By Nathan Vifflin<\/p>\n
Dec 15 (Reuters) – STMicroelectronics has shipped more than 5 billion radio-frequency antenna chips to Elon Musk’s SpaceX \u200bfor the Starlink satellite network, and chips delivered under the \u200cpartnership in the next two years could double that number, a senior executive at \u200cthe chipmaker told Reuters.<\/p>\n
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT<\/p>\n
Ten years after Musk met with the CEO of one of Europe’s largest chipmakers, Jean-Marc Chery, STMicroelectronics is disclosing the scale of their fast-growing space contract that has become a \u2060driver for its specialised \u200cchip business.<\/p>\n
KEY QUOTES<\/p>\n
“The past 10 years of user terminals in terms of volume could actually double over \u200dthe next two years,” Remi El-Ouazzane, president of STMicro’s microcontrollers and digital integrated circuits division, said in the interview without giving specific targets.<\/p>\n
“I expect many lower-orbit satellite \u200bplayers to leverage the technology,” El-Ouazzane said about the BiCMOS-based \u200cantenna chips used in Starlink user terminals.<\/p>\n
CONTEXT<\/p>\n
The space industry is shifting from government-led projects to a fast-growing commercial market, driven by companies like SpaceX, Eutelsat’s OneWeb and Amazon’s planned Leo network.<\/p>\n
This boom is creating demand for specialised chips that can handle high data rates and \u2060survive harsh conditions in space.<\/p>\n
BY THE \u200bNUMBERS<\/p>\n
STMicro has delivered more than 5 billion \u200bradio-frequency “front-end modules” or antenna elements to SpaceX since their collaboration began around 2015.<\/p>\n
Starlink operates in more than 150 markets \u200dand has around \u20608 million users, according to its website.<\/p>\n
WHAT’S NEXT<\/p>\n
STMicro will supply the upcoming inter-satellite laser links for SpaceX platforms and is \u2060working with European players such as Thales and Eutelsat on projects including the European \u200cUnion’s planned Iris 2 satellite constellation.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nathan Vifflin \u200cin Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nathan Vifflin Dec 15 (Reuters) – STMicroelectronics has shipped more than 5 billion radio-frequency antenna chips to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[32847,11,174461,174463,174462,79,193,1513,174460],"class_list":["post-349978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-chips","tag-elon-musk","tag-jean-marc-chery","tag-radio-frequency","tag-remi-el-ouazzane","tag-science","tag-space","tag-spacex","tag-stmicroelectronics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}