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Commentary / Analysis

• China's Unigroup plans to spend $60 billion, says report (Thursday Apr. 12, 2018)
  Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd., a Chinese holding company and one of the instruments of state policy on semiconductors, has CNY370 billion (about US$59 billion) that it plans to spend on chip deployment over the next five years, according to a Digitimes report.
  
  
• Lip-Bu Tan on AI, China & Moore (Thursday Apr. 12, 2018)
  There’s still room for investing in accelerators for machine learning, one of several semiconductor segments China hopes to dominate, according to Lip-Bu Tan, a veteran investor. Wearing his hat as chief executive of Cadence Design Systems, he’s bullish on the silicon roadmap and says EDA companies need to move up to the systems level.
  
  
• Cadence: Last Holdout for Vision + AI Programmability (Thursday Apr. 12, 2018)
  Cadence Design Systems, Inc. might have found the secret recipe for success in an increasingly hot AI processing-core market by promoting a suite of DSP cores that accelerate both embedded vision and artificial intelligence.
  
  
• Chip Designers Bank on AI, Bitcoin (Wednesday Apr. 11, 2018)
  Global Unichip (GUC) and a host of other Taiwan chip designers are seeing demand for ASICs take off, driven by systems houses that want to differentiate their products for cryptocurrency mining and AI to deliver greater efficiency.
  
  
• Semiconductor Leaders' Marketshares Surge Over the Past 10 Years (Wednesday Apr. 11, 2018)
  In total, the 2017 top-50 suppliers represented 88% of the total $444.7 billion worldwide semiconductor market last year, up 12 percentage points from the 76% share the top 50 companies held in 2007.
  
  
• Arm Under Attack in AI (Tuesday Apr. 10, 2018)
  Nearly a dozen processor cores for accelerating machine-learning jobs on clients are racing for spots in SoCs, with some already designed into smartphones. They aim to get a time-to-market advantage over processor-IP giant Arm that is expected to announce its own soon.
  
  
• Samsung early with 7nm process, says report. (Monday Apr. 09, 2018)
  Samsung Electronics has completed the development of 7nm manufacturing process technology that makes use of extreme ultra-violet (EUV) lithography, about six months ahead of schedule, according to a report in Seoul Economy Daily.
  
  
• Design Services Need Uber-izing (Monday Apr. 09, 2018)
  A wide swath of semiconductor design services companies are seeking their breakout moment. Samir Patel thinks that he has found one in the ability to customize standard products for an increasingly applications-centric chip market.
  
  
• SEMI Reports 2017 Global Semiconductor Equipment Sales of $56.6 Billion (Thursday Apr. 05, 2018)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totaled $56.6 billion in 2017, a year-over-year increase of 37 percent from 2016 sales of $41.24 billion.
  
  
• China shows it takes Imagination opportunity seriously (Thursday Apr. 05, 2018)
  The appointment of Leo Li as the next CEO of intellectual property licensor Imagination Technologies Ltd. (Kings Langley, England) demonstrates to me that China takes seriously the investment of £550 million in cash (about $740 million), made in the company last year.
  
  
• China startup releases AI processors then raises $100 million (Thursday Apr. 05, 2018)
  Horizon Robotics Ltd. (Beijing, China), a startup founded in 2015, has released two artificial intelligence processors and raised about $100 million in a funding round with help from Intel Capital.
  
  
• ESD Alliance Reports EDA Industry Revenue Increase For Q4 2017 (Wednesday Apr. 04, 2018)
  The Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 10.7 percent for Q4 2017 to $2718.6 million, compared to $2455 million in Q4 2016.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Up 21 Percent Year-to-Year in February (Tuesday Apr. 03, 2018)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $36.8 billion for the month of February 2018, an increase of 21.0 percent compared to the February 2017 total of $30.4 billion.
  
  
• Excluded from M&A, China Focuses on Expansion (Monday Apr. 02, 2018)
  Uninvited to the recent M&A party for the global semiconductor industry, China has been instead looking to build its own bustling ecosystem, a complete domestic supply chain including design, manufacturing, materials, and equipment.
  
  
• Cryptocurrency mining demand sucking up TSMC IC production (Thursday Mar. 29, 2018)
  TSMC's leading-edge manufacturing capacity is being made tight by strong demand for GPUs and special-purpose ASICs for use in cryptocurrency mining, according to a Digitimes report.
  
