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March 5th & March 7th Meetings in Pictures . . .
You are invited to an
introductory meeting with Mr. John Moor, Director of Marketing, National
Microelectronics Institute (NMI) of the United Kingdom and the UK Trade &
Investment (UKTI) Group of the British Consulate-General in Los Angeles to
learn about the UK's semiconductor business potential and the UK's business
incentives, as well as explore business development and expansion
opportunities in that region!
Mr. Moor
will discuss:
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Semiconductor business
development opportunities in the UK
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How American companies could
benefit from extensive design resources (e.g., Analog, Mixed Signal,
Wireless, etc.) available in the UK
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R&D programs in key UK
universities
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Collaboration on technology
exchange/sharing with UK-based companies
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Utilizing UK Ph.D. students
for engineering projects via extensive internship programs available throughout
the country
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Business infrastructure
incentives provided in each technology center
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Tax credit incentives for R&D,
startups, etc.
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How American companies can
penetrate the European market via establishing marketing and sales
channels in the UK
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And much, much more
Space is limited. To register
in advance for one of these two complimentary events, please contact the
event organizing committee at:
UK@SavantCompany.com
Who Should Attend:
Semiconductor industry executives, investors, academic liaisons,
technologists, trade organizations, technology forums, technology media
editors, and agencies interested in learning about the UK and its business
potential.
You are welcome to participate in one of these two events at
the Fairmont
Newport Beach Hotel:
(1) Dinner Meeting:
Wednesday,
March 5, 2008
6:00 PM -
7:00 PM Introduction and Networking
7:00 PM -
8:30 PM Dinner & Discussion
(2) Breakfast Meeting: Friday,
March 7, 2008
7:30 AM -
8:00 AM Introduction and Networking
8:00 AM -
9:30 AM Breakfast & Discussion
Location for both meetings:
Fairmont Newport Beach Hotel, 4500 MacArthur Blvd, Newport Beach,
California (Parking
is free)
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BRIEFING NOTE: SEMICONDUCTOR DESIGN IN UK
Summary
The UK’s semiconductor designers have in recent years taken a lead position
in several niche areas as a result of globalization and commoditization and
the strength of the UK ICT market.
Many UK semiconductor firms now specialize in semiconductor design for
manufacture by offshore foundries. Several leading players have emerged in a
number of niche technology areas, such as low power “mixed mode” devices and
specialist computing architectures, to serve specific needs within the UK
and global IT, communications, consumer electronics and other industrial
markets.
The UK market for Communications and IT suppliers is the most attractive in
Europe. Already #2 by value, the UK market for ICT products and services is
growing faster than that of France, Germany, and Italy so UK is likely to
become #1 EU market for ICT within a few years.
The UK hosts operations of more than 500 semiconductor firms, 80% of which
are foreign-owned. These firms employ some 8,000+ engineering staff, 3,000
or so undertaking design engineering related tasks and around 50% of these
focus on analogue, RF, or mixed signal design.
The areas around Bristol and Cambridge are currently generating a
significant flow of successful start-ups to add to those in areas such as
Silicon Glen (mostly between Edinburgh and Glasgow), and the Thames Valley
to the West of London.
The lower capital intensity of fabless design specialists allows many UK
start-ups to operate as so-called “soft-starts” funded by contract R&D,
although the more ambitious firms seek risk capital at an early stage.
However, the UK, with its strengthening VC community and AIM and LSE markets
is becoming a stronger market in which to raise international risk capital
and accelerate growth.
Context
The semiconductor industry continues to evolve rapidly. The complexity of
devices continues to grow as continuing miniaturization allows more
functionality to be integrated into each device; that rise in complexity
increases the design and test challenge while reduced feature sizes and
manufacturing volumes increase the capital cost of fabrication plants.
The latter effect has put the costs of remaining a fully integrated device
manufacturer beyond the resources of all but the top ten or so global
manufacturers who need massive market scale to achieve a rate of return on
the multi-billion dollar capital investment per plant; this effect has, in
turn, led to the rise of fabless semiconductor companies working with
specialist foundries.
The former effect has led to the emergence of design houses that specialize
in complex integration of analogue and digital circuitry within a single
chip, often reusing proven design “cores” to address parts of the solution
and arranging manufacture by a selected foundry.
