给你一个半导体产业东山再起的理由

有人问我，半导体产业是否哪里出了问题，不然像是 SiliconBlue 、 PicoChip 等看来不错、又拥有优秀技术的公司，为何会以低于数年来所获得的风险投资还低的金额贱价出售？我并不认为半导体产业有任何基本上的错误，该产业目前只是进入一个市场与技术、还有投资者期待的重整阶段，在摩尔定律(Moore's Law)走下坡、即将到达终点的状态下试图转型。 过去有许多大厂是利用摩尔定律取得领先的产品性能与降低成本，来取胜于对手；这在过去行得通，起始于某个所有芯片厂商都生产类似的功能区块零组件的时期。因此，对于那段时间的芯片厂商来说，附加价值并不在于设计，而是在于制造专长。 确实在数年前，摩尔定律的制程微缩结果，似乎总是能带来经济上的成功──整合组件制造商(IDM)进展至下一代制程节点的速度有多快，一款零组件就能多快以更低的价格取得设计案，也意味着对手厂商能在多快的时间内设计出竞争产品。而且同时间全球电子产业与半导体市场都是以倍数成长。 但 现在，我们已经非常接近摩尔定律的终点站，而且产品研发与生产的非重复性工程(non-recurring engineering，NRE)费用，已经远远高过投资先进制程节点通常可取得的经济效益。少数的例外是那些非常大量生产的组件，例如内存、处理器、 FPGA以及一些需求量很高的系统芯片。 还有一个翻天覆地的转变是，对IDM厂商与无晶圆厂芯片业者来说，现在来自于设计的 附加价值多于制造。目前大部分芯片厂商都已经或多或少达到了相同的CMOS制程节点，因此要在销售成绩上达成差异化，就是较优异的设计，或者至少取得一家 大客户的设计案、确保芯片的起始出货量。 从另一个角度来看，现在摩尔定律可提供的功能性优势与单位成本优势递减，但所需付出 的NRE成本却是呈倍数增加；对大多数业者来说，是时候该走下摩尔定律“手扶梯”了。投资1,000~5,000万美元就能以2.5亿美元卖掉一家公司并 不值得惊讶，因为现在我们的成本与交易价值已经翻转。有些风险投资业者花了1亿到5亿美元，却只能收回5,000万美元，无怪乎这些风险投资业者最近几年 纷纷转头离去，而不是继续关注类似的投资机会。 好消息是，这种状况的解决之道是明确的，而且已经获得全世界半导体厂商的接 受；有人称之为“超越摩尔定律(More-than-Moore)”。在 2011年，国际半导体技术蓝图(The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors，ITRS)发表了一份内容出色的白皮书，指出包括医疗照护、交通与能源等方面的部分应用，将会受益于“超越摩尔定律”，而非制程微缩。 而虽然如ITRS所言，其它在安全、通讯、车用信息娱乐等方面的应用也能获益于单芯片上的数十亿个晶体管，但显然只有一到两家很少数的公司能够主导足以平衡所需成本的庞大芯片数量。因此对多数新创公司来说，关键就是该准备摆脱摩尔定律，自由出走了。 何不给你自己一个不再使用先进制程技术的成本优势，也别总只是在数字芯片上尝试或推一些普遍常见的通讯标准等等；总而言之，传统的创新都是来自于聪明的设计，以及在系统层级的功能方面做彻底的改善。这是也就是例如InvenSense (最近已IPO)这样的公司以MEMS惯性传感器与导航组件所做出的创新，还有游戏机厂商任天堂(Nintendo)以Wii体感控制为世界带来的惊奇。 值 得注意的还包括，有不少MEMS厂商都能喊出不错的收购价格。例如村田制作所(Murata Manufacturing)最近宣布已同意用200亿日圆(约1.9亿欧元或2.6亿美元)并购芬兰厂商VTI Technologies；以及Maxim Integrated Products以1.3亿美元将SensorDynamics收归旗下。 我们确实已经看不到如过去十年的前半段时间发生之相同规模的风险投资案，但好点子依旧会获得支持；这是因为无论如何，以其广泛的表现形式来看，硅芯片、半导体与电子技术仍然是创造财富、提升全世界人类福祉的最佳途径。 编译：Judith Cheng 本文授权编译自EE Times，版权所有，谢绝转载 参考英文原文： Why the semiconductor industry will rise again，by Peter Clarke

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{pagination} Why the semiconductor industry will rise again Peter Clarke People ask me is there something wrong with the semiconductor industry if apparently good companies with good technologies such as SiliconBlue Technologies Inc. and PicoChip Ltd. are being sold for less than the venture capital invested in them over several years. I don't think there is anything fundamentally wrong with the semiconductor industry – but it is in a process of resetting approaches to the market and technology, expectations of investors and transforming itself from something that was just hitching a ride down the escalator of Moore's Law in a race towards the bottom. What had happened is that many protagonists had got hooked on Moore's Law as a way to get superior performance and reduced unit cost and therefore as a way of making sales by displacing their rivals. This made sense in the past and started in a time when chip companies all made similar building-block components. So, for those chip companies back in the day, the added value was not in the design but in the manufacturing expertise. And indeed years ago the miniaturization that resulted from Moore's Law always seemed to bring economic success. The faster an integrated device manufacturer could get to the next manufacturing process node the more quickly a component could be designed-in through lower pricing and the faster a rival's component could be designed out. And it was also accompanied by exponential increases in the global electronics and semiconductor markets. But now we are getting very close the atomic bottom of that escalator and the non-recurring engineering (NRE) costs of research and production are going up far more