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Commentary / Analysis

• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 5.1 Percent Year-to-Year in June; Q2 Sales Down Slightly Compared to Q1 (Wednesday Aug. 05, 2020)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors were $34.5 billion in June 2020, an increase of 5.1 percent from the June 2019 total of $32.9 billion. Sales in June were 0.3 percent less than the May 2020 total of $34.6 billion.
  
  
• Nvidia in pole position to buy Arm (Monday Aug. 03, 2020)
  Talks between Softbank and Nvidia about selling a stake in Arm are reported by the Nikkei to be at an advanced stage.
  
  
• Nvidia-Arm Deal Would Be a Technology "Disaster" (Monday Aug. 03, 2020)
  That Nvidia intends to buy Arm from Softbank now appears to be more than just idle speculation. Nvidia initially approached SoftBank with a proposal to purchase Arm for more than $32 billion in a cash-and-stock deal, according to two news sources.
  
  
• Nvidia Buying Arm Would be Reckless (Monday Aug. 03, 2020)
  Nvidia Corp. is reported to be in talks to purchase Arm Holdings Plc. If true, the move would be beyond stupid. It would be reckless and would ignite a firestorm of negative reactions from current and potential Arm licenses and be, on a long-term basis, counter productive for Nvidia and its shareholders.
  
  
• NAND Flash, DRAM Forecast to Remain Largest IC Markets in 2020 (Monday Aug. 03, 2020)
  DRAM and NAND flash are expected to repeat as the two largest IC segments again in 2020 after holding the same positions in 2019.
  
  
• Gen-Z Seeks to Share Memory, Lower Latencies (Thursday Jul. 30, 2020)
  Not to be confused with the demographic cohort that succeeds millennials, Gen-Z is a memory-semantic fabric architecture that’s at a point where it must better define how it fits within the greater scheme of specifications and standards, including the somewhat mature NVM Express and the emerging Compute Express Link (CXL) protocol that’s gaining traction in data centers.
  
  
• Intel Outside ... Just Like all the Others (Thursday Jul. 30, 2020)
  Intel Corp. did not make a formal announcement but industry observers believe the company will within the next 5 to 10 years terminate the development of next-generation semiconductor process technology, stop building new wafer fabs and, like many of its rivals, depend solely on dedicated foundries for these critical services.
  
  
• Arm China asks Beijing government to intervene in row with Arm UK (Wednesday Jul. 29, 2020)
  Arm China is asking the Beijing government to step into the row between Arm UK and Arm China.
  
  
• Intel is a Potentially Great Foundry (Wednesday Jul. 29, 2020)
  Intel Corp. dropped the ball. It should today be the world’s biggest semiconductor foundry; not TSMC. This can still change but it will require a radically different vision and strategy completely at odds with what CEO Bob Swan outlined last week. The board of directors will also need to intervene.
  
  
• Second Quarter 2020 Silicon Wafer Shipments Up Over First-Quarter and Year-Ago Volumes (Monday Jul. 27, 2020)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments rose 8 percent to 3,152 million square inches in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the 2,920 million square inches shipped in the first quarter of the year and surpassed second quarter 2019 shipments by 6 percent
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts June 2020 Billings (Friday Jul. 24, 2020)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.32 billion in billings worldwide in June 2020 (three-month average basis), according to the June Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI .
  
  
• Softbank talks to Apple and Nvidia about Arm sale (Thursday Jul. 23, 2020)
  SoftBank has talked to both Nvidia and Apple about selling all or part of Arm to them, reports Bloomberg.
  
  
• Moore's Law Isn't Slowing down - Just Ask System Companies (Tuesday Jul. 21, 2020)
  Moore’s Law, the tenet that the number of transistors on a chip will double every 18-24 months, has driven the electronics industry for decades. Today, there’s no denying that Moore’s Law is showing its age, with some semiconductor industry leaders going so far as to rewrite its definition.
  
  
• SMIC: Advanced Process Technologies and Gov't Funding (Part 2) (Monday Jul. 20, 2020)
  With the Trump Administration preventing SMIC from accessing some of the latest manufacturing equipment, can SMIC keep offering cutting-edge process technologies required by leading developers of system-on-chips (SoCs) in the long run?
  
  
• TSMC Raises Capital Expenditure Plan on Improved Outlook (Friday Jul. 17, 2020)
  
  
  
• Buying Avatar, Siemens Revives Legendary Place & Route Tool (Thursday Jul. 16, 2020)
  Siemens has struck a deal to buy Avatar Integrated Systems Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.), a developer of place & route software. Avatar’s tool was once highly rated but discredited by Synopsys back in 2017. The acquisition by Siemens revives it as a strong contender in the place-and-route software segment of the EDA market.
  
