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Technology Stocks : ADI: The SHARCs are circling! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Oravetz who wrote (2790)	2/27/2002 1:09:01 PM
From: Jim Oravetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2882

At long last MEMS After years of hype and disappointment, a market finally is developing for the microscopic-sized machines By Russ Arensman -- Electronic Business, 2/1/2002 ...Analog Devices Inc. (ADI), Norwood, MA, produced the first commercial airbag sensors in 1993, and now sells about 50 million MEMS chips a year for that purpose. ADI officials estimate they supply almost half the auto industry's airbag sensors, a market worth more than $1 billion annually. The company's initial MEMS airbag sensors cost about $12, compared with $200 for earlier collision detectors that used multiple sensors made with ball bearings in stainless steel tubes. "The idea of a single sensor in the $10-$15 range was a dramatic breakthrough that helped drive the technology into the marketplace," says Franklin Weigold, vice president and general manager of ADI's micromachined products division. ADI's sensors met the classic MEMS criteria for success: being able to do something better, faster and cheaper than is possible with other approaches. The company gained further advantage from its ability to combine MEMS with its leading-edge analog control circuitry. Thanks to that expertise, it now sells a one-chip airbag sensor module, while competitors require two chips. Yet it still took ADI nearly a decade to recoup its investment and turn the MEMS business profitable. As ADI's CEO Jerald G. Fishman cautions: "These investments are not for the fainthearted—they take a lot of time and a lot of money." MEMS accelerometers are finding their way into other automotive applications, including side-impact and rollover-protection systems. ADI also has high hopes for using tiny MEMS gyroscopes in navigation and ride control. But Weigold sees even bigger growth opportunities for MEMS in communications and biomedical products. Although the company is just getting started in those areas, it hopes to capitalize on its MEMS manufacturing infrastructure, a staff of 550 and more than a decade of experience. MEMS devices, says Weigold, "have all sorts of specialized problems that are only discovered by making lots of them…You don't really see the problems until you build a few million." snip.... e-insite.net