Silicon's the future at EDS 2019

22nd August 2019

Staff Reporter

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Swindon Silicon Systems, a Sensata Technologies company, is once again exhibiting at the Engineering Design Show and will use this year’s event to highlight the benefits of Application Specific ICs (ASICs) and how embracing silicon gives a product a genuine technical and commercial advantage. According to Richard Mount, Director of Sales at Swindon, a whole new generation of manufacturers are turning to silicon and many of these are behind a variety of innovative, high volume applications which are being described by many as Megatrends.

The key market drivers for many of these applications are electrification, autonomy, smart and connected and clean and efficient. “Examples include the Smart Factory and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), electric and hybrid vehicles, autonomous driving and all manner of applications that require sensors and sensor interfaces,” says Richard Mount. “These are all applications where silicon will play a major part in a product by adding performance and functionality in a smaller footprint and providing a commercial advantage,” he adds.

Many Advantages

Embracing silicon brings many other advantages in addition to performance, functionality, size and cost. An ASIC solution will reduce a user’s inventory and bill of materials (BOM) while protecting the originator’s Intellectual Property (IP). The wrongful use of IP is a major threat to all technology companies and many methods can be used to ensure the security of such a valuable asset. ASICs provide a solution where reverse engineering of the device is difficult if not impossible to achieve.

Customers also choose the ASIC route to guarantee component supply for the lifetime of their product with no gaps in availability. This is in sharp contrast to a solution built using standard components whose manufacturers readily consign them to the obsolescence bin once the part no longer make financial sense to the supplier.

Global Leadership

Swindon is a leader in high performance, low-cost mixed signal ASICs and integrated MEMS sensor interface solutions and is a major supplier of ASICs across many industrial sectors. Swindon is the global leader and foremost supplier of ASIC/MEMS solutions for Tyre Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS), supplying approximately half of the worldwide demand.

Members of the Swindon Silicon Systems team will be on hand at EDS 2019 – Stand H2 - to highlight the advantages of these single package devices including Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) and integrated MEMs sensor interface solutions, System on Chip (SoC) as well as System in Package (SiP) devices.

Swindon will also provide an insight into the company’s full turn key (FTK) service offering which commences with the ASIC specification, design, simulation, layout and verification and continues with the evaluation, qualification and in-house production test (both wafer probe and packaged devices) of the ASIC. This also includes wafer fabrication, packaging and evaluation of engineering samples, pre-production and production devices.