances in film tech-nology and the use of strainedlattices and others, has made apath for very high-speed, low-leakage devices. Advances inpackaging technology, includingTSVs, WLCSP, HDL, 2.5-D and3-D packaging, Cu pillars andMCP, are driving integration to-ward smaller and smaller foot-prints!Companies whose productsneed “bleeding edge” technolo-gies and those in the analogworld that are two generationsbehind in technology but haveunique process requirements aredriving the requirements, whilenot necessarily in two differentdirections, certainly at a differ-ent pace.Flash and its implicationsFlash is a proven technology,and now improvements in in-creasing density can beachieved. Using solid statedrives (SSDs) that are based onflash technology is becomingwide-spread in many enterpriseapplications, with some primarystorage systems using only solid state storage for some ap-plications. The benefits of speed, power, compact form fac-tor and more are well known. While the concerns of datacorruption and loss are there, I believe the technology ex-ists to improve the reliability. This, coupled with built-inredundancies, will reduce the concerns.On one hand, everything is mixed-signal as interlockwith humans is analog. On the other hand, processing datais best done digitally. So, while processing data storage canall be digital, interaction withthe outside world is analog.Providing customers with sys-tem level solutionsCustomers are looking for moreand more system-level solu-tions and related expertise fromtheir “chip” suppliers. Whilethat does not always mean afull turnkey solution, it does re-quire our field and marketingengineers to truly understandthe customer’s system to pro-vide the necessary solution andsupport. The primary reasonsfor this shift are growing com-plexity, increased global com-petition, speed of innovation,and product lifecycles. So, todo this right, requires expertiseand collaboration across the en-tire supply chain to bring prod-ucts and solutions to the marketfaster.IDT transforming the future ofsemiconductorsOur strategy is to defend andgrow our leadership in ourBe Open to mistakes and InnovateIntegrated Device Technology, Inc (NASDAQ: IDTI) designs, manufactures, and markets low-power, high-per-formance mixed-signal semiconductor solutions for the advanced communications, computing, and consumerindustries. Headquartered in San Hose, CA the company has a market cap of $ 982.59 million.Subramanyan Dakshinamoorthy, Vice President, Worldwide Operations, IDTthree core product categories – timing,switching and interfaces. With thetechnology leadership in analog,power management and timing-syn-chronization, we are expanding ourproduct portfolios in target applica-tions – wireless infrastructure andcloud computing. The recently available IDTP9030and IDTP9020 from IDT are theworld’s first single-chip wirelesspower transmitter and highest-output-power single-chip receiver solution.When used in tandem, they result inreduced energy costs and faster charg-ing time. The IDTP9030 andIDTP9020 are designed to meet theWireless Power Consortium (WPC)Qi standard, which ensures interoper-ability with any other device meetingthe WPC Qi standard. IDT’s recentlyannounced partnerships with Intel andQualcomm will help catalyze marketadoption of this game-changing tech-nology. We also announced a majordesign win with Primax, a manufac-turer of aftermarket wireless chargingaccessories for tier-one mobile phoneOEMs. The strong endorsements by Inteland Qualcomm validate IDT’s wire-less power technology leadership andposition us to win on both ends of thesystem, the mobile device as well asthe charging infrastructure. This is alsotrue of wireless power enterprise flashcontrollers, Rapid IO switches and allother new products designed in at tier-one customers. We recently announced the indus-try’s lowest-power DDR3 memorybuffer (LRDIMM buffer) for load-re-duced dual in-line memory modulesthat leapfrogs the competition by re-ducing power and achieving theworld’s highest data rate. Additionally,we sampled the world’s first DDR4register and temperature sensor. IDTalso announced the industry’s firstNVM Express enterprise/memorycontroller with a native PCI ExpressGen 3 interface. PCI Express breaksthe latency in throughput bottlenecksinherent in legacy SAS- and SATA-based SSDs. NVM Express is a stan-dard course controller interface whichwill expand the customer base for PCIExpress-attached SSDs. IDT alsoleveraged this technology to deliverthe industry’s first NVM Express non-volatile DRAM controller. Roadblocks on the wayDeveloping and manufacturing atthese very advanced digital technol-ogy nodes is extremely expensive.Thus, very few companies can affordthe huge investments. Consequently,companies with digital designs will belooking toward the huge foundry com-panies for manufacturing their de-vices, if they have not already. Also,the percentage of packaging and test-ing cost within the overall product costis climbing. The opportunity will be tooptimize the total cost of the productright at inception and make the call onthe tech node. On the mixed signal analog de-signs, the process complexity requiresvery tight coupling with design. Dueto power and signal integrity require-ments, typically they are a node or twobehind pure digital designs. However,even here the costs are getting higher,as some are on a “specialty process”for which the costs cannot be easilyabsorbed. There will be a challenge inmanagingthe cost.Again, thepackagingandtest-ing costc o m m e n t sapply here.With increases in the speedand volume of information glob-ally, the threat of patent infringe-ment – trade secrets – increases.But, most in the industry haveprograms and policies in place toprevent unauthorized leaks of in-formation. “siCollaboration across theentire supply chain tobring products and solutions to the marketfaster“Online shopping industry in India islikely to touch $ 34.2 billion by 2015. Itis estimated that around 27 million (inIndia) are active mobile Internet users.Currently four percent are buying prod-ucts through mobiles and can go up to20 percent by the next four years. Source: Press Trust of IndiaSubramanyan Dakshinamoorthy
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