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Commentary / Analysis

• Alibaba Reveals 16-core RISC-V Chip (Monday Jul. 29, 2019)
  Alibaba Group’s chip subsidiary, Pingtouge Semiconductor, this week announced what it claims is the most powerful RISC-V based processor, the Xuantie 910, targeting infrastructure for artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, and internet of things (IoT) as well as autonomous vehicles.
  
  
• Apple to Buy Intel's Modem Business for $1 Billion (Friday Jul. 26, 2019)
  Apple will pay about $1 billion to acquire Intel’s smartphone modem business, signaling that, despite a settlement reached with longtime supplier Qualcomm in April, Apple still has designs on its own silicon for 5G.
  
  
• Global GDP Impact on Worldwide IC Market Growth Expected to Rise (Friday Jul. 26, 2019)
  IC Insights forecasts that the 2018-2023 global GDP and IC market correlation coefficient will reach 0.88 (0.94 when excluding memory), up from 0.87 in the 2010-2018 timeperiod
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts July 2019 Billings (Friday Jul. 26, 2019)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.01 billion in billings worldwide in June 2019 (three-month average basis)
  
  
• Taiwan Startups Build on Hardware Heritage with AI Focus (Thursday Jul. 25, 2019)
  Taiwan may already be a key part of the electronics manufacturing supply chain, but it is now trying to enhance its image beyond manufacturing, as an enabler of hardware-based artificial intelligence (AI) services serving an increasingly data-driven society.
  
  
• Is Apple planning to acquire Intel's mobile business? (Wednesday Jul. 24, 2019)
  According to media reports, there are increasing signs that Apple will acquire the mobile division of chipmaker Intel. A deal as early as this week is considered possible.
  
  
• Who's Who in the Exodus from China to Southeast Asia (Wednesday Jul. 24, 2019)
  
  
  
• Second Quarter 2019 Silicon Wafer Area Shipments Fall 2.2 Percent from First Quarter Levels (Tuesday Jul. 23, 2019)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments totaled 2,983 million square inches in the second quarter of 2019, down 2.2 percent from the 3,051 million square inches shipped in the first quarter of the year and 5.6 percent lower than shipments during the same period in 2018
  
  
• TSMC Sees 5G Driving Strong Demand for 7nm (Tuesday Jul. 23, 2019)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) sees 5-nm and 7-nm demand improving from its earlier expectations, as the worldwide 5G development accelerates.
  
  
• CEOs Diverge on Moore's Law (Monday Jul. 22, 2019)
  Architecture is the new driver, say Arm, Micron, Xilinx
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue to Decline 9.6% in 2019 (Monday Jul. 22, 2019)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $429 billion in 2019, a decline of 9.6% from $475 billion in 2018, according to Gartner, Inc. This is down from the previous quarter’s forecast of -3.4%.
  
  
• Startup Runs AI in Novel SRAM (Monday Jul. 22, 2019)
  In his spare time, an engineer at Tektronix sketched out a novel deep-learning accelerator, and now his two-person startup is the latest example of the groundswell of enthusiasm that deep learning is generating.
  
  
• Nvidia Poaches Intel Safety Guru (Monday Jul. 22, 2019)
  At a time when companies in the electronics industry are competing fiercely to add “autonomy” to everything from end-point devices to robotics and autonomous vehicles, they are also waging a talent war over data scientists and AI algorithm developers. Emerging next is the recruitment battle over safety experts.
  
  
• Semi Content in Electronic Systems Forecast to Drop to 26.4% in 2019 (Thursday Jul. 18, 2019)
  The 2019 global electronic systems market will grow 4% to $1,680 billion. In contrast, the worldwide semiconductor market is expected to drop by 12% this year to $443.8 billion after exceeding the $500.0 billion level for the first time last year.
  
  
• Xiaomi picks up 6% stake in chip designer VeriSilicon (Wednesday Jul. 17, 2019)
  Smartphone major Xiaomi has picked up roughly 6 percent stake in chip designer VeriSilicon Holdings.
  
