The dirty little secret of flash drives today is that many of them are running on yesterday's interfaces. While SATA and SAS have undergone several iterations since they were first introduced, they are still based on decades-old concepts and were initially designed with rotating disks in mind. These legacy protocols are bottlenecking the potential speeds possible from today's SSDs.NVMe is the latest storage interface standard designed specifically for SSDs. With its massively parallel architecture, it enables the full performance capabilities of today's SSDs to be realized. Because of price and compatibility, NVMe has taken a while to see uptake, but now it is finally coming into its own.Serial Attached LegacyCurrently, SATA is the most common storage interface. Whether a hard drive or increasingly common flash storage, chances are it is running through a SATA interface. The latest generation of SATA - SATA III - has a 600 MB/s bandwidth limit. While this is adequate for day-to-day consumer applications, it is not enough for enterprise servers. Even I/O intensive consumer use cases, such as video editing, can run into this limit.The SATA standard was originally released in 2000 as a serial-based successor to the older PATA standard, a parallel interface. SATA uses the advanced host controller interface (AHCI) which has a single command queue with a depth of 32 commands. This command queuing architecture is well-suited to conventional rotating disk storage, though more limiting when used with flash.Whereas SATA is the standard storage interface for consumer drives, SAS is much more common in the enterprise world. Released originally in 2004, SAS is also a serial replacement to an older parallel standard SCSI. Designed for enterprise applications, SAS storage is usually more expensive to implement than SATA, but it has significant advantages over SATA for data center use - such as longer cable lengths, multipath IO, and better error reporting. SAS also has a higher bandwidth limit of 1200MB/s.Just like SATA, SAS, has a single command queue, although the queue depth of SAS goes to 254 commands instead of 32 commands. While the larger command queue and higher bandwidth limit make it better performing than SATA, SAS is still far from being the ideal flash interface.NVMe - Massive ParallelismIntroduced in 2011, NVMe was designed from the ground up for addressing the needs of flash storage. Developed by a consortium of storage companies, its key objective is specifically to overcome the bottlenecks on flash performance imposed by SATA and SAS.Whereas SATA is restricted to 600MB/s and SAS to 1200MB/s (as mentioned above), NVMe runs over the PCIe bus and its bandwidth is theoretically limited only by the PCIe bus speed. With current PCIe standards providing 1GB/s or more per lane, and PCIe connections generally offering multiple lanes, bus speed almost never represents a bottleneck for NVMe-based SSDs.NVMe is designed to deliver massive parallelism, offering 64,000 command queues, each with a queue depth of 64,000 commands. This parallelism fits in well with the random access nature of flash storage, as well as the multi-core, multi-threaded processors in today's computers. NVMe's protocol is streamlined, with an optimized command set that does more in fewer operations compared to AHCI. IO operations often need fewer commands than with SATA or SAS, allowing latency to be reduced. For enterprise customers, NVMe also supports many enterprise storage features, such as multi-path IO and robust error reporting and management.Pure speed and low latency, plus the ability to deal with high IOPs have made NVMe SSDs a hit in enterprise data centers. Companies that particularly value low latency and high IOPs, such as high-frequency trading firms and database and web application hosting companies, have been some of the first and most avid endorsers of NVMe SSDs.Barriers to AdoptionWhile NVMe is high performance, historically speaking it has also been considered relatively high cost. This cost has negatively affected its popularity in the consumer-class storage sector. Relatively few operating systems supported NVMe when it first came out, and its high price made it less attractive for ordinary consumers, many of whom could not fully take advantage of its faster speeds anyway.However, all this is changing. NVMe prices are coming down and, in some cases, achieving price parity with SATA drives. This is due not only to market forces but also to new innovations, such as DRAM-less NVMe SSDs.As DRAM is a significant bill of materials (BoM) cost for SSDs, DRAM-less SSDs are able to achieve lower, more attractive price points. Since NVMe 1.2, host memory buffer (HMB) support has allowed DRAM-less SSDs to borrow host system memory as the SSD's DRAM buffer for better performance. DRAM-less SSDs that take advantage of HMB support can achieve performance similar to that of DRAM-based SSDs, while simultaneously saving cost, space and energy.NVMe SSDs are also more power-efficient than ever. While the NVMe protocol itself is already efficient, the PCIe link it runs over can consume significant levels of idle power. Newer NVMe SSDs support highly efficient, autonomous sleep state transitions, which allow them to achieve energy consumption on par or lower than SATA SSDs.All this means that NVMe is more viable than ever for a variety of use cases, from large data centers that can save on capital expenditures due to lower cost SSDs and operating expenditures as a result of lower power consumption, as well as power-sensitive mobile/portable applications such as laptops, tablets and smartphones, which can now consider using NVMe.Addressing the Need for SpeedWhile the need for speed is well recognized in enterprise applications, is the speed offered by NVMe actually needed in the consumer world? For anyone who has ever installed more memory, bought a larger hard drive (or SSD), or ordered a faster Internet connection, the answer is obvious.Today's consumer use cases generally do not yet test the limits of SATA drives, and part of the reason is most likely because SATA is still the most common interface for consumer storage. Today's video recording and editing, gaming and file server applications are already pushing the limits of consumer SSDs, and tomorrow's use cases are only destined to push them further. With NVMe now achieving price points that are comparable with SATA, there is no reason not to build future-proof storage today.(Jeroen Dorgelo is director of strategy at Marvell Storage Group)

