2004 global semiconductor industry review and outlook in 2005

2004 is a year of rapid growth in the global semiconductor market. Although the research institutions have predicted 2005 growth will slow down significantly, but the progress of semiconductor technology has not stopped. In 2004 2005 just ended quietly approaching, we selected the microprocessor, microcontroller, memory, DSP, programmable logic device, EDA and automotive electronics and other fields, in reviewing the development trend in 2004 at the same time, also the technology and market in 2005 will be looking to readers.

Microprocessor: dual kernel leads the trend

In 2004, the two giants in the microprocessor market Intel (Intel) and AMD swap roles - Intel has become a product and technology followers AMD. Although Intel's self-esteem may be affected, but the company is still bulging, confident, and said the company has developed dual core technology for many years. Intel Itanium Asia Pacific Business Manager Wu Dingyan said: "the future of parallel processing technology will be applied more and more, Intel no longer blindly increase the clock frequency of the processor, will start from the parallel processing, launch dual core Itanium 2 processor and multi kernel."

In addition, hardware assisted Virtualization (Silvervale) will also become a trend in the development of processors, such processors can run multiple operating systems, can maximize the use of the processor's resources. Multithreading technology will also be applied to processors to improve processing efficiency.

Microcontroller: 32 MCU strong demand, the fastest growth

On the Chinese market, the current mainstream microcontroller (MCU) is still 8 products. However, due to the current application requires a higher degree of integration and better performance of the system, ARM China President Tan Jun believes that the transition to the 32 is an inevitable trend. He stressed that from the perspective of cost and cost performance, the Chinese market MCU applications will jump from 8 place to the 32 bit directly to the application of the 16. Other people in the industry also predicts that by 2005 there will be a lot of local Chinese design from 8 bit to 32 bit transfer.

In addition to changes in the number of kernel processing, another significant change is the MCU will integrate more and more functions, such as the use of flash technology, increasing the simulation function, and DSP integration, increase USB, CAN in peripheral functions and using super small package etc..

Memory: rising demand, technical progress is positive

Renesas technology believes that due to the growth of the mobile phone and digital consumer electronics market in 2005, global and Chinese mainland memory devices, especially large capacity, low power consumption and small size memory market demand will rise. In a variety of applications, computing is still the most important application of DRAM, and gradually transition to the DDR2, is expected in the first half of 2005 will be 40% of the DDR will turn to DDR2. In addition, with the characteristics of the mobile phone is gradually increased and the color pictures, and high-end games more features for mobile phones DRAM expects global consumption will grow.

According to the high density requirements of digital television including memory, digital TV is likely to become an important application of SDRAM or even the DDR market. In multimedia applications, the higher performance of the NAND type flash memory will replace the NOR type flash memory has become the first choice for design.

In addition, due to the growing demand for enterprise network storage, similar to QDR/QDR-II SRAM and other new technologies specifically for high-speed communications applications will also be more widely used. As the next generation of new storage technologies, MRAM, FRAM and PCRAM have also made positive progress, is expected to replace SRAM, DRAM and flash memory in more applications. MEMS storage concept is also growing concern. Currently IBM and emerging companies Nanochip is developing alternative flash memory and micro hard disk MEMS memory devices.

DSP: demand surged, towards high integration degree

The industry believes that, due to the 3G and VoIP began commercial operations, 3G based broadband wireless communication system, IP telephone system, multi channel modem and multi channel xDSL vigorous development, will drive the rapid growth of DSP market. Secondly, the huge growth potential of wireless terminal communications will further accelerate the application of DSP. Third, the original MCU based appliance applications are now increasingly using DSP devices to increase the functionality and performance of the product.

Currently, the integration of MCU features DSP is not surprising, and in order to meet the needs of more application processing, such DSP architecture continues to enrich the content, more complex SoC architecture development. These advanced SoC combines the general performance of the RISC microprocessor and DSP multimedia processing expertise, can achieve cost-effective and power-saving win-win. In addition, with a more perfect peripheral circuits, embedded flash memory and on-chip simulation of DSP products is also the development trend.

Programmable logic devices with high performance and low cost

Programmable logic device (PLD) growth driven mainly by FPGA devices. Analysis of the survey shows that now FPGA capacity and performance to meet the design requirements of more than half of ASIC. Programmable device suppliers have been looking for ways to improve the device density and performance, whether it is Altera or Stratix II Xilinx's new Virtex-4 series are examples of digital signal processing, more and more embedded kernel processing performance and continuous improvement, as well as the integration of high-speed serial connection technology is a common feature of these high performance FPGA products the.

The explosive growth of the global and China's consumer electronics market, creating a huge space for the development of low-cost FPGA products. Xilinx Spartern series and Altera Cyclone series is aimed at low cost, the amount of thumb consumer and automotive applications FPGA products.

EDA: market growth slowed down, hoping to place ESL and DFM

According to market research firm Gartner Dataquest