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Commentary / Analysis

• TSMC Capex to Exceed $10B in FinFET Ramp-Up (Thursday Oct. 16, 2014)
  TSMC said Thursday, Oct. 16, that it aims to increase its capital expenditures next year to more than US$10 billion as it accelerates its ramp-up to commercial production of 16 nm FinFET chips.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Capital Spending to Increase by More Than 11 Percent in 2014 (Thursday Oct. 16, 2014)
  Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to total $64.5 billion in 2014, an increase of 11.4 percent from 2013 spending of $57.8 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. Capital equipment spending will increase 17.1 percent in 2014, driven by strong memory average selling prices and increased demand for consumer products.
  
  
• IC Industry Slowdown: True or False? (Thursday Oct. 16, 2014)
  Did Microchip Technology get ahead of itself last week by suggesting that its downward revenue forecast was a negative bellwether for the whole semiconductor market? Or is there a macro-economic weakness, foreshadowed by Microchip, that bodes ill for the chip industry?
  
  
• Analysis: In $2.5B Deal, Qualcomm & CSR Mesh (Thursday Oct. 16, 2014)
  Qualcomm Inc., the world's largest cellphone chip vendor, has agreed to buy CSR for ₤1.57 billion ($2.5 billion) to strengthen its presence in the Internet of Things.
  
  
• Samsung Invests Big to Maintain Leadership, Support New Markets (Thursday Oct. 16, 2014)
  Samsung recently announced plans to build a new, cutting-edge wafer fab—a $14.7 billion investment for the company that will be located in Pyeongtaek, a city south of Seoul. The new fab, slated to begin production in 2H17, will add to Samsung’s current impressive compilation of wafer fabs as it seeks to maintain its leading position in memory IC sales and expand its system leadership beyond smartphones, Smart TVs, and tablets.
  
  
• Total Analog Revenues for 2014 Expected to Reach over $43 Billion, Says Semico Research (Wednesday Oct. 15, 2014)
  The shift to mobile has given a huge boost to the analog market. Interfacing with the real world via cameras, touch, gesture controls, audio and video applications all require analog functionality. In addition, power management ICs are critical to the success of these devices. These growing applications have added significant volumes to analog unit sales.
  
  
• Windows 10 On ARM: 7 Observations (Tuesday Oct. 14, 2014)
  Microsoft reps have been tight-lipped about the future of Windows on ARM devices but the company has many reasons to remain invested in non-Intel architectures.
  
  
• Maxim Preps Asynchronous MCU Core (Thursday Oct. 09, 2014)
  Maxim Integrated Products Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) is working on its own design of 16bit RISC processor core in an asynchronous logic, or clockless, format for the sake of power saving.
  
  
• Gigabit Ethernet Seeks a Boost (Thursday Oct. 09, 2014)
  Gigabit Ethernet is gearing up for a midlife kicker. Broadcom is leading a charge to create 2.5-Gigabit and 5-Gigabit standards for Ethernet to help keep pace with advances in WiFi. Trying to get ahead of the pack, Aquantia announced a family of physical-layer devices that support the faster data rates.
  
  
• ARM Calls for 'Invisible' Technology (Thursday Oct. 09, 2014)
  Successful technology will be invisible, ARM CEO Simon Segars said in his keynote address at ARM TechCon here. While the physical size of silicon is ever shrinking, connectivity, performance, and efficiency need to be even less visible to consumers.
  
  
• DRAM, China, and Leading-Edge Foundry Driving IC Industry in 2014 (Wednesday Oct. 08, 2014)
  IC Insights has just released its second McClean Report webcast for the 2014 subscription year. Some highlights from the numerous topics discussed during this latest webcast are depicted below.
  
  
• Why Do Big Companies Make Their Own Sensors? (Wednesday Oct. 08, 2014)
  The integration of sensors and sensor hubs into everything from smartphones to aerospace -- and the resultant plethora of MEMS/sensor startups and rock-bottom commodity pricing -- can make one wonder why any company would resort to the major research and development (R&D) effort to design its own sensors, much less commit to manufacturing them in-house or even at foundries. However, after interviewing the companies and analysts, EE Times uncovered a variety of good reasons for brewing your own sensors and sensor hubs.
  
  
• TSMC Overtakes Samsung in FinFET (Tuesday Oct. 07, 2014)
  TSMC, which has more than half the global foundry business, has overtaken Samsung in the FinFET race to commercial production that the South Korean company was leading this year, according to industry analysts. Both companies lag Intel, which is making FinFET chips internally.
  
  
• EDA Consortium Reports Revenue Increase For Q2 2014 (Monday Oct. 06, 2014)
  The EDA Consortium (EDAC) Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 6.3 percent for Q2 2014 to $1757.9 million, compared to $1653.4 million in Q2 2013. Sequential EDA revenue for Q2 2014 increased 0.7 percent compared to Q1 2014, while the four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 5.8 percent.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Continue to Climb in August (Monday Oct. 06, 2014)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and design, today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $28.4 billion for the month of August 2014, an increase of 9.4 percent from the August 2013 total of $26 billion and an uptick of 1.3 percent over the July 2014 total of $28.1 billion.
  
