Pulse of the Technology Industries In 2022

TrendForce, a global market research organization, has compiled ten technology trends for the development of the technology industry in 2022:

Although there are many bottlenecks in Micro LED technology in 2022, so that the overall cost remains high, the upstream, mid-stream and downstream manufacturers participating in Micro LED are still enthusiastic and actively establish Micro LED production lines. In terms of Micro LED self-luminous display application products, TV products are the most popular. At present, one of the main products developed by Micro LED display technology, the main reason is that TV has a lower specification threshold than IT products, which is conducive to the development of Micro LED technology. Therefore, Samsung launched a 110-inch commercial Micro LED passive trend After the display of the solution, it is expected to continue to develop TVs with active trend solutions for households below 88 inches, that is, from large-scale display commercial applications to applications in home scenarios, thereby expanding the market for the overall application of Micro LEDs.

In terms of Mini LED backlight display application products, in order to increase the new highlights of the display, brand manufacturers pursue a high contrast ratio of millions to compare with the display effect of OLED, and want to increase the number of Mini LED backlight boards used. Therefore, the use of Mini LED Compared with the traditional backlight LED usage, the number of LEDs will increase by more than ten times, and the equipment precision and production capacity of Mini LED SMT to be printed on the backplane also need to be improved. At present, the Mini LED backlight source is a passive trend solution. Mainly, in the future, it will develop towards an active trend solution, and the usage of Mini LED will increase significantly. Therefore, the performance and production capacity of SMT equipment will become one of the key factors for brand manufacturers to judge the supply chain.

With the increase in supply and the gradual expansion of production capacity, AMOLED technology has gradually matured. In order to maintain the leading edge, first-tier manufacturers are still trying to add more functions and specifications to enhance the added value of AMOLED panels. First of all, we can see the continuous evolution of the folding design, which is more optimized in terms of thinness and power saving; in addition to the left and right folding design seen in the past, the upper and lower folding is similar to the Clamshell design, which makes the product type closer to the current mobile phone design. In addition, the pricing is also close to the price band of mainstream flagship mobile phones, which is expected to drive sales growth. Other attempts at folding types, including multi-folding and scrolling, are also expected to be realized in the near future. TrendForce expects that the penetration rate of folding mobile phones will exceed 1% in 2022 and challenge 4% in 2024. In addition, the installation of LTPO backplane will improve the power consumption problem caused by 5G transmission and high refresh rate specifications, and it is expected to gradually become the standard specification of flagship phones. After two years of development and adjustment, the under-screen lens module finally has the opportunity to appear on the flagship mobile phones of many brands, and it is expected to realize a real full-screen mobile phone.

In terms of DRAM, Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron will gradually mass-produce next-generation DDR5 products. At the same time, stimulated by the demand for 5G mobile phones, they will continue to increase the market share of LPDDR5. The DDR5 specification pushes the speed to more than 4800Mbps. The high speed and low power consumption can greatly optimize the computing quality. With the mass production of Intel's new CPU platform, the timing sequence will be released on the PC platform Alder Lake first, and then released. The Eagle Stream of the server is expected to reach a market share of 10-15% of the total bit output by the end of 2022. In terms of process, the two major Korean suppliers have successively mass-produced 1 alpha nm process products using EUV technology, and market visibility will increase quarter by quarter in 2022.

The number of NAND Flash stacking layers has not yet faced a bottleneck. Following the mass production of 176-layer products in 2021, it will move to more than 200-layer technology in 2022, while the single-chip capacity remains at 512Gb/1Tb. In terms of storage interface, the penetration rate of PCIe Gen4 in the PC consumer market will increase significantly in 2022; in the server market, with the mass production of Intel Eagle Stream, enterprise SSD will be further upgraded to support PCIe Gen 5 transmission, which is higher than the previous generation Gen4 The transmission rate has doubled to 32GT/s, and the mainstream capacity has also been expanded to 4/8TB to meet the high-speed computing requirements of servers and data centers, and also contribute to the rapid increase in single-machine capacity in this field.

From the perspective of the server market, the flexible pricing strategies of data centers and the diversity of services have directly driven enterprises' demand for cloud applications in the past two years; from the perspective of the server supply chain, these changes have prompted the supply chain model to be replaced by ODM Direct. The business model of the traditional server brand factory will gradually be replaced by labor, and the business model of the existing brand factory will face structural transformation, such as providing leasing business and one-stop solution for cloud assistance. This change also means that corporate customers rely on more flexible and diversified pricing methods and hedging in the face of uncertainties in the general environment. In particular, due to the epidemic in 2020, the transfer of work models will be accelerated, and the lifestyle will change significantly. It is expected that by 2022, the demand for servers in hyperscale data centers will account for about 50%; and the ODM Direct foundry model will make the proportion of shipments growth of more than 10%.

