Advanced manufacturing and MEMS key to Canada's role in the Internet of Things

Advanced manufacturing and an evolving class of microelectronic devices were the hot topics at Innovation by Design, a symposium for the micro- and nano-electronics sectors, held in Gatineau QC last week. Driven by the explosive worldwide growth of the Internet of Things — the interconnection of identifiable embedded computing devices using the Internet — the race is on to design, build and market components of increasingly sophisticated devices for myriad industry sectors from smart phones and cyber security systems to automobiles.

For this year's event, CMC Microsystems and the Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC) were joined by the Sherbrooke QC-based MiQro Innovation Collaborative Center. C2Mi's involvement provided the symposium with a broad scope ranging from fundamental, academic-based research to industry collaboration for developing the latest packaging designs and materials required for increasingly pervasive and powerful micro-devices. ITAC's participation stems from its merger with the Strategic Microelectronics Council in 2001 (R$, November 13/01)

Despite market failure or foreign acquisition of many of Canada's semiconductor-driven firms — most notably the demise of Nortel Networks Corp — Canada's microelectronics research base remains largely intact with several promising firms continuing to grow and innovate domestically. And with dramatic advances in the development of a new class of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), many see new opportunities arising for Canada to play a major role.

There will be 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020, according to tech market research firm Gartner Inc.

Key to the realization of Canada as a significant competitor in the MEMS space is C2Mi, a novel collaborative venture between industry and academia. With 70 industrial partners including industry giants IBM and Teledyne-Dalsa, C2Mi is a formidable breeding ground for small- and medium-sized enterprises to position themselves in sophisticated value chains underpinning tech-based electronics.

"The Internet of Things is music to everyone's ears," says Luc Ouellet, VP technology development at Teledyne DALSA Semiconductor, noting the rapid growth in the use of machine-to-machine and vehicle-to-vehicle technologies. Ouellet cautions that the explosive growth in consumer electronics — a dominant driver in sales of microelectronics devices — is impacting revenues as prices fall for increasingly sophisticated devices. That places the onus on industry-academic collaboration to create the next value-added advancements to further propel growth.

"We need another $100-billion product," asserts Ouellet.

Yet the absence of an overarching strategy for microelectronics technologies and lackluster support from the federal government could hinder Canada's future role in the sector.

"We dropped the ball on semiconductors, let's get MEMS. There's lots of great research coming out of Canadian universities but it stops at papers. It drives me mad," says Brian Harling, a semiconductor industry veteran, mentor and co-founder of Montreal-based Widesail Technologies Inc. "Right now we can't grow companies to $1 billion (in revenue) and we have to solve this."

The federal government's attitude may be changing. The concept of advanced manufacturing and the paradigm shift it requires for R&D and manufacturing processes is now on prime minister Stephen Harper's radar, as made clear by comments he made at a Brampton ON event in late September.

"We are not going to compete in that (manufacturing) sector in a way we used to do it in the past. We're not going to compete on low skilled kind of mass manufactured products. We're going to compete in areas of manufacturing that are innovative, that are high end, often that are niche oriented that require investments in capital and highly skilled workforces," said Harper. "Manufacturers and exporters tell me they are seeing that transformation within the manufacturing sector. … I'm actually quite optimistic for the sector going forward."

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