While silicon remains the mainstream power semiconductor material, silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) are seen more suitable for power semiconductor devices needed by electric cars and mobile devices, as they can perform much better than Si in reducing on-state resistance and miniaturizing the size of power devices, thus helping the devices achieve fast charging, power consumption and high energy conversion functions. It is expected that the SiC and GaN power semiconductor markets will experience a higher growth than the Si semiconductor market by 2025, Digitimes Research believes.Taking advantage of mature technology and lower cost, Si power semiconductors recorded global market sales of over US$24 billion in 2016, compared to only US$200 million and US$14 million for SiC and GaN power semiconductors, respectively.Nevertheless, SiC and GaN are gradually replacing Si in specific applications, with SiC power semiconductor devices for applications with high power capacity, and GaN for applications involving medium to low power capacities.Digitimes Research estimates that the prices of SiC and GaN with high anti-compression strength will gradually decline in 2020, which will drive price cuts on those with medium to low compression resistance along with the refinements in production process and technologies as well as the entry of new players.Since 2015, both the US and China have seen Si power semiconductor manufacturers foray into the SiC and GaN semiconductor fields, and both Germany and Taiwan wafer foundry houses are also beginning to offer contract fabrication services for SiC and GaN semiconductors, which is expected to help drive down the prices of both semiconductors.In addition, Ga2O3 is emerging as a new material for power semiconductor, with its price getting close to that of Si but able to better reduce on-state resistance. This new material is expected to be applied for mass production of power semiconductor devices in 2018, and is likely to outgrow the GaN power semiconductor market by 2025, Digitimes Research estimates.

UV-C (in wavelength of 200-280nm) LED power output has increased to 70-75mW with application extending from disinfection of personal devices to medium-scale sterilization or purification.UV-C LED output increased from 10mW in 2014 to 50mW in 2016. South Korea-based LG Innotek and Japan-based Dowa Electronics earlier in 2017 unveiled 280nm UV-C LED chips with power output of 70mW and 75mW respectively.As users in the medical care and biotech sectors are less sensitive to price, prices and profitability for UV-C LED applications are relatively high with strong potential demand,The Minamata Convention on Mercury, which took effect on August 16, 2017, will restrict use of mercury beginning 2020, and stimulate demand for UV-C LED application to medium-scale water purification, Digitimes Research believes. Metawater, a water purification plant in Japan, has cooperated with Japan-based Nikkiso to develop a purification system based on 1,000 UV-C LED chips each with power output of 30mW, with a daily capacity to treat 2,000 tons of water.Currently, two types of substrates are used to make UV-C LED epitaxial wafers - aluminum nitride and sapphire, the former being more adopted. UV-C LED chips using aluminum substrates have higher luminous efficiency and longer service life than those using sapphire, but aluminum substrate prices are 1,000 times those for sapphire substrates.UV-C LED still faces technological barriers, such as in luminous efficiency and yield rates, to replacing 10-20W low-pressure mercury-vapor lamps which are widely used in sterilization currently.

