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As Starlink surpasses 8 million users of its network and terminals for home and business broadband access, STMicroelectronics, a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications, and SpaceX celebrate ten years of collaboration driving innovation with co-design of custom-made components for satellite communication. Over the past decade, the collaboration has produced billions of co-designed products used in millions of Starlink user terminals in addition to over 10,000 Starlink satellites, including Starlink’s latest V3 satellite, which provides more than 1 Tbps of fronthaul throughput.
The Starlink user terminal is the first and only consumer electronics phased array antenna, that delivers reliable high-speed internet by connecting to thousands of Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. Designed for self-install, Starlink is set up with just two steps, plug it in, point at the sky. SpaceX has pioneered high-rate manufacturing of these complex antennas while maintaining robust supply chain operations and ensuring the timely delivery of Starlink hardware to its expanding global customer base. Today, Starlink produces over 20,000 terminals per day for shipment to customers in more than 150 countries. ST products have been critical to allow SpaceX to scale production to meet the growing demand for Starlink connectivity globally.
“Our partnership with STMicroelectronics has been instrumental in enabling the scale and performance of Starlink. We are excited to continue this journey with ST to deliver the next generation connectivity solutions that make high-speed internet available to more people, helping improve education, healthcare, and business opportunities in places that never had reliable internet before” emphasized Gwynne Shotwell, President and COO at SpaceX.
“We are proud to celebrate a decade of collaboration with SpaceX. From initial concept to high-volume manufacturing, our close collaboration has been instrumental in realizing SpaceX’s vision and meeting their very ambitious mission. Through co-designing key chips, providing engineering services and delivering high-volume manufacturing, we demonstrate the exceptional value of ST’s innovation and manufacturing capabilities. While supplying billions of products annually for Starlink user terminals, we also contribute critical technologies to in-orbit systems onboard Starlink satellites, underscoring ST’s longstanding expertise in space-grade applications.” said Remi El-Ouazzane, President, Microcontrollers, Digital ICs, and RF Products Group at STMicroelectronics.
Starlink products are co-designed with ST engineers located in France and Italy, manufactured in fabs located in France and packaged and tested in Malaysia and Malta. The collaboration has focused on products based on BiCMOS technology, for which ST developed a new manufacturing process with Starlink as lead customer around PLP (panel level packaging) technology to meet the very challenging requirements in terms of volume and quality at competitive costs. The scaling of ST’s PLP operations has already enabled a delivery run rate of over 5 million chips per day to meet the fast ramp-up of Starlink’s operations. In addition, Starlink is also using multiple ST products including STM32, secure elements, GNSS across its broadband satellites’ constellation, direct-to-cell satellites, ground infrastructure and user terminals.
The collaboration continues beyond this milestone, built on the same deeply collaborative model and focused on next-generation satellites and user terminals. It centers on advancing new generations of key enabling technologies for phased-array antennas powered by ST’s BiCMOS-based solutions.
