Akustica announces innovation in single chip microphones
Akustica, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology manufacturer, announced availability of Akustica Microphone Chips, single-chip microphones to the market. The Akustica microphone chips are small, thin, light devices designed to replace the Electret Condenser Microphone (ECM), a fifty-year old technology that has been used in billions of portable electronic devices—while remaining fundamentally unchanged. The ECM, however, is limited by a number of acoustic issues: From RF noise, environmental noise, and mechanical/electromagnetic noise, the ECM cannot be used to easily eliminate all this mechanical and ambient noise—creating a number of pain points for millions of users of mobile phones, laptop computers and other digital media devices.
As a silicon microphone, Akustica’s Microphone Chips are not prone to the same degree of noise from any of these sources—thereby enabling superior acoustic environments.
Akustica’s Microphone Chips also offer numerous benefits to consumer electronics manufacturers. Because of their small size and surface-mountable design, Akustica’s Microphone Chips are ideally suited to space-constrained consumer electronics devices that are manufactured in high volumes.
As a MEMS device manufactured using standard Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) processes, Akustica’s Microphone Chips can be manufactured in quantity, with guaranteed uniformity, by existing CMOS foundries—rather than by dedicated MEMS foundries. Easier manufacturing increases access to the chips, lowering costs.
“With the consumer electronics industry recognising the demand for improved voice input quality, our launch of the world’s first single-chip microphones could not come at a better time,” said Jim Rock, co-founder and CEO, Akustica, Inc. “On the one hand, we are mainstreaming MEMS devices with our Microphone Chips for a broad consumer audience. On the other, we are helping manufacturers of laptop PCs, mobile phones and other digital media devices to overcome the acoustic problems that have seriously limited the widespread adoption of VoIP and other voice-based applications in the past.”
Yole Développement, industry analysts closely following this market, forecasts significant growth for the silicon microphone market, projecting an increase from 100 million units in 2005 to a TAM of 800 million units by 2010. “The MEMS industry is changing: The winning companies are delivering devices with embedded functionality. Featuring small size and easier integration, these devices also leverage the benefits of the semiconductor infrastructure in terms of manufacturing and cost structure. Companies such as Akustica are using this model to pave the way to high-volume applications,” said J-C Eloy, general manager of Yole Développement.
