Semiconductor Industry Outlook for the Next Decade

Looking at the entire trend, technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, green energy, and mobile computing will become the main driving force for the continued development of the semiconductor industry in the future. So which of these technologies will have a major impact on the semiconductor industry in the next decade? Which technologies will develop at a rapid rate? But what is certain is that they can integrate into our lives and change the way we work, live, and think. The technology will continue to develop because the purpose of developing technology is to integrate it into our lives and become part of everyday life. This article will combine interviews with several semiconductor manufacturers to discuss the hot technologies that will affect the semiconductor market.

Mobile computing continues to evolve <br> <br> mobile computing era is just beginning, can be seen in several years, the entire electronics industry will continue to develop along the general direction of mobile intelligent. First of all, it takes a long time for smart phones to eventually replace most of the functional devices and bring the world into the era of mobile intelligence, especially the third world. A large part of them will use mobile smart devices for the first time to access the Internet. Is associated with the world. Low-cost mobile smart terminals will truly eliminate the global information gap. Second, mobile smart devices are currently limited to limited mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablet computers. In the future, mobile smart devices will continue to be used in smart TVs, smart home appliances, smart homes, smart wearable devices, and other imaginable and unimagined applications. After the full development of the future, the Internet of Things will eventually be realized in a universal sense. Finally, based on the above market demand and development, current application processors need to further improve performance and reduce power consumption. Operating systems also need to be able to provide high-performance versions and simplified versions, respectively, to meet mobile computing devices and low power consumption and low resources. With the demand for IoT devices, semiconductor processes also need to move toward more advanced processes, such as the advanced 16/14nm FinFET process, so that the core chips that carry the above functions can integrate more and more powerful functions at a lower cost. Zhao Guoguang, vice president of RDA operations, said that RDA has advantages in this area, which is even more opportunities for RDA to grow rapidly in the future.

Shen Jin, vice president of Qualcomm Global, said that we believe that the development of smart phones has only just begun. Of course, smart phones will lead the development of other electronic products. On the one hand, the concept of mobile phone-centered design and product development, many consumer electronic products must be interconnected with mobile phones, through mobile phones to control; the second is the standard of mobile phones will affect consumer electronics standards, mobile experience Will become more and more beautiful, thin, for many home appliances will have an impact, such as TV. He also pointed out that mobile computing will also penetrate into all levels of human life and will affect many industries such as education and health.

“We believe that in the next decade, consumer electronic products will tend to be smaller, more powerful, and more power-efficient. In addition, due to the rigorous consumer demand for smart terminal device performance and speed, we believe in smart TVs, The interaction and integration technology between tablet PCs and smart phones will continue to accelerate, so multi-screen integration and multi-screen interaction will continue to be the trend of the future. For example, MediaTek has the advantage of cross-platform integration from digital TVs to smart phones. The customer brings more complete and rich solutions, and can bring the ultimate experience and content sharing of sound, light, color and communication to the global consumers in the multi-screen, multimedia digital life.” Zhang Weili, General Manager of MTK China A similar point of view.

In addition, Wu Xiong'an, president of ARM Greater China, predicts the trend of mobile computing in the next decade from a technical perspective. He said that in the next decade, the size of the nuclear or multi-core architecture will be popular in the field of mobile devices; the demand for GPUs will grow rapidly. The ARM's "GPU (Mali)" shipments have exceeded 130 million, and the growth has been extremely rapid.

Things promote networking equipment to accelerate <br> <br> Internet of Things (IoT) represents a major evolution of the semiconductor industry for decades, embedded solution enables devices around us smarter and more efficient. The Internet of Things will connect these devices, allowing them to collect and distribute data, to perceive our environment and to meet our needs. Gregg Lowe, president and CEO of Freescale Semiconductor, said that by 2025 it is expected that 1 trillion devices will be connected to the Internet. Fan Jianren, general manager of ADI China, also expressed the same point of view. He believes that the next decade is a decade of rapid development of the mobile Internet. Various wireless communication technologies and wearable smart devices have good prospects for development. At the same time as people’s affluence, the demand for quality of life will be higher and higher, and there are further requirements for personal medical and intelligent, safe transportation. At the same time, he also stated that the next decade is a decade of networking and digitization. ADI, as an analog technology vendor, has more room for development in the era of digitalization because the real world is analog and humans need ADI's technology. People are brought from the real world to the virtual digital world, and people are brought back from the virtual world to the real world.

