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ECWC 2014 Market Session: Connecting the World
Burr talked about “The Bothersome Bump”--the initial filling-up of light-bulb sockets was forecast to consume 2 billion bulbs worth of capacity per year. But after an initial build-up, peaking at about six years, there would be an enormous capacity hangover. Perhaps a smaller secondary peak would be seen at nine years, and another, even smaller, at 12 years corresponding to replacement cycles, but steady state demand volume would show only a gradual linear increase in line with ongoing growth of the total number of sockets. That was where Haitz’s Law diverged from Moore’s Law. There was a limit to how much light the world needed, so whereas the demand for computing power was near infinite, lighting requirements were finite, and as LED efficiencies improved, the actual number of luminaires required to achieve a given lighting level was decreasing significantly.
What would be the consequence on the PCB industry? Rapidly growing markets would drive substrate volumes. Increasing power density--more output per LED and more LEDs per unit area--would demand greater thermal conductivity and create a substantial and growing demand for metal-in-board substrates. Developments in the technology of LEDs themselves, for example the alternatives for producing a pure white light by the use of coloured phosphors on basic blue-white LEDs, or white and multi-colours by combination of monochromatic red, green and blue LEDs, powered and switched separately and requiring more complex metal-in-board interconnects.
The initial market surge was expected to subside in the middle of the decade, although it was anticipated that the shortfall would be filled by new applications as new capabilities of solid state lighting were realised. All of these developments would require enhanced thermal and power management capability from the interconnect and the printed circuit industry would respond with an expanding range of solutions going beyond established metal-base and metal-core technologies to provide cost-effective solutions to the challenges of thermal and power management, enabling new applications, and market opportunities.
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