Statistics from US-based research body CB Insights show that non-US unicorn startups commanded a 50% share of total global unicorns as of the end of August 2017, sharply up from only 37% as of the end of 2014, indicating the US is no longer a dominant country in nurturing startups. It also suggests that against Asian enterprises, particularly those in China, unrelentingly pursuing development and growth, the Silicon Valley seems stuck in the status quo.Among Asian countries, China now takes the lead with 56 unicorns and India comes next with 10, with both countries being top targets for multinational investment funds. Korea ranks third with three unicorns, and Singapore and Indonesia have two each; but those unicorns in the two Southeast Asian countries all involve financial support from China tech giants.China's web population broke the 700 million mark to hit 731 million as of the end of 2016 after experiencing an annual growth of 6.2%, according to statistics released by the China Internet Network Information Center. The growth, however, has fallen under 10% for the first time in five years, indicating China's web population growth has entered a plateau period.Creating new miracles in new sectorsDespite the relatively stable web population, it will be increasingly difficult to create unicorn companies in the future. But in the emerging sectors such as Internet of Vehicles (IoV), FinTech and related services, China still stands a chance of creating new miracles, given the fact that in 2016 alone, the user numbers of ride-hailing services shot up 38% on year to 168 million in the country.Eyeing huge business opportunities associated with Internet investment, Beijing authorities officially launched the China Internet Investment Fund at a scale of CNY100 billion (US$15.14 billion) in late January 2017, with China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom all among strategic fund providers. China has become the world's largest e-commerce market, with its trading scale estimated by iResearch to hit CNY400 trillion by 2020. But, beyond capturing the huge business opportunities in the domestic market, China Internet investment funds and venture capital funds will surely extend their tentacles to emerging markets surrounding the Indian Ocean by taking advantage of their powerful financial resources and abundant experiences.China to be world's No. 1 venture fund source in two yearsAt the moment, one fourth of global venture capitals come from Silicon Valley. But as China contributed US$72 billion or 21.4% of total global venture capital funds in 2016, the country is expected to unseat the US as the world's largest source of such funds within two years. In fact, China tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu have been actively injecting funds to support startups, with Tencent, particularly, having invested in 19 unicorns, surpassing the corresponding figure of 13 recorded by Sequoia Capital in Silicon Valley.In May 2016, Google and Singapore-based Temasek Holdings jointly published a report on the digital economy of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), showing that total digital economy investments by the ASEAN member states already amounted to over US$200 billion. And startups in the ASEAN garnered financings of US$3.1 billion in 2016 and absorbed much more new funds of nearly US$5 billion in the first seven months of 2017. Among them, the Singapore-based ride-hailing platform operator Grab has absorbed US$3.44 billion in financing, and the Indonesian motorbike on-demand startup Go-Jek has obtained US$1.75 billion in funds, with both firms already on the name list of global unicorns. Who are the major fund providers behind ASEAN startups? Besides Japan's SoftBank, China's four Internet giants BATJ (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com) have contributed the most of the funds for those startups. Among them, Alibaba and Tencent are the most aggressive, with Alibaba having almost completed Alipay service deployments in main ASEAN member countries via investments by its financial service platform Ant Financial.Alibaba, Tencent aggressively expanding presence in ASEANTaiwan's New Southbound Policy - which aims at bettering trade ties with ASEAN and South India - still highlights the concept of hardware production. It seems that while Taiwan is still warming up for the race, Alibaba and Tencent are already miles ahead. As the main investor in Singapore's e-commerce platform Lazada, Alibaba has twice injected funds into the company, whose market value has now reached US$3.15 billion. In the ASEAN countries, Alibaba has demonstrated its determination to integrate and consolidate local payment flows by rendering Alipay services through its subsidiary Ant Financial.In fact, Taiwan's startups are not far away from the global stage, but they tend to confine themselves to only a small scale when soliciting venture capital funds. In facing the development of startups involving high risks and high investment returns, Taiwan has two questions to answer: Should the funnel's opening be widened to allow all nationals to join startups or let selected elites do the job? Should the country develop B2C startups or cultivate many mini-unicorns in the B2B or focus markets?(The comments are from a Chinese-language book "Borrowing East Wind: China-US Tech Wrestling and Taiwan" written by Colley Hwang, president of Digitimes.)

