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Commentary / Analysis

• AMD Loses Processor Veteran (Monday Sep. 21, 2015)
  Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said its product and technology road maps won’t be impacted by the departure today (Sept. 18) of Jim Keller. The veteran microprocessor designer led the effort to design AMD’s next-generation x86 core called Zen, a 64-bit custom ARM core and SoCs based on them.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts August 2015 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.06 (Friday Sep. 18, 2015)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.67 billion in orders worldwide in August 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.06, according to the August EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Apple Seen Splitting 14/16nm Orders Among Foundries into 2016 (Friday Sep. 18, 2015)
  Apple, the world’s largest buyer of chips made with leading process technology, is likely to divvy up its orders for 14/16nm products this year and next as part of a strategy to gain pricing power over foundry suppliers such as Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), according to six analysts surveyed by EE Times.
  
  
• TSMC Preps 10nm, Tunes 16nm (Friday Sep. 18, 2015)
  TSMC will start early production on a 10nm process this year and 7nm in 2017, executives said in a road map update here. In between, the foundry giant will release a cost-reduced version of its 16nm process next year and a broad portfolio of specialty processes for the Internet of Things, automotive and sensors.
  
  
• China Warms Up, Slowly, to FD-SOI (Friday Sep. 18, 2015)
  China is not exactly falling in love with fully depleted silicon on insulator (FD-SOI) technology, but it became clear at the Shanghai FD-SOI Forum this week that the semiconductor industry in Asia is warming up to the idea.
  
  
• Q&A with GloFo CEO: 'IoT Is No Mystical Animal' (Wednesday Sep. 16, 2015)
  PC shipments are going down all over the world. The smartphone market is losing steam. The chip industry is expecting a down year in 2016. Practically every chip vendor in the world is groping for growth drivers for the semiconductor market.
  
  
• SEMI Reports Second Quarter 2015 Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Figures; Billings US$9.4 Billion (Tuesday Sep. 15, 2015)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$9.4 billion in the second quarter of 2015.
  
  
• TSMC Wins All Apple's A10 Chip Business, Report Says (Tuesday Sep. 15, 2015)
  TSMC will make all of the microprocessors for the iPhone 7 that is due to debut in 2016 using its 16nm FinFET manufacturing process, according to a Chinese language report.
  
  
• GlobalFoundries Employee Buyout Result of Revenue Drop (Tuesday Sep. 15, 2015)
  GlobalFoundries is offering a buyout program to members of its U.S. workforce following a downturn in revenues for the foundry industry over the past nine months.
  
  
• Companies Maximize 300mm, 200mm Wafers; Slow Progress on 450mm (Monday Sep. 14, 2015)
  Larger wafer diameters provide more chips per wafer at a modest increase in material and process costs, resulting in reduced chip costs. Historically, transitions to larger diameter wafers have provided cost reductions greater than 20% per unit area. However, enormous financial and technology hurdles continue to plague the development of, and the transition to, 450mm wafers.
  
  
• IoT Lacks Tools, Says EDA Vet (Friday Sep. 11, 2015)
  New design tools are needed to orchestrate an emerging swarm of networked sensors and the services they will spawn, said a Berkeley researcher and veteran of the EDA industry.
  
  
• IP hot spot forms in Egypt (Thursday Sep. 10, 2015)
  The formation of a set of semiconductor companies in and around Cairo, Egypt, provides hints that a possible clustering effect may be taking place there.
  
  
• Equipment Spending Slows but Still Positive in 2015 and 2016 (Thursday Sep. 10, 2015)
  Front End fab equipment spending (including new, used, and in-house) is projected to increase 5.0 percent in 2015 (to US$ 37.0 billion) and another 6.6 percent in 2016 (to $39.4 billion) according to most recent edition of the SEMI World Fab Forecast.
  
  
• Apple Unveils New Chips For Mobile (Thursday Sep. 10, 2015)
  The iPad Pro runs on a 64-bit A9X, Apple’s third generation of custom designed processors. While Apple was expectedly short on details, officials announced that A9X has twice the memory bandwidth of last year’s A8X and is 1.8 times faster than the 8X processor inside the Macbook Air 2 for “desktop-class performance.”
  
