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Commentary / Analysis

• There's More to The RISC-V China Story (Monday Nov. 26, 2018)
  A professor in Beijing corrected us that the China Open Instruction Ecosystem (RISC-V) Alliance, known as CRVA, is no splinter group. We stand corrected. But the fact remains that RISC-V activities in China are fragmented.
  
  
• Only Qualcomm Reported to Post Slight Decline Among Top Ten Fabless IC Design Houses by 3Q18 Revenue, Says TrendForce (Monday Nov. 26, 2018)
  TrendForce announced the ranking of top 10 fabless IC design houses worldwide based on their revenues for 3Q18, among which Qualcomm was the only one to post a slight decline. The other nine companies all registered year-on-year growth in their revenue, driven by segments like networking, data center, automotive application and consumer electronics.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts October 2018 Billings (Wednesday Nov. 21, 2018)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.06 billion in billings worldwide in October 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the October Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Outlook Remains Bright for Automotive Electronic Systems Growth (Tuesday Nov. 20, 2018)
  Despite some high-profile setbacks with autonomous vehicles, auto electronic systems growth projects well; remains a hotbed for semiconductor growth.
  
  
• Mobileye's New EyeQ5: How Open is Open? (Monday Nov. 19, 2018)
  Mobileye is aggressively shedding its reputation as a one-trick vision chip supplier. As the technology of automotive industries transitions from driving assist to robo-taxi development, Mobileye, an Intel company, is rolling out a comprehensive plan to grab a sizable share in the highly automated vehicle (HAV) market.
  
  
• Q&A with ST CEO: Who He Is, What He's Done (Thursday Nov. 15, 2018)
  A little over five months ago, Jean-Marc Chery became the new CEO of STMicroelectronics. He succeeded Carlo Bozotti, whose latter part of a 13-year tenure at the Franco-Italian company was one of the most turbulent periods in the company’s history.
  
  
• Why RISC-V Lags in China (Thursday Nov. 15, 2018)
  China does appear to have many "buyers" interested in RISC-V cores. But as I hunt for "developers" trying to leverage the RISC-V instruction set, I'm coming up short in Shanghai.
  
  
• RISC-V Momentum Seen Growing in China (Thursday Nov. 15, 2018)
  Momentum is growing in China for RISC-V, according to reports from two vendors at an event here. Andes detailed six cores it currently sells and four more in the works using the open-source instruction set architecture, and GoWin demonstrated FPGAs using them.
  
  
• Nine Top-15 2018 Semi Suppliers Forecast to Post Double-Digit Gains (Tuesday Nov. 13, 2018)
  IC Insights’ November Update to the 2018 McClean Report, released later this month, includes a discussion of the forecasted top-25 semiconductor suppliers in 2018
  
  
• What NXP Lost and Regained Post-Qualcomm (Thursday Nov. 08, 2018)
  An 11-hour flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt in mid-June flipped almost every expectation in Lars Reger’s business life — lock, stock, and barrel. Anticipating the eventual merger between Qualcomm and NXP Semiconductors, Reger, NXP’s automotive CTO, had devised a technology roadmap for an automotive division that generates roughly half of NXP’s revenue.
  
  
• Third Quarter Silicon Wafer Shipments Increase, Set New Quarterly Record (Wednesday Nov. 07, 2018)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased during the third quarter 2018, surpassing record second quarter 2018 area shipments to set another all-time high, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.
  
  
• Judge Rules Qualcomm Must License Modem Patents (Wednesday Nov. 07, 2018)
  A U.S. federal judge issued a preliminary ruling requiring Qualcomm license some of its modem IC patents to competitors including Intel and Samsung.
  
  
• Arm's Data Center Two Step (Monday Nov. 05, 2018)
  Arm put smart offload processors in the spotlight at its annual developers’ conference because they are stepping stones to its data center ambitions. The cloud is the latest target for the still-small designer of cores that investor Softbank is betting will be a semiconductor giant someday.
  
  
• Knowledge Transfer, or IP Theft? (Monday Nov. 05, 2018)
  What can be characterized in good times as helping emerging economies develop knowledge or technology can look quite different when things get messy.
  
