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Commentary / Analysis

• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts December 2019 Billings (Friday Jan. 24, 2020)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.49 billion in billings worldwide in December 2019
  
  
• 26 of 33 IC Products Forecast to Demonstrate Positive Growth in 2020 (Thursday Jan. 23, 2020)
  Sales growth in eight categories is expected to increase by 8% or more, which is IC Insights’ forecast growth rate for the total IC market in 2020. Two product categories—Automotive-Special Purpose Logic and Embedded MPUs—appear on the top-growth list all three years.
  
  
• Apple, Huawei Use TSMC, But Their 7nm SoCs Are Different (Thursday Jan. 23, 2020)
  Most SoCs in 2019 use 7nm process technologies. But at a closer look, everyone’s 7nm – used in smartphone SoCs or even PC CPUs – seems somewhat different.
  
  
• Global GDP Growth An Increasingly Important Driver of IC Market Growth (Monday Jan. 20, 2020)
  Over the 2010-2019 timeframe, the correlation coefficient between worldwide GDP growth and IC market growth was 0.85 (0.96 excluding the memory market in 2017 and 2018), a strong figure given that a perfect positive correlation is 1.0.
  
  
• Apple Reportedly Acquires Xnor (Friday Jan. 17, 2020)
  Reports are circulating that the Seattle-based AI at the edge company Xnor has been quietly acquired by Apple. An investigation by GeekWire suggests the deal was worth in the region of $200 million. This development could mean Xnor’s low-power algorithms for object detection in photos end up on the iPhone.
  
  
• Is ReRAM Ready to Leave the R&D Phase? (Thursday Jan. 16, 2020)
  Resistive RAM is the epitome of an “emerging” memory in that, for the most part, it’s still in the research and development phase.
  
  
• AI Chips: What Will 2020 Bring? (Thursday Jan. 16, 2020)
  2020 is set to be the most important year yet when it comes to the evolution of the nascent AI accelerator chip industry. Here are a few ideas about what we might see happening this year, in no particular order…
  
  
• Gartner Says Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Declined 11.9% in 2019 (Tuesday Jan. 14, 2020)
  Intel regained the No. 1 position in the market as the downturn in the memory market negatively impacted many of the top vendors, including Samsung Electronics, the No. 1 vendor by revenue in 2018 and 2017.
  
  
• China Only Region to Register Pure-Play Foundry Market Growth in 2019 (Thursday Jan. 09, 2020)
  With the rise of the fabless IC companies in China (e.g., HiSilicon) over the past 10 years, the demand for foundry services has also risen in that country. China market was the only major region that showed an increase in pure-play foundry sales last year.
  
  
• ESD Alliance Reports EDA Industry Revenue Increase for Q3 2019 (Tuesday Jan. 07, 2020)
  The Electronic System Design (ESD) Alliance Market Statistics Service (MSS) today announced that the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry revenue increased 8.9 percent for Q3 2019 to $2567.7 million, compared to $2358.3 million in Q3 2018.
  
  
• HiSilicon No Longer Huawei's Captive Chipmaker (Thursday Jan. 02, 2020)
  HiSilicon launched 4G communication chips on an open market, making it official that Huawei’s internal IC division is now externally supplying a host of chips to the industry.
  
  
• Record Amount of IC Capacity Forecast to be Added in 2021 (Monday Dec. 23, 2019)
  Faced with sharp declines in the ASPs of DRAM and NAND flash chips in 2019 many memory manufacturers delayed a portion of their near-term capacity expansion plans. With the plans only delayed and not canceled, there is still a significant amount of IC capacity that is expected to be brought online in 2020 and 2021.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts November 2019 Billings (Friday Dec. 20, 2019)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.12billion in billings worldwide in November 2019 (three-month average basis), according to the November Equipment Market Data Subscription( EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• A Renaissance in the Emulation Business Is Nigh (Tuesday Dec. 17, 2019)
  It is reasonable to predict that hardware-assisted verification revenue will break through $600 million by the end of 2019.
  
  
• Global Fab Equipment Spending Rebounds in Second Half of 2019 with Stronger 2020 Projected, SEMI Reports (Tuesday Dec. 17, 2019)
  Projected 2019 global fab equipment spending has been revised upward to US$56.6 billion on the strength of surging memory investments in the latter part of the year after a weak first half, SEMI reported today in its World Fab Forecast.
  
