Integrated devices roil passives market

Electronic News, Nov 3, 1997 by Bernard Levine

The marketplace for passive components is turning into a battle ground. Growing demand for integrated passive componentry--built with semiconductor-like, highly miniaturized construction--is sparking more new entries from traditional capacitor, resistor and other passive component firms anxious to defend their turf, as well as additional contestants from the worlds of contract manufacturing and elsewhere.

Some of the newest integrated passives now being sampled or still in R&D reportedly address electrostatic discharge and other problems which have vexed earlier models. Some new integrated passives are also showing up in leading-edge chip-scale packages, while others stick with more traditional packaging.

Integrated passives will be a major attention getter at this week's Wescon show in San Jose and Santa Clara, Calif. Makers of cell phones and other space-crammed or very high speed products are especially anxious to see what's available. Offerings so far have been limited, with integrated passive suppliers and wannabe's exploring various substrate options, including thick and thin film, as well as array and network configurations.

With portable electronic and high-speed applications demanding ever smaller componentry to fit on precious board space, California Micro Devices, a semiconductor firm which pioneered integrated passives several years ago, will review its latest integrated passive termination products at a Wescon technical workshop. A host of other firms are expected to show off their latest integrated passives efforts at the Wescon exhibits and technical sessions, with Bourns slating a Wescon press conference to highlight coming efforts.

What Size Market?

Opinions vary on how big a share of the future passives market might be grabbed by integrated models. In interviews and contributed articles for this special Passive Components feature section of Electronic News, traditional passive component industry leaders such as Vishay and AVX emphasize the continuing and expected ongoing leading importance of surface mount chips and other classic discretes, despite growing interest in integrated passives--which they are gearing up to serve as well.

Other firms agree traditional passives will keep the majority of applications in coming years, but suggest the integration move may have a bigger impact than some expect.

"It's important to contradict the notion that discrete capacitors, resistors and magnetic components are going to disappear into silicon ICs," said Felix Zandman, chairman/CEO of Vishay Intertechnology. "This was a 'concern' even when we formed Vishay 33 years ago. But in spite of it, the use of discrete passives is steadily increasing, and I believe it will continue to do so well into the next century."

But Dr. Zandman is hedging his bets. "This is not to discount changes in the technology of passives, such as the development of integrated passive components (IPCs), which are certain to gain increased attention over the next several years," he adds. "These are resistor or capacitor chip arrays, resistor/capacitor (R/C) SMD networks, resistor/capacitor/inductor (RCL) SMD networks and like combinations. We are supporting these developments with both production facilities and continuing research."

At the same time, Vishay is not letting these new types of devices overshadow its priority for helping customers use discrete components to provide speed and cost-efficiency in reducing time-to-market. Dr. Zandman points out that discrete passives provide considerable value as a flexible design tool for reconfiguring microprocessor-controlled circuits.

Claiming growing importance of all passives to the latest systems, Dr. Zandman says "A benchmark I frequently use to chart this growth goes back to the early '90s. Then a typical PC application for Intel's 486 microprocessor was supported by 124 resistors, capacitors and magnetic components. A few years ago a similar Pentium microprocessor board used 252 passives while the newest version of the Pentium requires even more passives. It's logical to ask why these applications aren't integrating passive functions instead of using an increasing number of discretes. To start, power components and high-precision components cannot be integrated. Lack of time is another reason. The cost of frequent obsolescence is, however, the main reason. The demand to continually introduce new products combined with a continually-shrinking design-time window makes it cheaper and faster to reconfigure passives to support existing ICs rather than to create new ones."

In a recent Breakfast on Park interview with EN editors (EN, Oct. 20), AVX chairman/CEO Dick Rosen predicted integrated passives could grow to 10 to 15 percent of the capacitor market in coming years, even though it is now "a very small part" of it. "The number is more than doubling every year now, but it's small," Mr. Rosen said. "A customer has to redesign its board so it has to be part of the evolution of the next device that one of our customers would make. It's not just a drop-in replacement." Still, some other firms with less of a stake in traditional discrete passive parts suggest growth of integrated passives could be quicker. California Micro Devices claims integrated passives usage could sharply ramp up if compatible semiconductor flip chip technologies take off in coming years. "If the industry moves to flip chip technology, I would predict people will use integrated flip chip passives in these applications," said John Nemec, California Micro Devices director of applications. "Between now and when flip chip is universally adopted, there will be modest growth in integrated passives, but when flip chip becomes ubiquitous, the integrated passive technology will be a natural solution with the other chips that are flip chipped and usage of integrated passives will rise sharply," he added.