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Commentary / Analysis

• Machine Learning on DSPs: Enabling Audio AI at the Edge (Monday Apr. 22, 2019)
  Once confined to cloud servers with practically infinite resources, machine learning is moving into edge devices for various reasons including lower latency, reduced cost, energy efficiency, and enhanced privacy.
  
  
• Graphcore CEO Touts 'Most Complex Processor' Ever (Monday Apr. 22, 2019)
  EETimes spoke to Nigel Toon, Graphcore CEO, about the company and its vision, the market for AI accelerators, and the future of AI.
  
  
• RISC-V, DARPA Advance Security (Monday Apr. 22, 2019)
  With the proliferation of intelligent devices, the industry needs new robust security approaches instead of trying to fix the cracks in existing designs.With the proliferation of intelligent devices, the industry needs new robust security approaches instead of trying to fix the cracks in existing designs.
  
  
• Globalfoundries' Morgenstern: Diversity is key in Dresden (Thursday Apr. 18, 2019)
  eeNews Europe caught up with Thomas Morgenstern, the managing director of Globalfoundries' operations in Dresden, Germany, and found a semiconductor executive with a remit to broaden the company's approach to multiple markets.
  
  
• EDA Industry Revenue Grows for Full Year 2018 but Slows for Fourth Quarter (Monday Apr. 15, 2019)
  The Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue decreased 3.1 percent for Q4 2018 to $2570.1 million, compared to $2652 million in Q4 2017.
  
  
• Countdown: How Close is China to 40% Chip Self-Sufficiency? (Friday Apr. 12, 2019)
  China is making progress becoming less reliant on foreign supply of semiconductors, according to Chinese IC industry executives, but the country’s efforts still require setting specific intermediate goals and prioritizing those goals.
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Grew 12.5 Percent in 2018 (Thursday Apr. 11, 2019)
  Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $474.6 billion in 2018, a 12.5 percent increase from 2017, according to final results by Gartner, Inc. 2018 growth was weaker than the previous year (21.9 percent) due to memory growth slowing to 24.9 percent versus 2017 growth of 61.8 percent.
  
  
• 2018 Global Semiconductor Equipment Sales Jump to Record $64.5 Billion (Wednesday Apr. 10, 2019)
  Worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment surged 14 percent from $56.62 billion in 2017 to an all-time high of $64.5 billion in 2018
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Decrease 7.3 Percent Month-to-Month in February (Tuesday Apr. 02, 2019)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $32.9 billion for the month of February 2019, a decrease of 7.3 percent from the January 2019 total of $35.5 billion and 10.6 percent less than the February 2018 total of $36.8 billion.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Materials Sales Hit New High of $51.9 Billion (Tuesday Apr. 02, 2019)
  The global semiconductor materials market grew 10.6 percent in 2018, propelling semiconductor materials revenue to $51.9 billion to eclipse the previous high of $47.1 billion set in 2011
  
  
• SMIC Rift: Rare Peek into China IC Industry (Monday Apr. 01, 2019)
  We decided to write up what we had learned about SMIC Co-CEO Haijun Zhao, because Zhao's rumored resignation has opened the door to a rare opportunity to see what's brewing inside the Chinese semiconductor industry.
  
  
• Processors, Sensors Drive Embedded Vision (Monday Apr. 01, 2019)
  The technical landscape for processors and sensors for embedded computer vision applications has changed tremendously over the past five years and will continue to change dramatically over the next five years.
  
  
• Moore's Law Ending? No Problem (Wednesday Mar. 27, 2019)
  An Arm fellow describes, "how I learned to stop worrying and love the end of Moore's Law."
  
  
• U.S. Companies Continue to Represent Largest Share of Fabless IC Sales (Wednesday Mar. 27, 2019)
  With 68%, the U.S. companies continued to hold the dominant share of fabless IC sales last year, just one percentage point less than in 2010.
  
  
• Apple v. Q'comm Cases and Impacts (Tuesday Mar. 26, 2019)
  An analyst describes the many cases between Apple and Qualcomm and their potential impacts for the companies and the cellular industry.
  
