Will China Conquer MEMS?
So, it’s on to MEMS… after a (Chinese) fashion.
Among the top 20 MEMS players listed by the market research firm Yole Développement, no Chinese vendor shows up — at least, not yet. Emerging Chinese MEMS vendors are likely to be concentrated in low-end MEMS segments such as microphones and pressure sensors.
How Chinese startups might become key player in the global MEMS market is a chapter of China’s microelectronics history yet to be written, over the next 10 or even 20 years.
(Source: Yole Development)
In the world of CMOS-based SoC development, Chinese fabless companies, despite relatively little experience in the field, have been able to get rich quickly. The opportunity generated a few domestic winners (i.e. Spreadtrum, Allwinner, and Rockchip) who rose above the pack. Many, however, eventually ended up ruthlessly beating each other up on price. This chapter offered a great example of how broadly available licensable IP cores (from ARM, Imagination, and others), designs, SPICE and access to foundries with finer geometry nodes presented an unprecedented level playing field for Chinese fabless companies.
MEMS is likely to be a different story. MEMS will test the patience, long-term vision, and breadth and depth of the IP portfolios held by Chinese startups. All of these qualities tend not to be China’s forté.
Today, China has thus far four MEMS pioneering vendors. They include MEMSIC, Senodia, QST, and MiraMEMS. A lot more MEMS players are reportedly coming upon China, largely driven by growing interest in MEMS among local VCs and entrepreneurs.
There is also the push for MEMS by the local government in conjuction with a research institute. Shanghai Industrial μTechnology Research Institute (SITRI) was established by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shanghai government to focus on the development of "More than Moore" technology.
SITRI, established after Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) as its model, is an open innovation platform that encompasses an 8-inch micro-fabrication line, R&D facilities, engineering services, supply-chain partners, and industry Association. SITRI also offers dedicated investment funds.
QST in Shanghai
Enter Joseph Xie, CEO of Shanghai Quality Sensor Technology Corporation (QST) founded in 2012. QST, according to Xie, is focused on producing "high-end magnetic sensors and MEMS sensors since its inception."
Xie is a semiconductor veteran who cut his teeth at Intel designing X86 processors in Santa Clara, Calif. He later returned to Asia and accumulated 16 years of experience in foundries — first at Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore, then at SMIC, China’s flagship foundry based in Shanghai.
By 2011, Xie, over 50 years old, was getting jittery to start up his own company. “I was once told by my boss at Intel that I was nobody if I had not worked for Intel,” he said. “I felt I needed to start up a company, just to prove to my old boss that I can stand on my own.”
Xie set his sights on MEMS. While he’s no expert, he liked MEMS because he initially saw little competition in the field.
While doing his due diligence, Xie stumbled across the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT), which appeared to have good gyroscope technology.
Almost anywhere in the world, research institutes in general have “no sense of manufacturability, footprint, and cost necessary to turn their technology into successful products — especially for the consumer electronics market,” Xie observed.
Xie initially talked SIMIT into giving QST the research institute’s gyroscope technology and its related patents in exchange for shares in QST. “No money changed hands,” said Xie.
Xie got another break when he was able to obtain “exclusive, worldwide and perpetual license of Honeywell’s world famous Anisotropic Magneto-Resistive (AMR) magnetic sensor technology.”
By leasing a manufacturing line at Shanghai Huahong Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (HHGrace) and working with the foundry, QST was able to announce its first product last fall, the AMR magnetic sensor QMC6983. QST developed the three-axis single chip magnetic sensor based on Honeywell’s technology. The startup has sold 700,000 units of its first product since two months ago.
Pressure sensors in smartphones tend not to work well for indoors GPS largely due to interferences. Xie said his company’s AMR magnetic sensor solves this problem, offering high accuracy and better reliability because of its built-in self-checking function and temperature drift compensation module. Touting this advantage, QST says its AMR magnetic sensor can be used in wearable systems and a variety of other applications.
