New-Tech Europe Magazine | May 2018

Latest News

Infineon launches new Development Center for automotive electronics and artificial intelligence in Dresden

Infineon is setting up a new Development Center at its Dresden location. The company is planning to create around 100 additional new jobs in the first phase. The new Development Center is expected to employ a total of around 250 people in the medium term. One focus of it will be to develop new products and solutions for automotive and power electronics, as well as artificial intelligence. It is scheduled to be launched in the course of the 2018 calendar year. In Dresden, the Infineon Group already has one of its largest and most cutting-edge locations for developing wafer technologies and manufacturing processes, as well as a highly automated production plant. 2,200 employees carry out research into and develop technologies for microcontrollers, sensors and power semiconductors and make chips there – including for the automotive industry. System integration is gaining in importance to enable complex interaction between semiconductors in more and more technically sophisticated cars. Modeling complex systems and developing highly integrated products will be one of the new Development Center’s core tasks in addition to chip design. “Microelectronics is responsible for around 90 percent of all innovations in the car. Semiconductors are a prerequisite for electromobility and autonomous driving, trends that are major growth drivers for Infineon,” says Dr. Reinhard Ploss, Chief Executive Officer of Infineon Technologies AG. “Algorithms, artificial

intelligence and the Internet of Things play a key part in the increasing networking of traffic systems. The new Development Center will also address those issues intensively. We will create synergies as a result of the direct links with our development and production location in Dresden. That will help us develop products faster and put them on the market

sooner.” “Over the past years we’ve continuously increased our share of the growing market for automotive electronics,” says Peter Schiefer, Division President Automotive at Infineon. “We’re one of the technology leaders in the field of electromobility and autonomous driving. We’ll expand our leading position further thanks to the new Development Center in Dresden.” “The State Government of Saxony offers us ideal conditions to do business in Dresden,” says Mathias Kamolz, Managing Director of Infineon Technologies Dresden GmbH. “We can also leverage a broad network of suppliers, universities, research establishments and public institutions in Saxony. The new Development Center will help Infineon enhance its development expertise in Dresden and deepen its successful collaboration with local partners.” Automotive is Infineon’s largest business area: Semiconductors for the automotive industry generate 42 percent of the Group’s revenue. Infineon expects that the trend toward electrically driven, connected and increasingly autonomous cars will help boost its growth significantly in the coming years.

CMOS Image Sensor Sales Stay on Record-Breaking Pace

The spread of digital camera applications in vehicles, machine vision, human recognition and security systems, as well as for more powerful camera phones will drive CMOS image sensor sales to an eighth straight record-high level this year with worldwide revenues growing 10% to $13.7 billion, following a 19% surge in 2017, according to IC Insights’ 2018 O-S-D Report—A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators,

and Discretes. The new 375-page report shows nothing stopping CMOS image sensors from continuing to set record-high annual sales and unit shipments through 2022 (Figure 1). CMOS image sensors continue to take marketshare from charge-coupled devices (CCDs) as embedded digital-imaging capabilities expand into a wider range of systems and new end-use applications, says the 2018 O-S-D Report. With

10 l New-Tech Magazine Europe