What's in Store for 2004

Time again to dust off the ol' crystal ball and foresee what's ahead for the microelectronics industry in 2004. I experienced mixed success for 2002 and 2003 with my predictions of hot markets and technologies, and the economic turnaround (which I now feel is really starting). This time around, I'm foregoing financial soothsaying and concentrating on the enabling technologies and end markets I feel will shine in the new year.

EDA Tools
EDA vendors have been working towards supporting electronic system-level (ESL) design tools for several years—2004 should be the year when substantial progress is finally made. Chip designers are recognizing the need for analysis tools above the current HDL class that can handle both software and hardware design activities. By moving more SoC design activities to the system level, designers can implement system functions and evaluate these implementations earlier in the design process. Higher-level design and verification saves time and money, and also allow you to implement design modifications that have a greater impact on chip performance than those done later in the design cycle.

The design community, for the most part, has settled on C/C++ as a viable system-level design language. EDA vendors with design and verification tools supporting C/C++, along with SystemC, are poised to make a serious impact on front-end chip design, particularly those with tools that easily link ESL and HDL design tasks, and tools that address ESL test and verification.

Chip Architecture
The two-year economic downturn has been particularly hard on the chip industry. Semiconductor vendors have been looking for ways to overcome the problems associated with ASIC development—expensive NREs (around $10M at 130nm; possibly double that amount at 90nm), long design times (12-18 months typical), and inflexibility once a chip is designed.

A rapidly emerging trend is to application-adaptable integrated circuits (AAICs), chips whose functionality can be substantially modified by changing on-chip functions or the connectivity between these functions. These modifications are done either during chip design (via hardware)—a configurable chip—or after design completion (using software and/or hardware)—a reconfigurable device. AAICs replace fixed-function chips, ASICs and ASSPs, and comprise several device categories. AAICs and some representative vendors include FPGAs (Altera and Xilinx), configurable and reconfigurable general processors and DSPs (Tensilica and Improv Systems), structured ASICs (NEC and Lightspeed Semiconductor), platform ASICs/SoCs (LSI Logic), embedded FPGAs (IBM), processing arrays (picoChip), and programmable system-on-a-chip (PSoC) devices (Atmel and QuickLogic). 2004 should see substantial growth in AAIC development and deployment, including the EDA tools for design and the development software that give certain types of AAICs their reconfigurable capabilities.

Silicon Process Development
Silicon processes are the foundation on which all semiconductor products are built. According to UMC, one of the two leading silicon foundries, 2004 should be "the year" in which several technology and manufacturing developments reach fruition. Expect full production of 90nm silicon chips around mid-year for UMC, processed in both 200mm and 300mm wafers. The move to 300mm, although costly in development time and capital expenditures, is important, since the increased wafer size results in 2.25X more usable chips.

Two other hot foundry areas will be embedded memories and high-voltage devices. By 2010, memory will consume 90% of a digital chip's area. The increasing memory trend drives the development of large, area-efficient embedded DRAM and one-transistor (1T) SRAM technologies, the latter spearheaded by MoSys. High-voltage technology supports chip applications such as displays and automotive electronics.

The Wonderful World of Wireless
And the winner is... WiFi (802.11b). WiFi-enabled appliances are showing up everywhere, both within the home, supporting wireless connectivity of all sorts of computer and entertainment equipment, as well as "on the road." Local governments, transportation providers, and retail stores are among those developing wireless mini-LANs (hot spots) that allow you to connect to the Internet while sipping your latte, waiting for your flight, or just strolling down the street. According to an article in the November 3, 2003 issue of Time Magazine, "Some 30,000 cafes, hotels, airport lounges and bookstores will have WiFi by the end of this year [2003]." This number will grow significantly in 2004.

Home-Brew Digital Photography
Waiting in the wings for the past three years, digital photos have caught the imagination of consumers worldwide. Camera prices have dropped considerably—the antiquated 640x480 pixel units are practically giveaways (I wonder when we'll see one in the bottom of a box of cereal?). Higher-end camera prices are also dropping, making these devices more attractive to the "weekend" picture taker.

Consumers are basing their camera purchases on a relatively short list of features, primarily resolution, zoom capability, and the ability to easily get prints of their pictures. Picture capacity is not a problem—high-capacity memory cards (64MB and up) are inexpensive and easy to swap in and out of cameras and readers. The sweet spot in resolution has climbed to 2-3 megapixels. Consumers are now looking for optical zoom as well as the more common digital zoom (digital zoom has the disadvantage of decreasing the number of pixels for the zoomed-in area in inverse proportion to the zoom factor; optical zoom does not have this problem).

Getting prints has become easier with the availability of memory-card readers that link directly to a PC or printer, usually through a USB cable, camera docking stations, and printers with built-in memory-card readers that eliminate the need for a PC altogether. Photo-quality paper and printers have also become more affordable and will be hot items in 2004. Don't want to print your own? No problem—coming soon to your Walmart or drug store (or already there) are customer-operated stations that read a camera's memory card and print the photos you choose in a size you want.

Thanks for the (Flash) Memories
Demand for Flash memory is skyrocketing, fueled by consumer applications such as digital cameras and MP3 players. You can now buy a 128 Mbyte compact flash card for under $50 and prices will continue to drop. Another application that is taking off is the finger-sized memory key, also known as a memory stick (not to be confused with Sony's proprietary Memory Stick storage device). Linked to your PC via a USB port, these non-volatile devices are available with up to 1 Gbyte of storage and are used for data backup, file transfers, and other large-data-volume applications. Memory-key prices have dropped to a level where 32 and 64 Mbyte devices are now offered as giveaways with some equipment purchases.

The Return of the PC
They're back—well, sort of. Desktop and notebook PC sales are making a comeback, with sales in 2004 projected to be higher than those of 2003. According to Gartner Dataquest, global PC unit shipments will grow 10.8% in 2003 and 12.8% in 2004. Consumers will replace a PC for two reasons—substantially higher performance or features not available in the system they currently own. Both of these drivers are spearheading the expected rise in PC sales over the next year.

Processor speeds are now 2 GHz and higher. If you haven't replaced your PC in two or three years or so, this will be approximately twice the clock rate of your current computer. New features on almost everyone's want list include a wireless interface for tether-free Internet access, both at home and away, CD burners, DVD players (and burners on high-end units), and software to capture, edit, and distribute digital photos.

Digital photography is one of the application-drivers boosting PC growth, with the PC providing a means to review, edit, print, and share your pictures (the latter via the Internet using email or an on-line picture-sharing services). With the inclusion of a DVD player, your notebook computer also serves as your "theatre away from home," great for business trips and keeping the kids entertained on family outings.

Jim Lipman is currently the President and Editor-in-Chief of SemiView Inc., a new company providing business, financial, and technology analysis, research, and editorial information for the rapidly growing Application-Adaptable Integrated-Circuit (AAIC) industry. His job experience includes chip-design R&D, marketing, marcom, technical editing, and on-line publishing of technical content for engineers.