  
• China Lures SMIC Co-CEO Zhao (Tuesday Mar. 26, 2019)
  China’s Tsinghua Unigroup, the state-owned holding company that controls most of the nation’s semiconductor assets, may snatch a co-CEO from Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) to revive a plan to build a domestic DRAM industry.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts February 2019 Billings (Friday Mar. 22, 2019)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.86 billion in billings worldwide in February 2019 (three-month average basis), according to the February Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI. The billings figure is 1.7 percent lower than the final January 2019 level of $1.90 billion, and is 23.0 percent lower than the February 2018 billings level of $2.41 billion.
  
  
• WIPO 2018 IP Services: Innovators File Record Number of International Patent Applications, With Asia Now Leading (Thursday Mar. 21, 2019)
  Asia-based innovators filed more than half of all international patent applications via WIPO for the first time in 2018 on significant growth from China, India and the Republic of Korea, capping another record-setting year for WIPO’s global intellectual property (IP) services.
  
  
• U.S. Court Finds Apple Infringed Qualcomm IP (Tuesday Mar. 19, 2019)
  A U.S. federal court found that several iPhone models infringe on patents held by Qualcomm, a major setback for Apple in the patent fight between the two companies that has been unfolding in several jurisdictions throughout the world.
  
  
• Nvidia Mum on 7nm GPU (Tuesday Mar. 19, 2019)
  Nvidia’s annual graphics event attracted some 8,000 attendees here, but one expected guest couldn’t make it — a 7nm GPU.
  
  
• Boeing's B737 Max and Automotive 'Autopilot' (Monday Mar. 18, 2019)
  Why the catastrophic plane crashes of Indonesia's Lion Air last October and another by Ethiopian Airlines last week should be setting off alarms in the automotive industry.
  
  
• Number of 300mm IC Wafer Fabs Expected to Reach 121 in 2019 (Monday Mar. 18, 2019)
  300mm wafers took over as the industry’s primary wafer size in terms of total surface area used in 2008. Furthermore, the number of 300mm wafer fabrication facilities in operation continues to increase.
  
  
• Global Top Ten IC Foundries Ranked for 1Q19, with TSMC Expected to Reach 48.1% Market Share, Says TrendForce (Monday Mar. 18, 2019)
  Foundries face a severe challenge in 1Q19, and global foundry production revenue for the first quarter is expected to decline by around 16% compared to the same quarter 2018, arriving at 14.6 billion USD.
  
  
• Data Centers Open Source Silicon (Friday Mar. 15, 2019)
  Microsoft and partners released open source RTL for a new data compression scheme, and Intel said another effort may do the same for a security block. The moves mark the first steps into open source silicon from data center giants in the Open Compute Project (OCP).
  
  
• Chips-as-a-Service on Startup's Menu (Thursday Mar. 14, 2019)
  High-end processors and accelerators need to be sold as a service, said the head of a startup who wants to do it. He also described work on a class of small data centers emerging on the edge of the Internet and specs from the Open19 Foundation.
  
  
• Global Fab Spending to See 2019 Decline, New Highs in 2020 (Tuesday Mar. 12, 2019)
  Global fab equipment spending is expected to decline 14 percent (US$ 53 billion) in 2019 but stage a strong recovery of 27 percent (US$ 67 billion) to set a new record in 2020
  
  
• Intel, RISC-V Rally Rival Groups (Tuesday Mar. 12, 2019)
  Intel and RISC-V backers announced rival alliances to nurture competing ecosystems around tomorrow’s processors.
  
  
• Intel Expected to Recapture #1 Semi Supplier Ranking in 2019 (Monday Mar. 11, 2019)
  Although Intel’s semiconductor sales are forecast to be relatively flat in 2019, the company is poised to regain the number 1 semiconductor supplier ranking this year, a position it held from 1993 through 2016.
  
  
• AV Safety Ventures Beyond ISO 26262 (Thursday Mar. 07, 2019)
  The developers of the functional automotive safety standard ISO 26262 aren’t resting on their laurels. They’ve embarked on the creation of a separate standard (ISO 21448), described as “Safety of the Intended Functionality (SOTIF).”
  
  
• Crowded AI Chip Market Still Has Room for New Entrants According to New Linley Group Study (Tuesday Mar. 05, 2019)
  A new report from The Linley Group analyzes deep-learning accelerators and IP cores for artificial intelligence, neural networks, and vision processing for inference and training. Many new companies and products target this fast-growing market, which topped $4 billion in chip revenue in 2018.