“We started shipping in 2008 – we were in single digit millions at that time – now we’ve just shipped our billionth device,” saysv SiTime’s CEO Rajesh Vashist, “in the last three years the volume has really ramped.”

Coincidentally, that is the time the company has been owned by MegaChips of Japan which bought SiTime in 2014.

The process of transitioning customers from quartz to MEMS is interesting. As system performance increases there comes a point at which the demands of the application push up against the capabilities of quartz. It could be a temperature issue, a vibration issue, reliability, accuracy, size or something else. At this point SiTime steps in.

SiTime, which supplies 90% of MEMS-based timers, goes about this process of infiltrating the $6.5 billion timing market by monitoring customers’ evolving product demands.

“We go to our top 20 customers and ask them what their problems are,” says Vashist, “it’s tough keeping up with some of the applications coming along today.“

This interaction with its biggest customers keeps SiTime on the edge of increasingly stringent product requirements. “What they want today the rest of the market wants tomorrow,”says Vashist.

Take a new-ish market like wearables where size is crucial. “Our smallest part is 1.5mm x 0.8mm – it’s not offered by anyone else,”says Vashist, “so in wearables it gets adopted on a heartbeat.”

The market penetration process is one of identifying the next system, and where in that system, the next quartz-to-MEMS transition will occur.

“Where the market is already served well by quartz, we don’t go there,” says Vashist, “what can’t be done by quartz is where we go.”

So SiTime is on a quest.

“SiTime is redefining timing technology, and we’ve only just begun our journey,” says Vashist, “SiTime is uniquely focused on solving the most difficult timing problems for the electronics industry. That is why customers are using our timing products in self-driving cars, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence systems, and 5G infrastructure.”

For instance telecoms always needs better performing devices and has been a fertile ground for MEMS timing devices. “Telecoms has been a big place for us,” says Vashist, “satellites, switches, servers, basestations, storage – it’s been a growth trajectory for SiTime.”

The company’s super-TCXOs (temperature compensated oscillators) are designed specifically for telecommunications and networking equipment.

“Network densification is driving rapid deployment of equipment in uncontrolled environments such as basements, curbsides, rooftops, and on poles,” says Vashist, “precision timing components in these systems must now operate in the presence of high temperature, thermal shock, vibration and unpredictable airflow. Service providers are questioning if quartz technology is up to this challenge. Customers have enthusiastically validated MEMS-based devices as they uniquely solve such environmental issues. We believe that our MEMS-based Elite platform will transform the $1.5 billion telecommunications and networking timing market.”

Automotive is also a growing area. “We have great design wins in LED headlights and ECUs,” says Vashist.

Industrial IoT is good. “Smart robotics, smart machine tools, smart meters are all using MEMS timing,” he says.

Alexas, smartphones and wearables lead the consumer applications

A big recommendation is there have been no defects. “We’ve not had a single MEMS failure in the billion units we’ve shipped,”says Vashist, “we give a warranty for the life-time of the product.”

SiTime has 10,000 customers which sounds a lot but isn’t really, according to Vashist. “We have less than 10% of the market,” he says.

Which, of course, means that SiTime is just starting out.