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Commentary / Analysis

• DRAM Growth Tops Industry Ranking in 2018; Outlook Dims for 2019 (Friday Dec. 14, 2018)
  Topping the chart of fastest-growing products for 2018 is DRAM, which comes as no surprise given the strong rise of average selling prices in this segment over the past two years.
  
  
• Semiconductor Equipment Sales Forecast: $62 Billion in 2018 A New Record, Market Reset in 2019 with New High in 2020 (Wednesday Dec. 12, 2018)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide sales of new semiconductor manufacturing equipment are projected to increase 9.7 percent to $62.1 billion in 2018, exceeding the historic high of $56.6 billion set last year. The equipment market is expected to contract 4.0 percent in 2019 but grow 20.7 percent to reach $71.9 billion, an all-time high.
  
  
• Arm Releases IoT Predictions for 2019 (Monday Dec. 10, 2018)
  The end of the year brings predictions galore, and Arm has jumped on this bandwagon with its view on what it thinks will happen in the internet of things (IoT) in 2019. It also carried out a consumer survey to find out what end users think about IoT, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), and 5G.
  
  
• RISC-V Takes a Leap Forward (Wednesday Dec. 05, 2018)
  RISC-V is open for business, proponents will claim at the first annual summit for the open-source instruction set architecture today. The Silicon Valley event comes at a time when backers say that China is rallying around the architecture with perhaps hundreds of RISC-V SoCs and dozens of cores in the works.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 12.7 Percent Year-to-Year in October; Double-Digit Annual Growth Projected for 2018 (Tuesday Dec. 04, 2018)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $41.8 billion for the month of October 2018, an increase of 12.7 percent from the October 2017 total of $37.1 billion and 1.0 percent more than last month’s total of $41.4 billion.
  
  
• Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Billings Drop to $15.8 Billion in Third Quarter 2018, SEMI Reports (Monday Dec. 03, 2018)
  SEMI today reported that third quarter 2018 worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings dropped 5 percent from the previous quarter to US$15.8 billion but are 11 percent higher than the same quarter a year ago.
  
  
• NVMe Hits a Tipping Point (Monday Dec. 03, 2018)
  You know you’ve made it when you get your own show. The fact that there’s a show dedicated to NVM Express (NVMe) next month solidifies an industry-wide sentiment that the host controller interface and storage protocol hit a tipping point in the last year.
  
  
• Arm Drops Cordio BLE IP (Friday Nov. 30, 2018)
  Arm is abandoning development of its Cordio hardware IP for low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) applications based on the NarrowBand IoT standard, but will continue to concentrate on the Cordio BLE software stack, EE Times has learned.
  
  
• Samsung's Big Semi Capex Spending Keeps Pressure on Competition (Friday Nov. 30, 2018)
  Samsung is expected to have the largest capex budget of any IC supplier again in 2018. After spending $24.2 billion for semiconductor capex in 2017, IC Insights forecasts that Samsung’s spending will edge slightly downward, but remain at a very strong level of $22.6 billion in 2018
  
  
• Xilinx's New FPGAs Address Evolving Threats, Fake ICs (Wednesday Nov. 28, 2018)
  FPGA pioneer Xilinx is targeting a range or military and space applications with its latest generation of “defense-grade’ programmable logic chips, including expanded military use of machine learning and AI applications as well as securing devices at the network edge.
  
  
• There's More to The RISC-V China Story (Monday Nov. 26, 2018)
  A professor in Beijing corrected us that the China Open Instruction Ecosystem (RISC-V) Alliance, known as CRVA, is no splinter group. We stand corrected. But the fact remains that RISC-V activities in China are fragmented.
  
  
• Only Qualcomm Reported to Post Slight Decline Among Top Ten Fabless IC Design Houses by 3Q18 Revenue, Says TrendForce (Monday Nov. 26, 2018)
  TrendForce announced the ranking of top 10 fabless IC design houses worldwide based on their revenues for 3Q18, among which Qualcomm was the only one to post a slight decline. The other nine companies all registered year-on-year growth in their revenue, driven by segments like networking, data center, automotive application and consumer electronics.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts October 2018 Billings (Wednesday Nov. 21, 2018)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.06 billion in billings worldwide in October 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the October Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Outlook Remains Bright for Automotive Electronic Systems Growth (Tuesday Nov. 20, 2018)
  Despite some high-profile setbacks with autonomous vehicles, auto electronic systems growth projects well; remains a hotbed for semiconductor growth.
  
