Market research firm iSuppli Corp. estimates that China's semiconductor market grew 15 percent in revenue last year, reaching $52 billion from $45 billion in 2006. If the estimates are correct, 2007 marks a new high when the country's semiconductor revenue exceeds $50 billion for a year.

The firm also has reported that shipments of mainstream CE products recorded stable unit growth during the first three quarters last year, compared with the same period in 2006. It expects the annual growth in unit shipments of digital STBs and digital still cameras to exceed 30 percent, and LCD-TV shipments to double in 2007. iSuppli forecasts China's semiconductor market to expand by 12 percent in 2008, with revenue reaching $58 billion.

Semiconductor sales are driven by increasing demand for electronic equipment—not just from overseas but from its growing domestic market. For instance, China has (by some estimates) 100 million PCs, 20 million printers, 2 million servers and 2 million projectors.

Reports from China estimate that if a common desktop consumes about 200W and each computer works for about 4hrs/day and for 250 days/year, the total PC power consumption could have exceeded 20 billion watts in 2007. The total power consumed just by IT products in China in 2007 is estimated to be between 30 billion KWh and 50 billion KWh, which is close to the annual output from the Three Gorges Damn (49.25 billion KWh in 2006). No wonder then that there's concern that consumer products—including TV sets and computer equipment—are on their way to consuming more power than kitchen appliances and lighting equipment.

Call for initiatives
Industry organizations are waking up to the need to conserve power and have rolled initiatives such as the 80 PLUS program. China, which has an eco-labeling rule for hazardous substances à la EU's RoHS that affects select electronic equipment, still has nothing comprehensive for power consumption.

The EU, which has usually been at the forefront of responsible environmental action in the form of legislation, set the ball rolling in the direction of energy conservation as its directive on energy-using products came into effect last August. The directive focuses on two ways of reducing the energy consumed by products: labeling to raise consumer awareness on the real energy use thereby influencing their buying decisions and energy efficiency requirements imposed on products right from the design phase. In fact, EU reports estimate that over 80 percent of all product-related environmental impacts are determined during the design phase of a product.

However, challenges to reducing power consumption keep increasing. New portable consumer applications not only demand longer battery life but require higher processing power for multimedia content.

New design techniques
To address such challenges right from the design intent and component selection stages, the 13th International IC-China Conference & Exhibition (IIC-China) will host technology leaders in Chengdu, Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai (Feb. 28 to Mar. 11, 2008) to speak on new design techniques and tools, and new technologies that can help China's product developers achieve their power goals. The IIC-China panel discussion, titled Towards Power-Efficient Design, will help fire up engineering geniuses in the country to come up with low-power, environmentally responsible design.

See you there.

Back to top