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Commentary / Analysis

• Chip Market Brightens in 2017 (Thursday Dec. 15, 2016)
  A veteran Wall Street analyst projects the semiconductor industry will snap back to typical growth levels next year after a slight contraction this year. Other market watchers also see a better year ahead, but project a flat or slight uptick this year based on a bump in PC and memory demand.
  
  
• Samsung Reportedly Mulls Foundry Spinoff (Thursday Dec. 15, 2016)
  South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is considering spinning out its foundry after losing Apple Inc.’s processor business to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd., according to a report by BusinessKorea, a Korean business news magazine.
  
  
• Lurking Behind Every M&A Is China (Tuesday Dec. 13, 2016)
  There has been much buzz in the global semiconductor industry about the accelerated consolidation of chip vendors. But the biggest untold story this year is the presence at the negotiating table — in almost every M&A deal — of Chinese investors, or U.S.-based private equity funds whose money can be traced back to China.
  
  
• TSMC Plans New Fab for 3nm (Monday Dec. 12, 2016)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) said that it plans to build its next fab for chips made at the 5-nm to 3-nm technology node as early as 2022 as it aims for industry leadership.
  
  
• Lawmakers Urge Rejection of Lattice Semi Takeover (Monday Dec. 12, 2016)
  A group of U.S. lawmakers has written a letter to Treasury Dept. Secretary Jack Lew urging him to reject the proposed acquisition of programmable logic supplier Lattice Corp. by an investment firmed with ties to China’s central government, saying it represents a threat to U.S. semiconductor leadership.
  
  
• Five Suppliers Hold 41% of Global Semiconductor Marketshare in 2016 (Wednesday Dec. 07, 2016)
  Vigorous M&A activity in 2015 and 2016 has reshaped the landscape of the semiconductor industry, with the top companies now controlling a much greater percentage of marketshare.
  
  
• What Siemens' Mentor Buy Means to IC Designers (Wednesday Dec. 07, 2016)
  Ever since Siemens announced its plan to acquire Mentor Graphics three weeks ago, many in the semiconductor industry have been poking and parsing its implications. They’ve found, thus far, more questions than answers.
  
  
• TSMC, IBM Detail 7-nm Work (Tuesday Dec. 06, 2016)
  Like presents under a Christmas tree, separate papers on 7-nm process technology from TSMC and IBM energized a packed ballroom on the first day of the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM).
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 5 Percent Year-over-Year in October; Industry Forecast Revised Upward (Tuesday Dec. 06, 2016)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $30.5 billion for the month of October 2016, an increase of 3.4 percent from last month’s total of $29.5 billion and 5.1 percent higher than the October 2015 total of $29.0 billion.
  
  
• Is Mobileye-Intel New 'Wintel' of Auto? (Monday Dec. 05, 2016)
  What technologies do Mobileye and Intel offer to autonomous driving? And what's the division of labor between Mobileye's EyeQ chip and Intel's yet-to-be-announced automotive SoC?
  
  
• No, The Sky Is Not Falling (Friday Dec. 02, 2016)
  If Apple is slashing semiconductor orders, TSMC would bear the most impact. Is this what's happening?
  
  
• Will China Grab ARM Servers? (Friday Dec. 02, 2016)
  China's data center giants have become the next big hope to give traction to ARM's server initiative.
  
  
• RISC-V Expands its Audience (Thursday Dec. 01, 2016)
  The RISC-V movement is grabbing the attention of a growing set of chip architects and semiconductor executives. Several came to the group’s fifth workshop here to gauge whether the seeds planted by a handful of academics could grow into a disruptive, commercial reality.
  
  
• Can Intel Win Auto Brain Chip Race? (Thursday Dec. 01, 2016)
  Call it the Silicon Valley 500. Can Intel take the checkered flag in the race for a dominant brain chip in the automotive market? Eighteen months ago, the answer would have been… not so fast. Despite Intel's outsized auto ambitions, the odds were bleak.
  
  
• IoT and Automotive to Drive IC Market Growth Through 2020 (Wednesday Nov. 30, 2016)
  Integrated circuit sales for connections to the Internet of Things are forecast to grow more than three times faster than total IC revenues during the last half of this decade, according to IC Insights’ new 2017 Integrated Circuit Market Drivers report.
  
  
• Intel Snags Exec from ARM to Run IoT (Wednesday Nov. 30, 2016)
  Fresh blood and a little reorganizations might be the key for Intel Corp. to succeed in two hot new markets – IoT and automotive – that will be crucial for its hopes to reduce its reliance on PCs as the company's main growth generator.
  