  
• Qualcomm Sketches Out Kyro Core (Tuesday Sep. 08, 2015)
  Qualcomm sketched out details of Kyro, the custom ARM core in its next-generation Snapdragon SoC which got rave reviews from one veteran analyst.
  
  
• Asia-Pacific to Dominate IC Sales Across System Categories in 2015 (Friday Sep. 04, 2015)
  Asia-Pacific’s grip as the dominant market for IC sales is forecast to strengthen in 2015 with the region expected to account for 58.9% of the $295.0 billion IC market this year, based on analysis published in IC Insights’ mid-year Update to its IC Market Drivers 2015 report.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Down Slightly in July (Friday Sep. 04, 2015)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors were $27.9 billion for the month of July 2015, a decrease of 0.9 percent from July 2014 when sales were $28.1 billion. Global sales from July 2015 were 0.4 percent lower than the June 2015 total of $28.0 billion.
  
  
• Does a Chinese Bid for Globalfoundries Make Sense? (Thursday Sep. 03, 2015)
  After Micron and OmniVision, should China's next big acquisition be leading foundry Globalfoundries Inc?
  
  
• Analog Devices is Sand 9 buyer (Wednesday Sep. 02, 2015)
  Piezoelectric MEMS resonator startup Sand 9 Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.) was acquired by Analog Devices Inc. (Norwood, Mass.) in June 2015, according to a technology consultant who works for companies on timing circuits. Several sources also emailed EE Times Europe to say that Analog Devices had bought Sand 9.
  
  
• China Server Upstart Hits Spotlight (Wednesday Sep. 02, 2015)
  Phytium Technology Co. Ltd. went from being an unknown to the equivalent of a rock star in the microprocessor world last week.
  
  
• Pure-Play Foundry Sales Forecast to Surpass $12.0 Billion in 4Q15 (Friday Aug. 28, 2015)
  The pure-play foundry market is forecast to grow to an all-time high of $12.2 billion in 4Q15, following several quarters in which sales remained between $11.3 and $11.8 billion, based on IC Insights’ updated foundry forecast.
  
  
• Open Source GPU Debuts (Friday Aug. 28, 2015)
  The first general-purpose graphics processor (GPGPU) now available as open-source RTL was unveiled at the Hot Chips event here. In a separate talk, another academic described an integrated open source processor with a core that’s more power efficient than a similar block from ARM.
  
  
• Well-backed MEMS startup closed? (Thursday Aug. 27, 2015)
  Sand 9 Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.), a startup founded in 2007 to develop piezoelectric MEMS resonator timing circuits as an alternative to quartz crystal devices, appears to have closed its doors.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Server Shipment Market Grew 8 Percent in the Second Quarter of 2015, While Revenue Increased 7.2 Percent (Wednesday Aug. 26, 2015)
  In the second quarter of 2015, worldwide server shipments grew 8.0 percent year over year, while revenue increased 7.2 percent from the first quarter of 2014, according to Gartner, Inc
  
  
• CEO Interview: Ambiq Sees Broader Options for Low Voltage (Wednesday Aug. 26, 2015)
  Mike Noonen, recently appointed interim CEO at microcontroller startup Ambiq Micro, discusses the focus and opportunities for this pioneering company designing circuits that can operate below the threshold voltage of the constituent transistors.
  
  
• China Shakes Up ARM Servers (Wednesday Aug. 26, 2015)
  A China-based startup described at the annual Hot Chips event here the most aggressive ARM-based server processor to date. In the same session, Oracle described its first Sparc processor with integrated Infiniband.
  
  
• Startup Wants Better IoT Radios (Tuesday Aug. 25, 2015)
  The Internet of Things needs new lower power radios and a fresh approach to silicon design, said an expert with a startup designing IoT chips.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts July 2015 Book-to-Bill Ratio of 1.02 (Friday Aug. 21, 2015)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.59 billion in orders worldwide in July 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.02, according to the July EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Microcontroller Unit Shipments Surge but Falling Prices Sap Sales Growth (Thursday Aug. 20, 2015)
  Explosion of smartcards, embedded sensors, and new Internet of Things applications are driving up unit volumes of low-cost 32-bit MCU solutions, says Mid-Year Update.
  
  
• Taiwan May Ease Rules on Chip Investments in China (Thursday Aug. 20, 2015)