than can be routinely justified by the economic benefit of working at those leading-edge geometries. The few exceptions are the very high volume mass-produced devices such as memories, processors, FPGAs and some high volume system-chips. And another flip around is that for IDMs and the fabless the added value is now more in the design than the manufacturing. Most companies are more or less able to get to the same CMOS process node and what makes a difference in sales is likely to be a superior design, or at least a design-win with a big system partner which guarantees the initial volume of chips. Getting off the Moore's Law escalator Another way of looking at it is that riding Moore's Law now offers diminishing functional benefits and unit cost benefits but has demanded exponentially increasing NRE costs. For most people it is time to step of the escalator. It should be no surprise that instead of spending $10 million or $50 million and being able to sell a company for $250 million we now have cost and deal values flipped around. Venture capital firms have spent $100 million to $500 million and more and in some cases can only realize $50 million in value. No wonder those VC firms started running away from rather than towards similar investment opportunities in recent years. The good news is that the solution is clear and is being adopted around the world. Some call it More-than-Moore. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) produced an excellent white paper in 2011 that pointed out that some applications based around health, transport and energy really benefit from More-than-Moore rather than from miniaturization. And while it is true that ITRS said other applications in security, communications and infotainment can take benefit from billions of transistors on a die it is clear that only one or two companies will be able to command the volumes to justify the cost. Therefore for most startups the key is to be prepared to get off the crutch of Moore's Law and walk free. Give yourselves a cost advantage by NOT working at the leading-edge and don't routinely just try and push some generally available communications standard or other into digital silicon. It comes down to good old fashioned innovation born of being smart in design and radical in terms of the system-level functional improvement delivered. That's what companies such as InvenSense Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) – a recent IPO – have done with MEMS-based inertial measurement and navigation components and what Nintendo did with the Wii control baton. It is what PrimeSense Ltd. (Tel Aviv, Israel) did with the optical and infra-red vision system that is at the heart of the Microsoft Kinetic system. It is what scores of other startups are doing and it is one of the reasons I am not overly concerned about a lack of investment in semiconductors. It is also noticable that a number of MEMS acquisitions have commanded good exit prices. Murata Manufacturing Co. Ltd. has announced it has agreed to buy VTI Technologies Oy (Vantaa, Finland) for about 20 billion yen (about 190 million euro or $260 million) in cash and SensorDynamics AG went to Maxim Integrated Products Inc. for about $130 million. It is true we are not seeing the same amounts of venture capital invested overall as we did in the first half of the last decade, but good ideas continue to get backing. And this is because silicon, semiconductors and electronics in their broadest manifestations are still a great way to create wealth and improve the well-being of the world.