Move over Moore's Law, analogue is key

Move over, Moore's Law, meet the new market drivers, writes Ravi Subramanian, general manager, analogue and mixed-signal business, Mentor Graphics.

By Tom Wilson - Electronics Weekly, Jan. 14, 2016 – 

The semiconductor industry in undergoing tumultuous changes that are being driven by multiple forces. A look at the top 20 semiconductor companies by revenue in 2014 shows a list not so different from those advancing by Moore's Law.

A look at the top 20 semi companies by growth rate in 2014 paints a totally different picture, with companies such as Skyworks, Bosch, NXP, Infineon, ON and Qorvo leading the pack. What's going on?

At the heart of it, this is all about new drivers for growth: new electronic platforms such as the automobile; the cloud and what it means to datacenters and servers; and the Internet of Things which forces ultra-low-power and security to come to the fore.

The growth drivers are changing because the services and applications that electronic platforms need to support are rapidly changing. Automotive, communications, and industrial/medical markets are expected to lead the growth for semiconductors- and not the traditional computing or consumer segments.

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