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aghubril
Last year's number 1 (Renesas Technology) and number 2 (NEC Electronics) merged ...
JPL
In the Gartner Inc chart, who was #2 in 2009 and dropped off the chart in ...
Microcontroller supply chain is out of control
Mark Lapedus
5/6/2011 8:30 PM EDT
Renesas strategy
In the rankings for 2010, Renesas was the MCU leader with $4.447 billion in sales, followed by Freescale ($1.525 billion), Samsung ($982 million), Microchip ($968 million), Atmel ($958 million), TI ($946 million), Infineon ($930 million), ST ($915 million) and Fujitsu ($684 million), according to Gartner.
Not surprisingly, Renesas is moving full speed to recover from the quake. In MCUs, ''we’re still catching up,’’ said Daniel Mahoney, president and CEO of Renesas' U.S. subsidiary, Renesas Electronics America Inc., at ESC. ''We think we will close the gap’’ in the second half of 2011.
Following the quake, five out of Renesas’ 10 fabs in Japan were temporarily shut down. ''Four of five have resumed production’’ in more recent times, Mahoney said.
The problem is that Renesas’ Naka fab is still out. The plant consists of two lines, including separate 200- and 300-mm lines. In total, Naka represents 20 percent of the Renesas-branded MCU capacity. Renesas did not elaborate which lines were impacted, but it did say that the quake did not disrupt the supply of NEC-branded MCU devices.
Seeking to play catch-up, Renesas outlined its strategy. First, the company is moving to re-open the Naka fab. The 200-mm line, dubbed N2, will restart on June 15; the 300-mm line, dubbed N3, will restart in July, he said.
Second, Renesas has shifted some production to other fabs. Third, it has moved some production to the foundries. The company has transferred some of the ''Naka production to TSMC,’’ he said. The company is also moving some MCU production to a 200-mm fab in Singapore, now owned by Globalfoundries Inc. That fab was once owned by Chartered, which was acquired by Globalfoundries.
Still, there could be disruptions in the supply chain. There were ''two months of inventory’’ in the supply chain before the quake, but that stock is nearly depleted, said Microchip’s Sanghi.
The inventory issue, coupled with Renesas’ woes, is expected to cause some shortages. Many OEMs are seeking replacement parts from Microchip. As reported, Microchip has outlined a replacement program and is expanding production within its fab in Gresham, Ore.
This week, Microchip posted stellar results and bought an IC-assembly house to expand its backend requirements.
Next: Atmel shines
In the rankings for 2010, Renesas was the MCU leader with $4.447 billion in sales, followed by Freescale ($1.525 billion), Samsung ($982 million), Microchip ($968 million), Atmel ($958 million), TI ($946 million), Infineon ($930 million), ST ($915 million) and Fujitsu ($684 million), according to Gartner.
Not surprisingly, Renesas is moving full speed to recover from the quake. In MCUs, ''we’re still catching up,’’ said Daniel Mahoney, president and CEO of Renesas' U.S. subsidiary, Renesas Electronics America Inc., at ESC. ''We think we will close the gap’’ in the second half of 2011.
Following the quake, five out of Renesas’ 10 fabs in Japan were temporarily shut down. ''Four of five have resumed production’’ in more recent times, Mahoney said.
The problem is that Renesas’ Naka fab is still out. The plant consists of two lines, including separate 200- and 300-mm lines. In total, Naka represents 20 percent of the Renesas-branded MCU capacity. Renesas did not elaborate which lines were impacted, but it did say that the quake did not disrupt the supply of NEC-branded MCU devices.
Seeking to play catch-up, Renesas outlined its strategy. First, the company is moving to re-open the Naka fab. The 200-mm line, dubbed N2, will restart on June 15; the 300-mm line, dubbed N3, will restart in July, he said.
Second, Renesas has shifted some production to other fabs. Third, it has moved some production to the foundries. The company has transferred some of the ''Naka production to TSMC,’’ he said. The company is also moving some MCU production to a 200-mm fab in Singapore, now owned by Globalfoundries Inc. That fab was once owned by Chartered, which was acquired by Globalfoundries.
Still, there could be disruptions in the supply chain. There were ''two months of inventory’’ in the supply chain before the quake, but that stock is nearly depleted, said Microchip’s Sanghi.
The inventory issue, coupled with Renesas’ woes, is expected to cause some shortages. Many OEMs are seeking replacement parts from Microchip. As reported, Microchip has outlined a replacement program and is expanding production within its fab in Gresham, Ore.
This week, Microchip posted stellar results and bought an IC-assembly house to expand its backend requirements.
Next: Atmel shines
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hm
5/8/2011 7:57 AM EDT
This is unfortunate for Renesas and many other Japanese vendors. Can Renesas be more innovative to resolve this problem in other technical way? N2 and N3 foundry made some specific parts, can these parts be substituted with other dropin replacement parts? They can work with some customer and help them mitigate their problems.
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agk
5/9/2011 4:34 AM EDT
This time the business switches to many others in the foundary field.This shows a loss to particular set of people gives a profit other set of people. Nature governs this policy very well.
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Robotics Developer
5/9/2011 3:45 PM EDT
I would expect that there will be shortages and longer lead times for some MCUs. I wonder how likely a company redesign of an existing product is given the respin of the PCBs, the software redesign, feature set differences, IDE/SDK tool differences. Possibly in the long term this will hurt the market share of those suppliers that are Japan centric. Perhaps, the take away lesson here is: have diverse geographic production for all critical ICs.
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Patk0317
5/9/2011 6:42 PM EDT
This is why second sourcing exists. Designers should endeavor to make sure there is another form, fit and function compatible solution. Even if the second source is not yet completely qualified, a second source could be used with more testing on the back end while qualification is being performed in parallel. Better to keep shipping a bit slower than usual than not at all.
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Bill Chase
5/9/2011 11:39 PM EDT
Excuse me Pat:
But for newer processors, there ARE NO drop in replacements. "Designers should endeavor to make sure there is another form, fit and function compatible solution" is not a design reality.
Bill in Santa Cruz
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GordDavison
5/10/2011 12:52 PM EDT
That is why manufactures need to either deign with older chip sets that have duplicate manufacturers or take control of the supply chain and start telling the manufactueres what to supply. The second choice is long term but would be the best approach. The manufacturer would define the interface and performace. the supliers build it. Kind of like an IEEE standard.
Sounds great!!
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cdhmanning
5/10/2011 11:27 PM EDT
"deign with older chip sets...". Like what?
The last micro I saw with drop-in replacements was the 8031 which was available from Intel, OKI, and others.
About the only real choice is to do one of:
1) Design your PCBs with overlapping footprints (eg. on on each side of the board) to take similar parets from different vendors (eg. an ST and an NXP part with similar peripherals) and onlyt use the common peripherals.
2) Move towards FPGAs so you can roll your own (and do multi-footprint to multi-source your FPGA).
IEEE standards will only work if you can have consistent sets of peripherals too.
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JPL
5/11/2011 8:07 AM EDT
In the Gartner Inc chart, who was #2 in 2009 and dropped off the chart in 2010?
This data looks suspicious to me. but the article is still interesting
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aghubril
5/11/2011 10:38 AM EDT
Last year's number 1 (Renesas Technology) and number 2 (NEC Electronics) merged to form this year's Renesas Electronics.
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