  
• Lattice Deal May Hit A Snag (Tuesday Nov. 29, 2016)
  A buyer with ties to the Chinese central government and a U.S. company whose technology has potential for dual-purpose applications is an alarming combination that could invite suspicion among regulators concerned about national security. In theory, it could trip up any proposed acquisition involving U.S. tech firms.
  
  
• M&A Takes New Twists (Monday Nov. 28, 2016)
  The volume of mergers and acquisitions in the last two years has far surpassed historical records. But now the quality of the deals is changing, too
  
  
• Samsung said to be developing its own CPU core based on RISC-V (Thursday Nov. 24, 2016)
  Samsung’s semiconductor division made a big leap forward this year with the development of its first custom CPU core inside its Exynos 8890 processor for the Galaxy S7, and it looks like the company intends to expand its CPU development efforts. According to industry sources, Samsung’s Device Solution division is working on its own CPU core for 32-bit microcontrollers, most likely targeted at the wearables and internet-of-things markets.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts October 2016 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 0.91 (Thursday Nov. 24, 2016)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.49 billion in orders worldwide in October 2016 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.91, according to the September Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Strategy Analytics: Apple Captures Record 91 Percent Share of Global Smartphone Profits in Q3 2016 (Thursday Nov. 24, 2016)
  According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, global smartphone profits reached US$9 billion in total during the third quarter of 2016. Apple dominated and captured a record 91 percent share of all smartphone profits worldwide.
  
  
• Intel's Nervana Attacks GPUs (Monday Nov. 21, 2016)
  Intel rolled out its intentions for a soup-to-nuts offering in artificial intelligence, but at least one of the key dishes is not yet cooked.
  
  
• Siemens Acquires Mentor Graphics: What Does This Mean for EDA? (Thursday Nov. 17, 2016)
  The announcement of Mentor Graphics’ acquisition by Siemens is a huge step toward the convergence of the EDA and mechanical design markets. Siemens is a leading player in mechanical CAx design tools, while Mentor has an expansive EDA product portfolio. This acquisition shows that the future for the EDA industry is system-level design and that future is now.
  
  
• ST's Bozotti on 'back-to-silicon' differentiation (Thursday Nov. 17, 2016)
  Carlo Bozotti, CEO of STMicroelectronics NV, has presided over a difficult period in the chip company's history as he first put together the ST-Ericsson mobile processors joint venture and then had to engineer ST's exit from what had became an ill-fated project. But now the write-offs, reorganizations and product phase outs are just about behind the company and it is starting to resume growth. EE Times Europe interviewed Bozotti at a bustling Electronica in Munich.
  
  
• Gartner Says Chinese Smartphone Vendors Were Only Vendors in the Global Top Five to Increase Sales in the Third Quarter of 2016 (Thursday Nov. 17, 2016)
  Three Chinese vendors — Huawei, Oppo and BBK Communication Equipment — together accounted for 21 percent of the smartphones sold to end users worldwide in the third quarter of 2016. They were the only smartphone vendors in the global top five to increase their sales and market share during the quarter, according to Gartner, Inc.
  
  
• Five Top-20 Semiconductor Suppliers to Show Double-Digit Gains in 2016 (Wednesday Nov. 16, 2016)
  The top-20 ranking includes three pure-play foundries (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC) and five fabless companies. If the three pure-play foundries were excluded from the top-20 ranking, U.S.-based fabless supplier AMD ($4,238 million), China-based fabless supplier HiSilicon ($3,762 million), and Japan-based IDM Sharp ($3,706 million), would have been ranked in the 18th, 19th, and 20th positions, respectively. In August 2016, China-based contract assembler Foxconn bought a controlling interest (66%) in Sharp for $3.8 billion.
  
  
• Xilinx to Dive in Hyperscale Race (Monday Nov. 14, 2016)
  Xilinx is jumping into the increasingly hot race for hyperscale data centers. The FPGA company is pursuing Altera (now a part of Intel), who took an early lead in the growing market by getting designed into Microsoft’s Project Catapult, the technology behind Microsoft’s hyperscale acceleration fabric.
  
  
• SMIC Expects Record Roll to Continue (Thursday Nov. 10, 2016)
  Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC), China’s largest foundry, said it expects strength in its business to continue as it rides a wave of demand in China.
  
  
• Anticipating a More Virtual Moore's Law (Wednesday Nov. 02, 2016)
  Nicky Lu, executive director of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association, is looking forward to the coming era of a “virtual” Moore’s Law, leading to a resumption of growth and profitability in the chip industry.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 11.5 Percent in Q3 (Wednesday Nov. 02, 2016)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $88.3 billion for the third quarter of 2016, marking the industry’s highest-ever quarterly sales and an increase of 11.5 percent compared to the previous quarter.