Fujitsu Microelectronics is changing its investment strategy and as a result will switch investment from leading edge process technology and will spend more on product design and developing silicon IP (intellectual property).
Dr. Joji Murakami president of Fujitsu Microelectronics Europe described the importance of this change of strategy for the semiconductor supplier in an exclusive interview with Electronics Weekly.
“In the past the company invested in leading edge process technology, but this is changing and after the 40nm process node the company will move to a fab-lite strategy,” said Murakami.
“The investment will shift to design and IP in order to add value,” said Murakami.
This investment will be targeted at developing new products in the areas of: automotive electronics, microcontrollers and low carbon technologies.
“After the current recession one of the new markets for us will be the development of low-carbon technologies,” said Murakami.
For Fujitsu an important element of its low power product plans will be its capabilities in gallium nitride (GaN) process technology.
This is being developed by a number of suppliers as a lower power alternative to gallium arsenide (GaAs) for the design of high frequency RF and data conversion devices.
According to Murakami, Fujitsu expects to be sampling first GaN devices in 2011 with production following a year later.
See: Fujitsu makes millimetre-wave GaN transmit-receive amplifier pair
Another feature of the company’s plans for low-carbon products is that it focuses on Europe’s growing solar power and wind generation industries.
“This is a new market for us and we will start design activities in Europe in the near future,” said Murakami.
Another important product area for Fujitsu is microcontrollers with a focus on the automotive and smart-metering markets.
In January, Fujitsu announced an expansion of its European software capabilities with the acquisition of Comneon’s software development centre in Linz, Austria.
The centre gave the company an embedded software activity supporting the automotive sector.
In microcontrollers there is also a change of direction with the company planning a number of ARM processor-based devices.
Fujitsu already embeds ARM cores such as ARM9E-S and Cortex-M3 into system-on-chip devices.
“We have our proprietary architecture but we are changing the strategy with plans for ARM9-based MCUs and in future higher performance ARM4F-based devices,” said Murakami.
Fujitsu’s current range of 32-bit RISC microcontrollers includes the MB91460P series, which was developed in co-operation with automotive electronics customers.
The company’s MB91F465P and MB91F467P microcontrollers provide up to four CAN controllers and up to twelve LIN-UARTs.
Fujitsu is also expanding its range of low power, low pin count 8-bit MCUs based on its proprietary core.
Its plans for the smart metering market included a collaboration with Zaragoza-based company, Advanced Digital Design.
The Spanish company is a specialist in power line and automatic meter management devices.
This year, Fujitsu expanded its low pin count microcontrollers with three new series in its F2MC-8FX family of 8-bit microcontrollers featuring 8, 16, and 20 pins.
These are aimed at white goods consumer and smart metering applications.
“We are targeting the markets in Italy and Turkey with these products,” said Murakami.