Fibocom <span style='color:red'>Drives</span> the Rapid Growth in the Economics of IoT Scale with Ultra-compact size Cat 1 bis Module MC610-GL at MWC Shanghai 2024
  Fibocom (Stock code: 300638), a global leading provider of IoT (Internet of Things) wireless solutions and wireless communication modules, announces the new member of its LTE Cat 1 bis module portfolio featuring high reliability, ultra-compact size and cost-effectiveness at MWC Shanghai 2024. The MC610-GL is positioned to foster the economics of IoT scale in vertical markets across asset tracking, E-mobility, AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure), etc.  The Global Cellular IoT Module market shows a 7% year-over-year (YoY) growth in Q1 2024, according to the latest reports by IoT Analytics. Despite ongoing inventory and demand issues in several other regions globally, technologies like 5G and LTE Cat-1 bis have seen a combined market growth of 67% year-over-year, signifying their substantial contribution to the cellular IoT module market's overall growth. “The statistics have verified Cat 1 bis’ driving forces in bringing affordable and reliable wireless connectivity service to a diversified IoT landscape, even though 5G remains strong performance in the data-intensive scenarios, and Cat 1 bis takes the lead in the mainstream low and medium speed market thanks to the worldwide 4G infrastructure,” said Kevin Guan, Director of MTC Product Marketing at Fibocom. “Without a doubt, we are optimistic in expanding the utilization of Cat 1 bis technology in segment areas and providing the value-added reference design service to industry customers. Looking forward, the MC610-GL is expected to address its top performance in the global market and accelerate the large-scale IoT deployment worldwide.”  Developed from the UNISOC 8910DM platform, the MC610-GL supports major carrier frequency bands worldwide and complies with rich network standards, thus ensuring uninterrupted wireless connection anywhere, anytime, especially catering to asset tracking scenarios. It adopts an ultra-compact LCC+LGA form factor design measured at 24.2 x 26.2 x 2.1mm with dual-mode (4G+2G) supported, providing great convenience for customers to switch from LTE Cat M to Cat 1 bis at the minimum investment. Equipped with rich standard interfaces, the module empowers a wide range of low-to-medium speed IoT industries with up to 10Mbps downlink data transmission rate while conserving significant cost. Leveraging the industry capabilities within Fibocom, customers are catered to the reference design service and support, reducing the lead time to market. In addition, regional versions for EMEA (MC610-EU) and Latin America (MC610-LA) are flexibly adjustable in request to customers’ cost concerns.
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Release time:2024-07-03 13:57 reading:865 Continue reading>>
Murata:What Are the Conditions for Increasing the Efficiency of Power Conversion and Motor <span style='color:red'>Drives</span> and for Expanding the Use of SiC and GaN Power Semiconductors?
  Governments around the world and companies in all industries and businesses are coming together to engage in efforts to achieve carbon neutrality (Fig. 1). Every conceivable multifaceted decarbonization measure is being taken. This includes, for instance, the utilization of renewable energies such as solar power, the electrification of equipment that was previously used by burning fossil fuels, and the reduction in power consumption of existing devices like home appliances, IT equipment, and industrial motors.  Various countries and regions have introduced carbon pricing mechanisms as systems to shift greenhouse gas emissions from business activities to costs. As a result, in addition to being meaningful as social contribution, carbonization initiatives now have a clear numerical impact on the financial statements that serve as a report card for corporate management.  Full Model Change in Semiconductor Materials for the First Time in 50 Years  There has been an increase in activity for decarbonization efforts. Against this background, there is a field in semiconductors where the pace of the movement in technological innovation is rapidly accelerating. This is the power semiconductor field.  Power semiconductors are semiconductor devices that play the role of managing, controlling, and converting the power necessary to operate electrical and electronic equipment. These devices are built into so-called power electronics circuits. These circuits include power circuits that stably supply drive power to home appliances and IT equipment, power conversion circuits to transmit and distribute power without waste, and circuits that drive motors with high efficiency at a torque and rotational speed that can be controlled freely. These power semiconductors, which are key devices to realize a sustainable society, have now started to undergo a once-in-50-years full model change.  Power semiconductors have various device structures including MOSFET*1, IGBT*2, and diodes. They are used differently according to the purpose. Nevertheless, although the structure differs, silicon (Si) has consistently been used for more than 50 years as the device material. That is because Si has good electrical characteristics and has the property of being easy to process into various device structures at the same time.  *1: A Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET) is a type of Field Effect Transistor. It functions as an electrical switch. These transistors consist of three layers: a metal, oxide, and semiconductor. The current is turned on and off by applying a voltage to the electrode called a gate.  *2: An Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) is a transistor with a structure that combines a MOSFET and bipolar transistor. It is characterized by combining the high-speed operation of the MOSFET with the high withstand voltage and low resistance of the bipolar transistor.  