Aurotek, founded in 1981, was one of the earliest automation equipment component suppliers in Taiwan. The company started the business as a distribution agent of mechanical equipment components such as bearings, ball screws, and universal joints from Japan, according to Aurotek's special assistance to chairman Nelson Chang.As the company grew in years, it assigned an R&D team mainly for the integration of all the related components and supply of complete solutions to Taiwan's equipment manufacturers. Moreover, the team also began offering fine-tuning services to its clients for their equipment, Chang said.The expansion of the R&D team helped the company step into the brand automated equipment field and supply Aurotek-branded machines directly to the manufacturers. However, to avoid competing directly with its clients, Aurotek's OBM products are mainly targeting the segments where its OEM/ODM clients do not have a presence.In addition to automation equipment products, Aurotek is also a developer of structure safety devices for buildings, selling products such as isolation and damping devices for minimizing earthquake damage, smoke extraction devices, and energy-saving blinds.Other than that, Aurotek is also a supplier of PCB depaneling systems, optical communication systems and mechanical arms.As the automation industry continues seeing significant growth, Aurotek has started to devote more efforts managing the variety of products it distributes. Among Aurotek's automation equipment distribution business, 70% of the products are from Japan-based machine equipment brand vendors and the remaining 30% from US- or Europe-based ones. The increasing demand in the market also benefits the sale performances of its own-brand products, Chang stated.To maintain the company's competitiveness and introduce more innovations, Aurotek has been partnering with Taiwan's state-owned research institutes such as Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to jointly work on technology development projects for automation applications, Chang pointed out.Nowadays, China is the largest automation market in Asia and a majority of Aurotek's shipments go to the country. Although Aurotek also obtains orders from Taiwan, the volumes are much smaller. With the China government's aggressive push of its Made in China 2025 project and 13th Five-year Plan, the worldwide automation and robotic industry is expected to see increasing pressure from the China competition.Aurotek's sales in China ramped up during the past 2-3 years thanks to its early channels development and solid partnership with clients and will continue pushing it efforts to keep up its performance in the market, Chang said.Although the competition in the automation industry is getting keener than before, Aurotek is confident it will be able to play a major role in the industry. Aurotek is seeing a lot of business opportunities from many different automation applications. Aurotek's advantage in customization thanks to its years of experience is continuing to strengthen the company's competitiveness in the automation market, he said. Aurotek is capable of providing comprehensive customization services for its automation products to its clients with the assistance from the R&D team, Chang added.Aurotek's special assistance to chairman Nelson Chang.Photo: Company

The concept of a fully "connected home" has been discussed for more than 20 years. However, widespread proliferation has taken far longer than anyone could have originally imagined. For a long time, deployment activity seemed to be limited to a relatively small number of high value installations. These installations were generally complicated to implement and their operation was not very user-friendly. Most importantly, they were composed of an amalgamation of isolated subsystems from different suppliers rather than a single universal system.Even as home automation started to become accessible from smartphones and tablets, market fragmentation meant that each aspect of the automation technology installed within a home was still based on its own proprietary mechanism that needed a separate app to control it. As a result, home automation systems have often proven inconvenient and frustrating for those operating them and has unquestionably held back their adoption by consumers. The industry fragmentation and lack of interoperability between different vendor ecosystems meant that the consumer couldn't really take advantage of the connected capabilities of all the various platforms.The industry is innovating with solutions that seem finally likely to help broaden the appeal of home automation and accelerate its future progression. Through its HomeKit technology, Apple is looking to consolidate all the various verticals under a single, comprehensive home automation ecosystem that works together easily and securely. The HomeKit Accessory Protocol (HAP) is enabling hardware from different suppliers involved in home automation to communicate with Apple products (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch) via a single, consistent, complete platform. This is done via wireless technologies like Bluetooth Low Energy technology, as well as IP connectivity. The list of different "behaviors" covered by the HomeKit hardware and software technology is extensive. Selecting a playlist for the audio system, turning on the lights in a particular room, remotely starting up home appliances (such as a washer/dryer), adjusting the heating and cooling, and activating the door entry system are just a few examples. But, because all of these functions are controlled via the Apple Home app or by asking Siri (rather than multiple apps), they can now work in tandem. For instance, settings can be configured so that if the curtains in a room were drawn, then the lighting would simultaneously turn on, or the ambient lighting could be changed to fit a certain music playlist.Marvell is placing itself at the forefront of next generation smart home development through its support of Apple HomeKit. Our family of wireless SoC devices was the first in the industry to secure certification for the original HAP specification three years ago and has consistently been at the forefront as evidenced with our latest HomeKit Accessory Protocol Release 9 (HAP R9) specification. The low power 88MW30x ICs each possess an integrated microcontroller with Cortex-M4 processing core, plus single-band IEEE 802.11n Wi-Fi functionality. The truly transformational change this time is our SoCs' certification for iCloud implementation, which enables remote control of HomeKit compliant devices using voice as well as the HomeKit App using iCloud remote access. This means that OEMs serving the home automation market will be able to make their systems much more streamlined and convenient to seamlessly implement through iCloud. As a result, new use cases are now possible. For example, you can remotely start your thermostat to heat or cool your home using the Apple Home app (or Siri voice control) while you are still on your way home from work and have the right temperature set for when you arrive.This technology is showcased in the Marvell EZ-Connect HAP software development kit (SDK), which is designed to facilitate the implementation of HomeKit-enabled home automation accessories - accelerating our OEM customers' design cycles and allowing products to be brought to market more quickly. Complementing its 802.11n wireless connectivity, the incorporated bridging functionality also allows interfacing with equipment using other RF protocols like Bluetooth low energy technology. For example, Marvell has partnered with a leading Bluetooth low energy vendor to offer a combo module reference design that is commercially available today through one of our module vendor partners, Azurewave. Our emphasis on security, encryption and memory partitioning allows secure, over-the-air firmware upgrades so that customer applications can run securely from external Flash memory while being encrypted on the fly. Our SDK also supports Amazon's popular AWS cloud platform and Google's Weave/Cloud as alternatives. To accompany the SDK, Marvell intends to provide OEMs with all the collateral necessary to get their products through the HomeKit certification process as rapidly and painlessly as possible and into the market quickly. Useful project examples are also provided.Marvell understands how crucially important a robust software solution is to enable a hassle free home automation user experience and has developed industry leading software capabilities in support of Apple HomeKit. This has allowed us to get ahead of the game.

