Quartz-killer, SiTime, which makes MEMS-based silicon resonators and oscillators, should be capable of addressing $1bn of the total quartz crystal market worth $3.6bn by the end of the year.
“In the next few years we should increase that to over $2.5bn of the TAM (total available market),” John McDonald, v-p at SiTime, told the Globalpress Summit conference in Monterey yesterday.
Asked why SiTime couldn’t address all of the quartz market now, McDonald replied: “At the high end of the market it has to do with phase noise. The quartz phase noise is lower”. He expects university work in the US to reduce that disadvantage.
The value proposition for silicon versus quartz is that “every system-in-package (SIP) component is shrinking except quartz, while silicon is cheaper and more reliable”, said MacDonald.
SiTime licenses its technology from Bosch of Germany which is a venture capital backer of the company. “The future of quartz crystal is to be integrated in silicon,” said McDonald, “it allows ultra small oscillators and resonators and complete timing solutions without quartz at a comparable price. It allows one or more resonators to be integrated with standard CMOS”.