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Commentary / Analysis

• First-Quarter 2020 Global Semiconductor Equipment Billings Up 13 Percent Year-Over-Year (Tuesday Jun. 02, 2020)
  Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings contracted 13 percent to US$15.57 billion quarter-over-quarter in Q1 2020 but increased 13 percent year-over-year.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Decrease 1.2 Percent Month-to-Month in April (Monday Jun. 01, 2020)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors were $34.4 billion for the month of April 2020, 1.2 percent less than the March 2020 total of $34.9 billion, but 6.1 percent more than the April 2019 total of $32.4 billion.
  
  
• Cloud Computing Is Changing Everything About Electronic Design (Monday Jun. 01, 2020)
  Cloud computing is changing everything about electronic design, according to Jeff Bier, founder of the Edge AI and Vision Alliance.
  
  
• Texas Instruments Maintains Firm Grip As World's Top Analog IC Supplier (Friday May. 29, 2020)
  With analog sales of $10.2 billion and 19% marketshare, Texas Instruments held a firm grip on its position as the leading supplier of analog devices in 2019. TI’s analog sales declined by about $600 million compared to 2018 yet it still had more than 10x the sales of tenth-ranked Renesas.
  
  
• Chip Equipment Becomes Trade War's Latest Battlefield (Thursday May. 28, 2020)
  
  
  
• DARPA Looks to Automate Security for IC Design (Thursday May. 28, 2020)
  The latest in a series of Pentagon semiconductor initiatives seeks to embed security features into chip designs that would allow silicon architects to probe economics-versus-security tradeoffs while baking in security throughout device lifecycles.
  
  
• Domain Specific Accelerators Will Drive Vector Processing on RISC-V (Wednesday May. 27, 2020)
  When the RISC-V market first began, the initial rush was to cost reduce designs that would have otherwise used proprietary CPU instruction set architectures (ISAs) in deeply embedded applications.
  
  
• GlobalFoundries Abandons Chengdu Wafer Fab (Tuesday May. 26, 2020)
  GlobalFoundries has finally given up on its wafer fab planned in Chengdu. The company filed official notices of closure, along with documents certifying the last 74 employees will be offered severance pay.
  
  
• Senators Seek Suspension of TSMC US Fab Project (Monday May. 25, 2020)
  U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and two other Democratic Party senators have called for a suspension of a planned project by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to build a chip plant in the state of Arizona.
  
  
• The TSMC and Huawei Announcements Are Not as Linked as You May Think (Monday May. 25, 2020)
  The industry was rocked last week by two U.S. announcements that seem interconnected.
  
  
• China to Fall Far Short of its "Made-in-China 2025" Goal for IC Devices (Monday May. 25, 2020)
  IC production in China represented 15.7% of its $125 billion IC market in 2019, up only slightly from 15.1% five years earlier in 2014.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts April 2020 Billings (Friday May. 22, 2020)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.26 billion in billings worldwide in April 2020
  
  
• CEO interview: The importance of being agile (Thursday May. 21, 2020)
  We asked Tim Ramsdale, CEO of Agile Analog Ltd. (Cambridge, England), to say more about the core of Agile Analog's technology and also how he sees the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
  
  
• Politics Haunts TSMC's US Fab Plan (Wednesday May. 20, 2020)
  The announcement by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) last week to build a fab in the United States was very likely motivated by a number of political factors, according to people with knowledge of the matter. It’s a move that could haunt TSMC and its future.
  
  
• CXL Protocol Adds Capabilities over PCIe (Tuesday May. 19, 2020)
  The Compute Express Link (CXL) protocol is rapidly gaining traction in data centers. It’s an alternate protocol that runs across the standard PCI Express (PCIe).
  
  
• TSMC Ariz Fab a Tangled Web (Monday May. 18, 2020)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is no Foxconn. Foxconn promised a big LCD fab in Wisconsin, but that ended up producing nothing but a photo opp for Terry Gou and Donald Trump.
  
