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Commentary / Analysis

• Much Ado About China's Big IC Surge (Thursday Jun. 22, 2017)
  It’s been two years since China announced a huge capital investment intended to kick-start an indigenous semiconductor industry. China’s ambitious “National IC Industry Development Outline” spells out a mission to build up a semiconductor industry that will eventually become self-sufficient. So, how’s that working out for China?
  
  
• Alibaba Fuels China's CPU Gambit (Wednesday Jun. 21, 2017)
  C-Sky Microelectronics Co., designer of China’s home-grown 32-bit embedded CPU processing cores, is quite possibly China’s best kept secret.
  
  
• Siemens Lays Out Vision for Mentor (Wednesday Jun. 21, 2017)
  When Siemens AG agreed last November to buy Mentor Graphics Corp. for $4.5 billion, it wasn't the first time that the German conglomerate had entertained the idea of swallowing the Portland, Ore.-based EDA software vendor.
  
  
• Cellphone IC Sales Will Top Total Personal Computing in 2017 (Wednesday Jun. 21, 2017)
  The ongoing slump in shipments of standard personal computers along with the drop-off in tablets are setting the stage for cellphone IC sales to finally surpass integrated circuit revenues in total personal computing systems this year, based on new forecasts in the recently released update of IC Insights’ 2017 IC Market Drivers Report.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts May 2017 Billings (Monday Jun. 19, 2017)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.27 billion in billings worldwide in May 2017 (three-month average basis), according to the May Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• MediaTek Chooses TSMC for 7nm (Friday Jun. 16, 2017)
  MediaTek, the second-largest designer of mobile phone chips after Qualcomm, says it has chosen Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) to make 7nm products.
  
  
• 7 of the Top 10 Smartphone Suppliers Headquartered in China (Thursday Jun. 15, 2017)
  Samsung and Apple dominated the smartphone market from 2014 through 2016. In total, these two companies shipped 555 million smartphones and held a combined 39% share of the total smartphone market in 2015. Although these two companies still shipped over one-half billion smartphones (526 million) in 2016, their combined smartphone unit marketshare dropped four percentage points to 35%.
  
  
• Google Ramps Mobile SoC Team (Thursday Jun. 15, 2017)
  Google is ramping up a team to build mobile SoCs for tablets and smartphones. The Web giant posted nearly 200 job openings in its hardware group including at least half a dozen specifically for mobile SoC designers.
  
  
• Qualcomm Reportedly Taps TSMC's 7nm (Wednesday Jun. 14, 2017)
  Qualcomm will switch back to TSMC to make its 7nm Snapdragon parts after giving its 10nm business to Samsung, according to a report in ET News, a South Korean publication.
  
  
• EC Refs Whistle Qualcomm-NXP Deal (Monday Jun. 12, 2017)
  The European Commission Friday (June 9) threw down a gauntlet by officially opening an in-depth investigation into the proposed acquisition of NXP by Qualcomm.
  
  
• DARPA Funds Development of New Type of Processor (Friday Jun. 09, 2017)
  A completely new kind of non-von-Neumann processor called a HIVE — Hierarchical Identify Verify Exploit — is being funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to the tune of $80 million over four-and-a-half years.
  
  
• Intel hints that Microsoft, Qualcomm's Windows 10/ARM x86 emulation could infringe on its IP (Friday Jun. 09, 2017)
  During the recent Computex event, Qualcomm and Microsoft revealed the first OEMs that would be using their Windows 10 on ARM platform announced last December. But it seems the Snapdragon 835 PCs, which use x86 emulation technology, aren’t being welcomed by one company: Intel.
  
  
• Long-Term Internet of Things Semiconductor Forecast Reduced (Thursday Jun. 08, 2017)
  IC Insights scaled back its total semiconductor sales forecast for system functions related to the Internet of Things in 2020 by about $920 million, mostly because of lower revenue projections for connected cities applications (such as smart electric meters and infrastructure supported by government budgets).
  
  
• China's ARM twist underlines strategic nature of tech (Wednesday Jun. 07, 2017)
  The strategic nature of technology underlies what ARM is doing forming a joint venture company to take IP to market in China
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 21 Percent Year-to-Year in April; Double-Digit Annual Growth Projected for 2017 (Wednesday Jun. 07, 2017)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $31.3 billion for the month of April 2017, an increase of 20.9 percent from the April 2016 total of $25.9 billion and 1.3 percent more than last month’s total of $30.9 billion.
  
