The time has passed and the New Year has arrived. In an instant, it will be 2017. For the electronics industry, 2017 is a year of passionate ups and downs and a fruitful harvest. During this year, the electronics industry has also been subject to keywords such as "innovation," "research and development," and "artisan." This is especially true with the rapid development of information technology, which has enabled the electronics industry to thrive.
Looking back at 2017, many revolutionary new technologies and new products emerged in the electronics industry this year. There have also been many major events that have caused shocks in the industry. Looking ahead to 2018, what kind of surprises will the electronics industry bring us? What kind of keywords will be the mainstream trend of this year?
Internet of Things
All things connected, after many years of brewing, the Internet of Things has been deeply rooted in people's minds, and then the Internet of Things will usher in a period of rapid development. The intersection between the electronics industry and the Internet of Things is bound to make the Internet of Things a new driving force for the electronics industry.
Interestingly, in the past, there has been controversy over the composition of the Internet of Things. By 2018, this controversy has gradually disappeared, and everyone has endorsed a new word: "Cloud management."
Among them, the "cloud" is cloud computing, which requires a lot of servers, so the server chip and memory are hot spots; the "pipe" highlights are 5G communications and low-power short-range communications; "end" is the edge of computing and Various sensors.
artificial intelligence
Both traditional industries and emerging industries are gradually moving closer to artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been hailed as the next era in the field of science and technology and has been recognized by the industry.
Artificial intelligence is not a new concept, but it is in the eyes of people. It is because of the century go chess battle between Google AlphaGo and Li Shishi in 2016. AlphaGo wins with a rolling gesture, and artificial intelligence is out of control. Both national and technological giants regard artificial intelligence as the core driving force in the future.
Artificial intelligence rapidly emerged in 2017 and became a new wave in the world, resulting in new business models and opportunities. In this wave, more and more traditional industries began to embrace "AI+" to change old ideas and ideas. China has an inherent advantage in the field of artificial intelligence. In addition to the strong support of national policies, it is expected that artificial intelligence will fully break out in China and lead the direction of the future industry.
Therefore, driven by artificial intelligence, the electronics industry will also usher in rare opportunities for development. In particular, the country’s key support for the electronics industry can be seen that the core competitiveness of the electronics industry will determine the height of China’s future technological development.
In 2018, the electronics industry will be propelled by artificial intelligence for nine days.
Autopilot
At the CES2018 International Consumer Electronics Show, many global giants and start-ups competed in the field of auto-piloting, making people dazzled. In recent years, autopilot technology has been very bright and has been taken seriously by the electronics industry.
Domestic and foreign giants Baidu and Qualcomm have all laid out a comprehensive layout in the field of automated driving, and have released revolutionary products. From this we can see that in the new year, various types of onboard sensors, communications devices, processors, and memories that are responsible for sensing will remain the key investment and development direction of semiconductor manufacturers in the automotive electronics field.
EV (plug-in electric vehicle) and EUV (hybrid car)
New energy vehicles are key projects supported by national policies. In recent years, EVs and EUVs continue to heat up, and the demand for new energy sources for the electronics industry has increased rapidly. The key to new energy vehicles is the battery, which requires tens to hundreds of single cells to form a battery pack. Therefore, a BMS (battery management system) is required to manage each of these cells to ensure that the battery pack is in an optimal condition. , And optimize electrical energy storage.
Therefore, the design point of EV/EUV is to protect the battery. For this reason, the structure of the automobile may also change in the future. As a result, with the continuous popularization of EVs and ADASs, the electronic process will continue to advance, the power consumption of the automobiles themselves will increase, and the demand for energy-saving components will increase.
Therefore, in the future, electronic components also need to be lighter and more efficient in order to extend the service life of the energy storage battery. Therefore, for the electronics industry, new energy is also one of the driving forces for the growth of the industry.
Video Surveillance
Video Surveillance is the long-standing application field in the electronics industry. Now video surveillance also usher in the second spring. In the past, video surveillance has also been very prosperous, with the emergence of local equipment companies such as Haikang, Dahua, etc., but it gradually stabilized and went into silence.
