Coventor's MEMS Design Blog

MEMS in Taiwan. Motion sensing, motion sensing and motion sensing.

At Semicon Taiwan this week, MEMS is gaining more respect and visitors to the special MEMS pavilion. Next to a selection of MEMS companies with booths is a "MEMS Museum" organized by semi, ITRI and the Nanotechnology and Micro System Association of Taiwan (NMA), showing the history of MEMS in Taiwan but also several consumer devices, 90% of them based on motion sensing; new gaming applications, computer mouse, and 3D remote controls.
For years the Taiwanese MEMS industry has been limited to government funded research projects lead by ITRI. Many universities offer MEMS courses today and generated well-educated MEMS designers and engineers.
Times are changing though.
First things first in Taiwan. Three foundries have been working on MEMS projects for a several years now, TSMC, UMC and APM (Asia Pacific Microstructures). Each one has been working on establishing their own way of doing MEMS. All this is accelerated by demand from established MEMS companies like Analog Devices to move MEMS fabrication to Asia and second source their production. TSMC management even announced that 20% of their total revenue will come from MEMS by 2012, whether this will happen or not isn't important, what this indicates is that the Taiwanese companies are serious.
If the Taiwanese foundries manage to deliver stable MEMS processes in the near future, the local IC Design Houses are sure to follow. And the rest of the MEMS industry might still be looking for the killer application to produce MEMS in high volumes. The Taiwanese have figured it out. All of them are focused on motion sensors, not exclusively of course but the inertial MEMS devices seems to be a driving factor for getting the local Taiwan MEMS eco-system established.