However, Si-based power semiconductors are no longer able to clear the high level of technical requirements to further reduce the power consumption of various electrical and electronic equipment. To overcome this situation, progress is underway on the utilization of new materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), which are more suitable than Si as materials for power semiconductors. SiC and GaN have multiple physical properties and characteristics suitable for power semiconductors. These include their dielectric breakdown field strength (affects the withstand voltage), mobility (affects the operating speed), and thermal conductivity (affects reliability). If we can develop a device that brings out those excellent characteristics, we can realize power semiconductors with even higher performance.  SiC-based MOSFETs and diodes have already been commercialized. They are being used in electric vehicle (EV) motor drive inverters, DC/AC converters in solar power generation power conditioners, and other equipment. GaN-based HEMT*3 have also already been commercialized. They are now being used in AC converters for ultra-small PCs, chargers for smartphones, and other equipment.  *3: A High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) is a Field Effect Transistor that enables high-speed switching by joining semiconductors with differing properties to induce electrons with high mobility.  Evolution of Capacitors, Inductors, and Other Equipment Is Essential to Draw out the Potential of SiC and GaN  It is not possible to draw out the full outstanding potential of power semiconductors made based on new materials simply by replacing the Si-based devices in existing power electronics circuits. This is because the other semiconductor ICs, passive components, and even the control software that comprise power electronics circuits have been developed and selected on the assumption they would be used in Si-based power semiconductors. It is necessary to newly re-develop and re-select these peripheral components as well to effectively utilize new material-based power semiconductors.  Fig. 2: Example of an AC/DC converter circuit utilizing a GaN-based power semiconductor used in data center servers and other technologies  For example, numerous GaN HEMTs are being used in AC/DC converter circuits that have adopted GaN HEMTs recently introduced to lower power consumption in the power supplies of data center servers (Fig. 2). It is possible to improve the switching frequency (operating frequency) of power electronics circuits by utilizing the features of GaN HEMTs in that they enable high-speed switching at high voltages. The reactance value of capacitors embedded into circuits and inductors in reactor signal processing circuits can be lower in circuits with a high operating frequency. In general, low reactance components have a small size. Therefore, it is possible to downsize the circuit board and to improve the power density. Similarly, introducing SiC MOSFETs even in inverter circuits which drive EV motors and other components enables the downsizing of peripheral components and also allows the overall inverter circuits to be made smaller and more lightweight.  On the other hand, a high level of noise may arise from high-voltage and high-speed switching power supplies. There is a possibility that noise may then adversely affect the operation of the peripheral equipment. Power supplies comprising power semiconductors made with SiC and GaN switch at an even higher frequency. Therefore, the risk of noise occurring further increases. Accordingly, stricter noise suppression is required than when using existing power electronics circuits. At that time, there is a need to use noise suppression components designed to be applied to high-voltage, large-current, and high-frequency circuits rather than those for conventional circuits.  In addition, there is also a need for small transformers that operate at even higher frequencies for transformers that are particularly heavy components even among passive components. Low profile planar transformers and other components have already been developed and launched onto the market under the assumption that they will be used in SiC- and GaN-based power semiconductors.  Attention Focusing on the Evolution of Peripheral Components in Addition to Power Semiconductors  Various types of semiconductors, not limited to power semiconductors, have been made based on Si up to now. Therefore, many existing electronic components have been developed under the implicit assumption that they will be used by being combined with Si-based semiconductors. It may become necessary to develop new products to suit the new technical requirements instead of simply searching for even better products among existing components to maximize the effect of introducing power semiconductors made with new materials.  In general, Si-based power semiconductors tend to operate at lower speeds the greater the voltage and current they can handle (Fig. 3). That is the reason why there are not enough small capacitors and reactors that can handle high voltages and large currents. Moreover, there is a trend to simplify the heat dissipation system and to reduce the size, weight, and cost for SiC-based power semiconductors that can operate stably under high temperatures. In these cases, the passive components also need to have a guaranteed high reliability under a high-temperature environment.  The introduction of new materials in the power semiconductor field is a major move to update the electrical and electronic ecosystem that has been optimized to Si materials for more than 50 years. Therefore, we also want to pay a great deal of attention to the evolution of peripheral electronic components optimized for new materials.
