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Commentary / Analysis

• ARM launches flagship cores in 'DynamIQ' style (Monday May. 29, 2017)
  ARM has announced two Cortex-A series cores that can implement the IP licensor's latest architectural refinement, known as DynamIQ, and provide leading performance for a richer set of ARM's well-known "big-little" multicore configurations.
  
  
• Reports: ARM agrees to create Chinese IP firm (Friday May. 26, 2017)
  Processor intellectual property (IP) company ARM and a venture capital fund it helped form in China have agreed to form a Chinese joint venture to create intellectual property for IC designs, according to reports.
  
  
• First Quarter 2017 Silicon Wafer Shipments Increase Quarter-Over-Quarter; Continue to Ship at Record Levels (Friday May. 19, 2017)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased during the first quarter 2017 when compared to fourth quarter 2016 area shipments according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.
  
  
• Qualcomm Takes on the World, in Court (Thursday May. 18, 2017)
  When Intel and Samsung joined the fray last Friday by filing amicus briefs in support of the FTC's complaint against, matters went from bad to worse for Qualcomm
  
  
• Samsung Spinoff Likely to Grab Foundry Share (Wednesday May. 17, 2017)
  Samsung Electronics’ plan to spin off foundry operations from the system LSI division is expected to increase Samsung’s share of global contract chipmaking at the expense of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and smaller rivals.
  
  
• Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Grew 2.6 Percent in 2016, According to Final Results by Gartner (Monday May. 15, 2017)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $343.5 billion in 2016, a 2.6 percent increase from 2015 revenue of $334.9 billion, according to final results by Gartner, Inc. The top 25 semiconductor vendors' combined revenue increased 10.5 percent, a significantly better performance than the overall industry's growth; however, most of this growth resulted from merger and acquisition (M&A) activity.
  
  
• ST opts for phase-change memory on 28nm FDSOI (Thursday May. 11, 2017)
  STMicroelectronics NV (Geneva, Switzerland) has opted to use phase-change memory as an embedded non-volatile memory option for its 28nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) process.
  
  
• Infineon Rides Automotive Wave into Top-10 Semi Supplier Ranking (Tuesday May. 09, 2017)
  In total, the top-10 semiconductor suppliers represented 56% of the 1Q17 worldwide semiconductor market of $99.6 billion (2Q17 is forecast to be the first ever quarterly semiconductor market to exceed $100 billion).
  
  
• After Moore's Law - What? (Friday May. 05, 2017)
  The semiconductor industry must, at last, outgrow its obsession with pitch shrinkage, and go creative with the "heterogeneous integration of different technologies" to push economic growth.
  
  
• As Apple Jilts Imagination, MIPS Goes on Block (Friday May. 05, 2017)
  With the potential loss of Apple -- which accounts for about half of the U.K.-based company’s revenue -- looming large, Imagination is fighting for its survival.
  
  
• Samsung Poised to Become World's Largest Semi Supplier in 2Q17 (Tuesday May. 02, 2017)
  After nearly a quarter of a century, the semiconductor industry could see a new #1 supplier in 2Q17. If memory market prices continue to hold or increase through 2Q17 and the balance of this year, Samsung could charge into the top spot and displace Intel, which has held the #1 ranking since 1993.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales in March Up 18.1 Percent Year-to-Year (Monday May. 01, 2017)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $30.9 billion for the month of March 2017, an increase of 18.1 percent compared to the March 2016 total of $26.2 billion and 1.6 percent more than the February 2017 total of $30.4 billion.
  
  
• Faster Networks Push Interface Development (Monday May. 01, 2017)
  As Ethernet speeds get faster, Rambus is looking to make sure memory and interfaces can keep up with the recent launch 56G SerDes PHY.
  
  
• Apple Stops Royalties to Qualcomm (Monday May. 01, 2017)
  Qualcomm is lowering its third-quarter guidance by about $500 million, claiming that Apple said it will not pay patent royalties. The disclosure suggests that Qualcomm receives a whopping $2 billion a year, or roughly $8 per device, in royalties for Apple products.
  
  
• NXP Acquires Freescale, Becomes Top MCU Supplier in 2016 (Friday Apr. 28, 2017)
  Strong growth in MCUs for IoT applications and suppliers jockeying for marketshare in this IC segment have resulted in several major acquisitions that changed the pecking order of MCU leaders in 2016, according to data released in IC Insights' April Update to The McClean Report
  
  
• RISC-V Foundation clarifies '100 errors' reports (Thursday Apr. 27, 2017)
  The RISC-V Foundation has commented on reports that tests performed by researchers at Princeton University had found more than 100 errors resulting from the memory consistency model of high-performance implementations of the RISC-V processor instruction specification.
  