Xie, however, acknowledged that there’s still a long way to go before his company and other Chinese MEMS companies can catch up with such leading vendors as Bosch and STMicroelectronics. Startups not only have to play catch-up with the leaders, but they also need long-term plans that enable them to respond quickly to the evolution of sensors.
MEMS’ new paradigm
Yole Développement’s recent report pointed out, “Inertial MEMS have been subject to dramatic market & technological evolution.” Along with “stand-alone” MEMS devices, “6 and 9-axis degree of freedom (DOF) sensors are creating a new paradigm in the combos business,” the firm wrote. Emerging is a combination of several inertial sensors integrated in a single package. Main applications for such sensors are consumer, said the report. They include accelerometers with a magnetometer or accelerometers with a gyro.
Casual observers of MEMS say that the Chinese are interested in it largely because MEMS is a block that won’t get integrated by a big SoC in a handset, thus giving them enough breathing room to stand on their own.
That, however, is far from the truth.
The barrier to entry in the MEMS market is a lot higher than most entrepreneurs think, said Xie. He rattled off six things anyone needs to know before getting into MEMS business.
- First, each MEMS technology requires a unique manufacturing technology. You can’t just go to any foundry and ask them to produce MEMS. Most foundries don’t have the IPs necessary to produce your own MEMs.
- Second, MEMS requires your own sensor designs.
- Third, MEMS also demand the pairing of a sensor and a low-power-consumption ASIC that works with precision under weak signals.
- Fourth, a sensor and ASIC must be put in a single package. Chances are that most foundries don’t have that experience, either.
- Fifth, MEMS needs to be tested while in motion.
- Sixth, sensors in a handset, for example, need to talk to the main chip in the system. Each sensor, however, is different, and each cellphone module is different. Hence, the way they communicate is also different.
If there’s anything Xie underestimated before getting into the MEMS market, it was the amount of software work his company and field application engineers needed to fine-tune the application software. When Xie discovered that his company had made MEMS that worked perfectly in one phone but wouldn’t work in another, he said, “We realized that software was the killer.”
The push toward the 6D and 9D sensors has been largely driven by sheer complexity and difficulties in mixing and matching different algorithms and sensors integrated with ASIC offered by different vendors. “A one-stop solution makes MEMS integration cleaner, simpler and more reliable,” Xie explained.
Sensor hub
Challenges MEMS faces in future aren’t just the increasing number of sensors that must be integrated in a single package. The industry’s new thing is a “sensor hub,” in which vendors add a microcontroller to the sensors-and-ASIC combination in the package. The microcontroller is needed inside the sensor hub, mainly to manage power consumption, Xie explained.
Previously, the main CPU in a handset did that job, according to Xie. But waking up the CPU every time sensors need to measure something turns out to be a huge power drain.
Beyond the company’s first accelerometer just announced this week, QST today has a road map for CMOS integrated 6D motion sensor (such as tri-axial accelerometer + tri-axial gyroscope, and tri-axial magnetic sensor + tri-axial accelerometer technology) and 9D sensors.
But at the advent of the sensor hub, Xie said, “We decided to move up our plan to add a microcontroller to our MEMS sooner.” Previously, it was on the comapny’s agenda for 2015 or even 2016.
QST has a choice between outsourcing its MEMS package to an MCU vendor and working with an MCU vendor to integrate it into its MEMS. QST decided on the latter. Xie said, "Considering ARM’s ecosystem, ARM core will be the first one we will consider. For specialty, low-power version, we may consider MIPS as well."
Related posts:
- Exclusive: Xiaomi Challenged
- Exclusive: Xiaomi Unboxed
- MEMS Combo Market Growth Spurred by Mobile, Wearables
- Apple Design Wins Lift Bosch to Top of MEMS Ranking
- Will ‘Makers’ Change Shenzhen?
— Junko Yoshida, Chief International Correspondent, EE Times
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