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Commentary / Analysis

• Broadcom lays off 1,100; may lay off more (Monday Jun. 18, 2018)
  The current lay-off follows Broadcom’s $5.5 billion acquisition of Brocade in November.
  
  
• Costs Dog PCIe Speed Gains (Thursday Jun. 14, 2018)
  Engineers are coming to grips with how much they are willing to pay for the new speeds PCI Express 4.0 and 5.0 will deliver — and who will get the money.
  
  
• Arm Ready to Sacrifice Profits for Long-Term IoT Growth (Thursday Jun. 14, 2018)
  Arm is better positioned as a privately held company to take a strategic approach for long-term growth as it addresses the IoT market, according to Rajeev Misra, CEO of SoftBank’s $100B Vision Fund and a director of the SoftBank Group.
  
  
• Industrial Internet and Connected Vehicles Drive IoT Sales Through 20211 (Thursday Jun. 14, 2018)
  IC Insights recently released its Update to its 2018 IC Market Drivers Report. The Update includes IC Insights’ latest outlooks on the smartphone, automotive, PC/tablet and Internet of Things (IoT) markets.
  
  
• Semiconductor Equipment Record Spending Streak To Continue Through 2019 (Tuesday Jun. 12, 2018)
  The semiconductor industry is nearing a third consecutive year of record equipment spending with projected growth of 14 percent (YOY) in 2018 and 9 percent in 2019, a mark that would extend the streak to a historic fourth consecutive growth year, according to the latest update of the World Fab Forecast report published by SEMI.
  
  
• Wally Rhines: Deep Learning Will Drive Next Wave of Chip Growth (Friday Jun. 08, 2018)
  Count Wally Rhines, semiconductor industry veteran and long-time CEO of Mentor Graphics, among the many who believe that deep-learning hardware will drive the next wave of growth for the semiconductor industry.
  
  
• AI Comes to ASICs in Data Centers (Thursday Jun. 07, 2018)
  Three years ago, when AI chip startup Nervana ventured into the uncharted territory of designing custom AI accelerators, the company’s move was less perilous than it might have been, thanks to an ASIC expert that Nervana — now owned by Intel — sought for help.
  
  
• Arm Sells Stake in China JV as EU Warns of Unfair Practice (Thursday Jun. 07, 2018)
  SoftBank Group, owner of microprocessor IP firm Arm, announced this week that the British firm will sell its majority 51% stake to Chinese investors and ecosystem partners for $775.2 million to form a joint venture for Arm’s business in China.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 20 Percent Year-to-Year in April; Double-Digit Annual Growth Projected for 2018 (Wednesday Jun. 06, 2018)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $37.6 billion for the month of April 2018, an increase of 20.2 percent from the April 2017 total of $31.3 billion and 1.4 percent more than last month’s total of $37.1 billion.
  
  
• Globalfoundries to add another NVM to FDSOI (Wednesday Jun. 06, 2018)
  Globalfoundries Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) is researching the addition of a second non-volatile memory technology option, and potentially more, to its offering on 22nm FDSOI.
  
  
• Automotive IC Market on Pace for Third Consecutive Record Growth Year (Monday Jun. 04, 2018)
  Consumer demand and government mandates for 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 Targets Laptop Performance (Monday Jun. 04, 2018)
  Arm announced a new mobile CPU core that it said can deliver performance within 10% of Intel’s latest Skylake chips. Analysts praised the architecture’s leap forward but said that they doubt Arm will take a significant share of today’s x86-based notebooks.
  
  
• Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Billings in First Quarter 2018 Reach Record $17.0 Billion, SEMI Reports (Monday Jun. 04, 2018)
  SEMI today reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached a historic quarterly high of US$17.0 billion for the first quarter of 2018, surging 59 percent in March to end the quarter with an all-time monthly high of $7.8 billion.
  
  
• Irwin Jacobs on Qualcomm and Moore (Monday Jun. 04, 2018)
  Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs shared his views on the outlook of the company he founded and the state of the semiconductor industry.
  
  
• TrendForce Reports Top 10 Semiconductor Foundries Worldwide for 1H18, TSMC Ranks First with an Estimated Market Share of 56.1% (Thursday May. 31, 2018)
  TrendForce forecasts lower revenue growth for global foundries in 1H18 than in 1H17, with the total revenue reaching about US$29.06 billion, a year-on-year growth of 7.7%. As for the ranking of foundries by revenue, TSMC, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and UMC are expected to take first, second, and third place respectively.
  
