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Commentary / Analysis

• Global Semiconductor Sales Up 16.5 Percent Year-to-Year (Tuesday Apr. 04, 2017)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $30.4 billion for the month of February 2017, an increase of 16.5 percent compared to the February 2016 total of $26.1 billion.
  
  
• Intel Shows Life Beyond CMOS (Tuesday Apr. 04, 2017)
  Intel described more than a dozen technologies to transcend the limitations of CMOS it is developing in conjunction with universities and the Semiconductor Research Corp. industry consortium at the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD 2017) here last month.
  
  
• Can Imagination survive without Apple? (Tuesday Apr. 04, 2017)
  Apple has notified Imagination Technologies Group, a key GPU core licenser to Apple for years, that it will no longer use Imagination’s intellectual property in new products.
  
  
• Apple dumping GPUs: Imagination in discussions (Monday Apr. 03, 2017)
  Processor IP licensor Imagination Technologies Group plc has said that it has been notified by Apple, its largest customer, that Apple will stop using Imagination's intellectual property within the next fifteen months to two years.
  
  
• Imagination share price drops 60% following Apple reports (Monday Apr. 03, 2017)
  Imagination Technologies’ share price has suddenly dropped over 60%. Reports, including in the Financial Times and City AM, suggest Apple will not be using Imagination intellectual property in Apple products. The price went from 270 to around a 100 over the weekend, where it has stayed this morning.
  
  
• Eight Views of Bluetooth World (Monday Apr. 03, 2017)
  The next big thing in Bluetooth — the mesh networking standard — was not quite ready for Bluetooth World. So the annual event here focused on showcasing startups, the frontiers of new use cases, and software extensions.
  
  
• IC Insights More Than Doubles its 2017 IC Market Growth Forecast (Thursday Mar. 30, 2017)
  IC Insights has raised its worldwide IC market growth forecast for 2017 to 11%—more than twice its original 5% outlook—based on data shown in the March Update to the 20th anniversary 2017 edition of The McClean Report.
  
  
• Intel Unveils 10, 22nm Processes (Wednesday Mar. 29, 2017)
  Intel will start making 10nm chips this year it claims will lead the industry in transistor density using a metric it challenged rivals to adopt. Separately, it announced a 22nm low-power FinFET node to compete for foundry business with fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) from rivals such as Globalfoundries.
  
  
• Patent Trolls Plague Chip Vendors (Tuesday Mar. 28, 2017)
  One of the unintended consequences of the M&A feeding frenzy in the semiconductor industry is that more chip vendors are getting targeted by patent trolls.
  
  
• ESD Alliance Reports EDA Industry Sees Highest Quarterly Revenue Increase in Five Years (Monday Mar. 27, 2017)
  The Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 18.9 percent for Q4 2016 to $2455 million, compared to $2064.5 million in Q4 2015. The four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 9.2 percent.
  
  
• Roadmap Says CMOS Ends ~2024 (Friday Mar. 24, 2017)
  Traditional semiconductor scaling is expected to reach an end by about 2024, according to a white paper from engineers working on a new version of the semiconductor roadmap. The good news is a wide variety of new kinds of devices, chip stacks and systems innovations promise to continue benefits in computing performance, power and cost.
  
  
• ST's SPAD Imager Likely Linked to iPhone 8 (Thursday Mar. 23, 2017)
  Apple’s upcoming iPhone 8 — allegedly featuring a “3D camera” — has been the subject of intense speculation among the media and the financial community for months.
  
  
• Apple hires group of UK GPU engineers (Thursday Mar. 23, 2017)
  Apple's efforts to design its own graphics processing cores appear to have been ramped up with a pulse of hiring of people that had immediately previously worked for Imagination Technologies Group plc (Kings Langley, England), according to profiles on LinkedIn.
  
  
• Samsung Edges TSMC in 10 nm (Wednesday Mar. 22, 2017)
  Samsung appears to be about a quarter ahead of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) with the ramp of 10-nm process technology, according to a veteran chip analyst.
  
  
• MIPS, execution culture and getting into AI (Tuesday Mar. 21, 2017)
  Jim Nicholas reckons that the establishment of an "execution culture" and certain multithreading advantages of MIPS processor architectures are starting to help a more agile business unit obtain design wins. And Nicholas wants to use that agility to get MIPS deeper into machine learning.
  
