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Commentary / Analysis

• Samsung, Toshiba Detail AI Chips (Wednesday Feb. 20, 2019)
  Samsung described a new neural network accelerator for smartphones that matches blocks from rivals such as Huawei. Toshiba detailed one for self-driving cars that pulls ahead of competitors such as Intel’s Mobileye at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference here.
  
  
• Intel Says FinFET-based Embedded MRAM is Production Ready (Wednesday Feb. 20, 2019)
  Intel gave further details on its technique for embedding spin-transfer torque (STT)-MRAM into devices using its 22nm FinFET process, pronouncing the technology ready for high-volume manufacturing. Embedded MRAM is considered a promising technology for applications such as internet-of-things (IoT) devices.
  
  
• Globalfoundries sees success for its diversification strategy (Wednesday Feb. 20, 2019)
  The Dresden plant of chip manufacturer Globalfoundries has returned to normal production after a six-month period of short-time work. The upswing could be regarded as an indication that foundry’s diversification strategy seems to be bearing first fruits.
  
  
• Moving AI Processing to the Edge Will Shake Up the Semiconductor Industry (Tuesday Feb. 19, 2019)
  Revenue from the sale of Artificial Intelligence (AI) chipsets for edge inference and inference training will grow at 65% and 137% respectively between 2018 and 2023, creating massive new potential revenue streams for chip vendors.
  
  
• Open Source Hardware Benefits Procurement Practices (Monday Feb. 18, 2019)
  Electronics engineers and designers will enjoy a variety of benefits of the advent of processor options based the RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA). The supply chain and procurement department, though, has the potential of capturing a variety of sourcing benefits related to the nature of open source offerings as well.
  
  
• Can MIPS Leapfrog RISC-V? (Friday Feb. 15, 2019)
  When Wave Computing acquired MIPS, “going open source” was the plan Wave’s CEO Derek Meyer had in mind. But Meyer, a long-time MIPS veteran, couldn’t casually mention his plan then.
  
  
• SiFive Sees Big Year for RISC-V (Thursday Feb. 14, 2019)
  
  
  
• Taiwan Maintains The Largest Share of Global IC Wafer Fab Capacity (Thursday Feb. 14, 2019)
  Taiwan led all regions/countries in wafer capacity with 21.8% share, a slight increase from 21.3% in 2017 (Taiwan first became the global wafer capacity leader in 2015.) Taiwan’s capacity share was only slightly ahead of South Korea, which accounted for 21.3% of global wafer capacity in 2018
  
  
• Can Arm Survive RISC-V Challenge? (Wednesday Feb. 13, 2019)
  Arm offers limited flexibility compared to RISC-V or MIPS. No one wants to spend months negotiating license terms under today's cost and time-to-market pressures.
  
  
• 200mm Fabs to Add 700,000 Wafers Through 2022, SEMI Reports (Tuesday Feb. 12, 2019)
  Robust demand for more content for mobile, Internet of Things (IoT), automotive and industrial applications will drive production of 700,000 200mm wafers from 2019 to 2022, a 14 percent increase, reports SEMI
  
  
• China IC Production Forecast to Show a Strong 15% 2018-2023 CAGR (Friday Feb. 08, 2019)
  IC production in China represented 15.3% of its $155 billion IC market in 2018, up from 12.6% five years earlier in 2013.
  
  
• NVMe Over TCP Will Take Time to Eclipse RDMA (Thursday Feb. 07, 2019)
  This year is already predicted to be a big one for NVMe-over-Fabric, and NVMe over TCP is expected to be a significant contributor.
  
  
• Apple, Q'comm Fight Over Engineers (Thursday Feb. 07, 2019)
  The latest battle of the all-out war between Apple and Qualcomm is taking a human toll. The iPhone designer is hiring cellular baseband engineers in San Diego, Qualcomm’s backyard.
  
  
• Renesas to Cut 1,000 Jobs in Japan (Monday Feb. 04, 2019)
  Japanese semiconductor company Renesas Electronics plans to eliminate roughly 1000 jobs — equivalent to 5% of its entire workforce. Cuts are targeted at those working in Japan.
  
  
• Gartner Says Four Chinese OEMs Were Among the Top 10 Global Semiconductor Customers in 2018 (Monday Feb. 04, 2019)
  Samsung Electronics and Apple remained the top two semiconductor chip buyers in 2018, representing 17.9 percent of the total worldwide market, according to Gartner, Inc. This is a 1.6 percent decrease compared with the previous year.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 13.7 Percent to $468.8 Billion in 2018 (Monday Feb. 04, 2019)
  SIA today announced the global semiconductor industry posted sales of $468.8 billion in 2018, the industry’s highest-ever annual total and an increase of 13.7 percent compared to the 2017 total.
  