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Release time:2023-11-22 14:42 reading:1804 Continue reading>>
China Market <span style='color:red'>Drives</span> Essentially All Pure-Play Foundry Growth in 2018
Cryptocurrency boom in 1H18 helped China’s pure-play foundry market surge 41% last year.IC Insights is in the process of completing its forecast and analysis of the IC industry and will present its new findings in The McClean Report 2019, which will be published later this month.  Among the semiconductor industry data included in the new 400+ page report is an in-depth analysis of the IC foundry market and its suppliers.With the recent rise of the fabless IC companies in China, the demand for foundry services has also risen in that country.  In total, pure-play foundry sales in China jumped by 30% in 2017 to $7.6 billion, triple the 9% increase for the total pure-play foundry market that year.  Moreover, in 2018, pure-play foundry sales to China surged by an amazing 41%, over 8x the 5% increase for the total pure-play foundry market last year.As a result of a 41% increase in the China pure-play foundry market last year, China’s total share of the 2018 pure-play foundry market jumped by five percentage points to 19% as compared to 2017, exceeding the share held by the rest of the Asia-Pacific region (Figure 1).  Overall, China was responsible for essentially all of the total pure-play foundry market increase in 2018!All of the major pure-play foundries registered double-digit sales increases to China last year, but the biggest increase by far came from pure-play foundry giant TSMC.  Following a 44% jump in 2017, TSMC’s sales into China surged by another 61% in 2018 to $6.0 billion.  The China market was responsible for essentially all of TSMC’s sales increase last year with China’s share of the company’s sales doubling from 9% in 2016 to 18% in 2018.A great deal of TSMC’s sales surge into China in 2018 was driven by increased demand for custom devices going into the cryptocurrency market.  While TSMC enjoyed a great ramp up in sales for its cryptocurrency business through 2Q18, the company encountered a slowdown for this business in the second half of last year, which was apparent in its slower sales to China in 3Q18 and 4Q18.  The 2018 plunge in the price of Bitcoins (from over $15K per Bitcoin in January of 2018 to less than $4K in December of 2018) and other cryptocurrencies lowered the demand for these ICs.Figure 1With China’s share of the pure-play foundry market quickly growing (going from representing 11% of the total pure-play foundry market in 2015 to a 19% share in 2018) it comes as no surprise that many of the pure-play foundries are planning to locate or expand IC production in Mainland China.  Notably, each of the top seven pure-play foundries has plans for increasing China-based wafer fabrication production, including the five non-Chinese foundries of TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, Powerchip, and TowerJazz.
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Release time:2019-01-09 00:00 reading:1239 Continue reading>>
Startup <span style='color:red'>Drives</span> Open Source to IoT
A startup formed by members of Linaro wants to be the Red Hat of the Internet of Things, delivering configurations of Linux and the Zephyr RTOS for end nodes, gateways and cars. Foundries.io aims to provide processor-agnostic code with regular updates at a time when IoT developers have a wide variety of increasingly vendor-specific choices.“Today every IoT product is effectively a custom design that has to be tested and maintained, and we believe that causes huge fragmentation. Our concept is to make it as easy to update an embedded product as to update a smartphone, so you don’t need a security expert,” said George Grey, chief executive of Foundries.io.The startup will offer a Zephyr distribution that can fit into as little as 512 KBytes flash. It’s embedded Linux, based on Open Embedded/Yocto, implements Docker Containers and fits into less than 200 Mbytes. Both will be offered with subscriptions that include over-the-air security patches and other updates initially on a weekly basis.The startup is charging $2,500/month or $25,000/year for a Linux product, regardless of how many devices use it. It charges $1,000/month or $10,000/year for Zephyr.“It’s a hundredth the cost of building a software team, and there are no per-unit fees and no lock in. If you stop your subscription, you keep the software and get no more updates,” said Grey.The service targets system OEMs. The startup also runs a partner program selling subscriptions to SoC and module vendors. So far, it supports code running on six development boards, spanning Arm, Intel and RISC-V processors.Foundries.io is “the first independent effort to commercialize Zephyr” after Wind River, the creator of the RTOS it made open source while part of Intel, said Christopher Rommel, a vice president of embedded software and hardware at VDC Research Group, Inc. Wind River is not actively promoting Zephyr since Intel sold it to a private equity group.The startup’s support for RISC-V “is further evidence of that community’s momentum,” Rommel said. However, he noted the market for embedded operating systems is well served by traditional players such as MonaVista and Wind River, as well as many new entrants including cloud computing giants and cellular carriers.The startup’s Linux and Zephyr RTOS stacks do not initially include hypervisors. Click to enlarge. (Image: Foundations.io)Indeed, the IoT software sector is getting crowded. Arm has in recent years spun up an increasingly rich set of embedded software offerings under its Mbed group. In addition, Google has rolled out Android Things for the IoT, Amazon bought FreeRTOS and Microsoft rolled out a full IoT stack using proprietary security hardware.China’s Alibaba, Huawei and Tencent are said to have their own IoT software stacks. Carriers are jumping on the bandwagon, too. AT&T offers its M2X stack and Vodaphone is building its own IoT software platform, Grey said.“Our difference is what we produce is for any device or cloud service, so there’s no vendor lock-in--that something users such as governments want,” said GreyToday, five of the top six embedded operating systems are open-source products with in-house code being the sixth, according to the EE Times 2017 embedded markets survey. “It’s a too-well served market. There are too many choices, resulting in everyone doing their own thing…Zephyr has an opportunity to become the Linux of RTOSes,” said Grey.As for Google’s Android Things, “it’s a bit like Android TV, it’s targeting some specific use cases, but it’s not a completely open platform that anyone can pick up and use,” he said.Today, Foundries.io is lacking a full virtualization module, but it plans to support hypervisors by the end of the year. Looking further out, it aims to build versions of its OSes geared for specific market segments such safety-critical apps.So far, the startup has two beta users including Vitality, itself a 30-person startup in the health care field. “For their first products, the developed all the software themselves, it cost them a lot of engineering effort and they had to physically update devices which doesn’t scale,” Grey said.So far, Foundries.io raised a seed round of $1.5 million from Linaro and other strategic investors it is not naming. It aims to raise at least $7 million within the next year to expand its feature set and road map.
