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Commentary / Analysis

• Qualcomm Details ARM Server SoCs (Monday Aug. 21, 2017)
  Qualcomm will describe the custom ARM core inside its first server processor at Hot Chips this week. The Falkor CPU is at the heart of the company’s 10-nm Centriq 2400, a 48-core SoC that will ship later this year, targeting big data centers.
  
  
• DRAM, NAND Flash, Automotive Analog/Logic Among Best-Growing ICs (Wednesday Aug. 16, 2017)
  IC Insights has revised its outlook and analysis of the IC industry and presented its new findings in the Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report 2017, which originally was published in January 2017. Among the revisions is a complete update of forecast growth rates of the 33 main product categories classified by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization (WSTS).
  
  
• Significant Mid-Year Revision to 2017 IC Market Forecast (Thursday Aug. 03, 2017)
  Entering the second half of the year, it is clear the IC industry is on course for a much stronger upturn than was initially forecast in January.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Capital Spending Is Forecast to Grow 10.2 Percent in 2017 (Thursday Aug. 03, 2017)
  Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to increase 10.2 percent in 2017, to $77.7 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. This growth rate is up from the previous quarter's forecast of 1.4 percent, due to continued aggressive investment in memory and leading-edge logic which is driving spending in wafer-level equipment.
  
  
• UMC Breaks into 14nm (Friday Jul. 28, 2017)
  United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), Taiwan’s second largest foundry, has started its first production of 14nm products, narrowing a technology gap with its larger competitors such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Samsung.
  
  
• IoT Growth Slower Than Expected (Wednesday Jul. 26, 2017)
  The Internet of Things is not growing as fast as expected but it is growing thanks to more integrated parts and low power networks, an analyst said. Fueling the engines, Andes Technology announced four new cores for IoT gateways and other uses.
  
  
• Value of Semiconductor Industry M&A Deals Slows Dramatically in 1H17 (Tuesday Jul. 25, 2017)
  The historic flood of merger and acquisition agreements that swept through the semiconductor industry in the past two years slowed to a trickle in the first half of 2017, with the combined value of about a dozen transactions announced in 1H17 reaching just $1.4 billion.
  
  
• Second Quarter 2017 Silicon Wafer Shipments Increase Quarter-Over-Quarter; Continue to Ship at Record Levels (Tuesday Jul. 25, 2017)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased during the second quarter 2017 when compared to first quarter 2017 area shipments according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.
  
  
• Report: Samsung Plans to Triple Foundry Market Share (Tuesday Jul. 25, 2017)
  Executives from South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. told the Reuters news service that the company has plans to triple its market share in the semiconductor foundry business and has its eyes set on the No. 2 position in that market, behind dominant player Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC).
  
  
• Security a Must for Auto GbE Switch (Monday Jul. 24, 2017)
  Bringing popular Ethernet technology to cars seems like a natural progression. More vehicles are getting connected and incorporating a number of automated driving features while a much bigger volume of data is expected to pass both ways between cars and the external world.
  
  
• AMD's CTO on 7nm, Chip Stacks (Monday Jul. 24, 2017)
  AMD is among chip designers getting an early taste of 7nm process technologies, said its chief technology officer. He called for accelerated work on wafer-level fan-out packaging and greater use of parallelism in EDA software.
  
  
• Neural Accelerator Battle Begins (Friday Jul. 21, 2017)
  The embedded market for neural network accelerators is heating up, with more systems — ranging from smart speakers and drones to light bulbs — poised to run neural networks locally instead of going back to the cloud for computation.
  
  
• 2H17 DRAM, NAND ASP Growth to Cool, But Yearly Growth Strong (Wednesday Jul. 19, 2017)
  Sales of both memory types—DRAM and NAND—are expected to set record highs this year. In both cases, the strong annual upturn in sales is being driven almost entirely by fast-rising average selling prices. In the case of DRAM, unit shipments are actually forecast to show a decline this year.
  
  
• Does NVMe Have a Place in Industrial Embedded and IoT? (Monday Jul. 17, 2017)
  Is NVM Express (NVMe) overkill for embedded, industrial applications? Until recently, that's been the consensus, according to Scott Phillips, vice president of marketing at Virtium. But as big players such as Intel and Micron push the interface specification forward, Phillips said many industrial customers are approaching the company and asking about NVMe.
  
  
• TSMC Logs First 10nm Sales (Thursday Jul. 13, 2017)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has recognized its first revenue from 10nm products, trailing Samsung, its main rival in the foundry business, by nearly four months.
  