  
• PCIe a Battlefield for Intel, Rivals (Wednesday Jul. 17, 2019)
  A veteran analyst surveys the landscape of competing positions Intel, IBM, Nvidia, Xilinx and others have staked out on top of the fast-moving PCI Express (PCIe).
  
  
• TSMC achieved massive sales turnaround in June (Thursday Jul. 11, 2019)
  Leading foundry TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) returned to year-on-year growth in June with sales that were up 21.9 percent on what they were in June 2018. For the same month UMC has provided a sharp contrast.
  
  
• DRAM Capex to Plunge 28% in 2019 After Huge Outlays in 2017-18 (Thursday Jul. 11, 2019)
  After huge capex outlays for DRAM in 2017 and 2018, the question becomes how much new capacity will come online and how far DRAM prices (price per bit) will fall as a result of this buildup.
  
  
• Memory Startup Targets High-Performance Computing (Thursday Jul. 11, 2019)
  A Cambridge UK-based startup is looking to address the memory bottleneck (or tailback) in high-performance computing with a new memory chip design dedicated to handling large data sets and time-critical data.
  
  
• AI Seeks New Moore's Law (Wednesday Jul. 10, 2019)
  Can two industry-sized pain points add up to one historic opportunity? That's the hope a Google engineer sparked in a talk at Semicon West here.
  
  
• ESD Alliance Reports EDA Industry Revenue Increase for Q1 2019 (Monday Jul. 08, 2019)
  The Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 16.3 percent for Q1 2019 to $2606.4 million, compared to $2241 million in Q1 2018.
  
  
• China's Tsinghua Launches DRAM Unit (Thursday Jul. 04, 2019)
  Chinese government-backed Tsinghua Unigroup has established a new DRAM unit in a renewed push to achieve semiconductor independence amid ongoing friction with the U.S.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Decrease 14.6 Percent Year-to-Year in May (Tuesday Jul. 02, 2019)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors were $33.1 billion in May 2019, a decrease of 14.6 percent from the May 2018 total of $38.7 billion and 1.9 percent more than the April 2019 total of $32.5 billion.
  
  
• Semiconductor Industry Capex Forecast to Slump in 2019 and 2020 (Monday Jul. 01, 2019)
  Five of the past six semiconductor industry capex downturns have lasted two years before recovering
  
  
• Micron Cuts Capex, Wafer Starts (Thursday Jun. 27, 2019)
  U.S. memory chip supplier Micron Technology said that it would reduce its capital-spending plans for fiscal 2019 and 2020 and further trim wafer starts amid an ongoing demand slowdown that has thrown the memory market into a tailspin.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts May 2019 Billings (Friday Jun. 21, 2019)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.06 billion in billings worldwide in May 2019 (three-month average basis), according to the May Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Can Huawei Survive? (Wednesday Jun. 19, 2019)
  We knew it was going to be bad. But could being placed on the Trump Administration's export blacklist actually be enough to put Huawei out of business?
  
  
• U.S. Companies Dominate Worldwide IC Marketshare (Wednesday Jun. 19, 2019)
  China and Taiwan companies register double-digit shares in the fabless segment but very low shares of the IDM IC segment.
  
  
• Chiplet Ecosystem Slowly Picks up Steam (Tuesday Jun. 18, 2019)
  Momentum continues to coalesce slowly around the creation of an open chiplet ecosystem, enabling the heterogeneous integration of chiplets from multiple vendors in a system-in-package.
  
  
• Global Top Ten Foundries for 2Q19 Perform Less-than-expected Due to Sliding Demand and High Inventories, Says TrendForce (Monday Jun. 17, 2019)
  Suppliers' revenues generally exhibited a dropping trend YoY, and 2Q total revenue for foundries worldwide is expected to drop by about 8% compared to the same period 2018, arriving at US$15.4 billion. The top three in market shares are TSMC, Samsung and GlobalFoundries.