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Release time:2018-08-22 00:00 reading:1239 Continue reading>>
Consumer Space <span style='color:red'>Drives</span> Service Robot Sales, Startups
  Recent market studies on global trends in service robots conclude that the consumer-robot category is growing faster than any other kind. In 2020, service robots for domestic or personal use could well account for 40 million units sold — some of them by robotics startups, which are also on the rise.  The service-robot category covers just about all robots other than the fixed-in-place, industrial machines designed to do one main job very accurately and very fast. Service robots vary widely in form and function and sell in far higher unit volumes than industrial robots. Most analyses distinguish between professional service robots, such as those used in military or medical applications, and robots for domestic and personal use, such as smart vacuums and toys. Professional service robots are more complex, command a higher price tag, and account for annual unit sales in the tens of thousands. Domestic and personal-use robots are simpler, cost much less, and sell in the millions of units per year. Most robots of both types are produced in the United States.  Global unit sales of professional service robots increased 24% in 2016 over 2015, while the dollar value per robot increased by only 2%, according to “World Robotics: Service Robots 2017,” a report from Germany’s International Federation of Robotics. IFR attributes the low rate of revenue increase to a slight decline in sales of high-value military machines, which accounted for 19% of units sold in 2016. Unit sales of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the largest military type, grew 4%, but unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) unit volumes declined by 32%.  About 10% of professional service robots are “field” or agricultural machines, such as milking systems. These also declined slightly in 2016. But unit sales of medical robots — by far the highest-priced of any service robot — rose 23%, accounting for 2.7% of professional-robot sales in 2016. In a separate category are powered exoskeletons that help rehab patients walk or reduce the weight of loads carried; unit sales of these machines rose 21%. Growing even faster are logistics systems, such as the automated guided vehicles (AGVs) used in factories. Their volumes increased 34% in 2016, and they now constitute 43% of professional service robots.  Most of the domestic/personal robots sold are machines that perform household tasks, such as vacuuming and lawn mowing. The IFR report estimates unit growth of 25% for such robots in 2016. Another rapidly increasing category is entertainment robots, such as sophisticated toys, for which volumes rose 22% in 2016.  The IFR expects aggressive growth in the next few years for service robots. The organization estimates a 17% rise in total unit sales of professional robots for the current year and predicts increases of 20% to 25% annually for the professional category between 2018 and 2020. Some of the fastest-growing professional service robots are public relations systems, for which volumes are estimated to have jumped 37%, to 10,300 units, in 2017 and are predicted to grow to 66,100 units by 2020. Logistics systems such as AGVs in factories, hospitals, and e-commerce environments will jump 46% in 2017 and then grow 25% to 30% per year between 2018 and 2020.  Powered exoskeletons will continue to log rapid growth, according to IFR, which estimates a unit increase of 35% for the category in 2017, followed by 25% growth per year between 2018 and 2020. Domestic/household robot unit volumes overall have grown 30% in 2017 and will rise 30% to 35% annually in the 2018-2020 time frame. Entertainment robot unit sales will increase 20% to 25% annually during the forecast period.  “The growing interest in service robotics is partly due to the variety and number of new startups, which currently account for 29% of all robot companies,” Martin H?gele, chairman of the IFR Service Robot Group, said in a statement. About 200 startup companies in the United States are developing service robots, along with 170 in the European Union and Switzerland, and 135 in Asia.  In a study released in June, Boston Consulting Group reported that private investment in the robotics space had tripled between 2014 and 2015 alone. Lower prices and improving capabilities, including cheaper and better electronics and easier programming, have helped fuel this rise, according to the BCG report.  The management consulting firm measures robotics in dollar values. In 2014, it predicted a global market for all types of robots — military, industrial, commercial, and consumer — of $67 billion by 2025. BCG sharply revised that figure upward in its June report, predicting a total market of $87 billion. The new tally includes a jump of 156% for consumer robots, which indicates very high unit numbers, considering the consumer category’s much lower average selling prices.  