  
• Chip Industry Maps Heterogeneous Integration (Thursday May. 24, 2018)
  In 25 years, after Facebook, Google, and Amazon have marched toward global domination by designing their own chips, what will the semiconductor industry look like?
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts April 2018 Billings (Thursday May. 24, 2018)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.69 billion in billings worldwide in April 2018 (three-month average basis), according to the April Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• ST's New CEO Not Ruling Out Acquisitions in Quest for Growth (Wednesday May. 23, 2018)
  As STMicroelectronics moves closer to its leadership transition, we heard from both outgoing and incoming CEOs this week at the company’s annual capital markets day in London for investors and analysts.
  
  
• Samsung Plans 3nm Gate-All-Around FETs in 2021 (Wednesday May. 23, 2018)
  Samsung Electronics laid out plans to bring to mass production in 2021 the architectural successor to FinFETS, gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, at the 3nm node.
  
  
• Can Mobileye Validate 'True Redundancy'? (Tuesday May. 22, 2018)
  
  
  
• Arm Gives Glimpse of AI Core (Tuesday May. 22, 2018)
  Arm sketched the inner workings of its machine-learning core at a press and analyst event here. Engineers are nearly finished with RTL for the design with hopes of snagging a commitment within weeks for use in a premium smartphone in 2019 or later.
  
  
• Semi Capex Forecast to Exceed $100B for the First Time in 2018 (Tuesday May. 22, 2018)
  IC Insights forecast an 8% increase in semiconductor industry capital spending for this year. However, IC Insights has raised its expectations for 2018 capital spending by six percentage points to a 14% increase.
  
  
• Rambus takes aim at ARM in IoT security (Monday May. 21, 2018)
  Rambus has moved from being a patent and technology licensing company to a product and now an IoT services company that wants to take on ARM. Nick Flaherty talks to Jerome Nadel, the chief marketing officer, on where the company is heading, from cold computing to secure tokens.
  
  
• Microsemi Deal May Spur Broader ReRAM Adoption (Monday May. 21, 2018)
  A deal by Microsemi to license non-volatile resistive RAM (ReRAM) technology from Crossbar could be a significant catalyst paving the way for wider adoption of ReRAM, according to memory industry analysts.
  
  
• Startup Maps AI into Flash Array (Thursday May. 17, 2018)
  Wedged between a coffee shop and a hair salon in a gentrifying suburb here, a couple dozen engineers are exploring a new direction in computing. Startup Mythic aims to map neural networks into NOR memory arrays, calculating and storing results in ways that shave power consumption by perhaps two orders of magnitude.
  
  
• Thirteen Top-15 1Q18 Semi Suppliers Register Double-Digit Gains (Wednesday May. 16, 2018)
  The top-15 worldwide semiconductor sales ranking for 1Q18 includes eight suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Europe, two in South Korea, and one each in Taiwan and Japan.
  
  
• First Quarter 2018 Silicon Wafer Shipments Increase Quarter-Over-Quarter to Record Level (Monday May. 14, 2018)
  Reaching their highest recorded quarterly level ever, worldwide silicon wafer area shipments jumped to 3,084 million square inches during the first quarter 2018, a 3.6 percent increase over fourth quarter 2017 area shipments of 2,977 million square inches and a 7.9 percent rise over first quarter 2017 shipments.
  
  
• SMIC to start 14nm risk production in H1 2019 (Monday May. 14, 2018)
  SMIC says it will start risk production on 14nm in H1 2019, reports Digitimes.
  
  
• GF Seeks Fab, ASIC Partners (Monday May. 14, 2018)
  The new CEO of GlobalFoundries has a charter to improve financial performance of the privately-held chip maker. Thus, Tom Caulfield is seeking partners for the company that is a distant second in a hotly competitive race to make chips.
  
  
• Qualcomm reported to be dumping Arm-based server chips (Friday May. 11, 2018)
  In a blow to Arm’s multi-decade effort to get its cores into servers, Qualcomm is reported by Bloomberg to be giving up on its Arm-based server chip programme.