  
• Trump Presses China to Buy More U.S. Chips (Tuesday Mar. 27, 2018)
  China is considering buying more semiconductors from U.S. firms as part of behind-the-scenes negotiations to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China and avert a trade war, according to reports.
  
  
• Stock Relisting Could Be a Boon for Arm (Tuesday Mar. 27, 2018)
  Arm Holdings would gain much-needed visibility under a plan being floated by Softbank to re-list the processor IP firm on the stock market.
  
  
• EDA Chief Calls AI the New Driver (Friday Mar. 23, 2018)
  It’s the age of AI, Moore’s Law is not dead, and technology is changing everything, according to Aart de Geus, co-chief executive of Synopsys, in a talk at the company’s annual user group conference here.
  
  
• U.S. Companies Maintain Largest Share of Fabless Company IC Sales (Friday Mar. 23, 2018)
  Research included in the March Update to the 2018 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report shows that fabless IC suppliers accounted for 27% of the world’s IC sales in 2017—an increase from 18% ten years earlier in 2007.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts February 2018 Billings (Friday Mar. 23, 2018)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.41 billion in billings worldwide in February 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the February Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Path to 2nm May Not Be Worth It (Friday Mar. 23, 2018)
  Engineers see many options to create 5-, 3- and even 2-nm semiconductor process technologies, but some are not sure they will be able to squeeze commercial advantages from them even at 5nm.
  
  
• Report: Globalfoundries asks China to probe TSMC (Wednesday Mar. 21, 2018)
  Already under investigation in Europe over alleged antitrust behaviour foundry TSMC could now come under scrutiny in China, according to a Nikkei Asian Review report.
  
  
• Broadcom Eyes New Acquisition Targets (Friday Mar. 16, 2018)
  Broadcom executives said the company is eyeing fresh potential targets for acquisition, just days after U.S. President Donald Trump quashed the company's proposed $117 billion hostile takeover attempt of rival Qualcomm.
  
  
• Trump Precedent Won't Chill M&A (Thursday Mar. 15, 2018)
  The Trump Administration set a new precedent by prohibiting Broadcom’s hostile takeover of Qualcomm before shareholders got a vote. Analysts were mixed over whether such executive power is a good thing, but they agreed that the semiconductor industry — and Broadcom — will continue to pursue big deals.
  
  
• IC Insights Raises 2018 IC Market Forecast from 8% to 15% (Thursday Mar. 15, 2018)
  IC Insights’ latest market, unit, and average selling price forecasts for 33 major IC product segments for 2018 through 2022 is included in the March Update to the 2018 McClean Report (MR18). The Update also includes an analysis of the major semiconductor suppliers’ capital spending plans for this year.
  
  
• Fab Spending Poised For Remarkable Fourth Year of Growth (Monday Mar. 12, 2018)
  China is expected to be the main driver of fab equipment spending growth in 2018 and 2019 absent a major change in its plans. The industry had not seen three consecutive years of growth since the mid-1990s.
  
  
• Interview with Rick O'Connor of RISC-V Foundation (Thursday Mar. 08, 2018)
  The RISC-V Foundation was present at the Embedded World exhibition with its own booth that also hosted a number of companies within its growing ecosystem. eeNews caught up with Rick O'Connor, executive director of the foundation and asked why a new and open processor architecture was relevant to embedded applications.
  
  
• Are the Major DRAM Suppliers Stunting DRAM Demand? (Wednesday Mar. 07, 2018)
  Historically, the DRAM market has been the most volatile of the major IC product segments. A good example of this was displayed over the past two years when the DRAM market declined 8% in 2016 only to surge by 77% in 2017!
  
  
• January Semiconductor Sales Up 22.7 Percent Compared to Last Year (Tuesday Mar. 06, 2018)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $37.6 billion for the month of January 2018, an increase of 22.7 percent compared to the January 2017 total of $30.6 billion. Global sales in January were 1.0 percent lower than the December 2017 total of $38.0 billion, reflecting normal seasonal market trends.
  
  
• 92 IC Wafer Fabs Closed or Repurposed From 2009-2017 (Monday Mar. 05, 2018)
  Since the global economic recession of 2008-2009, the IC industry has been on a mission to pare down older capacity (i.e., ≤200mm wafers) in order to produce devices more cost-effectively on larger wafers.