Shen Jin, vice president of Qualcomm Global, said that Qualcomm is also developing technologies to interconnect various products in the Internet of Things field. At the same time, we have a dedicated company called Qualcomm Life Technologies responsible for the development of technology projects in the mobile health market. Zhang Hui, Marvell's global vice president and general manager of Greater China, believes that 4G technology will shine in the coming years. Concepts such as Internet of Things, car networking, cloud computing, and big data will change people's lives, work, and entertainment in more depth.

The development of the Internet of Things also requires strong sensors, advanced wireless communication modules, and powerful software support. All these have brought great opportunities to semiconductor manufacturers. Murata said he has a rich lineup of sensor products. In addition, security is also a concern. Whether it is the application of smart cards such as mobile phone SIM cards, e-passports, transportation cards, health care cards, bank cards, and mobile payments, or the anti-data theft and modification in smart devices must be concerned Equipment reliability and data security. Infineon stated that it is possible to carry out anti-counterfeit management of equipment by installing authentication chips on equipment components.

Energy efficiency, green energy-saving products concern <br> <br> With the development of human society, the increasing depletion of fossil fuels and coal resources, transform the energy structure and improve conversion, transmission and energy efficiency become a trend. Coupled with the global warming, energy saving and emission reduction are highlighted in terms of automobiles, home appliances, and industrial transmissions. Therefore, the demand for energy-efficient, green and energy-saving products has become greater.

Ling Lilte, who specializes in analog, believes that there will be unlimited opportunities in emerging markets such as smart networks and energy harvesting, because in the future, billions of smart connected devices will be autonomously powered by energy harvesting equipment. Pan Dawei, vice president of sales for Asia Pacific of International Rectifier (IR), thinks that because designers and technicians are all facing the problem of reaching the physical limits of silicon, if you want to further improve performance, it will become more complicated and costly. Will be higher. In some cases, in order to increase the power density of the system with little energy consumption, while reducing the system size, complexity, and cost, it is necessary to adopt new technologies to build components, and in other cases, it may be necessary to adopt new ones. s material. IR's GaNpowIR platform is designed with silicon-lined substrate epitaxy, low-cost GaN and standard CMOS wafer processes, and it is competitively cost-effective, so we expect it to be widely adopted in the global market. In the next few years, IR's high-price, high-quality, robust, high-performance, GaN-based power devices will enable innovation in power electronics density, efficiency, and cost in applications/markets worldwide. Type development. From more efficient solar panel inverters to higher-efficiency, electronic control systems using permanent magnet motors to simpler, denser inverters for electric vehicles, and next-generation integrated DCs for electronic products -DC power supplies, GaN-based power devices will bring revolutionary development to this industry.

Dong Xiaowei, general manager of Maxim China, said that we are particularly concerned about the development of integrated power solutions and sensor solutions for mobile devices. In addition, with the continuous improvement of energy requirements and the need to better manage energy, the key is to develop infrastructure to manage the power grid. Therefore, we are optimistic about the future development of the smart grid market.

In addition to energy-efficient products, green energy-saving products should have a lot of market opportunities in the next decade. Wang Jian, sales director of Fairchild China, said that LED technology is another area that is expected to grow substantially in the next decade. Fairchild has unique conditions to meet the semiconductor requirements of the evolving LED market. Fairchild offers an ever-increasing portfolio of best LED components in the industry that can be used to design, develop and produce LED lighting solutions for low, medium and high power lighting applications.

Regarding energy conservation, Silicon Labs China General Manager Liu Xianli believes that they have their own advantages. He said, “In the next few years, we will give full play to Energy Micro's best energy-saving technologies for the Internet of Things and power-sensitive batteries. Powered portable devices provide a new generation of ARM-based MCUs and wireless MCUs. Eventually, the addition of Energy Micro will enable us to compete more effectively in the embedded market."