Interesting facts from Freescale Embedded Live presentation

Recently I was lucky enough to see a presentation by semiconductor giant Freescale at Embedded Live. Packed full of observations and facts and figures about semiconductors, here are just a few of the points which should interest anyone working in the embedded industry:

• 2010 has seen the biggest increase in spend on semiconductors in history: £72billion v £59billion in 2000.
• Medical costs are still rising in the West as people live longer on average than ever before. As a result, there is growing interest in the international standard IEC 62304 - which specifies life cycle requirements for the development of medical software and software within medical devices.
• Auto car production is static at 40 – 50m in Japan, the USA and EMEA (unchanged from the early 2000s). At 30 – 40m per year the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are catching up. 50% of BMW 7 Series cars are sent to China.
• The trend in electronic content in automobiles is set to continue: 2000 – 22%; 2010 – 35%; 2030 – 50%+. Now there are an average of 80 microcontrollers per high end car and 35 microcontrollers per average car.
• ITS – Intelligent Transport Systems – with smart roads and cars that communicate together to make more efficient transport systems is an interesting area of development.
• In Germany if 20m petrol burning cars were replaced by electric cars the reduction in emissions would be around 2.4%. This is because German power stations are mainly fossil-fuel burning.
• 3.5% of Carbon Dioxide emissions are caused by man. Of the 3.55, cars account for 5.5%, other traffic 6.5%, power plants 25%, domestic use 23%, and industry 19%).
• The cost of developing new generations of silicon chips doubles at each node: 0.6 – 0.9billlion 45 – 32nm 2010 - 1.3billion 22 – 12nm 2012.
• New products (e.g. new types of phones) are emerging more frequently (every 12 months) than new technologies (e.g. chips based on new processes) (18 months).