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Commentary / Analysis

• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 7.3% Year-to-Year in July, but Growth Slows (Wednesday Sep. 07, 2022)
  SIA today announced global semiconductor industry sales were $49.0 billion in the month of July 2022, an increase of 7.3% over the July 2021 total of $45.7 billion, but a decrease of 2.3% compared to the June 2022 total of $50.2 billion.
  
  
• Qualcomm hits back at ARM over lawsuit (Monday Sep. 05, 2022)
  Qualcomm is accusing its processor IP supplier ARM of attempting to interfere with its internal design operation after the takeover of startup Nuvia.
  
  
• New U.S. Rule Could "Impair" China's AI Progress (Monday Sep. 05, 2022)
  The U.S. government’s fresh restrictions on sales of Nvidia GPUs are expected to slow China’s AI progress, which one analyst says leads the world.
  
  
• Four Large Agreements Prop Up 2022 Semiconductor M&A Total (Wednesday Aug. 31, 2022)
  After slowing significantly in the last half of 2021, the pace of megadeals for semiconductor mergers and acquisitions regained momentum in the first six months of 2022.
  
  
• Q2'22 saw a significant decline in GPU and PC shipments quarter to quarter (Wednesday Aug. 31, 2022)
  Jon Peddie Research reports the growth of the global PC-based graphics processor unit (GPU) market reached 84 million units in Q2'22 and PC CPU shipments decreased by -34% year over year.
  
  
• CEO Interview: Sammy Cheung: Filling the General-Purpose FPGA Void (Thursday Aug. 25, 2022)
  While the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) was once dominated by just two players, there are now a number of companies trying to fill the various gaps in the $6 billion–plus FPGA market. One such company is Efinix, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary by opening a large new office in Cupertino, California, not far from Apple headquarters.
  
  
• A closer look at TSMC's 3-nm node and FinFlex technology (Thursday Aug. 25, 2022)
  TSMC is on track to launch the much-awaited 3-nm process node in September, according to media reports in Taiwan, and Apple will be its first 3-nm customer, incorporating its TSMC-manufactured M2 Pro processor in Mac machines to be unveiled later this year.
  
  
• Semi Capex On Pace For 21% Growth to $185.5B This Year (Tuesday Aug. 23, 2022)
  IC Insights has adjusted its 2022 worldwide semiconductor capital-spending forecast that now shows a 21% increase this year, to $185.5 billion.
  
  
• The Worldwide Semiconductor Market is expected to increase 13.9 percent in 2022, continuing to grow by 4.6 percent in 2023. (Monday Aug. 22, 2022)
  Following a strong growth year of 26.2 percent in the year 2021, WSTS expects another year of double-digit growth for the worldwide semiconductor market in 2022 with a forecast of $633 billion, up 13.9 percent.
  
  
• UK blocks Chinese purchase of EDA company Pulsic (Friday Aug. 19, 2022)
  The purchase of Bristol-based Pulsic by Super Orange of Hong Kong was blocked under the National Security and Investment Act 2021. It is not known how much Super Orange was prepared to pay for the private company.
  
  
• Exclusive CEO Interview: Latest Funding Drives Ventana's First RISC-V Chiplets in Data Centers (Tuesday Aug. 16, 2022)
  Ever since Ventana Micro Systems came out of stealth last year, the company has been busily developing relationships with partners and potential customers to create traction for its RISC-V–based chiplets, which it believes will address the high-performance computing demands in data centers and at the edge.
  
  
• New US EDA Software Ban May Affect China's Advanced IC Design, Says TrendForce (Monday Aug. 15, 2022)
  Looking at the global EDA software market, market size is estimated to grow from US$8.1 billion to US$13.6 billion from 2020 to 2024, with a compound annual growth rate of 13.8%.
  
  
• Opinion: CHIPS Act Escalates Long-Standing U.S.-China Tech Rivalry (Thursday Aug. 11, 2022)
  As U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi flew to Taipei last week, President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act in an effort to boost U.S. semiconductor production. But will it increase U.S. semiconductor competitiveness, or will it set back the U.S. industry in its ongoing technology rivalry with China?
  
  
• Tudor Brown resigns from SMIC (Thursday Aug. 11, 2022)
  Tudor Brown, one of the founding team at Arm, has resigned from the board at SMIC, the Chinese foundry.
  
  
• Nordic Semi sets up RISC-V design team (Thursday Aug. 11, 2022)
  Leading European chip design Nordic Semiconductor is setting up a new design team to develop a processor core based on the open RISC-V instruction set.
  