Shipments of smartphone-use application processors in China are expected to reach 179 million units in the fourth quarter of 2017, up 4.1% on quarter and 1.4% on year, according to estimates of Digitimes Research.MediaTek's shipments of smartphone APs are gaining a boost in the fourth quarter, fueled by the promotion of its Helio P23 and P30 SoCs, both of which meet China Mobile's Cat. 7 specifications and feature a vision processing unit (VPU) supporting AI applications. As a result, MediaTek is expected to narrow its shipment gap against Qualcomm to 4.1pp in the fourth quarter, Digitimes Research estimates.Qualcomm managed to maintain its leading market position in China's smartphone AP market in the second and third quarters of 2017, buoyed by booming smartphone sales enjoyed by Xiaomi Technology, which bought a large portion of its APs from Qualcomm. However, Qualcomm will face price competition in the fourth quarter as it will be unable to continue to dominate the Cat.7 and above market segments.Overall, smartphone AP shipments in the China market expanded 24.3% sequentially to 172 million units in the third quarter of 2017 due largely to replenishment demand from brand smartphone vendors with Qualcomm being the top beneficiary.Smartphone AP shipments from Spreadtrum Communications and MediaTek were affected somewhat in the third quarter due to decreased smartphone shipments by white-box handset vendors, affected by rising prices for components (such as memory chips) and decreased overseas orders.

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is being fast developed based on two standards of wireless communication technology, DSRC (dedicated short range communications) and C-V2X (cellular vehicle-to-everything) developed by 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).In terms of IoV development, the US has taken the lead, Digitimes Research indicated. The US Department of Transportation in 2015 planned to adopt a regulation requiring all new vehicles be equipped with DSRC-based V2V (vehicle to vehicle) devices beginning 2020, rendering DSRC applicable to V2V.Qualcomm in September 2017 unveiled MDM 9150 C-V2X chip in a bid to set up a C-V2X ecosystem, and has won support from several automakers including Audi, Continental, Ford and PSA Group. MDM 9150 uses unlicensed 5.9GHz ITS (intelligent transportation systems) frequency band units.IoV using onboard millimeter wave radars and cameras to collect data on cars' surrounding can provide V2V function of keeping safe distances between cars; V2I (vehicle to infrastructure) function of displaying traffic lights for controlling running speeds; and V2P (vehicle to pedestrian) function of keeping pedestrians safe. These functions entail software-based processing and analysis of spatial data, bringing business opportunities for setting up high-precision digital map databases.

Demand for upgrading hospitals to smart facilities is increasing fast in China where hospitals are in short supply and medical resources are unevenly distributed.There are about 33,000 hospitals of varying sizes around China and 80% of them are in larger cities, Digitimes Research indicated. While private and government-run hospitals account for 56% and 44% of all hospitals at present, the number of private hospitals will be increasing faster from about 19,000 in 2017 to 46,000 in 2021.In China, the smart solution supply chain generally lack an understanding of hospital operations, but local suppliers have an upper hand over foreign competitors in some fields such as hospital information system and operation-supporting system.Taiwan-based suppliers will have advantages through combining innovative technologies such as robots and AI (artificial intelligence) with hospital management.

Global smartphone shipments are expected to grow 5% on year to reach 1.43 billion units in 2017 and expand another 4.8% to over 1.5 billion units in 2018, according to Digitimes Research.Replacement demand for smartphones from feature phone users in emerging markets in Southeast Asia, South America and Africa will be the main source of sales growth for smartphones from 2018-2022 with shipments to grow at a rate of 60-70 million units a year during the projected period.With the exception of Apple and HMD Global (Nokia), the rest of the world's top-20 handset brands in 2017 will come from Asia, including 11 from China and two each from Korea, India and Taiwan. China-based Huawei, Oppo and Vivo will take the third, fourth and fifth positions in the global vendors ranking in 2017.