  
• Record Fab Spending for 2017 and 2018 (Wednesday Jun. 07, 2017)
  In 2017, over US$49 billion will be spent on equipment alone, a record for the semiconductor industry. Spending on new fab construction is projected to reach over $8 billion, the second largest year on record.
  
  
• SEMI Reports First Quarter 2017 Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Figures; Record Quarterly Billings of $13.1 Billion (Tuesday Jun. 06, 2017)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$13.1 billion for the first quarter of 2017. The quarter ended very strong, with March billings reaching $5.6 billion, an all-time monthly record.
  
  
• Apple, Amazon to Join Foxconn's Toshiba Bid (Tuesday Jun. 06, 2017)
  Apple and Amazon will pony up to pay a portion of contract manufacturer Foxconn's bid to acquire Toshiba's semiconductor business as the consumer electronics powerhouses move to secure a steady supply of NAND flash memory, Foxconn's cheif executive told the Nikkei news service.
  
  
• 5nm nanosheet transistors cut power by 75% (Monday Jun. 05, 2017)
  Researchers at IBM have developed a practical way to build transistors on a 5nm process that provides a reduction in power consumption of up to 75% or a performance boost of 40% for the same power.
  
  
• Qualcomm-NXP Deal Faces EU Snag (Monday Jun. 05, 2017)
  As Qualcomm continues its lonely courtroom battle against the world, the San Diego-based smartphone chip behemoth is fighting for approvals of its proposed NXP acquisition with a global army of antitrust regulators.
  
  
• Nvidia CEO Says Moore's Law Is Dead (Friday Jun. 02, 2017)
  Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has become the first head of a major semiconductor company to say what academics have been suggesting for some time: Moore’s Law is dead.
  
  
• Cortus joins RISC-V fan club (Thursday Jun. 01, 2017)
  French intellectual property licensor Cortus SAS (Montpellier, France) has extended its roadmap of processor cores with the addition of a RISC-V implementation dubbed APS3V.
  
  
• "Billion Dollar Capex Club" Forecast to Swell to 15 Companies in 2017 (Wednesday May. 31, 2017)
  IC Insights recently released its May Update to the 2017 McClean Report. This Update included IC Insights’ latest 2017 IC market forecast, a discussion of the 1Q17 semiconductor industry market results, a review of the IC market by electronic system type, a look at the top-25 1Q17 semiconductor suppliers, and an update of the capital spending forecast by company.
  
  
• Report: Apple working on neural processor (Tuesday May. 30, 2017)
  Consumer giant Apple Inc. is designing a processor IC specifically to perform artificial intelligence tasks, according to a Bloomberg report that references an unnamed source.
  
  
• ARM's next Mali GPU tweaks Bifrost (Tuesday May. 30, 2017)
  Processor intellectual property licensor ARM Ltd. (Cambridge, England) has launched the Mali-G72 its second graphics processor unit (GPU) based on the Bifrost architecture.
  
  
• ARM Cores Target AI-powered Future (Monday May. 29, 2017)
  ARM plc Monday (May 29) announced its two new application processor cores, the high-end Cortex-A75 and the mid-range Cortex-A55, as part of an ambitious goal to accelerate AI adoption and get an ARM processor core into every IoT device by 2035.
  
  
• 2017 Automotive IC Market on Pace for Record Year (Monday May. 29, 2017)
  Electronic systems that improve vehicle performance; that add comfort and convenience; and that warn, detect, and take corrective measures to keep drivers safe and alert are being added to new cars each year.
  
  
• ARM launches flagship cores in 'DynamIQ' style (Monday May. 29, 2017)
  ARM has announced two Cortex-A series cores that can implement the IP licensor's latest architectural refinement, known as DynamIQ, and provide leading performance for a richer set of ARM's well-known "big-little" multicore configurations.
  
  
• Reports: ARM agrees to create Chinese IP firm (Friday May. 26, 2017)
  Processor intellectual property (IP) company ARM and a venture capital fund it helped form in China have agreed to form a Chinese joint venture to create intellectual property for IC designs, according to reports.
  
  
• First Quarter 2017 Silicon Wafer Shipments Increase Quarter-Over-Quarter; Continue to Ship at Record Levels (Friday May. 19, 2017)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased during the first quarter 2017 when compared to fourth quarter 2016 area shipments according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.