Industrial players of GNSS - European chip industry
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Industrial players of GNSS - European chip industry
There are several GPS/GNSS players in the European chip industry and their offerings vary depending on whether they are owners of the
chip level hardware and software IP, their manufacturing capability, i.e. are they a chip maker with silicon chip fabrication facilities (fabs) or
a fab-less chip company/IP provider? ST Microelectronics (France/Italy) have their own proprietary GPS hardware and software IP which
they sell on the open market, but they also offer design and foundry services to fab-less chip companies and key OEM’s to build custom
GPS chips sometimes using third party GPS technology. Parthus (Ireland) are a fab-less chip company, they offer silicon design services
and license their proprietary GPS Hardware and Software IP to other chip makers. Infineon (Germany) have a co-operation with Trimble
(U.S.A), where Infineon build and market a GPS chip set based on Trimble GPS IP. Philips Semiconductor (Netherlands) was in a similar
situation, they had a GPS chipset but had a co-operation with Ashtec (U.S.A.) to provide GPS software support. It is therefore sometimes
necessary to ask the question “when is a European chip maker not a European chip maker?”
To be successful in the market a chip set vendor cannot just sell the chips, they must also have the application software, development tools
and application know-how (reference design etc.) to support the chip set. This is particularly important for GPS/GNSS chip sets that are
highly programmable products, expert knowledge is required to write the software and also to design/layout the RF section. Industrial cooperations
are sometimes sought to bring all the various elements together to make the complete GPS/GNSS product offering.
On a wider level, chip makers often forge strategic alliances with key customers to combine silicon know-how with system know-how to
produce innovative, market driven products with better performance and lower cost. This focus on partnership means that chip makers are
increasingly reluctant to invest in speculative, high-risk products. The Commission should therefore give careful consideration to ways of
stimulating the demand at the user for GALILEO enabled GNSS products.
Chip makers have a huge amount invested in fabs and it is imperative that these fabs are kept running at optimum capacity/efficiency.
Main-stream chip makers therefore target high volume products/applications to keep fabs full and to achieve good economies of scale.
Lower volume, high added value products/applications such as military, aviation and surveying, are generally serviced by specialist companies
with expertise in high accuracy techniques, military or CAA/FAA qualification/certification procedures etc.
As applications converge and main-stream chip makers adopt System On Chip (SOC) technologies, it is becoming increasingly important
for the chip maker to be able to offer a complete product/IP portfolio capable of supporting a broader application area. E.g. for Personal
Navigation the GPS/GNSS functionality may be integrated alongside PDA technology, GSM technology, etc., the GPS/GNSS function will
be increasingly seen as an IP building block. This then has an impact on the ability to charge royalties for GALILEO enabled chips, it is extremely
unlikely that the chip industry would stomach a scheme where the royalty is a fixed percentage of the price of the chip. Chips are
silicon real estate and the size of real estate dedicated to the GALILEO function, which is itself a subset of the GNSS function, is likely to be
a very small percentage of the total silicon area of a super-integrated System-On-Chip for Personal Navigation or Car Multimedia. Indeed
any attempt by the Commission or GALILEO Operating Company to charge royalties for GALILEO enabled chips would be seen as significant
barrier by chip makers given the fact that GPS is royalty free. [1]
References
[1] G.Dippel-Hens (GALILEAN working group report)
"GNSS business issues".