  
• 1Q/4Q "Direction Indicator" Signals Rebound in the 2020 IC Market (Thursday Jul. 16, 2020)
  After dropping by 15% last year, the worldwide IC market is expected to show single-digit growth in 2020, even with the disastrous effects of Covid-19 on the global economy.
  
  
• Softbank Said to Have a Buyout Offer for Arm (Wednesday Jul. 15, 2020)
  Softbank is said to have been weighing the possibility of holding an initial public offering (IPO) for Arm Holdings, but now there’s said to be at least one company out there that wants to straight-up buy Arm from Softbank.
  
  
• SMIC: Advanced Process Technologies and Gov't Funding (Wednesday Jul. 15, 2020)
  Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. has begun producing 14nm chips, and has joined the relatively small club of semiconductor makers that can build finFETs. The company is on the verge of a stock offering that could reap in excess of $7 billion to keep investing in its business.
  
  
• Maxim Integrated Deal Cements Analog Devices at No 2 in Analog (Wednesday Jul. 15, 2020)
  The $21 billion acquisition of Maxim Integrated by Analog Devices ranks in the top three among mega-semiconductor company acquisitions in recent years (the others include Avago’s acquisition of Broadcom for $37 billion and SoftBank buying Arm for $32 billion).
  
  
• ESD Alliance Reports Electronic Design Automation Industry Revenue Growth for Q1 2020 (Monday Jul. 13, 2020)
  The Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 3.5 percent in Q1 2020 to $2,698 million, compared to $2,606.4 million in Q1 2019.
  
  
• Apple to Start Mass Producing Self-Designed Mac SoC, Projected to Cost under US$100, in 1H21, Says TrendForce (Tuesday Jul. 07, 2020)
  The first Mac SoC, projected to cost under US$100, will be mass produced with TSMC’s 5nm process technology. The low cost of the Mac SoC makes it an extremely cost-competitive option.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 5.8 Percent Year-to-Year in May; Annual Sales Projected to Increase 3.3 Percent in 2020, 6.2 Percent in 2021 (Monday Jul. 06, 2020)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors were $35.0 billion in May 2020, an increase of 5.8 percent from the May 2019 total of $33.0 billion and 1.5 percent more than the April 2020 total of $34.4 billion
  
  
• Taiwan Edges South Korea as Largest Base for IC Wafer Capacity (Thursday Jun. 25, 2020)
  China capacity expansion forecast to push the country into second place in the regional rankings in 2022, trailing only Taiwan in size.
  
  
• Apple Moving Macs from Intel to Arm (Thursday Jun. 25, 2020)
  After two years of rumors, at this year’s (virtual) World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple finally announced that it was going to migrate all its Mac products from Intel processors to the company’s own Arm-based silicon.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts May 2020 Billings (Friday Jun. 19, 2020)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.35 billion in billings worldwide in May 2020 (three-month average basis), according to the May Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Distributed In-Chip Thermal Sensors Improve Multicore CPU Monitoring (Thursday Jun. 18, 2020)
  With silicon geometries scaling to 5nm, thermal activity escalates and monitoring becomes critical to maintaining accuracy and reliability. To address this, Moortec, a provider of in-chip monitoring, telemetry and analytics technology, has introduced a distributed thermal sensor (DTS) on TSMC’s N5 process, which it claims is significantly smaller and more accurate compared to current in-chip thermal sensor solutions.
  
  
• Automotive IC Market Forecast With Strongest CAGR Through 2024 (Thursday Jun. 18, 2020)
  Automotive IC segment to show robust average annual growth but still hold less than a 10% share in 2024. Communications and Computer segments remain largest applications.
  
  
• Intel's 10nm Node: Past, Present, and Future - Part 2 (Thursday Jun. 18, 2020)
  Originally promised to hit the market in the second half of 2016, Intel’s Cannon Lake processor was first delayed to the second half of 2017, and then was quietly launched in limited quantities in 2018.
  
  
• U.S. Chip Revival Gains Traction (Wednesday Jun. 17, 2020)
  A new front has opened in efforts to revive U.S. chip manufacturing as lawmakers propose billions of dollars in spending and tax incentives to promote technology innovation across the entire semiconductor ecosystem — from post-Moore’s Law basic research to advanced chip packaging.