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Commentary / Analysis

• U.S. Chip Sanctions "Put Temporary Checkmate on China" (Monday Oct. 24, 2022)
  Biden Administration’s escalation of the chip war with China is expected to at once hamper China’s foundry industry and cost multinational chipmakers billions of dollars in lost sales.
  
  
• How the CHIPS Act Will Impact Engineers (Monday Oct. 24, 2022)
  EE Times asked two design engineers to weigh in on the implications of the Act for engineers in the U.S., in the short and long term.
  
  
• Global 200mm Semiconductor Fab Capacity Projected to Surge 20% to Record High by 2025, SEMI Reports (Wednesday Oct. 19, 2022)
  Semiconductor manufacturers worldwide are estimated to increase 200mm fab capacity 20% from 2021 through 2025, adding 13 new 200mm lines as the industry reaches a record high of more than 7 million wafers per month (wpm)
  
  
• Electronic System Design Industry Hits Record Revenue of Nearly $3.8 Billion in Q2 2022, ESD Alliance Reports (Monday Oct. 17, 2022)
  Electronic System Design (ESD) industry revenue increased 17.5% from $3,191.4 million in Q2 2021 to $3,748.7 million in Q2 2022. The four-quarter moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four, rose 15.3%.
  
  
• First RISC-V laptop uses Alibaba TH1520 SoC (Monday Oct. 17, 2022)
  A project led by RISC-V International with DeepComputing and Xcalibyte has resulted in the first RISC-V laptop. We take a look at the chip behind the laptop and the people behind the project.
  
  
• TSMC Cuts Expansion Plan to $36B as Outlook Sours (Monday Oct. 17, 2022)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is cutting its 2022 capacity expansion budget to $36 billion from the original $40 billion announced in July, as outlook for demand from smartphone and other consumer electronics makers dims.
  
  
• US restricts Sea Turtles in chip industry (Thursday Oct. 13, 2022)
  The US has extended its embargo on the supply to technology to China by restricting the involvement of individuals in the chip industry, reports the Nikkei.
  
  
• Foundries defy chip market downturn (Thursday Oct. 13, 2022)
  Taiwanese foundries TSMC and UMC were able to maintain strong progress year-on-year with September sales while the global chip market is headed towards contraction.
  
  
• Global 300mm Semiconductor Fab Capacity Projected To Reach New High in 2025, SEMI Reports (Wednesday Oct. 12, 2022)
  Semiconductor manufacturers worldwide are forecast to expand 300mm fab capacity at a nearly 10% compound average growth rate (CAGR) from 2022 to 2025, reaching an all-time high of 9.2 million wafers per month (wpm)
  
  
• Arm chops staff (Thursday Oct. 06, 2022)
  Arm has laid off 20% of its UK workforce of 3,500 employees and 18% of its global workforce of 6,950 people.
  
  
• No suggestion from Softbank about Samsung investing in Arm, say reports (Thursday Oct. 06, 2022)
  According to the Korean newspaper JoonAng, Softbank CEO Masa Son did not make any suggestion that Samsung should buy, or invest in, Arm when they met earlier this week.
  
  
• EU chip plan would cost €500bn, says NXP CEO (Tuesday Oct. 04, 2022)
  The EU will need ten times more than its budget if it wants to get 20% of the world chip market by 2030, Kurt Sievers, CEO of NXP (pictured), told the Globalfoundries’ Technical Summit in Dresden.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 0.1% Year-to-Year in August (Tuesday Oct. 04, 2022)
  SIA today announced global semiconductor industry sales were $47.4 billion during the month of August 2022, a slight increase of 0.1% over the August 2021 total of $47.3 billion but a decrease of 3.4% compared to the July 2022 total of $49.0 billion.
  
  
• Global Fab Equipment Spending Forecast to Reach All-Time High of Nearly $100 Billion in 2022, SEMI Reports (Monday Oct. 03, 2022)
  Global fab equipment spending for front-end facilities is expected to increase approximately 9% year-over-year (YOY) to a new all-time high of US$99 billion in 2022
  
  
• Mobileye files for IPO, reveals data (Monday Oct. 03, 2022)
  Late on Friday Intel announced it is preparing to sell shares in its loss making Israeli driverless car technology subsidiary Mobileye.
  