Now, thanks to the rise of artificial intelligence, video surveillance began to fully recover. Of course, the current video surveillance has been very different from the past. It has embarked on an intelligent road and has added features such as face recognition and license plate recognition.
Video surveillance products need to be calculated at the edge/user side, so they need large computing, low-power modules or chips. In addition, face recognition and other functions attached to video surveillance also require a large amount of computer vision and deep learning capabilities. This is undoubtedly a new challenge and opportunity for the electronics industry.
Speech Recognition
If artificial intelligence is a big direction, the core of its intersection with the electronics industry is the AI ​​chip. Speech recognition technology is the outpost of artificial intelligence. Currently, it is the pioneer before the artificial intelligence is completely landed. Voice recognition will still be the focus of attention in the industry in 2018.
Safety
With the arrival of the Internet of Things and 5G, the network has further penetrated into human life. At the same time, it has also spawned security issues. In the security field, cyber attacks continue to occupy the headlines, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices have become vulnerable to attack.
Therefore, every organization and company is developing security solutions such as security standards, secret keys, secure operating systems, security MCUs, security connections, security systems, security protocols, and so on.
One can imagine that in 2018, security issues will inevitably be one of the key words in the electronics industry.
3D
This 3D is not 3D, where 3D refers to 3D in the electronics industry. For example, 3D transistors have long been no surprise. Everyone is more concerned with the design and manufacture of 10nm and 7nm, and the blueprint for the development of 5nm FinFETs.
In the technical field, 3D packages include Co-Op-on-substrate (CoWoS) and InFo (Integrated Fan-out), which are said to be important guarantees for Moore's Law to continue to be effective. In 2017, the most popular electronic product, iPhoneX, brought new 3D sensors to the fire.
Therefore, 3D is likely to be a new outlet for the electronics industry. The development of 3D technology in 2018 is expected.
5G
With the arrival of the 5G era, the electronics industry will also enter a new era. The significance of 5G for the electronics industry is no doubt. According to the consensus reached by the industry, 5G R&D will enter a boom in 2018, and 5G will be commercialized by 2020. The development of 5G will fully advance the electronics industry.
In 2017, the electronics industry was consistently "innovation", and the first round of innovation was driven by the upgrading of smartphones instead of feature phones. With the popularization of 5G technology, mobile phones will usher in yet another upgrade. The industry ushered in the second round of innovation and the core power.
In terms of hardware, hardware innovation based on 5G communication will bring upgrades to mobile phone components. For example, antennas, RF devices, appearance, high-end displays, wireless charging, and other fields will require 5G communication technology requirements to match and upgrade.
It can be seen that in 2018, 5G has already locked in one of the electronic keywords of the industry in advance.
LPWAN
LPWAN, the Chinese name for the low-power wide-area Internet of things, it is not yet a unified standard, characterized by ultra-low power consumption, high performance, low duty cycle, with a star network coverage, support for a single node maximum coverage 100 km of cellular convergence gateways for remote wireless network communication technology.
Because of these features, technologies such as low-power Bluetooth 5 and mesh will continue to be the focus of attention in 2018. In addition, low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) technology solutions will also receive attention. The most popular of these is the LTE CatM1 (commonly known as LTE-M or eMTC) and LTE CatNB1 (commonly known as NB-IoT), French companies in the 3GPP standard. LoRaWAN of Sigfox and LoRa Alliance.
The market is confident in the future development of LTE-M and NB-IoT, and believes that its future products are in building automation, logistics tracking, energy meter reading, consumer electronics, agriculture or environmental monitoring, transportation and smart cities, and corporate retailing. Applications will have significant growth.
to sum up
The Internet age is changing every year. It is believed that in 2018, for the electronics industry, it will be a year full of innovation and change. The Chinese electronics industry will continue to keep rising at both ends of the smile curve, and will change from big to strong, and will also be in the forefront of the world in exploring cutting-edge technology.