Organizations across many industries are developing new products that provide extremely sophisticated functionality and increased levels of performance, while taking up less space and consuming less power in various environments. In the fields of optical, RF and microelectronics, this is resulting in the convergence of these capabilities in a variety of leading-edge technology products.
For instance, industries like the medical, automotive and datacom sectors are adding smaller, more integrated and higher performing technology into products to make medical devices, electric vehicles and datacenters smarter, more capable and efficient.
Next generation mmWave Antenna in Package (AIP) assemblies require complex RF design skills that must also be combined with advanced microelectronic packaging experience and assembly processes. New optical transceivers require heterogenous integration of optical and electronic components, coupled with innovative packaging and microelectronic assembly technology.
We are seeing an inflection point in the development of new technology products as trends towards miniaturization and tighter integration of RF and microelectronic capabilities opens the door to a whole new realm of applications across many markets that touch people’s lives every day.
Cross Technology & Industry Experience
For more than fifteen years, Sanmina has been providing advanced development, design, manufacturing and sustaining engineering services to organizations for technology products that require these RF, optical and microE capabilities. Recognizing the importance of these technology and industry trends, we’ve recently formalized these capabilities under one division with the new name Advanced Micro Systems Technologies (AMST).
Our work spans a broad number of markets including the telecom, medical, automotive and defense and aerospace sectors. The integration of these technology themes under one division leverages a commonality and learning that can be applied across multiple products and market segments.
For example, we’ve worked for many years on optical technology that was originally created and proven in the telecom market and have transferred that skill set to the medical industry, as many new point-of-care solutions begin to incorporate optical sensing capabilities. In addition, our experience working on defense and aerospace components with SWaP (size, weight and power) requirements helps us better support our customers in other market segments.
Wide Range of Engagement Models
When customers come to Advanced Micro Systems Technologies, typically their biggest concerns are achieving faster time to market, obtaining the resources and technology needed to meet development timelines, differentiating their product from the competition through integration, customization of their fundamental chip-level IP and being able to ramp a new product to scale.
The services and capabilities we provide can vary widely, depending on a customer’s priorities. In some situations, a customer comes to us with a blank sheet of paper and asks us to develop a complete solution on their behalf. In other cases, the customer is looking for us to act as an extension of their team and collaborate on a development project.
A customer may engage with us before a product is even conceptualized to perform a feasibility study or to help them select relevant technologies and suppliers to consider as part of a new product. In yet another scenario, a customer might want to leverage our design expertise and have us take on a consulting role to further refine a product so that it is more manufacturable, or tailored to optimize the manufacturing equipment and processes that are required to make it.
For the most part, engagements happen in the standard product development lifecycle, starting with conceptualization, moving to detailed design and then into qualification and verification. Then the collaboration moves to NPI and the transition to volume production.
What Sets Advanced Micro Systems Technologies Apart
Customers come to Advanced Micro Systems Technologies when they are looking for something unique or different that breaks the mold and that can’t easily be achieved using established processes or current product architectures. They may be having challenges finding other suppliers or partners that can tailor solutions according to their needs because they don’t fit into standard platforms. In other cases, a supplier may not think that the volume for the new product fits into their factory scale.
Some of the advantages of working with our team on these types of projects include:
- Complete solution. Advanced Microsystems Technologies provides end-to-end services with a bridge between development and manufacturing. Most manufacturers don’t offer design and development and therefore can’t provide the direct link to new product introduction (NPI). By designing a product with a global manufacturer, alignment between the product, equipment and processes is assured and enables faster time to market.
- Depth of experience. Having experts with decades of advanced technology experience is critical since understanding different technology markets is almost as important as understanding a product itself. We’ve got experts ready to take on unique and exacting requirements, whether it’s magnetic molding, fabrication and assembly processes for advanced substrates like silicon photonics, or SMT side component placement. Our teams run statistical analysis and simulations to predict yield and ensure the performance at the very early stages of new products.
- Co-located design and development. Because design engineers, process engineers and manufacturing experts are all co-located, quite often a walk down the hall can quickly solve a question about assembly or some other issue. We can do rapid prototyping and testing without having to ship the product somewhere else, improving a customer’s time to market and time to money. From there, cost-effective volume manufacturing can happen across our global footprint.
- IP agnostic. Customers can come to us without worrying that we will reuse their IP, bypassing the need to pay high fees for the value of a component.
- Sustaining engineering services. We can oversee day-to-day aspects of manufacturing a product with a constant focus on finding opportunities to reduce costs and improve yield. This in turn frees up a customer’s engineering team to focus more time on developing next generation products that keep them ahead of the competition.
To learn more, take a look at the press release we issued today.