In 2016, robotics technologies shifted toward consumer-facing applications, and more companies serving the consumer space were started. But the trend itself is older: Since 2012, about 40% of all new robotics companies have targeted consumers, with far fewer startups emerging to serve the military, commercial, and industrial sectors.  “Much of the accelerated growth [by 2025] will come from the consumer market because of applications such as self-driving cars and devices for the home,” Vlad Lukic, a BCG partner and coauthor of the report, said in a statement. The rest will come from 34% higher growth in commercial robots.  According to a recent study from Swedish market research firm Berg Insight, the global installed base of service robots totaled 29.6 million units in 2016. A whopping 80 percent, or 23.8 million, were floor-cleaning robots. Accounting for the remainder were 4 million UAVs, or drones; 1.6 million robotic lawn mowers; 100,000 AGVs; 50,000 milking robots; and lots of other types in much smaller numbers: humanoid, assistant and companion, telepresence, surgical, autonomous mobile, and powered exoskeleton.  Berg predicts that the total installed base of service robots will rise to 264.3 million worldwide by 2026, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 24% between 2016 and the final forecast year. The figures are close to the IFR’s estimates covering a portion of the forecast period.
Release time:2017-12-15 00:00 reading:1286 Continue reading>>
RISC-V Spins into <span style='color:red'>Drives</span>, AI
  Storage giant Western Digital announced that it will standardize on RISC-V processors and has invested in Esperanto Technologies, a startup designing high-end SoCs and cores using the open-source instruction set architecture. The two moves suggest that RISC-V has emerged as a viable — but not yet mature — alternative to ARM and the x86.  Long-term, WD expects that it could ship as many as 2 billion RISC-V chips a year inside its hard-disk and solid-state drives. Privately, the company also revealed that it is working on machine-learning accelerators for inference, probably related to its unspecified investment in Esperanto.  For its part, the startup tipped plans for a family of 64-bit RISC-V chips that will include:An AI “supercomputer-on-a-chip” to be made in TSMC’s 7-nm process.A 16-core “ET-Maxion” targeting highest single-thread performanceA 4,096-core “ET-Minion” targeting performance-per-watt with a vector floating-point unit in each core.  “Having a major company like WD bet on the architecture is a huge boost for the RISC-V ecosystem, and having a startup try to take it to high-end products is a big deal because to date, RISC-V has been mainly in low-end microcontrollers for the IoT,” said Linley Gwennap, principal of market watcher The Linley Group.  Esperanto has kept a tight lid on its plans to date, although its chief executive, microprocessor veteran David Ditzel, has been a fixture at RISC-V events for some time. Ditzel designed server processors at the former Sun Microsystems and startup Transmeta before doing a relatively short stint at Intel.  “I wasn’t going to do something unless it could be bigger than Transmeta — its get big or go home,” said Ditzel in an interview.  He declined to describe details of his products, their architecture, or even the company’s funding. However, he did give a few examples of his team, which includes Tom Riodan, a former Intel and MIPS processor designer who sold his startup QED to PMC Sierra.  “He was going to start his own RISC-V company, but we got together instead,” said Ditzel.  In addition, the startup snagged “a chief architect of the Sony Playstation 3. He was about to start work on the PS5, and when he heard about what we are doing, he said he wanted to join.”  Advisors include Berkeley professor emeritus David Patterson, who helped launch RISC-V, and Alan Eustace, a veteran senior engineer at Google, HP, and Digital Equipment. Although Ditzel declined to give numbers, the startup has engineers in Silicon Valley and Europe, at least 27 of whom will attend this week’s RISC-V workshop.  Esperanto’s staff includes former Intel specialists in floating-point and out-of-order design as well as circuit designers and physical layout experts. A compiler team already wrote a shader compiler to run high-end graphics jobs on its chips.  At a RISC-V workshop here, Esperanto will demonstrate RTL, presumably running in an FPGA, handling neural-networking jobs such as image recognition. The company’s general-purpose processors haven’t taped out yet but will target a range of applications.  “Top of our apps list is training and inference; we can do pretty good at graphics for high-end VR/AR … [the architecture] works best for problems with lots of parallelism,” said Ditzel.  The chips will use 16-bit floating point for training but support lower bit widths and integer operations for neural nets, too. “We will have more performance and fewer watts than competitors and more scalable power — most other [training] chips are hot — we can do lower-power apps as well.”  Unlike training accelerators from rivals such as Nvidia, Intel, and startup Graphcore, “we’re not at a max reticle die size,” he said of the 7-nm chip.  One of the company’s early targets may be embedded processors for devices such as Amazon Echo or Google Home. Time-to volume was one lesson from his startup Transmeta, said Ditzel, leading to a strategy of “being able to start in broad consumer spaces rather than day-one in servers” where design cycles can span two years.  The startup’s main business will be selling SoCs; however, it also may sell systems using them. In addition, it is open to licensing its cores “to make RISC-V more widespread.”  The relative immaturity of RISC-V and software for it is a chief challenge today.  “The GCC compiler is pretty stable and Linux ports are being upstreamed, but LLVM still has ways to go,” said Ditzel. “By the time we are selling chips, there will be a lot more maturity. There hasn’t been much silicon until recently with the SiFive parts, but once that’s there, the software will come along.”  “We are in it for the long haul … this is about the next six years, not the next six months.”  Along the way, Esperanto expects to take a lead role in defining extensions to the RISC-V instruction set. The company employs the co-lead of the foundation’s working group on a vector architecture, and Ditzel led work on extensions to Sun’s Sparc CPU back in the day.  For its part, Western Digital plans to transition “future core, processor, and controller development” to RISC-V. It currently consumes more than a billion cores a year. It has been a member of the RISC-V Foundation from the outset but has said little about its plans previously.  “The open-source movement has demonstrated to the world that innovation is maximized with a large community working toward a common goal,” said Martin Fink, WD’s CTO in a press statement.  “For that reason, we are providing all of our RISC-V logic work to the community,” said Fink, who was slated to keynote the event this week. “We also encourage open collaboration among all industry participants, including our customers and partners, to help amplify and accelerate our efforts. Together, we can drive data-focused innovation and ensure that RISC-V becomes the next Linux success story.”  In an FAQ, the company said that it has no plans to make merchant semiconductors. It positioned the move as an extension of its storage business rather than a replacement of it.
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Release time:2017-11-29 00:00 reading:1185 Continue reading>>
Tight Memory Supply <span style='color:red'>Drives</span> Micron's Record Sales
  Micron Technology continues to build on a momentum that started late last year with a strong fiscal third quarter, ended June 1.  Revenues for the quarter were a record $5.57 billion. That’s 20 percent higher compared to the previous quarter and 92 percent higher compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2016. It’s also the first quarter for new Micron president and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, who in a statement outlining the quarterly financials said the strong operational performance with free cash flow nearly double that of the previous quarter enabled the company to retire $1 billion in debt. The results reflect Micron’s execution of its cost reduction plans and ongoing favorable industry supply and demand dynamics, he added.  Mehrotra joined Micron in May after a long career at SanDisk prior to its sale to Western Digital last year, serving as president and CEO from 2011 to 2016. In a live webcast, Mehrotra said the company saw record revenues across all business units, driven by its technology portfolio and broad customer reach, as well as a favorable pricing environment for both NAND and DRAM. He also cited artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and autonomous driving as strong segments as memory and storage become an increasingly strategic element in these applications.  Micron’s compute and networking business unit saw a significant increase demand, in part due to increased enterprise demand as analytics and in-memory data processing pushed up DRAM content, while revenue from cloud customers was four times higher year over year. Micron Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Ernie Maddock said success in the cloud segment can be attributed not only to the higher DRAM content demand, but company’s focused efforts to increase market penetration by addressing its needs.  On the mobile front, Micron plans to introduce nearly 20 new 1x designs in the next 12 months, and is developing MCP and discrete NAND to address a full range of smartphones. Mehrotra said demand is strong for both value devices and higher-end smartphones. The company is currently sampling its 32-layer 3D NAND MCP and discrete eUFS and eMMC devices. “Many mobile OEM customers prefer MCPs in their design implementation to address their memory and storage requirements as MCPs provide a single source for DRAM memory and NAND storage, simplifying their system design, validation, and supply chain considerations,” he said.  