Semiconductor Industry News

“Billion Dollar Capex Club” Forecast to Swell to 15 Companies in 2017 
Top spenders expected to represent 83% of total semiconductor industry spending this year. 
31 May 2017, by IC Insights,
http://www.icinsights.com/data/articles/...ts/975.pdf

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More non-IC design houses to seek advanced capacity at foundry houses
Cage Chao, Taipei; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES [Thursday 8 June 2017]
More patrons other than IC-design houses and IDMs are likely to flock to wafer foundry houses looking for advanced capacity for emerging applications such IoT, Big Data, self-driving and AI (artificial intelligence), according to industry sources.
Non-semiconductor firms like Bitcoin mining chip suppliers have been keen to advance process nodes in order to roll out high efficient chips at a fast manner to achieve their goals regardless of mounting process costs, said the sources.
As a matter of fact, Bitcoin mining chip suppliers have always been among the first batch of clients for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) whenever the foundry house initiated a new generation of process node since the launch of its 28nm production, the sources indicated.
Wafer production for applications including IoT, AI, autonomous driving and Big Data may account for a majority share of capacity of most foundry houses in the future as compared to chips for mobile devices previously, commented the sources.
Rising demand for chips for Bitcoin mining and other new applications have eventually helped ramp up sales at some silicon IP companies, including Global Unichip and Alchip Technologies, indicated the sources.
Global Unichip saw its revenues surge 39.2% on month and 41.5% on year to NT$985.36 million (US$32.74 million) in May. Year-to-date, the company had combined revenues of NT$4.102 billion, increasing 19.64% from a year earlier.
However, Global Unichip said it will focus on areas with high growth potential such as AI, machine learning and high-speed computing (HPC).
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170608PD206.html
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Hmm.. Weijian's comment got me thinking. Will the market demand be able to absorb the increase in semiconductor supply, given the substantial increase in production capacity (capex). Good thing there is product differentiation for certain semiconductor products. How far will loT, big data, AI carry this industry. And when will the semicon equipment upgrade slow down. Hmm..

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Demand for automotive chips is on the rise.......................

"Collectively, microcontrollers, analog, standard logic, and memory ICs used in automotive applications accounted for only about 8% of total IC marketshare by system type in 2016, but that share is forecast to increase to more than 10% in 2020, when automotive is expected to become the third-largest end-use category for ICs, trailing only the communications and computer segments."
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2017 Automotive IC Market on Pace for Record Year
22% forecast increase driven by system growth, rising ASPs for memory and logic devices. 
24 May 2017, by IC Insights
http://www.icinsights.com/data/articles/...ts/974.pdf
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Nvidia, TI, Microchip, Qualcomm Take Automotive Chips For A Spin
http://www.investors.com/research/indust...or-a-ride/
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Intel predicts a $7 trillion self-driving future
Over half a million lives will be part of the ‘passenger economy’
by Kirsten Korosec  Jun 1, 2017, 
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/1/157255...omous-cars
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(09-06-2017, 06:19 PM)holymage Wrote: Hmm.. Weijian's comment got me thinking. Will the market demand be able to absorb the increase in semiconductor supply, given the substantial increase in production capacity (capex). Good thing there is product differentiation for certain semiconductor products. How far will loT, big data, AI carry this industry. And when will the semicon equipment upgrade slow down. Hmm..

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Hi holyimage,
Actually, there is really no need to read too much into my comment. Due to the asymmetry (the asymmetry comes in the fact that when the downturn comes, insiders like me can lose our livelihood, but investors atmost lose a hand/leg..Also, insiders have to switch careers to get out, investors just need to sell to get out), just a thought and "deja-vu" feeling.

I should most probably stop hijacking this thread.

Worldwide Spending on the Internet of Things Forecast to Reach Nearly $1.4 Trillion in 2021, According to New IDC Spending Guide 

14 Jun 2017 
FRAMINGHAM, Mass., June 14, 2017 – A new update to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Internet of Things Spending Guide forecasts worldwide spending on the Internet of Things (IoT) to grow 16.7% year over year in 2017, reaching just over $800 billion. By 2021, global IoT spending is expected to total nearly $1.4 trillion as organizations continue to invest in the hardware, software, services, and connectivity that enable the IoT. .................................................

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS42799917
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5 nanometer transistors inching their way into chips 
June 5, 2017 | Written by: Huiming Bu
Categorized: IBM Research | Innovation

Announced at the 2017 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits conference in Kyoto this week, IBM and our research alliance partners, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung built a new type of transistor for chips at the 5 nanometer (nm) node.........................................

Wait! What about Moore’s Law?

The mere introduction of new chip technology means this question comes up. Today, Moore’s Law, in the context of logic technology scaling, breaks down into four parts: density, performance, power and economy. Density, or the number of transistors per square inch of a chip, has gone from Gordon Moore’s original observation in 1965 of doubling every 12 months, to now taking three years. Performance improvements have experienced a similar slowing. Power, while less influential at its introduction, has grown in importance due to our battery-hungry mobile devices. The economy, or cost per transistor, is the only element of the “law” that’s kept similar pace over the last 50 years.

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/think/2017/06/...ansistors/
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3-in-1 device offers alternative to Moore's law
June 14, 2017 by Lisa Zyga 

https://phys.org/news/2017-06-in-device-...e-law.html

Consumer to Industrial Data Explosion Hits Supply Chain
June 13, 2017
By Paula Doe, SEMI
Traffic to the cloud is doubling each year, driving demand for new technologies for everything from the RF front end of mobile phones to the architecture of data centers. “5G is not like the other Gs — it’s an inflection from consumer to industry,” says Sree Koratala, Ericsson VP Technology and Strategy, who will open the program on the disruptive demands for new technologies in 5G and the cloud at SEMICON West 2017, July 13, in San Francisco...............................

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The coming exponential increase in demand for data to petabytes per day (a staggering 1015 bytes) means disruptive changes for the semiconductor technologies needed to move, process and store all that data, in 5G and the cloud. Source: Intel


http://www.semi.org/en/consumer-industri...ly-chain-0
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Engineers' Guide to the Artificial Intelligence AI Galaxy Kai Fu Lee, Columbia U Commencement 2017