  
• NXP Goes All In on FD-SOI (Monday Mar. 20, 2017)
  To do FD-SOI or not to do FD-SOI? NXP Semiconductors’ announcement this week at Embedded World in Nuremberg might finally put an end to this Shakespearean quandary, although there remain players in the chip industry unprepared to face the answer.
  
  
• Why ARM wants to do more (Monday Mar. 20, 2017)
  Since its formation in 1990 processor IP licensor ARM Ltd. (Cambridge, England) has continually added layers of engineering activity to its primary business of circuit design licensing.
  
  
• SEMI Reports 2016 Global Semiconductor Equipment Sales of $41.2 Billion (Friday Mar. 17, 2017)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totaled $41.24 billion in 2016, representing a year-over-year increase of 13 percent.
  
  
• U.S. Companies Still Hold Largest Share of Fabless Company IC Sales (Friday Mar. 17, 2017)
  Largest fabless IC marketshare increase has come from Chinese suppliers, who now hold a 10% share.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts February 2017 Billings (Friday Mar. 17, 2017)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.97 billion in billings worldwide in February 2017 (three-month average basis), according to the February Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• TSMC Tips 7+, 12, 22nm Nodes (Thursday Mar. 16, 2017)
  Trying to cover the waterfront, TSMC disclosed plans for new high-, mid- and low-end processes at an annual event here. They included an enhanced 7nm FinFET node using extreme ultraviolet lithography, a 12nm upgrade of its 16nm process and a 22nm planar technology — its answer to fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI).
  
  
• Intel/Mobileye Duopoly: Dream or Nightmare? (Wednesday Mar. 15, 2017)
  Intel’s Mobileye acquisition Monday has stirred mixed emotions and contrasting reviews among those who cover the industry. Excitement, puzzlement, surprise, fear, confidence and some disappointment.
  
  
• The System(s)-on-a-Chip (SoC) Market to Reach a 7.7% CAGR through 2021, says Semico Research (Tuesday Mar. 14, 2017)
  A new research report from Semico forecasts that the CAGR for SoC revenues will reach 7.7% by 2021, continuing to outpace the larger semiconductor market growth rate.
  
  
• Auto SoCs: Race to ASIL D (Friday Mar. 10, 2017)
  Where does the automotive industry stand today on the Automotive Safety Integrity Level (ASIL) of the SoCs in their current ADAS models or in the autonomous cars on their drawing boards?
  
  
• ARM Servers 'Compelling' for Microsoft (Thursday Mar. 09, 2017)
  Microsoft is testing ARM server SoCs from Cavium, Qualcomm and at least one other supplier, boosting their hopes of cutting into the lucrative dominance of Intel’s x86 in servers.
  
  
• SoftBank to sell 25% of ARM to Saudi-backed fund (Wednesday Mar. 08, 2017)
  Japan’s SoftBank is set to sell a roughly $8bn stake in Arm, the UK chip designer it purchased only six months ago, placing 25 per cent of Britain’s largest technology company into a new, Saudi-backed $100bn investment fund.
  
  
• Record Spending for Fab Equipment Expected in 2017 and 2018 (Wednesday Mar. 08, 2017)
  Today, SEMI announced updates to its World Fab Forecast report, revealing that fab equipment spending is expected to reach an industry all-time record − more than US$46 billion in 2017
  
  
• Startup Taps TSMC to Attack Broadcom (Tuesday Mar. 07, 2017)
  One of a handful of startups aiming to attack Broadcom’s dominance in Ethernet switching emerges from stealth mode this week. Nephos spun out of Taiwan’s Mediatek and will push packaging technology from TSMC to a new level.
  
  
• January Semiconductor Sales Up 14 Percent Compared to Last Year (Monday Mar. 06, 2017)
  
  
  
• China's Xiaomi Develops First In-House Smartphone Processor in co-operation with ARM (Friday Mar. 03, 2017)
  In an attempt to keep up with rivals such as Apple, Samsung and Huawei, Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi has developed its own application processor, the Surge S1.