  
• Semi Content in Electronic Systems Forecast to Set New Record in 2017 (Thursday Jul. 13, 2017)
  In its upcoming Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report 2017 (to be released at the end of July), IC Insights forecasts that the 2017 global electronic systems market will grow by only 2% to $1,493 billion while the worldwide semiconductor market is expected to surge by 15% this year to $419.1 billion.
  
  
• Imec Aims 2-D FETs at Sub-5-nm Node (Thursday Jul. 13, 2017)
  Designers can extend Moore's Law scaling beyond the 5-nanometer node by choosing two-dimensional anisotropic (faster with the grain) materials such as monolayers of black phosphorus, according to Imec (Leuven, Belgium).
  
  
• Suppliers Beware: The Perils of Vertical Integration (Thursday Jul. 13, 2017)
  There are basically two types of organizations in the computer and mobile industry: device makers who are, to the extent they can be, vertically integrated, and component or IP suppliers that offer their product or technology across several vertical product types to the device makers.
  
  
• 200mm Fabs Thriving; SEMI's Updated 200mm Fab Report Now Available (Wednesday Jul. 12, 2017)
  Since 2009, installed 200mm fab capacity has increased, and by 2020, 200mm capacity is expected to reach almost 5.7 million wafers per month (wpm), and poised to surpass the 2007 peak.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue to Reach $400 Billion in 2017 (Tuesday Jul. 11, 2017)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $401.4 billion in 2017, an increase of 16.8 percent from 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. This will be the first time semiconductor revenue has surpassed $400 billion. The market reached the $300 billion milestone seven years ago, in 2010, and surpassed $200 billion in 2000.
  
  
• U.S. Paves Roads to Trusted Fabs (Tuesday Jul. 11, 2017)
  The U.S. Department of Defense is working with partners on multiple technologies that would make any foundry a trusted source to make classified ASICs for the military. If the government is successful it will be able to tap leading-edge process technologies from multiple fabs by 2019.
  
  
• Rambus Reportedly Exploring Sale Possibilities (Tuesday Jul. 11, 2017)
  Memory technology licensor and chip vendor Rambus Inc. is working with a financial advisor to study options for its sale, according to a report by the Bloomberg news service.
  
  
• Apple hits back at Imagination's 'misleading' statements, disputes timeline (Monday Jul. 10, 2017)
  The war of words between Apple and Imagination Technologies seems to be escalating. A few days after Imagination’s annual report accused Apple of making ‘unsubstantiated allegations,’ the Cupertino company has hit back.
  
  
• Graphcore's 'Colossus' chip due before end of year (Friday Jul. 07, 2017)
  Simon Knowles, CTO of startup Graphcore Ltd. (Bristol, England) has discussed his company's approach to machine intelligence including providing some details of the first chip codenamed Colossus.
  
  
• Imagination fades in 2016 semiconductor IP market (Thursday Jul. 06, 2017)
  ARM continued to dominate a semiconductor intellectual property (IP) market that grew strongly in 2016, but Imagination struggled as its restructuring during that year hurt sales, according to a report from IPnest. The strongest growth companies were Rambus and Ceva.
  
  
• ESD Alliance Reports EDA Industry Revenue Increase For Q1 2017 (Thursday Jul. 06, 2017)
  The Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 10.5 percent for Q1 2017 to $2167.5 million, compared to $1962 million in Q1 2016. The four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 10.6 percent.
  
  
• China Makes Two IoT Calls (Thursday Jul. 06, 2017)
  Two of China’s Web giants tapped domestic and U.S. chip partners for embedded voice software and services competing with Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Their efforts mark a new front in the war over an emerging market for natural-language and machine-learning services targeting everything from cars to thermostats.
  
  
• Micron Fab Incident Disrupts DRAM Supply (Thursday Jul. 06, 2017)
  Suspension of production at a Taiwanese DRAM fab owned by Micron Technology will further disrupt an already tight global DRAM supply situation and lead to price increases, according to a market watcher.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 22.6 Percent Year-to-Year in May (Tuesday Jul. 04, 2017)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $31.9 billion for the month of May 2017, an increase of 22.6 percent compared to the May 2016 total of $26.0 billion and 1.9 percent more than the April 2017 total of $31.4 billion.
  
  
• Embedded MRAM Can Take the Heat (Thursday Jun. 29, 2017)
  On the heels of several foundries publicly announcing plans to put MRAM into production by the end of this year and into 2018, one of them has outlined how it can significantly improve data retention for embedded applications.