  
• Mobileye's New EyeQ5: How Open is Open? (Monday Nov. 19, 2018)
  Mobileye is aggressively shedding its reputation as a one-trick vision chip supplier. As the technology of automotive industries transitions from driving assist to robo-taxi development, Mobileye, an Intel company, is rolling out a comprehensive plan to grab a sizable share in the highly automated vehicle (HAV) market.
  
  
• Q&A with ST CEO: Who He Is, What He's Done (Thursday Nov. 15, 2018)
  A little over five months ago, Jean-Marc Chery became the new CEO of STMicroelectronics. He succeeded Carlo Bozotti, whose latter part of a 13-year tenure at the Franco-Italian company was one of the most turbulent periods in the company’s history.
  
  
• Why RISC-V Lags in China (Thursday Nov. 15, 2018)
  China does appear to have many "buyers" interested in RISC-V cores. But as I hunt for "developers" trying to leverage the RISC-V instruction set, I'm coming up short in Shanghai.
  
  
• RISC-V Momentum Seen Growing in China (Thursday Nov. 15, 2018)
  Momentum is growing in China for RISC-V, according to reports from two vendors at an event here. Andes detailed six cores it currently sells and four more in the works using the open-source instruction set architecture, and GoWin demonstrated FPGAs using them.
  
  
• Nine Top-15 2018 Semi Suppliers Forecast to Post Double-Digit Gains (Tuesday Nov. 13, 2018)
  IC Insights’ November Update to the 2018 McClean Report, released later this month, includes a discussion of the forecasted top-25 semiconductor suppliers in 2018
  
  
• What NXP Lost and Regained Post-Qualcomm (Thursday Nov. 08, 2018)
  An 11-hour flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt in mid-June flipped almost every expectation in Lars Reger’s business life — lock, stock, and barrel. Anticipating the eventual merger between Qualcomm and NXP Semiconductors, Reger, NXP’s automotive CTO, had devised a technology roadmap for an automotive division that generates roughly half of NXP’s revenue.
  
  
• Third Quarter Silicon Wafer Shipments Increase, Set New Quarterly Record (Wednesday Nov. 07, 2018)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased during the third quarter 2018, surpassing record second quarter 2018 area shipments to set another all-time high, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.
  
  
• Judge Rules Qualcomm Must License Modem Patents (Wednesday Nov. 07, 2018)
  A U.S. federal judge issued a preliminary ruling requiring Qualcomm license some of its modem IC patents to competitors including Intel and Samsung.
  
  
• Arm's Data Center Two Step (Monday Nov. 05, 2018)
  Arm put smart offload processors in the spotlight at its annual developers’ conference because they are stepping stones to its data center ambitions. The cloud is the latest target for the still-small designer of cores that investor Softbank is betting will be a semiconductor giant someday.
  
  
• Knowledge Transfer, or IP Theft? (Monday Nov. 05, 2018)
  What can be characterized in good times as helping emerging economies develop knowledge or technology can look quite different when things get messy.
  
  
• Who's Who in AI SoCs (Monday Nov. 05, 2018)
  Beyond big guns like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Baidu, who have been designing their own chips for deep learning (both for training and inference), we’re hearing — almost weekly — about “nouvelle” AI SoC architectures invented by startups that nobody’s ever heard of.
  
  
• Samsung Still Spending Heavily on Capex (Monday Nov. 05, 2018)
  Samsung Electronics said that it would cut its semiconductor capital spending slightly and warned that the memory market is headed for a seasonal slowdown after two years of spectacular growth.
  
  
• New Architectures Bringing AI to the Edge (Friday Nov. 02, 2018)
  As artificial intelligence (AI) capability moves from the cloud to edge, it is inevitable that chipmakers will find ways to implement AI functions like neural-network processing and voice recognition in smaller, more efficient, and cost-effective devices.
  
  
• Chipmaker Results Point Toward Correction (Friday Nov. 02, 2018)
  A number of chipmaker earnings announcements over the last week had a common theme — softer demand, inventory correction, and potential impacts from the U.S.-China trade war.
  
  
• Quarterly Year-over-Year Growth Slows Substantially for IC Market (Friday Nov. 02, 2018)
  The first half of 2018 started out with strong quarterly year-over-year growth for the IC market. However, 3Q year-over-year IC market growth dropped to 14%. Moreover, with the softening of the memory market, IC Insights projects that year-over-year IC market growth in 4Q will be only 6%.
  
  
• Chinese Firm to Buy NXP Spinoff (Monday Oct. 29, 2018)
  Chinese contract manufacturer Wingtech Technology Co Ltd said it has struck deals to acquire a controlling stake in Netherlands-based Nexperia, a spin off of NXP Semiconductors.