Global telecom operators actively launch 5G standalone (SA) architecture as the core network required to support various services, accelerate the construction of base stations in major cities, and diversify network services based on network slicing and edge computing, providing end-to-end quality assurance. Enterprise demand in 2022 will drive 5G combined with Massive IoT and Critical IoT applications, including more network endpoints connecting data transmissions such as smart factory light switches, sensors and temperature readings. The key Internet of Things covers smart grid automation, telemedicine, traffic safety and industrial control, etc. In addition, combined with Industry 4.0 cases, it provides asset tracking, predictive maintenance, field service management and optimized logistics processing.

The epidemic has forced digital transformation of enterprises and changes in personal lifestyles, which once again highlights the importance of 5G deployment. In 2022, operators will compete through network slicing functions. Due to the development of 5G private networks, openRAN, unlicensed spectrum, millimeter waves, etc., In the multi-party ecosystem, in addition to traditional operators, there are also participants from OTT, cloud, social media, and e-commerce, becoming emerging service providers. In the future, operators will actively build 5G enterprise applications, such as O2's participation in the 5G-ENCODE project, exploring new business models for private 5G networks in industrial environments, and the Vodafone and Midlands Future Mobility alliance to test self-driving car networking.

The post-pandemic new normal continues to push up the demand for non-contact and digital transformation, so that the Internet of Things will focus on strengthening the Cyber-Physical System (CPS) in 2022. By combining 5G, edge computing, AI and other tools, it can be extracted from massive data Valuable data is analyzed to achieve the effect of intelligent autonomous prediction. In the current CPS instance, digital twins are used in key vertical fields such as smart manufacturing and smart cities. The former can simulate design, testing and production processes, and the latter can monitor key assets and assist in decision-making. Under the trend that the real environment is becoming more complex and the interaction between more fields and devices needs to be considered, it will promote the expansion of the deployment scope of digital twins. It is expected to build a comprehensive virtual space - Metaverse as the development framework, in order to mirror the physical world more intelligently, completely, instantly and safely, and use the smart factory as the first field; this will also drive the vision of the sensor layer, acoustics, environmental information collection, platform-level AI accurate analysis of computing power, and technological innovations such as blockchain to ensure data credibility.

The epidemic has changed people's life and work situations, accelerated the willingness of enterprises to invest in digital transformation, and tried to introduce new technologies. As a result, the adoption rate of new AR/VR applications such as virtual meetings, AR remote collaboration, and simulation design has also increased. On the other hand, in addition to game applications, various remote interactive functions brought by virtual communities will also become important applications for manufacturers to develop the AR/VR market. Therefore, under the circumstance that the hardware adopts a low-price strategy and the acceptance of application scenarios increases, the AR/VR market will expand significantly in 2022, which will prompt the market to pursue more realistic AR/VR effects. For example, using software tools to create more realistic application services, introducing AI computing to assist, or equipping more types of sensors to provide more real data into virtual reactions, such as eye tracking functions have become Oculus, The options for future consumer products from manufacturers such as Sony. In addition, some haptic feedback effects can even be provided on hardware such as controllers or wearable devices to improve the user's sense of immersion.

Autonomous driving technology will be implemented in a way that is close to life. It is expected that the unmanned automatic parking (AVP) function of SAE Leve4 will become an important option for high-end vehicles to be equipped with automatic driving function in 2022, and relevant international standards are also in formulation, the development of this function is positively helpful. However, this function will vary depending on the equipment of the vehicle, resulting in scene restrictions such as fixed/unfixed routes, private/public parking spaces, etc. The conditions of the parking lot will also affect the availability of AVP, including the completeness of signs and the networking environment. When this function is executed the distance between people and vehicles is related to local regulations. Since the technical routes of different car manufacturers are different, the computing part can be divided into the computing on the car side and the generation of parking routes by cloud computing. However, cloud computing requires a good networking environment to execute. Therefore, in terms of use, on-board computing will Cover more usage scenarios, or there will be solutions for both. Other applications such as V2X and high-precision maps will also affect the application scope of automatic parking, and it is expected that there are still many AVP solutions in progress at the same time.

Under the trend that countries will gradually ban the sale of fuel vehicles from 2025 to 2050, it will accelerate the global sales of electric vehicles and increase the market share of SiC and GaN components and modules. In addition, energy conversion needs and terminal applications such as 5G communications are growing rapidly, which drives the heat of the third-generation semiconductor market, which in turn drives the sales of SiC and Si substrates (Substrate) required for third-generation semiconductors. However, due to the relatively limited production and research and development of current substrates, the current stable supply of SiC and GaN wafers is still limited to 6 inches in size, making the production capacity of foundry and IDM factories in short supply for a long time.

In this regard, substrate suppliers such as Cree, II-VI and Qromis plan to expand production capacity and increase the area of SiC and GaN wafers to 8 inches in 2022, hoping to gradually alleviate the gap in the third-generation semiconductor market. On the other hand, foundry companies such as TSMC and World Advanced (VIS) are trying to cut into GaN on Si 8-inch wafer manufacturing, and IDM companies such as Infineon. A new generation of Infineon Trench SiC device energy-saving architecture will be released, and Qorvo, a communications company, has also proposed a new GaN MMIC Copper Flip Chip package structure for the defense field.