While the mobile segment was solid performer, Micron’s embedded business unit experienced record quarterly revenue in automotive, consumer / connected home, and industrial applications; the unit’s revenue was up 44 percent year over year. Mehrotra frequently referenced potential for automotive throughout the webcast, particularly autonomous vehicles. The company is maintaining a market share leadership position in automotive, he said, driven by infotainment and instrumentation systems. Voice-activated assistants and set-top boxes were big contributors on the connected home front. In the meantime, the company is in the process of transitioning its non-automotive embedded DRAM portfolio to 20n designs.  Finally, Micron’s storage business also saw record revenue driven by a 30 percent quarter over quarter growth in SSDS, with sales to cloud and enterprise customers exceeding client sales.  Overall, Mehrotra said Micron sees a healthy demand environment into 2018. The company’s priorities are focusing on being competitive by introducing new technology quickly, while strengthening business fundamentals. It is ramping up 64-layer 3D NAND and 1x DRAM technologies, he said, and expects to achieve meaningful output by end of fiscal 2017. The company’s third generation 3D NAND will be based on its CMOS Under Array Architecture, which allows for a smaller die and lower cost.  Mehrotra said Micron is making progress in the cloud and enterprise markets and sees greater opportunities ahead, but it has some work to do. The company is focusing on having a mix of system level solutions in the NAND portfolio, as well as stronger controller and firmware capabilities with a roadmap for both internal and external controllers.  Micron is forecasting a DRAM industry bit supply growth of 15 to 20 percent in calendar 2017, while NAND industry bit supply growth will be in the 30 to low 40 percent range. And although the favorable pricing environment is expected to persist into 2018, Micron cautioned that in the first half of the year its bit growth will be lower than industry average for DRAM due to its 1x transition, followed by a stronger second half.  Jim Handy, principal analyst with Objective Analysis, said the favorable pricing environment is a big contributor to Micron’s current success. “It's mostly about the environment," Handy said. "We're in a shortage."  It means the company is “basically printing money now,” thanks to unusually high profit margins for both DRAM and flash, he added. “Prices for flash and DRAM have both gone up, which goes against what the semiconductor market usually does,” Handy said.  But Handy said Micron is also doing a good job of executing and controlling costs. There’s a reason why there were 28 DRAM makers in 1990s and only three today. “The dropouts weren't able to lower their cost structures quick enough,” Handy said.  He did agree there are opportunities for DRAM ahead, especially as autonomous driving is falling to into place faster thanks to Google’s backing, which could be a boon to Micron.  In the bigger picture, any new president will have a change of focus in mind for the company, said Handy, and Mehrotra wants to be more customer-focused and concentrate on longer-term and higher margin opportunities. “The good pricing environment is a nice thing, but whether it’s a good pricing or a bad pricing environment, all of these things will make the company stronger,” he said.  Micron is clearly bullish on its technologies, said Handy, and is in a strong position with its 1x DRAM and 3D NAND. The company has struggled in the past to launch them in a timely fashion. But while they were third to market with 3D NAND, Handy said, "once they got into 3D NAND they executed very well."
Release time:2017-07-03 00:00 reading:1204 Continue reading>>
NAND Shortage <span style='color:red'>Drives</span> Price Surge
  Contract pricing for NAND flash memory surged by 20 to 25 percent in the first quarter, a strong testament to the undersupply condition that persists in the market, according to DRAMeXchange, a firm that tracks memory chip pricing.  NAND revenue typically falls off considerably between the seasonally strong fourth quarter and the the first quarter of the year, traditionally a slow season for end device shipments. However, in the first quarter of this year, global NAND revenue declined by just 0.4 percent, as the reduction of two-dimensional NAND capacity was severe enough to create tight demand, DRAMeXchange said.  Prices of mobile storage products such as embedded multi-chip package (eMCP), embedded multi-media card (eMMC) and universal flash storage (UFS) also continue climbing, DRAMeXchange said.  DRAMeXchange expects NAND shortage to persist for the entire year, resulted in expected sequential sales increases for NAND suppliers.  The production capacity of two dimensional NAND has fallen as the industry has begun migrating to 3D NAND manufacturing, said Alan Chen, senior research manager at DRAMeXchange, in a press statement.  "As the market has yet to regain its balance following this disruption, contract prices of NAND flash chips will keep going up," Chen said.  South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. maintained its sizeable lead in the NAND flash market, holding 35.4 percent of the market in the first quarter, despite a 6 percent decline in NAND revenue, according to DRAMeXchange. Western Digital maintained its position as the No. 2 supplier of NAND with about 17.9 percent of the market, according to the firm.