  
• Semiconductor R&D Spending Will Step Up After Slowing (Friday Feb. 01, 2019)
  The semiconductor business is defined by rapid technological changes and the need to maintain high levels of investment in research and development for new materials, innovative manufacturing processes for increasingly complex chip designs, and advanced IC packaging technologies.
  
  
• Annual Silicon Shipments Hit Record High, Market Exceeds $10 Billion for First Time Since 2008 (Thursday Jan. 31, 2019)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments in 2018 increased 8 percent year-over-year to a record high, while 2018 worldwide silicon revenue jumped 31 percent during the same period, exceeding the $10 billion mark for the first time since 2018, reported the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its year-end analysis of the silicon wafer industry.
  
  
• Semiconductor Unit Shipments Exceeded 1 Trillion Devices in 2018 (Monday Jan. 28, 2019)
  Annual semiconductor unit shipments, including integrated circuits and optoelectronics, sensors, and discrete (O-S-D) devices grew 10% in 2018 and surpassed the one trillion unit mark for the first time, based on data presented in the new, 2019 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report
  
  
• China, Chips, and 2019 Still Unclear (Monday Jan. 28, 2019)
  Amid big uncertainties over China and European trade and the bottom of the memory cycle, veteran analyst Bill McLean predicts that the semiconductor industry will slow down over the next two years before picking up steam again. Long term, don’t worry about China, he advised in his annual Silicon Valley talk.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts December 2018 Billings (Friday Jan. 25, 2019)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.11 billion in billings worldwide in December 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the December Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Imagination's New CEO Plots Turnaround Strategy (Thursday Jan. 24, 2019)
  Ron Black, the recently appointed CEO of Imagination Technologies, is well aware that the prahics IP vendor has something to prove.
  
  
• NXP's Reger Re-defines CTO's Role (Wednesday Jan. 23, 2019)
  Last month, Lars Reger became CTO for all of NXP Semiconductors -- the sort of role that has lots of faith-shaking pitfalls. I wonder what challenges it will bring, and what changes he might bring to NXP.
  
  
• Global GDP Growth Increasingly Important Driver of IC Market Growth (Wednesday Jan. 23, 2019)
  Over the 2010-2018 timeframe, the correlation coefficient between worldwide GDP growth and IC market growth was 0.86 (0.91 excluding memory in 2017 and 2018), a strong figure given that a perfect positive correlation is 1.0.
  
  
• TSMC's Outlook Underscores Foundry Market Challenges (Tuesday Jan. 22, 2019)
  TSMC's announcement last week that it expects its quarterly sales to decline precipitously quarter-to-quarter put the chip foundry market on notice as it begins what is expected to be a challenging year.
  
  
• Updated HBM Standard Geared for HPC, Networking (Friday Jan. 18, 2019)
  High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), like many other memory technologies, is being adopted for emerging use cases that didn’t exist at its inception because of specific characteristics such performance, capacity and power consumption. But it won’t be long before there’s pressure to improve upon them as adoption in newer scenarios takes off.
  
  
• Q'comm Exec: "Automotive Changed Our DNA" (Friday Jan. 18, 2019)
  Had Qualcomm’s marriage with NXP been consummated, the Consumer Electronics Show last week would have been the stage to unveil the world’s largest automotive chip giant (Qualcomm/NXP).
  
  
• Value of Semiconductor Mergers and Acquisitions Falls Considerably (Friday Jan. 18, 2019)
  The historic flood of merger and acquisition agreements that swept through the semiconductor industry in 2015 and 2016 slowed significantly in 2017 and then eased back further in 2018, but the total value of M&A deals reached in the last year was still nearly more than twice the annual average during the first half of this decade.
  
  
• Semiconductor Leaders' Marketshares Swell Over the Past 10 Years (Tuesday Jan. 15, 2019)
  The top 5 semiconductor suppliers accounted for 47% of the world’s semiconductor sales in 2018, an increase of 14 percentage points from 10 years earlier.
  
  
• Apple's $1 Billion Baseband Deal (Monday Jan. 14, 2019)
  Qualcomm paid Apple $1 billion in a three-year deal in 2011 to win its cellular modem business.