  
• ARM Servers Want a Tune Up (Monday Oct. 06, 2014)
  Users and vendors of ARM-based servers say their biggest need is better support from middleware such as compilers for scripting languages. The systems aim to use an emerging class of relatively power-efficient ARM-based SoCs to grab a slice of a server market currently dominated by Intel’s muscular x86 processors.
  
  
• ARM Partners Explore M7 Horizon (Thursday Oct. 02, 2014)
  ARM partners gathered here to discuss new use cases for the recently announced Cortex-M7, which promises performance of 5 CoreMark/MHz and 2.14 DMIPs/MHz. Freescale is one of several early ARM partners deploying the M7 in its SoCs; others include Atmel.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Sales on Pace to Total $338 Billion in 2014, a 7.2 Percent Increase From 2013 (Thursday Oct. 02, 2014)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue is on pace to reach $338 billion in 2014, a 7.2 percent increase from 2013, and up from the previous quarter's forecast of 6.7 percent growth, according to Gartner, Inc.
  
  
• Semiconductor double digit growth in 2014 & 2015 (Wednesday Oct. 01, 2014)
  The global semiconductor market was US$82.2 billion in the second quarter of 2014 according to World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). 2Q 2014 was up 4.8% from 1Q 2014 up 10.1% from 2Q 2013. Healthy growth should continue into 3Q 2014.
  
  
• Smartphone Apps Processor Revenue Reached $5.2 Billion in Q2 2014 says Strategy Analytics (Tuesday Sep. 30, 2014)
  The global smartphone applications processor (AP) market grew 22 percent year-on-year growth to reach $5.2 billion in Q2 2014, according to Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies (HCS) service report, “Smartphone Apps Processor Market Share Q2 2014: Qualcomm Captures 58 Percent Revenue Share”
  
  
• Intel Rose to Number Two Position in Tablet Applications Processors in Q2 2014 (Tuesday Sep. 30, 2014)
  The global tablet applications processor (AP) market registered a solid 23 percent year-on-year growth to reach $945 million in Q2 2014, according to Strategy Analytics Handset Component Technologies (HCT) service report, “Tablet Apps Processor Market Share Q2 2014: Intel Grabs Number Two Spot.”
  
  
• Smartphone Connectivity Presents Both Opportunities and Challenges for Automotive Processor Chip Suppliers (Monday Sep. 29, 2014)
  The use of smartphones in motor vehicles—already a near-ubiquitous phenomenon—is the most disruptive trend in the automotive infotainment business today, presenting both challenges and opportunities for automakers and their processor semiconductor suppliers, according to a new report from IHS Technology.
  
  
• 4 Reasons for Intel's $1.5 Billion Bet in China (Monday Sep. 29, 2014)
  
  
  
• Leading-Edge IC Foundry Market Forecast to Increase 72% in 2014 (Friday Sep. 26, 2014)
  Of the Big 4 pure-play foundries (i.e., TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, and SMIC), TSMC is the only one that is expected to have a higher revenue-per-wafer figure in 2014 than in 2010. Of the Big 4 foundries, TSMC is forecast to have the highest revenue per wafer in 2014 at $1,328, 27% higher than GlobalFoundries.
  
  
• iPhone 6 Plus: $100 Costlier for Consumers to Buy - Just $15.50 More Expensive for Apple to Make (Thursday Sep. 25, 2014)
  For consumers opting to buy Apple Inc.’s iPhone 6 Plus rather than the iPhone 6, the additional 0.8 inches of screen size will cost $100 extra. However, for Apple, the iPhone 6 Plus costs only about $16 more to produce, delivering to the company an even heftier margin than normal for its wildly popular smartphone line.
  
  
• Cadence's Rowen Forecasts Processor Design Split (Tuesday Sep. 23, 2014)
  Chris Rowen, CTO of the IP Group at Cadence Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), has developed a vision of how system-on-chip architecture is evolving in the era of the Internet of Things and has concluded that processor architectures will become more diverse and their design style will bifurcate into least two major categories.
  
  
• Teardown.com Analysis: Apple iPhone 6 Plus (Monday Sep. 22, 2014)
  This year's Apple iPhone release included two flagship phones, the iPhone 6 and the larger iPhone 6 Plus, finally moving into the 4.7" and 5.5" mobile phone market. The iPhone 6 Plus is a competitive leap forward against such devices as the already released LG G3 and Samsung's Galaxy Note 4 -- Apple's toughest competitor, to be released in October.
  
  
• Why UMC is Boosting Automotive Chip Business (Monday Sep. 22, 2014)
  United Microelectronics Inc. (UMC) is making a strong push to increase its automotive semiconductor participation in order to take advantage of a changing marketplace shifting to one of the largest growing chip markets.
  
  
• What Apple Stuffed Inside iPhone 6 Plus (Monday Sep. 22, 2014)
  The iPhone 6 Plus packs a host of new tech including Apple's A8 SoC manufactured by TSMC.
  
  
• Dell: 'If ARM works and costs less, we will use it' (Friday Sep. 19, 2014)
  Michael Dell, founder of Dell, has said the company may work with Cambridge-based microprocessor firm ARM for its mainstream servers.