Added to these effects is the emergence of mass markets for semiconductors
in high growth, lower labor cost markets such as China, India, Korea etc
encouraging location of fabrication plants and associated design
capabilities in these countries.
ICT Market size
The UK market for communications, IT, and consumer electronics has continued
to grow faster than that of other major European markets in recent years; as
a result of which the UK market could soon become the leading EU market in
this area. This growth is partly the result of the growth of London as a
leading global market in financial services, itself partly the result of
record inward investment levels into the UK and the ICT demands of those
firms.
The UK IT market should overtake that of Germany next year; in 2007 it is
expected to be worth approximately €70 billion p.a.
The UK Communications market should continue growing faster than France,
Germany and Italy; in 2007 it is expected to be worth around €58 billion
p.a. - #2 by value
The UK market for Consumer Electronics is the largest in EU; in 2007 it is
expected to be worth around €13 billion p.a.
This market strength has positive implications throughout the electronics
supply chain.
UK’s Technology Focus
The semiconductor industry is now dominated by sales of general purpose
microprocessors, memory chips, and digital signal processors, designed
and/or fabricated in US and Asia. However some 15% of global Application
Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) design starts are made in UK. Ranging in
complexity from 70 million transistors on 65nm CMOS to 50 transistor
analogue, they generally fall into one of three niche design areas in which
UK engineers and researchers excel:
High performance digital
computing architectures
Often optimized for low power consumption for use in mobile phones,
PDAs, and other portable battery powered devices;
ARM, Cambridge Consultants, Cyan Semiconductor, Sondrel, and Swindon Silicon
Systems are among the key UK firms in this area;
Research Groups at the
Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Imperial, Kent,
Queens Belfast, and Warwick undertake substantial related research.
Specialized mixed mode
architectures for high performance audio and video processing
Ant, EnSilica, Mirics, Pace, and Wolfson Microelectronics are examples
of specialist firms in this area;
Research groups at Cambridge,
Glasgow, Imperial, Liverpool, and University College are particularly strong
in the necessary analogue design areas.
Specialized mixed mode
architectures for high performance RF and digital processing
CSR, elonics, icera, Plextek, and TTPCom are some of the key firms in
this area;
Research Groups at Birmingham, Cambridge, Imperial, Newcastle, Nottingham,
Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, St Andrews, Surrey, University College, and
Warwick, all receive substantial related government research funding.
In addition, firms such as CriticalBlue, Celoxica and Imperas are supporting
UK’s design strengths by creating advanced tools to raise design
productivity, efficiency and complexity to new levels.
Geographic Clustering
The UK has four geographic regions with high concentrations of
semiconductor design expertise:
1) South East England
hosts firms such as Analog Devices, EnSilica, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Micron,
Mirics, NXP, Samsung, ST Microelectronics etc and leading University
Research groups at Oxford, Southampton, and Surrey etc.
2) Scotland hosts firms
such as elonics, Freescale, National Semiconductor, etc and leading
University Research groups at Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews and Strathclyde.
3) East of England
hosts Ant, ARC, ARM, CSR, Cyan, and Sagentia etc and leading University
Research groups at Cambridge with London’s Imperial and University Colleges
nearby.
4) South West England
hosts firms such as ClearSpeed, Icera, Intel, PicoChip, ST Microelectronics,
and Toshiba etc and leading University Research groups at Bath, Bristol, and
nearby Southampton.
Sources
This note draws on research undertaken by DTI, EITO, National
Microelectronics Institute, and UK Trade & Investment.
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John
joined NMI in 2004 as an Industry Consultant before becoming head of
marketing. John brings over 20 years industry experience to the position
from technical and business management roles in leading edge technology
organizations. His work at NMI has included the establishment and operation
of several design related technical networks, researching and authoring
reports on key industry themes and driving NMI’s strategy. Prior to joining
NMI, John was VP Operations and a founder of ClearSpeed Technology – a
Bristol based fabless semiconductor company, VP Product Marketing at nSine
Ltd, Product Manager at Division Ltd as well as other technical engineering
positions within electronic product companies. John served on the board of
directors of the Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA) between 2000-2002,
holds an MA in Strategic Marketing Management from Kingston University
(London), an MBA from Leicester University and was a college graduate in
Electronic Engineering in 1988.