  
• Neuromorphic Device with Low Power Consumption (Thursday Aug. 04, 2022)
  Compact, low–latency, and low–power computer systems are required for real–world sensory–processing applications. Hybrid memristive CMOS neuromorphic architectures, with their in–memory event–driven computing capabilities, present an appropriate hardware substrate for such tasks.
  
  
• Architect of CHIPS Act Speaks on Its Impact (Thursday Aug. 04, 2022)
  In an exclusive interview with EE Times, Keith Krach, former Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment in the Trump administration, speaks on the significance of the CHIPS Act, which has since been passed by the House in a 243–187 vote.
  
  
• Intel Orders Delayed, TSMC Slows Three-Nanometer Expansion, Says TrendForce (Thursday Aug. 04, 2022)
  According to TrendForce research, Intel plans to outsource the tGPU chipset in Meteor Lake to TSMC for manufacture. Mass production of this product was initially planned for 2H22 but was later postponed to 1H23 due to product design and process verification issues.
  
  
• June Swoon - IC Sales Turn Negative as Economy Weighs on Market (Thursday Aug. 04, 2022)
  The IC market recorded its first-ever June sequential sales decline this year, based on data from WEMA, SIA, and WSTS dating back to 1976,
  
  
• Global Semiconductor Sales Increase 13.3% in Q2 2022 Compared to Q2 2021 (Wednesday Aug. 03, 2022)
  SIA today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors totaled $152.5 billion during the second quarter of 2022, an increase of 13.3% over the second quarter of 2021 and 0.5% more than the first quarter of 2022.
  
  
• U.S. Passes CHIPS Act, Increasing Restrictions on China Lead to Rising Geopolitical Risk, Says Trendforce (Monday Aug. 01, 2022)
  The disruption of the chip supply chain caused by the pandemic in the past two years, as well as geopolitical flashpoints such as Sino-US trade frictions and the Russia-Ukraine war, have led regional economies worldwide to focus more on the autonomy of local production and supply chains.
  
  
• Worldwide Silicon Wafer Shipments Set New Record in Q2 2022, SEMI Reports (Thursday Jul. 28, 2022)
  Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments in the second quarter of 2022 surpassed the previous record high set in the first quarter of the year, edging up 1% quarter-over-quarter to 3,704 million square inche
  
  
• Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Semiconductor Revenue Growth to Slow to 7% in 2022 (Wednesday Jul. 27, 2022)
  Global semiconductor revenue is projected to grow 7.4% in 2022, down from 2021 growth of 26.3%, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc. This is down from the previous quarter’s forecast of 13.6% growth in 2022.
  
  
• SMIC shipping 7nm ICs (Monday Jul. 25, 2022)
  SMIC has been shipping a 7nm chip for a year, says TechInsights which has reverse engineered the device and says “initial images suggest it is a close copy of TSMC 7nm process technology.”
  
  
• eMMC Holds Its Own Against UFS (Monday Jul. 25, 2022)
  The embedded MultiMediaCard (eMMC) standard is no longer being updated. But that’s not keeping some vendors from innovating around the NAND flash storage device for use cases where it’s still the best option.
  
  
• Arm IPO on hold (Thursday Jul. 21, 2022)
  Softbank has suspended work on a dual IPO listing for Arm in London and the US, reports the FT
  
  
• Americas' Chip Suppliers Continue to Dominate R&D Spending (Thursday Jul. 21, 2022)
  Despite political and national security concerns about U.S. domestic semiconductor production, American companies continue to account for more than half of the global chip industry’s total spending on research and development, according to the latest annual analysis of R&D expenditures by IC Insights.
  
  
• TSMC Trims Expansion Plans as Outlook Dims (Monday Jul. 18, 2022)
  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has pared back its plan to spend more than $40 billion this year for capacity expansion. The outlook for demand has worsened on expectations of an inventory reduction in the PC and consumer electronics segments.
  
  
• Global Total Semiconductor Equipment Sales On Track to Record $118 Billion in 2022, SEMI Reports (Monday Jul. 18, 2022)
  Global sales of total semiconductor manufacturing equipment by original equipment manufacturers are forecast to reach a record $117.5 billion in 2022, rising 14.7% from the previous industry high of $102.5 billion in 2021, and increase to $120.8 billion in 2023.
  
  
• Are Micron and the Taiwanese Semi Suppliers the Canaries in the Coal Mine? (Thursday Jul. 14, 2022)
  On June 30, 2022, Micron, the third largest memory supplier in the world, reported its fiscal 3Q results that ended in May. These results were very strong, with the company posting sales of $8.6 billion, up 11% from the previous quarter and 19% higher than one-year earlier. However, the guidance for its fiscal 4Q sales ending in August was the epitome of a “canary in a coal mine” moment.