  
• Who's Who in AI SoCs (Monday Nov. 05, 2018)
  Beyond big guns like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Baidu, who have been designing their own chips for deep learning (both for training and inference), we’re hearing — almost weekly — about “nouvelle” AI SoC architectures invented by startups that nobody’s ever heard of.
  
  
• Samsung Still Spending Heavily on Capex (Monday Nov. 05, 2018)
  Samsung Electronics said that it would cut its semiconductor capital spending slightly and warned that the memory market is headed for a seasonal slowdown after two years of spectacular growth.
  
  
• New Architectures Bringing AI to the Edge (Friday Nov. 02, 2018)
  As artificial intelligence (AI) capability moves from the cloud to edge, it is inevitable that chipmakers will find ways to implement AI functions like neural-network processing and voice recognition in smaller, more efficient, and cost-effective devices.
  
  
• Chipmaker Results Point Toward Correction (Friday Nov. 02, 2018)
  A number of chipmaker earnings announcements over the last week had a common theme — softer demand, inventory correction, and potential impacts from the U.S.-China trade war.
  
  
• Quarterly Year-over-Year Growth Slows Substantially for IC Market (Friday Nov. 02, 2018)
  The first half of 2018 started out with strong quarterly year-over-year growth for the IC market. However, 3Q year-over-year IC market growth dropped to 14%. Moreover, with the softening of the memory market, IC Insights projects that year-over-year IC market growth in 4Q will be only 6%.
  
  
• Chinese Firm to Buy NXP Spinoff (Monday Oct. 29, 2018)
  Chinese contract manufacturer Wingtech Technology Co Ltd said it has struck deals to acquire a controlling stake in Netherlands-based Nexperia, a spin off of NXP Semiconductors.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales in September Up 13.8 Percent Year-to-Year (Monday Oct. 29, 2018)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $122.7 billion during the third quarter of 2018, an increase of 4.1 percent over the previous quarter and 13.8 percent more than the third quarter of 2017.
  
  
• Intel Reports Tepid Progress on 10 nm (Monday Oct. 29, 2018)
  
  
  
• NovuMind's AI Chip Sparks Controversy (Thursday Oct. 25, 2018)
  NovuMind, a Santa Clara, California-based startup founded in 2015 by Ren Wu, once a distinguished scientist from Baidu, Inc., is poised to reveal details of its debut AI chip, NovuTensor.
  
  
• Analysis: Dialog finds a better way out from under Apple (Wednesday Oct. 24, 2018)
  Jalal Bagherli, the highly-respected CEO of Dialog Semiconductor plc, has negotiated his way out from a potentially company-threatening overexposure to consumer electronics and IT giant Apple Inc.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts September 2018 Billings (Wednesday Oct. 24, 2018)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.09 billion in billings worldwide in September 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the September Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• IEDM: Intel embeds MRAM in FinFET process (Monday Oct. 22, 2018)
  Intel has followed in the footsteps of Globalfoundries, Samsung and TSMC in developing magnetic RAM as an embedded non-volatile memory (NVM) for use in IC manufacturing.
  
  
• Communications Rise To Represent Largest Portion of Foundry Sales (Thursday Oct. 18, 2018)
  With tremendous growth of smartphones over the past decade, foundry sales to the communications market have soared and are now forecast to account for about 3x more than IC foundry sales to the computer market in 2018
  
  
• Wafer Shipments Forecast to Set New Highs Through 2021 (Wednesday Oct. 17, 2018)
  Total wafer shipments in 2018 year are expected to eclipse the all-time market high set in 2017 and continue to reach record levels through 2021, according to SEMI’s recent semiconductor industry annual silicon shipment forecast.
  
  
• Advanced Technology Key to Strong Foundry Revenue per Wafer (Monday Oct. 15, 2018)
  Analysis shows more than a 16x difference between the average revenue generated by 0.5µ 200mm wafers ($370) and ≤20nm 300mm wafers ($6,050).
  
  
• Apple, Amazon Refute China Chip Hacking Story (Friday Oct. 05, 2018)
  Tech giants Apple and Amazon are denying a report by Bloomberg Businessweek that they are among nearly 30 companies that had their hardware compromised by Chinese spies that allegedly implanted tiny microchips for the purpose of accessing their networks.