  
• Revenue Ranking of Global Top 10 IC Design Companies Shows U.S. Companies Having Divergent Performances in 3Q19, Says TrendForce (Friday Dec. 13, 2019)
  The newest analysis from TrendForce shows that several U.S.-based IC design companies experienced continually expanding losses in 3Q19 revenue because of the ongoing China-U.S. trade war and because Huawei had yet to be removed from the Entity List. Of the U.S.-based companies, Qualcomm demonstrated the greatest revenue loss with a 22% decline.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Equipment Sales Forecast - 2020 Rebound, 2021 Record High (Thursday Dec. 12, 2019)
  Global semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales will drop 10.5 percent to $57.6 billion in 2019 from last year’s historic peak of $64.4 billion but stage a 2020 recovery and set a new high in 2021
  
  
• Third Quarter 2019 Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Billings Jump 12 Percent, SEMI Reports (Wednesday Dec. 04, 2019)
  Worldwide semiconductor equipment manufacturers posted third-quarter 2019 billings of US$14.9 billion, a quarter-over-quarter increase of 12 percent but down 6 percent from the third quarter of 2018, SEMI, the global industry association representing the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, reported today.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 2.9 Percent Month-to-Month in October; Annual Sales Projected to Decrease 12.8 Percent in 2019 (Wednesday Dec. 04, 2019)
  The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $36.6 billion for the month of October 2019, an increase of 2.9 percent from the previous month’s total of $35.6 billion, but down 13.1 percent compared to the October 2018 total of $42.1 billion.
  
  
• Semico Forecasts Strong Growth for RISC-V (Thursday Nov. 28, 2019)
  Forecasting the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for RISC-V CPU cores, Semico estimates that segments including the computer, consumer, communication, transportation and industrial markets will see a 146.2 percent CAGR on average between 2018 and 2025.
  
  
• North American Semiconductor Equipment Industry Posts October 2019 Billings (Wednesday Nov. 20, 2019)
  North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $2.11 billion in billings worldwide in October 2019 (three-month average basis), according to the October Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) Billings Report published today by SEMI.
  
  
• Intel to Reclaim Number One Semiconductor Supplier Ranking in 2019 (Monday Nov. 18, 2019)
  In total, the top-15 semiconductor companies’ sales are forecast to drop by 15% in 2019 compared to 2018, two points lower than the expected total worldwide semiconductor industry decline of 13%.
  
  
• Silicon Wafer Area Shipments Fall for Fourth Consecutive Quarter (Tuesday Nov. 12, 2019)
  Marking the fourth consecutive quarterly decline, worldwide silicon wafer area shipments totaled 2,932 million square inches in the third quarter of 2019, down 1.7 percent from the 2,983 million square inches shipped in the second quarter of the year and 9.9 percent lower than shipments during the same period in 2018
  
  
• Top 5 Share of Semiconductor Industry Capex to Set New Record in 2019 (Wednesday Nov. 06, 2019)
  The share of semiconductor industry capital spending held by the top five companies (i.e., Samsung, Intel, TSMC, SK Hynix, and Micron) is forecast to reach an all-time high of 68% this year, surpassing the previous record high of 67% recorded in 2013 and 2018
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 3.4 Percent Month-to-Month in September (Monday Nov. 04, 2019)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $106.7 billion during the third quarter of 2019, an increase of 8.2 percent over the previous quarter and 14.6 percent less than the third quarter of 2018.
  
  
• China IC 'Big Fund' Phase II Aims Self-Sufficiency (Thursday Oct. 31, 2019)
  China’s “Big Fund” is rolling out its second phase of funding through a just-incorporated company called the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase II Co., Ltd. (National Big Fund Phase II).
  
  
• AI Takes Over Linley Fall Processor Conference (Thursday Oct. 31, 2019)
  Intel, SiFive, Marvell, Mellanox, and Achronix all announced important developments at the Linley Processor Conference. Most of the innovations were either about artificial intelligence processors or about supporting AI workloads in data centers.
  
  
• China GDP and PMI Contraction A Risk Factor For Global Economy (Thursday Oct. 31, 2019)
  Given that the global economy increased by a healthy 3.0% in 2018, it is difficult to comprehend that an economy growing 6% could be considered a risk factor for worldwide GDP growth this year. However, that is the case with China and it’s slowing economic growth.
  
  
• How to Choose Between AI Accelerators (Thursday Oct. 31, 2019)
  Last week I spoke with Alexis Crowell, Intel’s senior director of AI product marketing, on this topic. Intel offers various AI accelerator products with completely different architectures (including, but not limited to, Movidius, Mobileye, Nervana, Loihi, not to mention all the CPU products). Crowell was happy to highlight some of the less obvious criteria that should be considered when choosing an AI accelerator.
  
  
• 'The AI Inference Processor is Dead' (Tuesday Oct. 29, 2019)
  What is the reality of the AI chip market today? In recent years, this market was over-hyped to the point where many of us became sceptical.