  
• Visual Processors and CNN - the next generation supercomputer (Thursday Apr. 27, 2017)
  VPUs are at the crossroads of image-processing, convolutional neural nets (CNN), machine intelligence, and the emerging augmented reality market. More than just an image processing algorithm co-processor, and more like a powerful subsystem that can take multiple streams of highspeed pixel data and feed a GPU for display, while simultaneously doing data analysis and extraction.
  
  
• UMC Sees Weakening Demand at 28nm (Thursday Apr. 27, 2017)
  United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC), Taiwan’s second largest foundry, said sales of its most advanced technology node have slipped for a third time under strong competition.
  
  
• Princeton finds bugs in RISC-V architecture (Thursday Apr. 20, 2017)
  Researchers at Princeton University have discovered a series of memory-consistency errors in high-performance implementations of the RISC-V processor instruction specification.
  
  
• TSMC Expects First-Half Smartphone Slump (Friday Apr. 14, 2017)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the largest foundry for customers in the smartphone business including Apple and MediaTek, says it is expecting an inventory correction in smartphones to continue through the first half of this year.
  
  
• DDR4 Set to Account for Largest Share of DRAM Market by Architecture (Friday Apr. 14, 2017)
  The new, higher-speed DDR4 DRAM generation gained significant marketshare in 2016, representing 45% of total DRAM sales. Previously, DDR3 DRAM, including low-power versions used in tablets, smartphones, and notebook PCs, accounted for 84% of total DRAM sales in 2014 and 76% in 2015, but in 2016, DDR4 price premiums evaporated and prices fell to nearly the same ASP as DDR3 DRAMs.
  
  
• NXP Shows First FD-SOI Chips (Friday Apr. 14, 2017)
  NXP will ship this year as many as five SoCs made in Samsung’s 28nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) process, including one that has been sampling for six months. Samsung is expected to announce its FD-SOI roadmap in May and is already working on RF and in-house embedded MRAM for it.
  
  
• Dialog suffers on report of Apple in-sourcing (Thursday Apr. 13, 2017)
  Mixed-signal, RF and power IC vendor Dialog Semiconductor plc could be the latest company to suffer from a wave of in-sourced design by consumer electronics giant Apple Inc.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Forecast to Increase 12.3 Percent in 2017 (Thursday Apr. 13, 2017)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to total $386 billion in 2017, an increase of 12.3 percent from 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. Favorable market conditions that gained momentum in the second half of 2016, particularly for commodity memory, have accelerated and raised the outlook for the market in 2017 and 2018.
  
  
• Foundries Need Clear Benchmarks (Tuesday Apr. 11, 2017)
  Amid an unprecedented proliferation of process nodes, the industry needs good public benchmarks to compare semiconductor process technologies.
  
  
• Qualcomm Returns Fire in Apple Suit (Tuesday Apr. 11, 2017)
  Apple refused to pay cellular chip royalties, pressured its contract manufacturers not to pay them, instigated regulatory investigations and throttled performance of an LTE modem chip, according to Qualcomm.
  
  
• ISPD Predicts Chip Futures (Friday Apr. 07, 2017)
  The paradigm of real-time machine learning is eliminating many of the human-driven elements in the physical design of microchips, according to speakers at the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM's) International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD).
  
  
• Google Calls for Switch Chip API (Thursday Apr. 06, 2017)
  A Google executive called for a common API to swap Ethernet switches in and out of networks as easily as a new server. The interface could pave the way for an emerging crop of Ethernet chips that aim to disrupt Broadcom’s dominance in the sector.
  
  
• How Apple will dodge an Imagination lawsuit (Tuesday Apr. 04, 2017)
  Once the best of friends processor licensor Imagination and consumer electronics giant Apple look set to fall out at the end of a relationship that has lasted more than a decade. Must Imagination sue and how will Apple avoid such a suit?
  
  
• SEMI Reports 2016 Global Semiconductor Materials Sales of $44.3 Billion (Tuesday Apr. 04, 2017)
  SEMI today announced that the global semiconductor materials market increased 2.4 percent in 2016 compared to 2015 while worldwide semiconductor revenues increased 1.1 percent.