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Release time:2017-06-02 00:00 reading:1154 Continue reading>>
iNAND <span style='color:red'>Drives</span> Toward Automotive Market
  Western Digital is directing its iNAND embedded flash to the automotive market.  The company’s iNAND storage portfolio came with the SanDisk acquisition; the latter company has previously positioned it for the increasingly high demands of smartphones, such as professional-grade digital photography and 4K Ultra-HD video playback.  Under the Western Digital umbrella, the technology is seeing opportunities for it to meet the evolving demands of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), infotainment and safety systems, and other data storage requirements of connected vehicles. Gartner is forecasting that by 2020 connected and autonomous car data traffic per vehicle may reach more than 280 petabytes per year, essentially making the connected car a data center on wheels.  The iNAND 7250A EFD is available in capacities up to 64 GB and is designed to work with diagnostic systems continuously processing analytics, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure systems that are constantly streaming, and infotainment and navigation systems that are becoming increasingly complex. What these systems all have in common is that they generate, receive, and process data.  In a telephone interview with EE Times, Western Digital’s VP of embedded and integrated solutions, Christopher Bergey, said that the iNAND journey to automotive goes back as far as SanDisk’s acquisition of M-Systems, which had a focus on the embedded market. Since then, development of the iNAND portfolio has been largely driven by mobile handsets. “It was the largest market at the time and still is today,” he said.  He said that there was some use of iNAND in automotive applications in its earlier days, but SanDisk wasn’t taking a bottom-up design approach for specific markets. In the past few years, there has been a more systems-level approach to satisfy the particular performance, reliability, and capacity requirements of specific market segments.  iNAND was heavily promoted at the World Mobile Congress in 2015, including the ability for NAND cells to be formatted as both TLC and SLC, with the SLC areas having much higher write speeds, thanks to the newly introduced SmartSLC technology. Some of the overprovisioned areas of the flash are formatted as SLC, and the logic in the controller and the firmware monitor the requests of the host. When the firmware detects that the host needs high performance, it enables the device to control whether data is written to the smart SLC or to the main array.  Bergey noted that mobile has quickly moved to adopt TLC NAND, a trend backed by research firm Counterpoint. One in two smartphones sold globally includes a TLC NAND flash memory solution, according to its February 2017 report, and the advancement in graphics processing technology, as well as integration of high-resolution cameras in the phones, have resulted in a deluge of high-quality user-generated content from sharper high-quality images to high-resolution HD to 4K videos.  Adding advanced specifications such as imaging has led to significant efforts from memory suppliers to offer higher-capacity and advanced NAND flash memory solutions that can address these cost constraints without any compromise on performance, endurance, or user-experience, noted the Counterpoint report, and the industry has moved from SLC (single-bit per cell) to 2-bit MLC (two bits per cell) and to higher-density TLC or 3-bit MLC (three bits per cell or triple-level-cell).  Bergey said that design improvements have been made at the system level for mobile devices, but there’s also been a lot of excitement around automotive because the amount of data being stored and processed is increasing, leading to more compute modules in vehicles. “The amount of data in these modules is increasing exponentially,” he said. Western Digital is also seeing opportunities for iNAND in the industrial and connected home markets, he said, and there is more of a focus on creating additional value for OEMs incorporating them into their products.  Bergey said that plenty has been learned from the smartphone market, both in terms of sheer numbers of devices and the changing workloads. Improvements have been made to core controller technology that allow for economies of scale, he said, and are being applied in the automotive environment. In some cases, Western Digital is providing automotive-grade flash, while some subsystems are less demanding so commercial flash will do.  Bergey conceded that, given the multiple subsystems in the modern vehicle, there will be multiple memory technologies in play, including NOR flash and SRAM, but with all of the electronics being put into cars, most devices have considerable storage requirements with cost-per-bit remaining a factor. “NAND is a sweet spot because of its cost and the reliability we can provide at a system level.”  Bob O’Donnell, president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, said that flash capacity and reliability has found itself in a position where it can meet all of the relatively sudden and rapidly emerging application requirements of automotive, the extreme temperature ranges outlined in AEC-Q100 Grade 2 and AEC-Q100 Grade 3, and the ISO26262 design guidelines for nonvolatile memory-based products. “It’s a very demanding standard,” he said. “Cars last 10 to 15 years, so you have to have storage that lasts a long time.”  In a telephone interview with EE Times, he said that the estimates on how much data connected cars, particularly autonomous ones, will be sorting and processing, should not be underestimated. An autonomous vehicle generates four terabytes a day. O’Donnell said that increasingly higher-resolution maps and sensor data need to be accommodated. “It’s small now, but you are going to see a lot more of it.”  Automotive companies are looking several car seasons ahead, he added, so they have to start planning for these higher capacity solutions now.  O’Donnell does see parallels with the smartphones in terms of NAND flash adoption and expansion, but while the latest and greatest smartphones are hitting the 256-GB mark, automotive is rapidly outpacing it in terms of storage needs. “That local storage demand is going to continue to rise.” He said that connected homes are also a viable segment for flash such as Western Digital’s iNAND, although capacity-wise, it’s at the other end of the spectrum, as popular items such as the Amazon Echo are primarily thin clients. “That category is growing like crazy.”
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Release time:2017-05-12 00:00 reading:1141 Continue reading>>

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