Press
08/30/10
Hybrid Devices-The Memory Market's New High Value Product Category
What are Hybrid Devices and why will it move the semiconductor industry forward?
This report outlines the market opportunities, market and financial drivers, financial opportunities, near-term technology enablers required for introduction, and technology hurdles and market challenges for advanced Hybrid Devices.
Hybrid Devices Promises High Impact on Consumer Electronics
How can key technology events be evaluated to predict Consumer Electronics Trends?
This report examines steps to acceptance and success of a consumer product. Hybrid Devices can have a significant revenue growth impact for new memory products for Consumer Electronics. Hybrid Devices with their inherent flexibility promise to significantly alter the architecture of Consumer devices, shift BOM (Bill of Material) costs to variable purchase plug-in Hybrid Devices, enhance competitive differentiation, and provide for early adoption of new memory technologies.
Conventional Memory and the Impact of Hybrid Devices
How does memory technology adapt to enable the rapidly evolving consumer mobile market?
Hybrid Devices provides numerous advantages to OEMs as well as to memory manufacturers. By using HD versus conventional discrete memory in a design, the risk of adoption of any new memory type would be reduced. Early confirmation of acceptability reduces investment risk, and the period required to become a mainstream product. Multiple packaging options allow greater flexibility in feature sets, and in the mix of volatile and non-volatile memory solutions.Market acceptance of HD concepts in the Consumer segment demonstrates the current state of the art and confirms the attributes of flexibility and lower manufacturing costs. Market acceptance of HD concepts in the Consumer segment demonstrates the current state of the art and confirms the attributes of flexibility and lower manufacturing costs.
The Impact of Hybrid Devices on the ASSP Market
Why are Hybrid Device concepts impacting the ASSP Market?
In the next decade, as designs cross the 30nm lithography boundary and approach 12nm, Hybrid Devices that incorporate standard memory, new memory, logic, processors, and analog on a single fabrication process will again transform the platform IC market and many types of Hybrid Devices will displace current ASSP devices as a preferred choice for custom platform IC products.
Four Generations of Hybrid Devices Enable Now and Future Smartphone Market
How can each of the four generations of HD enhance the features of the Smartphone?
Hybrid Devices will accelerate the shift in Smartphone system architecture by moving BOM costs from the core phone to the accessory Hybrid Devices. This will accomplish the rapid transition to a Cognitive Radio Smartphone that will use the wireless spectrum more efficiently. HD will enable vendors to add functionality without incurring additional base handset costs.
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05/08/10
Details of additional reports will be made available as reports are competed.
Click below for a partial list of scheduled additional reports.
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08/30/10
Introduction to Hybrid Devices—Change in the Target Market Changes the Value Proposition
The memory market is once again attempting to fund impending crucial large capital investments in a mature market burdened by commodity pricing. Opportunities for memory products have been characterized as very competitive markets of very great size, but typically with profit margins that tend to rise and fall according to market conditions.
While this cycle is generally regarded as an economic driver for the semiconductor industry as a whole, the model is more closely associated with the memory market due to the increased amplitudes of the cycles. With limited opportunities to differentiate memory products, commodity pricing is now an unchanging market characteristic. With the historic trend toward a single standard product that supports the widest number of applications, these market characteristics have become accepted as the signature model of memory production.
Even though current supply/demand trends are temporarily favorable to the memory manufacturers, the question to ask is whether this trend toward feast or famine can be changed for companies that shift their product strategies toward Hybrid Devices. We believe that Hybrid Devices can provide such products and enable significant new revenue streams while generating higher profits for memory suppliers.
Convergent Semiconductors has teamed with Edison Labs to examine the direction of the memory market now that mobile devices replace the desktop PC as the technology driver. In an industry that has spent billions of dollars to offer smaller, faster, and cheaper devices, mobile devices are forcing a re-examination of this approach. The iPod was an example where the value to the OEM was in the content that could be proviced. Smart phones, eBooks and Netbooks soon followed as consumers became aware that content--as well as sharing and communicating aboout that content--is important.
This series of reports progresses from concept to reality by presenting Hybrid Devices, the infrastructure to product them, and the applications that will support these technologies. The reports examine why so many of the new memory technology participants are outside of the current recognized circle of memory manufacturers.
The commitment of major semicnductor companies to the development of new memory technologies makes headlines on a regular basis--new alliances are being formed, and new opportunities are unfolding at an accelerated pace while all semiconductor companies seek optimal re-alignment as the world's economies begin their recovery.
Hybrid Devices are a new class of products that incorporate current standalone memory (DRAM, FLASH, SRAM and new emerging memories) with logic or analog circuits into a single IC device. This device can be used as a standalone memory device such as demonstrated by NAND solid-state disk drives, or with all the enhanced digital/analog features the additional logic can bring, as shown by Ramtron's MaxArias Secure Wireless FRAM Memory in which the memory array is powered by energy harvested from RF reception. The ability of this Hybrid Device to continue to act as a memory device defines its hybrid qualities and also will enable rapid market acceptance of this new product category.