  
• Intel Foundry's "No. 1" Customer - U.S. DoD - Targets GAA (Thursday Sep. 29, 2022)
  The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is Intel Foundry Services’ (IFS’s) “No. 1” customer, IFS president Randhir Thakur told EE Times, noting that IFS plans to be part of the DoD state-of-the-art heterogeneous integrated packaging (SHIP) program.
  
  
• Supply Chain Experts Weigh In on CHIPS Act (Thursday Sep. 29, 2022)
  Federal legislation is, one source says, “an opportunity to think differently around a common problem.”
  
  
• AI "unicorn" Graphcore set to cut jobs (Thursday Sep. 29, 2022)
  Artificial intelligence (AI) chip startup Graphcore Ltd. (Bristol, England) is proposing to axe jobs at multiple sites due to the “macroeconomic” situation.
  
  
• Automotive IC Marketshare Seen Rising to 10% by 2026 (Wednesday Sep. 28, 2022)
  The automotive IC marketshare has steadily increased since 1998 growing from 4.7% of total IC sales that year to 7.4% in 2021. Marketshare gains are forecast to continue for the auto segment, with an 8.5% share expected this year and 9.9% share by the year 2026.
  
  
• CXL Spec Grows, Absorbs Others to Collate Ecosystem (Monday Sep. 26, 2022)
  The Compute Express Link (CXL) protocol is arguably the fastest-evolving specification in the computing world, with the third iteration published just a bit longer than three years after its inception. But even with many vendors developing CXL products, there is a lot of work to be done to build out the ecosystem.
  
  
• CEO interview: Alphawave IP's Pialis on chiplets and custom silicon (Wednesday Sep. 21, 2022)
  Alphawave IP, a UK-listed IP licensor, is one of the fastest growing chip companies. eeNews Europe caught up with CEO Tony Pialis to ask about the implications of its recent acquisition of OpenFive.
  
  
• DRAM Market Deflates, Cyclical Downturn Looms (Wednesday Sep. 21, 2022)
  A vigorous DRAM market upturn that started in the last half of 2020 and continued through May 2022 is, by all accounts, over, according to data released in IC Insights’ August 3Q Update to The McClean Report 2022.
  
  
• NeuReality preps 7nm data centre AI chip (Friday Sep. 16, 2022)
  Israeli startup NeuReality is preparing to ship its NR1 AI-server-on-a-chip ASIC in the second quarter of 2023.
  
  
• CMOS Image Sensors Stall in "Perfect Storm" of 2022 (Friday Sep. 16, 2022)
  Optoelectronics’ biggest product category is expected to suffer its first sales decline in 13 years because of a smartphone slump, low camera growth in handsets, and weak global economy, says update report
  
  
• Chip industry in "hopeful denial" says Penn (Wednesday Sep. 14, 2022)
  Malcolm Penn, CEO of Future Horizons reiterated his single digit semiconductor growth forecast for 2022 and warning of a double-digit decline for 2023 at IFS2022 in London yesterday,
  
  
• ARM, IBM team on low power analog AI chip (Monday Sep. 12, 2022)
  Researchers at ARM and IBM have developed a 14nm analog compute in memory chip for low power always on machine learning.
  
  
• Memory Market Collapse to Lift TSMC to Top Spot in 3Q22 Ranking (Thursday Sep. 08, 2022)
  IC Insights reduced its worldwide IC market growth forecast for 2022 from 11% to 7%. The downgraded expectation for this year is almost entirely due to the collapse of the memory market in the second half of 2022.
  
  
• Samsung Sounds Alarm About '22 Chip Market Landing (Thursday Sep. 08, 2022)
  The memory market is so volatile that in the early 2000s, several firms including Enron sought to form a DRAM-futures trading market. Samsung, the largest maker of memory chips in the world, this week warned that the chip industry may be in for hard landing by the end of the year.
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Equipment Billings Increase 7% in Q2 2022, SEMI Reports (Thursday Sep. 08, 2022)
  Global semiconductor equipment billings rose 7% from the first to the second quarter of 2022 and 6% year-over-year to US$26.43 billion, SEMI announced today in its Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (WWSEMS) Report.
  
  
• Global Top Ten IC Design House Revenue Spikes 32% in 2Q22, Ability to Destock Inventory to be Tested in 2H22, Says TrendForce (Wednesday Sep. 07, 2022)
  Revenue of the top ten global IC design houses reached US$39.56 billion in 2Q22, growing 32% YoY. Growth was primarily driven by demand for data centers, networking, IoT, and high-end product portfolios.