  
• SMIC Aims to Raise More Than $3B for Expansion (Tuesday May. 12, 2020)
  Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), based in Shanghai, aims to sell new shares that could raise more than $3 billion for investment in expansion.
  
  
• TSMC Expected to Rebound in 2021 on AMD Gains (Monday May. 11, 2020)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is likely to see a strong rebound starting next year as fabless companies such as AMD grab market share from Intel, according to Wedbush Securities senior vice president Matt Bryson.
  
  
• Imagination Inquiry Exposes Wider Risk of IP Sales to China (Thursday May. 07, 2020)
  Imagination Technologies’ now-defunct plan to add four Chinese investors to its executive board has touched a raw nerve in the UK and triggered a series of events leading to a full-blown government inquiry.
  
  
• HiSilicon First China-Based Semi Supplier to be Ranked in Top-10 (Wednesday May. 06, 2020)
  In total, the top-10 semiconductor companies’ sales surged by 16% in 1Q20 compared to 1Q19, more than twice the total worldwide semiconductor industry 1Q20/1Q19 increase of 7%.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Decrease 3.6 Percent in First Quarter of 2020 (Tuesday May. 05, 2020)
  First-quarter sales decreased 3.6 percent compared to the previous quarter, which is in line with typical seasonal trends, and increased 6.9 percent compared to the first quarter of 2019.
  
  
• Imagination Previews Shifting Views Prior to UK Hearing (Tuesday May. 05, 2020)
  Tuesday morning in London, a cadre of Imagination Technologies executives past and present will be questioned on the company’s plans by the UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
  
  
• Global Silicon Wafer Area Shipments Edge Up in First Quarter 2020 Despite COVID-19 Headwinds (Monday May. 04, 2020)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments rose 2.7 percent to 2,920 million square inches in the first quarter of 2020, compared with fourth-quarter 2019 shipments of 2,844 million square inches, but dropped 4.3 percent year-over-year
  
  
• Is IPO in China Imagination's Only Possible Exit Path? (Monday May. 04, 2020)
  Next week the U.K. government will hold a parliamentary hearing to consider establishing an instrument similar to America’s CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.) to protect UK companies from takeovers deemed against the national interest. The impetus for considering such a measure is what’s going on with Imagination Technologies.
  
  
• Covid-19 and America's Vulnerabilities - A Way Forward (Monday May. 04, 2020)
  The unfolding Covid-19 crisis exposed America’s significant economic and security vulnerabilities. We no longer produce — indeed are unable to develop — many of the things we need to run a modern, prosperous economy.
  
  
• Total Foundry Revenue to Undergo Single-Digit Growth in 2020, Owing to Deferred Seasonality from COVID-19 (Wednesday Apr. 29, 2020)
  Prior to the onset of COVID-19, foundries had originally forecasted a double-digit revenue growth YoY. However, given the deferred schedule of disease containment and the uncertain recovery time for market demand, TrendForce is forecasting a 5%-9% single-digit YoY growth in foundry revenue this year, with 6.8% being the median.
  
  
• Memory Market Not Forecast to Exceed 2018 High of $163.3B until 2022 (Wednesday Apr. 29, 2020)
  A weak DRAM market put a lid on growth in the total memory market in 2015 and 2016. But robust DRAM and NAND flash market growth in 2017 and 2018 lifted the total memory market 64% and 26%, respectively .
  
  
• Wave Computing Set to File Chapter 11, With MIPS the Likely Winner (Monday Apr. 27, 2020)
  Rumors are rife this week that Wave Computing, which also has MIPS under its wing, is heading for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. At the time of writing, a simple web search for filings of U.S. bankruptcies does not show them listed, so this is not the case – yet.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts March 2020 Billings (Monday Apr. 27, 2020)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.21 billion in billings worldwide in March 2020 (three-month average basis), according to the March Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• IC Unit Shipments Forecast to Display First-Ever Back-to-Back Decline (Wednesday Apr. 22, 2020)
  IC Insights forecasts that worldwide IC unit shipments will register their first-ever back-to-back annual decline in 2020.