We believe there will be an expanded set of these devices over the next decade. The following chart identifies the targeted gross margin for Hybrid Device companies assumed by Convergent Semiconductors based on the reported gross margins for selected memory and logic companies.
Source: Morningstar, Corporate Reports, and Convergent Semiconductors
In the Hybrid Device category, the three basic semiconductor classes of memory, logic, and analog features can be integrated onto a single package, often into a single die using a common fabrication process. The higher functionality and profitability from combining these capabilities on a single die will become a major enabler for merging memory and logic into one fabrication process and will result in significant displacement for those companies that have not embraced the significance of this capability.
Phase 1-Package Hybrid DEvices The essence of the packaging concept is to identify the functional boundary conditions at which the performance and the interface are optimized. Multi-Chip Packages (MCP) and Multi-Chip Modules (MCM) are the first step toward HM technologies; the utilization of these configurations continues to grow. Products in both of these categories come in a variety of forms depending on the complexity of the application and development philosophies of their designers. These can range from using pre-packaged ICs on small printed circuit boards meant to mimic the package footprint of an existing chip package as well as fully-custom chip packages integrating many chip dies onto a single high-density substrate. These products are already in high volume production today.
Phase 2-System-in-Package (SiP) Hybrid Devices SiP Hybrid Memory devices begin to take advantage of the ability to connect the memory die (or a memory plane) with a digital die (or digital layer). These devices will offer significant system advantages, consumer advantages, and cost advantages compared to discrete semiconductor devices. SiP incorporates a mix of components (logic, analong, and memory functions) into a single package.
This stage is characterized by die connected using thru-silicon-via (TSV) technology. Initially this can be implemented with high-performance TSV with vertically stacked memory dies in a single IC package. This ability to directly couple the memory and the logic offers the system designer the ability to treat the memory and logic as closely coupled segments in the hardware device. SiP HD has already emerged with the production of OneNAND and eMMC.
Phase 3-Partial Hybrid DEvices This third phase continues to exploit the increased complexity of packaging technologies by supporting more complex combinations of components, along with standardized interfaces like SPI or equally well-established parallel interfaces. The distinguishing chracteristic of this phase is the integration of some logic or analog functions into a common memory /logic process. This ability to mix together within a single package features that have traditionally required different processes will enable the ability to rapidly add new capabilities to existing digital products. This additive ability extends the current model of adding more memry to electronic devices over time as the product matures.
Phase 4-Full Hybrid Devices The final transition phase, Full Hybrid, is driven by the ability to combine high-performance logic and high-performance nonvolatile memory withn the same die. Full Hybrid will also drive new revenus for CAD suppliers and foundry eqipment suppliers as a single process emerges for both memory and logic devices, For companies developing new memory technologies, this new market category could offer a faster means for these new memories to enter the market, and provide the early market movers an opportunity to define and establish a dominant market share in a category we believe will rival the current global market for memory devices.
Summary: Customers look forward to highly customized hardware and software solutions that are able to address the individual market opportunity for a single customer. In order to address this ultimate market of a single customer, hardware customization opportunities need to follow software's level of customization. The ultimate motivation for the shift to HD will be the recognition by the memory companies, OEMs, and the end customers that a fundamenetal shift has occurred in how semiconductors can best adapt to end market appications.
The longer-term effect of HD capability will cause the value proposition between the memory and the logic to shift away from the processor and toward the additional value generated by the performance and flexibilty of the HD architectures and application-specific hybrid package.
Convergent Semiconductors and Edison Labs offer three services outlining different aspects of this market shift, with each service consisting of eight reports. Reports are available individually or as a part of the service series. Please contact us for additional details.
Our Latest Articles
08/30/10
The memory market is once again attempting to fund impending crucial large capital investments in a mature market burdened by commodity pricing. Opportunities for memory products have been characterized as very competitive markets of very great size, but typically with profit margins that tend to rise and fall according to market conditions.
While this cycle is generally regarded as an economic driver for the semiconductor industry as a whole, the model is more closely associated with the memory market due to the increased amplitudes of the cycles. With limited opportunities to differentiate memory products, commodity pricing is now an unchanging market characteristic. With the historic trend toward a single standard product that supports the widest number of applications, these market characteristics have become accepted as the signature model of memory production.
Even though current supply/demand trends are temporarily favorable to the memory manufacturers, the question to ask is whether this trend toward feast or famine can be changed for companies that shift their product strategies toward Hybrid Devices. We believe that Hybrid Devices can provide such products and enable significant new revenue streams while generating higher profits for memory suppliers.
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05/11/10
There are geographic regions of the world that are expected to adopt what is currently called the smartphone at a greater rate than any consumer product to date. The interesting fact is that the adoption is so high not because of the phone's features, but because of its applications. As Google said when it introduced the Android platform in November 2007, the announcement was regarding "...the Open Handset Alliance and Android...more significant and ambitious than a single phone. In fact, through the joint efforts of the members of the Open Handset Alliance, we hope Android will be the foundation for many new phones and will create an entirely new mobile experience for users, with new applications and new capabilities we can't imagine today."
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