MEMS resonators continue to show potential

Startup companies are continuing to work on replacing traditional quartz  resonators with the more advantageous MEMS  devices.  We spoke with Discera's President and CEO Tom Willey about his company's recent activities, competition and future plans.

MEMS Investor Journal:  Discera experienced a management change with you coming in as the new CEO last December.  Why were you brought in and how will the company be different under your leadership?

Tom Willey:  Most successful start up companies undergo a change in their development phases.  Typically they will begin with the discovery or research phase, then migrate to the development phase, and eventually transition into the commercialization phase.  Each of these phases are distinct, and have need for different skill sets.  Discera was at the cusp of moving from the development phase to the commercialization phase.  My background in commercializing products to create viable and sustainable high growth organizations  created an opportunity for mutual success.  Since I have come on board, the company is very focused on delivering tangible results that directly lead to a product in the market, and scaling revenues quickly.  This requires a number of different functions in the company working in cohesion, including technology, engineering, operations, sales and marketing. 

MEMS Investor Journal:  SiTime, with industry veteran Kurt Petersen at the helm, is seen as a solid competitor for Discera.  What are you doing to emerge as the leading MEMS resonator provider?

Tom Willey:  Discera has been involved directly for the last 10 years in creating, developing and now commercializing MEMS based CMOS resonators.  The team at Discera has had to blaze a new path in commercializing this difficult technology into viable products.  Our initial samples were available about a year and a half ago.  Since then, we have been busy working on creating a stable, repeatable, high yielding product, and all the reliability testing that is associated with bringing a new product to the market.  I am happy to say that Discera has made significant strides towards this, and we are now very stable and have met all our key objectives in commercializing our resonators. 

SiTime is a very credible organization, and we wish them the best.  We are very happy to see other companies that are now also participating in this arena, as it lends a lot more comfort to customers and stakeholders with respect to using MEMS resonators.  This is a large market, and growing.  We believe that there will be place for other companies, including SiTime, and other equally promising startups.

MEMS Investor Journal:  What about other emerging timing startups such as Mobius Microsystems?

Tom Willey:  As the timing industry is large and fragmented, with a relatively flat landscape from a product innovation perspective, we expect that there will be a number of players trying to get into the market.  Some of these players will use MEMS, while others will use different techniques.  Each approach has its pros and cons.  Our focus is the high volume standard XO space, that has a performance requirement of between 10ppm to 100ppm. 

MEMS Investor Journal:  Have you seen any other interesting startups with alternative approaches for frequency generation?

Tom Willey:  There are a few teams, and companies working on alternative materials but fundamentally the same approach as Discera.  Companies such as Silicon Clocks come to mind, with their approach of using SiGe over a CMOS wafer for their MEMS processing.  At present, we continue to closely monitor activities at some of the key university programs, including the University of Michigan, and University of California, Irvine, where we have close ties with professors running their MEMS programs.

MEMS Investor Journal:  Besides pilots and prototypes, have Discera’s products been integrated in mass manufactured products yet?   

Tom Willey:  Not as yet.  Discera is very close to getting into mass manufactured products.  We have been integrated into samples of products that are being targeted to enter the market over the next few months.  The market response to Discera has been outstanding, and we anticipate a rapid ramp to revenues.  The focus that we have brought towards commercialization includes choosing programs that are targeted more towards volume production than towards pure play technology development.

MEMS Investor Journal:  What are the biggest challenges in convincing a customer to switch from the traditional quartz or ceramic resonator to your components?

Tom Willey:  Reliability is a big factor.  Engineers have been using quartz crystal based products ever since they have been schooled.  It is easy to ignore new products, especially using a different approach.  Fortunately, there are some standard reliability tests that we have passed, to demonstrate to our customers that we are as reliable, if not more reliable than the products they are using today.  To drive home this point, Discera has worked on a program that has stressed our products in far more harsh an environment than our end customers would expect to see their products survive.  In a recent test, Discera’s XOs survived over 30,000G.  This test was done with a well known third party company that is a potential customer of ours.  To put this into perspective, most of the standard tests today require that you pass a drop test.  The maximum amount of force that we see is up to 4Gs in most of the reliability tests that our customers require.

The other big challenge is showing that you can provide enough quantities, quickly.  As we are fabless, and use a pretty much standard CMOS process, we are able to scale our production very quickly.  Our current yields are in the high 90s (%), which makes us very viable as a supplier.  Our process is also portable, and in order to bring on a second source, this is possible fairly quickly.  Our plan is to bring on a second source when the time is right.

MEMS Investor Journal:  What kinds of applications are best suited for your products today?

Tom Willey:  Our products are very low in power, and hence are well suited for portable applications, as well as applications that have a tight power budget.  These days, with the power issue becoming a major cause for concern in most electronic devices, we expect that there will be a broad appreciation for our low power XOs.  In addition, there are a number of applications in the consumer electronic, and PC space, that we believe we will be well suited for.  Our XOs are targeted to be in the most commonly used frequency ranges, between 1MHz to 125 MHz.

MEMS Investor Journal:  Which applications are better suited to continue to use quartz and ceramic resonators until your technology matures?

Tom Willey:  We believe that quartz and ceramic resonators are going to be around for some time.  At present, the higher performance ultra low jitter (sub 1ps) applications (high end networking infrastructure) will be serviced by quartz crystal resonators.  Over time, we will address these various markets.  It is a question of focusing on a target market segment, and executing.

MEMS Investor Journal:  What are the main milestones on your agenda for the rest of 2006 and through 2007?

Tom Willey:  We are focused on ramping into volume production.  For the rest of 2006 and early into 2007, there are a lot of operations related activities to get ready for high volume manufacturing.  On the sales and marketing side, we are focused on building our channel partners, and readying for the launch of the product.  Through the rest of 2007, our plan is to have a succession of products and channel partners that we will announce.

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Tom Willey leads Discera as president and CEO and has 15 years experience growing successful businesses in the communications and wireless semiconductor market.

In his time with Philips Semiconductors, Willey doubled the TDMA/CDMA cellular chip business to $270M and was responsible for penetrating the fast growing Chinese cellular handset manufacturing market. Willey has successfully led efforts in all aspects of the semiconductor industry including product strategy and vision, product development through customer design wins and order fulfillment.

Prior to joining Discera, he was President and CEO of Innovics Wireless, where he is credited with developing and delivering the industry’s first WCDMA data PC card using the company’s baseband 3G-modem chip.

Willey has also held leadership positions with VLSI, National Semiconductor and Hewlett Packard. 

Willey has a bachelor’s degree with honors (1st Class) in electronics engineering from Paisley University, Paisley, UK and a master’s degree in electronics from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK.