DRAM memory demand is expected to pick up in the second quarter of 2023, while NAND flash demand is unlikely to see a recovery in the second half of the year, according to memory module company Ten Ambrose Technology.

Ten Ambrose Technology said DRAM prices have fallen by nearly half since 2022, and the decline is expected to slow, according to Taiwanese media outlet Electronic Times. As more chipmakers cut production, the DRAM market's supply-demand balance is expected to recover in the first quarter of 2023, and the recovery in DRAM prices will precede that of NAND flash prices.

Overall DRAM demand is reportedly low this year, with analysis by semiconductor data consultancy IC Insights pointing out that weak economic conditions and high inflation have slowed global demand for personal computers, mainstream smartphones and other consumer electronics. As a result, DRAM demand is spiraling downward, with sales now expected to fall 40 percent to $29.3 billion in the second half of 2022, compared to $49 billion in the first half of 2022. The DRAM market is expected to decline by 18 percent for the full year 2022.

source：aijiwei

According to a recent industry outflow of Marvell's price increase letter, the company will increase the price of its products by 10% effective January 1, 2023, according to Science and Technology Daily.

Marvell noted that while supply chain dynamics remain challenging and unpredictable, we have seen some improvements, reducing lead times to 26 weeks for most products starting in December 2022. The 16-week lead time for Fibre Channel HBAs will not change. In addition, due to increased costs and additional fees on the vendor side, the company will increase the price of its products by 10% effective January 1, 2023.

However, Marvell did not specify the relevant products and models, nor did it make clear whether the price increase was for the entire line.

Marvell, founded in 1995 and headquartered in Silicon Valley with R&D centers in Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu and Beijing, China, is a leading global semiconductor vendor providing a full suite of broadband communications and storage solutions for the high-speed, high-density, digital data storage and broadband digital data networking markets, engaging in the design, development and delivery of mixed-signal and digital signal processing integrated circuits. The company is a global leader in the design, development and supply of mixed-signal and digital signal processing integrated circuits for the high-speed, high-density, digital data storage and broadband digital data networking markets.

At the end of October, Marvell China was rumored to be laying off a large number of employees, and Marvell insiders confirmed the news to Tibco. The sources said that Marvell's China layoffs involve all departments and will give the laid-off employees a two-month buffer period, with compensation rumored to be N+3.

source：aijiwei

According to Yonhap News Agency, Samsung's dynamic random access memory (DRAM) sales fell 34.2% in the third quarter of this year from a year earlier against the backdrop of a cold market for memory chips due to the global economic downturn.

Market research agency Omdia data show that global DRAM sales in Q3 this year fell 29.8% from a year earlier to $17.548 billion. Analysts believe that the global economic recession has led to shrinking demand, combined with customer adjustments to inventory and falling prices, the semiconductor storage market has entered a full-scale winter.

Specifically, Samsung Q3 DRAM sales fell 34.2% to $7.133 billion, SK Hynix was $5.246 billion, down 25.3%, and Micron sales fell 26.3% to $4.35 billion.

According to a previous report released by Eugene Investment & Securities with little difference from Omdia, shows Q3 global DRAM market sales of $17.973 billion, down 29.3% from Q2's $25.427 billion. Samsung's Q3 market share fell to 41.0%, a record low in eight years.

source：aijiwei

On December 14, according to VantageHub, strong demand in the semiconductor materials market, coupled with strong sales of CMP abrasive pads, special gases and other materials, research TECHCET expects the market size to exceed $66 billion this year, up 8% from last year. Looking ahead to next year, due to the global economy faces many challenges, sales may recession.

The survey said that this year, grinding pads, special gases, precursor materials, SOI wafers and other market growth is strong, all double-digit growth over last year, next year by the overall economic uncertainty, the semiconductor industry revenue is expected to decline, including storage equipment manufacturers revenue decline is greater.

Research pointed out that the semiconductor materials market revenue is relatively flat this year, but sales will decline compared to this year, is expected to decline next year wafer crop rate, including storage crop rate decline, will make the former body, special gases, cleaning with chemical sales affected.

However, the advanced process semiconductor materials next year is still more than 5% growth than this year. Overall, despite the recessionary concerns, but in the United States under the chip bill to promote the second half of next year, there will be more money betting on the semiconductor market, driving the materials market back to the growth track in the third quarter of next year.

source：aijiwei

Intel has now released the 13th generation Core desktop processors with "K" and "KF" suffixes, as well as the Z790 chipset. Its positioning is relatively high-end, mainly for overclockers and gaming enthusiasts. Previously it was reported that Intel plans to launch more Raptor Lake processors and H770/B760 chipsets on January 3, 2023, mainly for mainstream gamers and general user products, closer to the needs of the general user community.

BoBoard Hall said that the brand manufacturers of B760 motherboard will probably reach the channel at the end of the month, in accordance with Intel's new pricing, this new motherboard compared to the previous generation of B660 series products is about 10% higher, depending on the specific product to its cost. According to the motherboard manufacturers previously exposed Intel's 13th generation Core desktop processor lineup, there will be a total of 22 models, there are 16 models yet to be released.

It is worth noting that the Core i5-13400 and Core i5-13400F may exist in two versions of the chip, B-0 and C-0, with B-0 being Raptor Lake and C-0 being Alder Lake, and there may be some differences, while Intel is not ruled out from releasing a product like the Core i5-12490F in some regions to provide a version. In addition, the 13th generation Core desktop processors will also be compatible with the original Z690, H670, B660 and H610 motherboards.

source：chaonengwang

Spain will focus on producing less advanced semiconductors used in domestic industry after its ambition to make cutting-edge microchips has so far failed to attract investment, according to people familiar with the government's plans, Bloomberg reported.

The Spanish prime minister is focusing Spain's 12.3 billion euro ($12.9 billion) plan on mid-range semiconductors after losing bids for production facilities to Germany and the United States this year, said the person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because the strategy was not made public.

"Spain has not changed its position. From the beginning, the top priority of our strategy has been to attract companies that can design or produce microchips, and part of the value chain," a statement from the prime minister's press office said.

Spain has now scaled back its desire to produce the most technologically advanced chips and is adjusting its plans to take advantage of growing global demand for 10- to 28-nanometer chips that could supply Spain's automotive industry.

When Spain first announced its strategic plan, funded by EU recovery funds, more than half of the budget was earmarked to subsidize chips smaller than 5nm. These top-of-the-line semiconductors will require facilities costing tens of billions of dollars to develop.

Even before the plan was officially announced, Spanish officials considered changing their strategy after U.S. tech giant Intel Corp. chose Germany to build a 17 billion euro European complex in March, according to people familiar with the matter. Then, a major U.S. manufacturer pulled out of advanced negotiations for an investment deal in Spain after the Biden administration announced $50 billion in subsidies for chipmakers.

"We will subsidize chip manufacturing in Spain, which may be thinner or more mature, based on innovation and in line with the EU chip bill," the press office statement said. "We have a clear strategy, but we will adjust as the market evolves."

This coincides with a shift in European policy, after the European Commission earlier this year proposed a Chip Bill that would allow subsidies for the production of "first-of-a-kind" semiconductors.

Countries with large automotive industries, including France, have pushed to subsidize the less advanced chips needed for car production, arguing that if the EU wants to achieve its 20 percent target, it can't just focus on cutting-edge chips.

EU countries last week adopted their own version of the chip bill, and slightly expanded the scope of subsidies.

source：aijiwei

As China continues to emerge fabless chip design startups, resulting in a short supply of photomask shields (pellicle) for wafer fabrication Arf and Krf lithography processes, prices are rising.

Photomask film used to protect the photomask, according to Korean media The Elec reported that South Korea's only photomask film manufacturer FST mask export revenue ratio this year is expected to increase from 30% last year to 40% this year.

Earlier this year, 3M, an upstream raw material supplier, had to close its plant in Belgium to comply with local environmental protection laws, and higher raw material prices have led to higher photomask shroud prices.

In addition, several photomask film manufacturers are also developing new films for advanced process nodes such as EUV, resulting in an overall decline in production.

source：aijiwei

Despite recent improvements, the automotive chip shortage is unlikely to be fully resolved until 2024, as supply growth cannot keep up with the rapid growth in demand, according to automotive supply chain sources, Digitimes reported.

In response to the ongoing chip crunch, some automakers have begun adjusting their 2023 vehicle designs so that chips with the same functionality can be sourced from more than two suppliers, or chips from the same supplier can accept different pins. In this way, they can respond more flexibly to shortages of automotive chips, mainly MCUs, MPUs and IGBT chips and modules, the sources said.

The shortage of some chips and components made it difficult to assemble as a whole in the short term, affecting the normal production of cars and instead leading to an increase in the inventory of other components instead of a shortage. This has led automotive customers to adjust their order schedules or slow down shipments from customers with sufficient supply, the sources continued.

Automotive semiconductors will continue to be supply-constrained due to two major factors. One is the limited growth in the supply of automotive chip process capacity. If the foundry's capacity has been validated by automotive customers, it will take at least six months to convert their process capabilities to manufacture automotive chips, and for process capabilities that have not yet been certified for automotive chip production, they will need to spend another 2-3 years to complete validation.

Another factor is the lack of transparency in the uneven supply of chips and components. Two years ago, some channel players tried to consolidate the uneven supply of components faced by supply chain participants to achieve the best ratio of overall supply, but did not succeed, the sources said. idm, tier-one suppliers and automakers usually treat which components are in short supply as confidential.

According to research firm Yole Development, the value of semiconductors used in vehicles is estimated to grow from $550 in 2021 to $912 by 2027, with the corresponding number increasing from 820 to 1,100 chips, due to the growing popularity of electric and self-driving cars.

source：aijiwei

According to foreign media Seeking Alpha this 6th news, Intel CFO David Zinsner said at the UBS event, customers digesting inventory should not end at the end of this year, is likely to continue until 2023.

Zinsner also pointed out that the world is facing economic downturn. In view of this, Intel can not be clear that the semiconductor industry in 2023 Q1 there are signs of recovery. Intel is still dealing with customers to clean up inventory actions, perhaps not at the end of this year, will continue into next year, "coupled with the general headwinds in almost all regions, should not be better than the same period in the past".

Mizuho Securities technology analyst Jordan Klein believes that Zinsner's remarks may be a precautionary shot in advance, implying that Intel's 1Q next year may be about 5% lower than analysts' estimates, with gross margins and profits likely to be less than expected. He believes that Intel shares will encounter downside risk in the coming weeks.

It is reported that Intel announced its fiscal year 2022 third-quarter earnings in October, lowering its capital expenditure forecast for the fiscal year to $25 billion from the previous $27 billion and warning of job cuts.

source：aijiwei

According to a recent report by Nikkei News, the impact of global inflation and other factors has led to a decrease in consumer purchasing power, sluggish demand in the PC market, and a drop in the price of core chip NAND Flash, making the price of SSDs for PCs continue to fall and reach new lows.

According to the report, the wholesale price (bulk price) of TLC 256GB, an SSD indicator product, was around $29.5 each during October-December 2022, down 6% (down $2) compared to the previous quarter (July-September), the fifth consecutive quarterly decline and the third consecutive quarter to set a new record low; a 21% decrease (down $8) compared to the same period last year.

Market research firm Gartner pointed out that the global PC shipments during July-September 2022 fell by 19.5% to 67.996 million units compared with the same period last year, the largest decline in history since the survey began in the mid-1990s, which is a historic slowdown for the PC market.

In addition to weak PC demand, falling NAND Flash prices are also the reason for the continued decline in SSD prices. The price of TLC 256Gb, an indicator NAND Flash product, will be around $2.40 per unit during October-December 2022, down 14% from the previous quarter (July-September).

The report points out that although entering the year-end season, but because of inflation pressures on household consumption, the market is generally expected this winter PC sales fear weak, and storage chip manufacturers began to NAND Flash production reduction measures, but it is estimated that the effect of production cuts will not begin to appear until after the spring of 2023, the current NAND Flash prices are afraid of continued decline, so SSD prices are also afraid of further The current NAND Flash prices are likely to continue to fall, so SSD prices are likely to go down further.

source：xinzhixun

According to the Economic Times, Nomura, JP Morgan and other institutions warned that the storage industry will be more gloomy in the first half of next year, with prices set to plunge by more than 50%. Although storage manufacturers and channel operators to actively go to inventory, but the results will not gradually appear until Q1 next year. Among the various types of storage, coded flash storage (NOR Flash) related manufacturers will outperform pure DRAM manufacturers.

According to the news, JPMorgan Chase issued a report after visiting Nanya Technology, Lixin, Huabang, Macronix and other storage manufacturers in Taiwan, most of them expect demand will not rebound rapidly, but will recover gradually. Mainly due to the increase in supply chain inventories and the longer time required to consume inventories in the overall global economic downturn, it is estimated that the overall situation will not start to turn better until Q2 or the second half of next year. In addition, NOR Flash related vendors will outperform pure DRAM vendors due to strong demand for high density NOR chips in the automotive/industrial sector.

Affected by the global economic downturn and the new crown epidemic, foreign media reports expect the global semiconductor market to shrink by 4% to $557 billion in 2023, the first annual contraction since 2019. Another World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization said the memory market, which accounts for more than one-fifth of the total, will decline by 17 percent.

source：aijiwei

NVIDIA has launched its A800 AI GPU, a downgraded version of its A100 and H100 series, to Chinese customers and already has orders in place, according to industry sources, Electronic Times reported.

The U.S. ban on high-end GPU exports to China is said to have affected NVIDIA's A100 and H100 AI chips exported to China, prompting it to launch the lower-spec A800 series to comply with new U.S. control regulations on Chinese exports of advanced chips. The new U.S. export control regulations limit the rate to 600 GB per second and above, and NVIDIA's A800 chips have a data transfer rate of 400 GB per second, down from 600 GB per second in the previous generation.

NVIDIA still needs to obtain a U.S. export license for its A800 series AI GPUs sold in China, the sources said, adding that the processor supplier should be able to start shipping chips to Chinese customers in a few months.

NVIDIA disclosed in early November that the A800 GPU, a replacement for the A100 model, went into production in the third quarter. It also said it met clear tests for the new U.S. regulatory rules.

Sources close to the matter said the 7nm A800 will still be manufactured and packaged by TSMC, with China's Taiwan-based Jinyuan Electronics in charge of test operations and IC test interface solutions to come from Chunghwa Precision Test Technology and Yingwei Technology. TSMC's 7nm capacity utilization has declined recently, and the launch of NVIDIA's A800 GPU may help boost TSMC's 7nm process capacity utilization.

source：aijiwei

According to the "Economic Daily News" reported that the logic IC de-stocking and storage manufacturers a large number of production cuts resulting in weakening demand for silicon wafers, silicon wafer fabs are rumored to have begun to agree with customers to delay the pull, the previous attitude of holding fast to the offer has also changed, some manufacturers loose mouth willing to cooperate with market conditions and customers to negotiate prices, said "I'm afraid the first half of next year will be a little tougher ".

The recession in the semiconductor industry in the foundry reflected in the capacity utilization rate decline, storage plants have been reducing capital expenditure and production cuts for the winter, IC design houses are actively de-stocking and reduce the amount of investment, even at the expense of paying a breach of contract to cancel the foundry long contract, but the previous performance of the silicon foundry is still relatively supportive, and now it is rumored that the silicon foundry agreed to delay the customer pull, highlighting that the market situation is even more critical.

It is understood that a few customers in Taiwan, China, silicon wafer factory agreed to delay shipments, the schedule delayed about one or two months; another silicon wafer factory is to negotiate with customers, from the first quarter of next year can be slightly delayed pull; a silicon wafer factory business said that the semiconductor market is really bad now, the inventory level of long-term contract customers has been increasing, the current silicon wafer shipping conditions actually do not match the actual market demand.

Previously rumored that TSMC to the supply chain cut orders, Global Crystal pointed out that "the order has a long contract protection and no customer default", is expected to 8-inch and 12-inch silicon wafer capacity utilization rate to maintain strong.

TSMC said that this year will still be full production and full sales, looking ahead to next year, customers continue to comply with the long-term contract, the company will cooperate with customers, flexible adjustment of product mix.

Wafer Works pointed out that the next negotiation with customers in the first half of next year prices will be adjusted according to market conditions.

source：aijiwei

According to news, according to industry sources, China's Taiwan foundry World Advanced is in talks with Qualcomm, MPS, ADI and other potential customers for orders for power management ICs. These customers are looking to shift orders from their foundries in mainland China after the U.S. introduced a series of new export restrictions.

According to Taiwan's Electronic Times, the foundry's long-term growth prospects remain strong, despite short-term macro headwinds that pose a challenge to World Advanced's operations.

Earlier World Advanced Chairman and General Manager Fang Liao talked about the impact of U.S. export controls at a legal conference, and he believes that it currently appears to be in advanced processes and AI, HPC applications such as 16nm and even more advanced processes, so there is no negative impact on the company in the short term. At the same time, there are IDM companies in some cases to transfer part of the foundry to the world advanced, from the special process related to Power to mature processes have felt the relevant demand, so the overall opportunity outweighs the negative impact.

It is reported that the world advanced currently has five eight-inch fabs, located in Taiwan, China and Singapore. World Advanced continues to expand eight-inch wafer foundry capacity, with an average monthly capacity of about 241,000 8-inch wafers in 2021.

source：aijiwei

TrendForce reports that the third quarter NAND Flash market is still defeating the impact of weak demand, with shipments in both consumer electronics and servers falling short of expectations, leading to an 18.3% drop in NAND Flash prices in the third quarter.

According to the report, vendor bit shipments decreased by 6.7% YoY in Q3, and the average unit sales price continued to fall, resulting in overall NAND Flash industry revenue of approximately $13.71 billion (approximately RMB 97.889 billion), a 24.3% YoY decline.

IT Home learned that TrendForce said that the most obvious changes in the NAND Flash revenue ranking in the third quarter were in two areas, firstly, SK Group's revenue dropped the most by 29.8% year-over-year to $2.54 billion (about RMB 18.136 billion), relegating it to the third place. This is mainly due to the weak demand for PCs and smartphones, while the relatively robust demand for servers also impacted Solidigm's sales performance as companies cut back on spending and entered the inventory adjustment cycle, resulting in an 11.1% decline in bit shipments and a sharp drop of more than 20% in average unit sales price.

Secondly, Armor Man has gradually gotten rid of the impact of raw material pollution at the beginning of the year, and its revenue and market share have returned to the second place. Despite the sluggish consumer demand, the average unit price declined sharply, but bit shipments benefited from the seasonal pull of smartphone customers to support the third quarter revenue growth of 23.5% YoY to $2.83 billion (about 20.206 billion yuan), revenue fell by only 0.1% YoY.

As for other manufacturers, Samsung, Western Digital and Micron all faced volume and price declines, with revenue down by a similar margin, with sluggish terminal demand being one of the main factors dragging down revenue performance.

The company's revenue is expected to drop to 20-25% in the fourth quarter, and the revenue is expected to drop by nearly 20% from the previous quarter.

source：ITzhijia

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According to the news, the DRAM market usually sells strongly in the second half of the year as system manufacturers order memory chips for the next generation of products they plan to release during the year-end holidays. But that hasn't been the case this year.

Weak economic conditions and high inflation have slowed global demand for personal computers, mainstream smartphones and other consumer electronics, according to analysis by IC Insights, a semiconductor data consultancy. As a result, DRAM demand is spiraling downward, with sales now expected to fall 40 percent to $29.3 billion in the second half of 2022, compared with $49 billion in the first half of 2022. The DRAM market is expected to decline by 18 percent for the full year 2022.

The DRAM market saw strong sales in the first few months of the year, although the first signs of a DRAM market correction began to appear in late 2Q22. Micron, for example, reported an 11 percent increase in sales for its fiscal 3Q22 (ending in May). But then the company guided for -17% sales for its fiscal Q4 (ending August). Micron's actual sales for the fourth quarter of 2022 were down 23 percent, well above its expectations. Later this year, Micron also said it expects its annual DRAM bit volume to decline by 1%, further evidence that the DRAM market is in a rapid and severe downturn.

SK Hynix and Samsung also announced sharp declines in their memory sales for the third quarter of 2022, and both expect the DRAM market weakness to continue through the end of this year and into at least the first quarter of '23.

In their earnings calls, the three memory makers noted that inflation has eroded consumer discretionary spending at a time of year when sales typically heat up. Combined with ongoing supply chain disruptions and bloated inventory levels, a DRAM market correction is almost inevitable.

Over the past 30 years, the DRAM market has been characterized by periods of phenomenal growth and years of great decline (e.g., 2022) with high volatility.

IC Insights notes that in the past four years alone, the DRAM market has declined 37% in 2019, grown 42% in 2021, and is expected to decline 18% in 2022. With such extreme volatility, it's no wonder that the number of DRAM suppliers in this number has decreased from more than 25 30 years ago to the top three suppliers today.

source：aijiwei

Storage major Micron recently said it is taking further action to address storage market conditions, including reducing DRAM and NAND wafer production by about 20% this quarter compared to the previous quarter, and plans to further cut capital expenditures, according to the Economic Times.

In a statement released yesterday, Micron said it is reducing DRAM and NAND wafer production, which will be about 20 percent lower than in Q4 of fiscal year 2022, which ended Sept. 1.

Micron said in September that it would reduce its capital expenditures by 30 percent this year, and in the new statement Micron said it would further reduce capital expenditures.

Wedbush analyst Bryson pointed out that the widespread reduction in supply and capital spending, which usually means that the storage industry falls to the bottom, is a good sign, but there is the possibility of a longer-term demand downturn that will put pressure on the entire technology industry.

According to research data from TrendForce, global DRAM industry revenue for the third quarter of 2022 was $18.19 billion, down 28.9% QoQ, the second highest decline since 2008 due to the financial tsunami. Throughout the market, the fundamental reason for the decline in DRAM revenue is the weakness on the consumer side. The demand for consumer electronics continues to shrink, and the contract price decline has not only expanded to 10-15%, but even server DRAM clients, which originally shipped relatively stable volumes, have begun to adjust their inventories, resulting in a significant decline in pulling power.

source：aijiwei

According to Electronic Times, due to the slow process of de-stocking, demand has not seen a significant uptick, many semiconductor industry chain companies choose to announce all the bad news in Q4, looking forward to a quick bottom and then revive the flag. The industry expects that the worst case scenario of semiconductor and electronics industry chain performance may fall in 2022 Q4 and 2023 Q1.

By the global economic downturn inflation and other factors, the semiconductor industry chain demand is weak. Although many companies are not in the loss, but in the customer to stop pulling goods, cut orders and the impact of price drops, Q4 revenue will decline significantly. Industry estimates, semiconductor, electronics industry operations are expected to fall in the worst case in 2022 Q4 and 2023 Q1, many manufacturers have been in advance in the second quarter, the third quarter has shown weakness. Among them, the terminal PC, cell phone brands and IC design manufacturers and other supply chain performance quickly reversed downward, a number of major manufacturers have warned that inventory down to normal levels at least a few quarters of time to digest.

In the third quarter, the supply chain has been revealing plummeting earnings, and the financial test has been continuously revised downward, while the international makers Intel (Intel) and Meta are very conservative in their future outlook and have started layoff plans.

Such as Intel in late October on the revision of 2022 full-year earnings estimates, revenue from the beginning of the year estimated at $ 76 billion, reduced to $ 63 billion to $ 64 billion, and decided to cut $ 3 billion in operating costs in 2023, up to $ 10 billion before 2025. Qualcomm has also significantly revised its 2022 global smartphone shipment forecast, and announced that it will freeze personnel and cut expenses, while MediaTek estimates that Q4 revenue will be reduced by more than 20% quarterly.

Yesterday, Samsung warned that inventory continues to rise. Because of weak product demand, Samsung inventory assets increased in the third quarter, more than 57 trillion won. To reduce supply chain risk, Samsung had increased raw material purchases, but the global demand for its products did not recover in the ongoing recession.

source：aijiwei

Samsung SDI is pushing to establish joint venture electric vehicle battery plants in the U.S. with each of the two global automakers, sources said.

The total cost of the two joint ventures is estimated at $8 billion, of which Samsung SDI is expected to invest $4 billion. Some analysts believe that this massive investment plan of Samsung Group indicates that the conservative attitude of Samsung Group towards electric vehicle battery business is changing.

They plan to build a plant with an annual capacity of 50 GWh to meet the demand for power batteries for 670,000 electric vehicles with a range of 500 km. To do so, Samsung SDI and GM will each invest about $2 billion.

IT House learned that GM has previously purchased soft pack batteries from LG Energy Solution, but Samsung SDI does not produce such batteries. Samsung mainly specializes in prismatic and cylindrical batteries. This could signal a change in GM's battery form factor strategy.

The type of batteries to be produced at the joint plant has not yet been determined. However, some industry insiders speculate that the plant will launch square batteries.

In addition, Samsung SDI is pushing for a separate joint venture with Volvo, which Korean media said will be announced in December.

The joint venture is said to be similar in size to the Samsung-GM joint venture, with each company investing about $2 billion in the joint plant to produce 50GWh of batteries per year.

According to Volvo's strategy, the brand will use cylindrical batteries in the future, while the EX90 will use square batteries, and Samsung SDI is well positioned to produce both types of batteries. Samsung SDI will now partner with the world's top three automakers -- General Motors, Volvo and Stellantis.

Source：ITzhijia

According to the Taiwan media "Electronic Times" reported, sources said that most of the car companies and semiconductor foundries 2023 price negotiations still have not reached agreement process "is not as smooth as expected".

Automotive supply chain sources pointed out that most car companies are still negotiating prices with foundries recently, from the core to TSMC, UMC, world advanced and other foundries are still negotiating, a small part is near the end. Foundries, IDMs and Tier 1 suppliers are considering whether they each need to take a step back, with manufacturing prices expected to increase by single-digit percentages in 2023.

For most in the automotive industry, negotiations are not going as well as expected, especially as fabs' automotive chip capacity growth remains unimpressive. Suppliers also hinted that the difficult part of the negotiations with fabs is to agree on advance payments, and both sides are not sure whether they should invest in a common future or just pay a deposit for the order.

For automakers, they want upfront payments to support investments by fabs to expand or convert their capacity to automotive use so that their supply can increase quickly. The automotive side can guarantee orders and deliveries, during which time the fab can maintain stable prices and expand into the industrial/automotive market. Simply put, the fabs want to build a long-term future that is mutually beneficial to both parties, represented by the mainstream IDM model, including Infineon, NXP, Renesas, Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics or Tier 1.

With ongoing macro changes, especially inflation, likely to affect the market's spending power in 2023, the automotive industry is still searching for the best way to work together.

Source：aijiwei

The Electronica trade fair is one of the most important events in the electronics industry. It is held every two years in Munich, Germany, and is usually attended by more than 80,000 professionals from over 50 countries. The fair covers all aspects of the electronics industry, from semiconductors to electronic components and systems.

Flyking Technology Co.,Limited，a well-known global one-stop electronic component service provider， will be attending the electronica 2022 from November 15 to 18. The full set of Integrated Circuit solutions will be brilliantly displayed at booth 124 in Hall C3.

And Flyking will set up a brands exhibition area to comprehensively display our independent distribution brands. At the same time, we will exhibit a series of IC-related industrial contents, show the technology and achievements of global IC industry, and discuss the innovation and development of global semiconductor industry with electronic people.

At this exhibition, Flyking will have a deep communication and learning with various enterprises in the electronics industry, contribute to the the development of the world's semiconductor supply chain, and show a different style of the industry.

November 15-18, 2022, we are looking forward to your arrival at Munich International Electronics Fair, Hall C3, No. 124, Germany!

According to the "Electronic Times" reported that the recent car companies and foundries for 2023 offer consultation into the climax, in which a small part of the foundry for the car with a small price increase is expected to succeed, the price increase ratio is still under negotiation.

Sources said that some manufacturers tend to foundry and IDM and Tier 1 each step back, it is estimated that the year 2023 foundry offer single-digit percentage increase, but still depends on the customer, the size of the order varies. In fact, the initial negotiations with customers that, as long as the supply is smooth, the price can be "with the line on the market". It is understood that the automotive chip foundry offer in the past few years soared, because the demand sharply exceeded the supply. But inflationary pressures and other factors have clouded the outlook for demand next year, prompting automakers to re-examine risks and costs.

This comes on the heels of news that TSMC, the leading foundry, may have uncertainty about price increases next year, and that automotive chip customers are already considering renegotiating their prices.

Due to the impact of the epidemic, geopolitics, inflation and other factors, the market demand for PCs and other consumer electronic devices is rapidly slowing down, foundries are facing customer cut orders, capacity utilization has declined significantly. Automotive chip IDMs are also experiencing a shortfall in fab utilization and are likely to scale back outsourcing. Previously due to chip shortages, head down not to ask the price only to have capacity car manufacturers and chip makers seized the opportunity to renegotiate prices with foundries in the fourth quarter. Foundries due to weak demand for consumer electronic devices caused by the capacity gap, but also plans to industrial and automotive chips to make up.

Source：aijiwei

NXP recently released Q3 earnings, total revenue increased 20.4% year-on-year, net profit increased 42.2% year-on-year. CEO Kurt Sievers (Kurt Sievers) said he is cautious about the development prospects of the chip industry in the coming months, pointing out that market demand is divided into two kinds of chips needed for consumer products and automotive chips, demand from consumer electronics such as game consoles and personal computers is declining, but the demand for automotive and industrial chips is still "resilient. Automotive and industrial chip demand is still "resilient".

Data show that, according to NXP business division, Q3 automotive revenue of $1.804 billion, up 24% year-on-year, accounting for about 50% of total revenue; industrial and IoT business revenue of $713 million, up 17%; mobile device business revenue of $410 million, up 19%; communications infrastructure and other business revenue of $518 million, up 14% year-on-year.

Because of the large share of revenue from automotive chips, NXP avoided the dilemma of a rapid decline in demand for semiconductors. Like vendors in the automotive end of the market, NXP said there is still a shortage of some products here. Investors are now concerned about how long the automotive-side market can provide a cushion under the widespread decline in demand.

Most of the demand in the chip industry is falling like a rock, and there is an inventory overhang," said Schiff. But the other part "continues to retain a healthy demand, supply and demand is still unbalanced.

Source：aijiwei

Intel revealed in its third quarter 2022 earnings report that they have signed seven of the world's top 10 semiconductor design vendors. eenewseurope.com tried to analyze the "top seven customers" component and concluded that they include Qualcomm, Broadcom, Marvell and Cirrus Logic, as well as the already Nvidia, MediaTek, and Rexchip were identified.

Eenewseurope website believes that in the global Top 10 manufacturers, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Marvell and Cirrus Logic are all chip companies based in the United States, as the U.S. domestic companies, they signed a foundry cooperation with Intel is very logical. In addition, Nvidia has also expressed interest in Intel foundry before, and is now sure to join, but is currently only involved in a project operated by Intel for the Department of Defense. In addition, the Taiwanese chip factory MediaTek has confirmed the use of Intel foundry, there is a Taiwanese factory RuiYu followed MediaTek, announced the use of Intel foundry. It is reported that one of these seven customers has tested the 18A process for mass production in 2024, and completed the chip flow in the factory.

The analysis that Intel's large customers have been assembled to seven, while AMD, Wing and Weir were excluded.

The analysis points out that Wing and Weir because of the type of chip, almost unlikely to use Intel foundry. AMD's CPU, GPU, FPGA and other chip business is in direct competition with Intel, so the possibility of using Intel foundry is not very likely.

But the site also said that the actual business volume of these seven companies is limited, mostly of specialty processes with 16nm and above process, and not too many advanced process foundry.

As early as March last year, Intel's chief CEO Pat Kissinger announced the "IDM2.0" strategy, announced the development of foundry business. Since then, Intel has continued to announce new moves to prove the feasibility of their "IDM2.0". In February this year, Intel announced that it would buy the Israeli company Tower Semiconductor (Tower) for $5.4 billion, trying to make up for the drawbacks of its single business with the existing customer base of the world's top 10 foundries, Tower Semiconductor. The outside world believes that Intel is determined to develop foundry business, its logic should be running to break the business model.

source：aijiwei

Recently, semiconductor analyst BlayneCurtis adjusted the stock ratings of three analog chip makers, AnalogDevices (ADI) and NXP Semiconductor's rating from "plus" to "equal weight", but also down Silicon Laboratories originally revised its "equal weight" rating to "reduce".

and said the three analog chip stocks fear greater downside.

The three shares fell to varying degrees yesterday, ADI fell 1.41%, NXP fell 0.21%, Silicon Laboratories plunged 5.10%.

With the impact of the epidemic and inflation, as well as people's expectations for the future of the economy, the analog chip market has also seen a downturn. Curtis expects that as chip orders begin to decline due to weak demand, ADI will significantly lower its profit expectations for 2023, and although this quarter's earnings may not happen, he believes it will happen sooner rather than later.

The analyst is understood to have lowered his target price for ADI to $140 from $180, lowered his target price for NXP shares to $140 from $200, and lowered his target price for Silicon Laboratories shares to $95 from $140.

source：aijiwei

According to Korean media reports, Samsung is planning to increase outsourced production of non-memory chips, including display driver ICs and image sensors.

It is understood that China's Taiwan foundry UMC may provide Samsung with more image sensors and display driver IC capacity, while Samsung's foundry division continues to produce more advanced products such as smartphone application processors, which aims to increase the stability of chip procurement by diversifying supply channels, in addition to the force accumulation and world advanced is also expected to become a new partner of Samsung.

At the same time, Samsung foundry division is planning to build a third production line in South Korea's Pyeongtaek and the United States after Tyler, Texas, the location is likely to be in Europe, the European Union has been open to foreign investment since last year, and Europe is also where Samsung can be more closely linked to customers.

In addition, Samsung is also focusing on automotive chip development. With the development of intelligent automotive electronics and autonomous driving, the demand for chips in the automotive industry is soaring.

source：aijiwei

On October 18, DIGITIMES reported that McKinsey & Company and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said that the shortage of automotive chips has not been fully resolved and could last until 2026 or even 2030.

Although foundries such as TSMC and UMC have been increasing their 28nm capacity, the two consulting firms stressed that more mature nodes for different applications in cars will still be in short supply. Even if only one chip of any kind needed to run is missing, these cars will be stalled in the production line.

BCG recently released a report titled "Automotive Industry Semiconductor Outlook," saying that although the supply of automotive chips has been rising, it still can't keep up with demand growth.

BCG predicts that the automotive semiconductor market is expected to grow at more than 9 percent per year through 2030, as the adoption of electric vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) will increase chip content in vehicles.

Based on the fact that battery-only electric vehicles (BEVs) will become mainstream in electric vehicles by 2026 and will require the most semiconductor components, BCG expects the shortage of analog and MEMS-related chips to be a major challenge for the automotive industry by 2026.

Demand growth will be highest for logic chips fabricated at 20nm to 45nm nodes to meet the growing computing demands of centralized electrical/electronic architectures, while demand pressure at mature nodes larger than 55nm may ease.

However, McKinsey's analysis shows that chips manufactured using 90nm and above process nodes are also facing the same supply shortage problem. Its report shows that the annual demand for 12-inch equivalent automotive wafers may increase from about 11 million in 2019 to 33 million in 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 11%. But production of 90-nanometer and above process node chips, which account for 67 percent of automotive demand, will grow by only about 5 percent between 2021 and 2026.

BCG said that as about 50% of the growth in mature node semiconductor capacity comes from mainland China, geopolitical risks or resulting uncertainty about access to capacity in mainland China could increase the risk to the global automotive supply chain. In addition, underinvestment in mature node capacity outside of mainland China is likely to persist due to a lack of cost efficiency.

source：aijiwei

October 18 news, according to Bloomberg local time reported on October 17, Susquehanna Financial Group released the latest research report pointed out that the overall average chip delivery cycle in September 2022 was 26.3 weeks, shortened by 4 days compared to August, the largest drop in the past two years, showing that the chip industry supply tightness is being eased.

Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland pointed out that the waiting time for all key product categories are showing a trend of shortening, power management, analog chips fell the most.

It is worth noting that the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of the Census released data on October 14, 2022 September U.S. retail sales of electronic and electrical stores fell 8.6% annually (0.8% monthly) to $ 7.444 billion, the lowest since January of this year, the seventh consecutive month showing a year-on-year decline.

The U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released on October 7, 2022, the number of U.S. semiconductor and related electronic components employment in September compared to the August 388,400 (the highest since March 2009) decreased by 100 people a month to 388,300, the first time in nine months to show a contraction.

AMD CEO Lisa Su said on Oct. 6 that the personal computer (PC) market turned significantly weaker in the third quarter of 2022, and the overall economic situation led to lower-than-expected PC demand, resulting in a significant adjustment in the entire PC supply chain inventory.

U.S. media "Automotive News" (Automotive News) reported on October 16, forecasting agency AutoForecast Solutions (AFS) pointed out that so far this year, the global car manufacturers due to chip supply shortage and cut nearly 3.6 million units of production capacity, down from 10.5 million units in 2021, chip shortage led to a shortfall of 25,900 units of global car production last week. The chip shortage led to a 25,900-unit shortfall in global vehicle production last week, including 23,300 units for North American car makers.

Sam Fiorani, vice president of AFS Global Automotive Forecast, pointed out that although the chip supply continues to improve, the end point of the shortage of automotive chips continues to be delayed, and automakers expect the chip shortage to enter its third year and have begun to revise production plans for 2023.

The Federal Reserve Board (FED) announced on September 15 that the annual rate of U.S. car and light truck assembly in August (adjusted for seasonal factors) rose to 10.16 million units from 10.06 million units in July, the highest since April, the third consecutive month of upward movement.

The Kelley Blue Book (KBB), a Cox Automotive brand, announced on October 12 that the U.S. average transaction price (ATP) for new vehicles increased 6.1% annually (0.3% monthly) to $48,094 in September 2022, the first monthly decrease in five months.

source：xinzhixun

According to Taiwan's Central News Agency, the problem is estimated to continue into the first half of next year; TSMC has even warned that the biggest impact of inventory adjustment will be in the first half of next year, and the pressure of inventory de-stocking in the IC design industry will also affect the latter part of IC packaging and testing demand.

Looking ahead to next year's electronic technology industry market conditions, the "Institute for Industrial Information" (MIC) senior industry consultant and director of Hong Chunhui pointed out that the current demand has not seen a rebound, the supply chain downstream to the upstream spread of different degrees of inventory problems, the slow pace of depletion, fear will continue into the first half of next year.

From the days point of view, MIC analysis, compared to the same period last year in the second quarter of this year, all types of industry inventory days increased by an average of 15.5% to 25.1%, of which the inventory days to the semiconductor industry increased by 100.1 days the most, the electronic components industry 98.3 days next.

Allianz Investment Trust's Taiwan stock team said that inventory adjustments began in the third quarter, especially in personal computers and notebook computers related to the most obvious, inventory adjustments are expected to end in the first half of next year.

MIC industry analyst Yang Kexin pointed out that the negative factors in the external environment have not been removed, the consumer market buying is not good, the pulling power is weak, customer stocking momentum slowed down, from the terminal, the system factory to the semiconductor chip production and marketing supply chain operators, are facing the problem of high inventory levels, inventory decomposition will affect the semiconductor market performance next year.

Observe the semiconductor field, MIC analysis, semiconductor chip production and marketing is limited by the long-contract mechanism, repeat, over-orders have to take delayed delivery and other practices, unfavorable semiconductor supply chain regulation, inventory adjustment is expected to last until the first half of next year.

Wafer foundry leading TSMC President Wei Zhejia pointed out that the semiconductor industry inventory adjustment and other factors, affecting the 4th quarter to the first half of next year TSMC overall crop performance, he expected the semiconductor supply chain inventory inventory high point in the 3rd quarter of this year hit the top, the 4th quarter began to decline, it is estimated that the first half of next year to return to a healthy level, inventory adjustment factors will have the greatest degree of impact in the first half of next year.

Chip design major MediaTek predicts that customer inventory adjustment may continue for 2 to 3 quarters; wafer foundry world advanced recently said that the 4th quarter customers continue to adjust inventory, do not rule out that may continue into the first half of next year.

Observe the IC design, memory, IC packaging end, Yang can Xin analysis, the current semiconductor industry inventory adjustment, IC design and memory industry is facing a decline in demand, oversupply problem, IC design industry is facing the pressure of inventory de-stocking, and the impact of the latter part of the IC packaging demand, unfavorable to the overall operation next year.

From the perspective of products, including panel driver chips, consumer power management chips (PMIC), general-purpose and consumer microcontrollers (MCU) and other weak demand, related industry inventory levels continue to rise.

Among them, the passive component maker Guoguang said that in the fourth quarter, due to the long holiday in mainland China in October and the Christmas holidays in December in Europe and the United States to reduce the number of working days, and the standard product inventory adjustment period than expected to extend, prudent response to the performance and operating outlook.

The U.S. foreign corporation pointed out that the weak end market demand, supply chain inventory level to record high, is the main reason for the decline in the passive components market, the terminal channel continues to de-stocking, the estimated adjustment time takes 6 months.

In the memory, MIC pointed out that the consumer terminal market to server customers are facing different degrees of inventory adjustment, and there is a high degree of uncertainty in the short-term demand of the memory industry.

However, the industry is not all pessimistic, PEGATRON Chairman Tzu-Hsien Tong recently said that the current market needs a little time to digest the relevant product inventory, and he believes that about 2 quarters can be completed digestion.

The memory factory South Asia Tech General Manager Lee Pei-ying analysis, some customers to de-stocking positive development, demand has the opportunity to rebound, although the 4th quarter prices may continue to fall, but the decline will converge.

The MIC pointed out that the chip industry is facing the problem of high inventory turnover days and is now facing severe inventory de-stocking challenges. If the terminal market situation still does not improve, it is difficult to avoid a price and volume drop. The rapid decline in prices cannot be avoided.

source：aijiwei

IBM has announced that it will incorporate the Red Hat Storage product roadmap and its associated teams into the IBM Storage business unit to provide enterprises with consistent application and data storage across local infrastructures and the cloud.

With this move, IBM will integrate Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) storage technologies as the foundation for IBMSpectrum Fusion. This combines IBM and Red Hat's containerized storage technology for providing data services and helps accelerate IBM's capabilities in the emerging Kubernetes platform market.

In addition, IBM intends to offer a new Ceph solution that provides a unified software-defined storage platform that bridges the architectural divide between data center and cloud providers. This will further advance IBM's leadership position in the software-defined storage and Kubernetes platform market.

Under the agreement between IBM and Red Hat, IBM will assume lead sponsorship of the Ceph Foundation, and Ceph Foundation members will collaborate to drive innovation, development, marketing and community activities for the Ceph open source project. will continue to follow an upstream-first model that reinforces IBM's commitment to these important communities. the involvement of the Ceph leadership team and other aspects of the open source project is a key priority for IBM to maintain and nurture Red Hat's ongoing innovation.

Red Hat and IBM intend to complete the transition by January 1, 2023, which will involve the storage roadmap and the transfer of relevant Red Hat employees to IBM's storage business unit. After this date, Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus will continue to include OpenShift Data Foundation, sold by Red Hat and its partners. in addition, Red Hat OpenStack customers will still be able to purchase Red Hat Ceph storage from Red Hat and its partners. Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenStack customers with existing subscriptions will be able to maintain and expand their storage footprint as needed, without changing their relationship with Red Hat.

The upcoming Ceph-based IBM Ceph and IBM Spectrum Fusion storage solutions are reportedly expected to begin shipping in the first half of 2023.

source：aijiwei

Citi Research has issued a warning that widespread delivery delays and cancellations suggest that the analog IC party is over.

MarketWatch, Investing.com reported that Citi analyst Christopher Danley published a research report on July 11, indicating that the delayed and cancelled lead times that hit analog IC and DSP major Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI), a major analog IC and digital signal processor (DSP) manufacturers, delivery delays and cancellation problems now also affect other analog IC manufacturers, lead time gradually reduced, "we believe that the demand turned weak (especially in Europe) and high inventory is the main cause of this boom cooling.

Danley predicts that Texas Instruments Inc. and NXP Semiconductors N.V. will report poor earnings, "This is only the beginning of the cycle of the downturn, and every company and every end market will feel the impact.

Danley also predicts that the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index will reach a new low due to increased downward momentum and lower corporate earnings estimates on Wall Street. He believes that the chip stocks will bottom out in the first half of 2023 after each company aggressively revises its profit outlook downward, investors pledge to surrender, and memory, logic IC, and foundry industry players cut capital expenditures.

Danley as early as more than a month ago, a lone opinion, warning automotive and industrial customers (the most severely affected by the chip shortage industry) signs of correction.

TSMC is scheduled to report earnings this Thursday (Oct. 13), while Dutch semiconductor equipment giant ASML Holding NV will also report then, and semiconductor etching machine maker Lam Research Corp. will announce a week later on Oct. 19.

The earnings season for U.S. chip stocks will be kicked off by Texas Instruments on Oct. 25.

So far, some analog IC stocks have performed much better than their semiconductor counterparts. Year-to-date, ON Semiconductor (ON Semiconductor), DEI only fell 12.44%, 18.58%, respectively, performing much better than the 43.78% decline in fee and a half.

source： EETOP半导体社区

According to foreign media reports, under the influence of the dual decline in demand and prices, South Korea's semiconductor sales in overseas markets, in August this year fell to $10.78 billion, down 7.8% year-on-year, after 26 months of year-on-year decline again.

And from the latest data released by the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, September their semiconductor product sales in overseas markets, year-on-year growth still has not resumed.

The latest data released by the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy show that sales of semiconductor products in overseas markets in September were $11.49 billion, down 5.7% year-on-year.

Although there is a decline year-on-year, but in September, South Korea's semiconductor product sales in overseas markets, but still higher than in August, 10.78 billion U.S. dollars, a return to growth.

As in August, Korea's semiconductor sales in overseas markets in September fell year-on-year, still affected by the global economic slowdown caused by the decline in demand and price declines.

Sitting Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two major memory chip manufacturers in South Korea, is an important global supplier of semiconductors, semiconductors are also an important export commodity in South Korea, in their exports accounted for about 20% of the proportion of semiconductor products in overseas sales stability, for their export stability has an important impact.

source：TechWeb

Market research firm SNE Research said on Oct. 6 that global EV battery usage from January to August this year was 287.6 GWh, which was up 78.7 percent from a year ago. usage of CATL EV batteries rose 114.7 percent year-on-year to 102.2 GWh, and the company's market share rose from 29.6 percent to 35.5 percent.

In comparison, LG Energy Solutions' market share fell from 22.3% to 13.7%, while the combined market share of SK On, Samsung SDI and LG Energy Solutions fell from 33.5% to 25%. BYD's EV battery usage, on the other hand, grew over 192% year-over-year.

Right now, Chinese companies are rapidly expanding their overseas operations. Companies like CATL recently announced that its cylindrical batteries will be supplied to BMW starting in 2025. Currently, cylindrical batteries are a major product for LG Energy Solutions, Samsung SDI and Panasonic.

CATL is currently building a 100 GWh per year plant in Hungary with an investment of €7.3 billion. This is CATL's second plant to be built in Europe, after the German plant scheduled to be operational this year. In addition, it is considering building a third plant in Europe to double its production.

China is dominating EV battery minerals, which is a huge advantage for Chinese EV battery makers. When it comes to mineral processing and smelting, China has a 50 to 70 percent market share in different areas. The raw materials used by Korean EV battery manufacturers are in most cases imported from China.

source：ECCN

According to foreign media reports, the current situation of the memory chip market is not optimistic, subject to the global economic recession concerns caused by the slowdown in demand, has affected the demand for end products, which in turn affects the demand for memory chips, research institutions are expected to NAND flash and DRAM prices are declining, the market oversupply situation will intensify next year.

Memory chip demand is slowing, but Samsung Electronics executives said they do not intend to reduce production

Memory chip demand slowdown, price decline, will inevitably affect Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and other memory chip manufacturers, Samsung Electronics is currently the world's largest memory chip manufacturer, memory chips are also an important source of revenue and profits for them.

In the decline in demand and prices, product manufacturers usually cut production to reduce inventory pressure, improve supply and demand conditions and thus stabilize prices, but in the case of a decline in demand for memory chips, Samsung Electronics does not intend to cut production.

Samsung Electronics does not intend to cut production, is their executive vice president and global marketing head of the storage business Han Jin-man, in San Jose, California, at a conference, he said they did not have internal discussions on cutting production of memory chips.

Han Jin-man also revealed at the meeting that Samsung Electronics' basic position on the issue of cutting production of memory chips is that there should be no artificial reduction in production, and that Samsung is working to ensure that there is neither a chronic shortage nor an oversupply of chips in the market.

Although Samsung Electronics does not intend to cut the production of memory chips, but the memory chip manufacturer Micron Technology, but there are considerations. Foreign media reports mentioned that Micron Technology has indicated that they may cut capital expenditures for fiscal year 2023 (through the end of September 2023), by up to 30%, and spending on chip equipment, by up to 50%, to slow supply growth.

source：IT zhijia

A few days ago, the U.S. stocks semiconductor chip stocks across the board plunged, including chip stocks in the IT sector fell more than 4%, while chip stocks in AMD is a plunge of nearly 14%.

According to AMD announced preliminary financial results for the third quarter, AMD's third-quarter revenue is expected to be about $5.6 billion (about $39.8 billion), an increase of 29% year-on-year. But this performance is much lower than previously expected, AMD previously said Q3 quarter revenue is expected to grow about 55% year-on-year.

The reason given by AMD for the decline in performance is that "macroeconomic contraction led to less than expected sales in the traditional PC consumer market, accompanied by a large inventory in the supply chain, so the overall market is not very enthusiastic about the installation, resulting in a significant reduction in processor shipments."

The report also noted that the company's processor shipments were significantly lower due to weaker-than-expected PC market and inventory backlogs in the supply chain, and that revenue from the personal user (Client) segment was lower than expected, falling 53 percent sequentially and 40 percent year-over-year.

Previously, prior to the release of the report, AMD had expected to bring in $6.7 billion in revenue, but revenue will be $1.1 billion lower than expected, now at $5.6 billion, mainly due to a decline in desktop and notebook computer CPU sales.

It is reported that a report by market research firm Canalys shows that the U.S. economy is facing a looming recession and high inflation, making shipments to the U.S. PC market fall by more than 20% year-on-year in the second quarter of this year.

source：icspec

Demand for IC packaging leadframes is expected to fall further in Q4 2022, and it may take a quarter or two to see if demand will rebound, industry sources said, as inventory adjustments for consumer chips take longer than expected.

According to the Electronic Times, demand for packaged leadframes for custom high-end sensors, MEMS components and chips currently used in industrial control and automotive applications is relatively stable. However, demand related to mainstream logic computing chips and power management ICs (PMIC) remains weak.

Recently, China Taiwan packaging major Sunrise had said that it will be able to maintain sales growth in 2022, but capacity utilization will decline slightly in the fourth quarter of this year.

Sources had pointed out that the slowdown in consumer electronics demand is affecting not only second-tier back-end companies, but also leading companies such as Sun and Moon, and that utilization rates at Sun and Moon's main back-end plant in Kaohsiung will drop to between 70-80% in the fourth quarter of this year.

source：aijiweiAPP

September 27 news, according to foreign institutions for the ABF carrier board market forecast shows that due to the low demand for PCs and Intel's new server processors delayed to next year's release, making this year's ABF carrier board supply and demand situation under great pressure, but in 2023, benefiting from the rise in the contribution of Intel's new PC and server chips, the ABF carrier board market supply and demand gap will again expand, while BT, the PCB demand is affected by weak demand in the consumer electronics market underperformed.

Foreign institutions also pointed out that in the next few years, non-Intel camp ABF carrier board demand will continue to expand, ABF carrier board supply and demand gap to maintain at least 15%, mainly because of AMD, Ceres, NVIDIA and Marvell's structural HPC, cloud, network drive, as well as the acceleration of demand for automotive electronics, and the rising trend of China's semiconductor localization.

Foreign investors analyze that the still tight non-Intel camp ABF supply situation should bring favorable pricing and profits for the non-Intel ABF carrier board business of Shinex, NDT, and Kingmaker, as Intel enjoys exclusive or priority capacity support from all ABF carrier board suppliers, making it difficult to switch to other chip designers given delivery times and dedicated equipment.

Although market sentiment is likely to remain subdued in the coming months due to inflation dragging down consumer electronics demand, strong non-PC demand for networking, automotive, AI/HPC, AR/VR, and urgent GPU/CPU orders from China-related sources, as well as a gradual return to growth from top US IDM/fabless suppliers in the first half of next year, can be expected to be a catalyst for Taiwan's ABF carrier board catalyst for production capacity.

Foreign investors emphasized that overall, the outlook for BT and PCB is gloomy due to the impact of weak consumer electronics demand, so they maintained their "Buy" ratings on Shinex, NDT and Kingmaker, but lowered their target stock prices and suggested investors to buy when the supply/demand gap for ABF carrier boards expands from 2023.

source：xinzhixun

China Taiwan Electronics Times reported that recently, Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata (Hidetoshi Shibata) said that this round of global chip shortage will be alleviated in mid-2023.

Information shows that Renesas 2022Q2 total revenue of 376.6 billion yen, an increase of nearly 73% year-on-year, an increase of nearly 9%, the automotive business growth is relatively flat, while the industrial / IoT business is growing rapidly.

Specifically, automotive revenue was 163.8 billion yen, up 54.3% year-over-year and 6.4% sequentially. In terms of inventory of automotive products, the inventory of related products improved little from the previous quarter and was well below the expected inventory.

At this stage, the chip shortage in the automotive sector is gradually easing, but we continue to see some shortages and, more importantly, growth remains a strong driver for the foreseeable future. In particular, the fundamentals of ADAS and electric vehicles are intact and will provide strong structural growth opportunities for these automotive chip majors.

In an interview recently, Hidetoshi Shibata said that Renesas does not intend to build a chip factory in the United States, and will continue to expand production capacity in Japan. He said, in terms of front-end production, Europe or the United States and other regions may not have a good supply of raw materials, Renesas is investing in natural disaster challenges and other related technologies, and to keep some inventory in case of emergency.

Customers in the automotive industry are currently trying out Renesas' first 7nm chips. Shibata Hidetoshi said that the automotive chip is generally using a more mature process technology, Renesas expansion will continue to use the 40nm process.

Renesas also recently announced the completion of its acquisition of Reality Analytics, Inc. (Reality AI), an outstanding provider of embedded AI solutions, on July 19, 2022, after receiving approval from Reality AI shareholders and regulators.

The acquisition will enable Renesas Electronics to expand its suite of tools and software products for AI applications and enhance Renesas Electronics' own ability to provide highly optimized endpoint solutions combining hardware and software. Among other things, combining Reality AI's AI inference technology with Renesas Electronics' MCU and MPU products will enable a seamless integration of machine learning and signal processing.

source：aijiwei

Automotive parts and module suppliers intend to raise prices due to rising material costs and other expenses, according to industry sources.

While the extreme material shortages of the past two years have eased, shortages of certain ICs persist, according to Electronic Times. According to automotive module suppliers, tier-one suppliers have been adjusting their orders weekly for the past two months, with orders from automotive customers increasing and decreasing. Sources noted that shortages of special ICs and control boards have not yet eased, and suppliers still need to match the pull-in adjustments.

"Automotive component and module suppliers have received a positive response when discussing price increases with their Tier 1 customers. Because Tier 1 understands that all costs have increased significantly in recent years, upstream suppliers have also borne the burden of declining gross margins," The source said.

It is reported that the market research agency had predicted that the shortage of automotive semiconductors may continue at least until 2023. While some automakers say they have resumed full production, most automakers report that automotive semiconductors are still in short supply. The shortage will prevent automakers from producing enough cars to meet demand in 2022 and 2023, resulting in continued high prices for most cars.

source：aijiwei

Research firm TrendForce pointed out in its latest report that due to weak demand for consumer products and further pressure on suppliers' inventories, DRAM prices fell by 13-18% in the fourth quarter, and the market even saw "combined bargaining in the third and fourth quarters" or In the fourth quarter, DRAM prices fell by 13-18%, and the market even saw "combined third and fourth quarter bargaining" or "volume negotiation before price negotiation".

However, as DDR5 penetration continues to rise, coupled with its higher unit price, DDR5 penetration in PC DRAM will increase to 13-15% in the fourth quarter, making the overall PC DRAM (combined DDR5 and DDR4) average unit price slightly increased, the fourth quarter PC DRAM price is estimated to drop about 10 ~ 15% quarterly.

IC Insights recently estimated that the DRAM market will shrink 38% year-over-year in the third quarter of this year. In addition, IC Insights also expects the DRAM market to see a greater decline in the fourth quarter and early next year.

source：aijiwei

September 20, according to South Korean media THEELEC, citing market sources, reported that Samsung Electronics System LSI Division plans to slightly expand OLED DDI (driver chip) production capacity in 2023, and will further secure OLED DDI production capacity for smartphones through a partnership with Taiwan's UMC.

Samsung Electronics' system LSI division is currently the global leader in the OLED DDI market. According to market research firm Omdia, as of Q1 2022, Samsung Electronics' System LSI division has a 55% market share of smartphone OLED DDI, significantly ahead of second-ranked LX Semicon at 14.6% and third-ranked Novatech at 11.6%. Samsung Electronics System LSI Division has such a strong market position, but mainly due to Samsung Electronics and Apple, two of the world's major smartphone manufacturers of large-scale adoption.

The report points out that at this stage, Samsung Electronics System LSI Division 12-inch wafer OLED DDI production line has two, mainly including Samsung foundry department and Taiwan UMC supply. In the UMC part, it uses a 28nm process 12-inch wafer production line, and the line is also used for foundry CMOS image sensors. In addition, Samsung is also actively investing, such as investing in UMC's P6 fab in Taiwan, which is scheduled to come online in 2023, not only to provide mass production equipment for the fab, but also to sign a long-term supply contract with the fab.

Source：xinzhixun

China Taiwan's export orders may contract for a second straight month in August as global demand cools, Reuters found by a survey, similar to the decline in July.

The report combined the views of 13 economists to predict that China Taiwan's export orders will fall 3.7 percent in August from a year ago, revising downward the original estimate of a 3.4 percent decline.

China Taiwan's export orders, which carry a significant portion of the world's semiconductor supply chain demand, were hit by weak demand for technology and continued weakness in mainland China, the largest market, with an unexpected drop in exports in July, with orders shrinking 1.9 percent to $54.26 billion from a year earlier, and the Chinese authorities forecast that the value of exports in August would fall 0.9 percent to 3.7 percent from August 2021.

The report pointed out that the export orders through China Taiwan can be a glimpse of the high-tech industry and the overall situation of Asian export demand, with China Taiwan leading the actual exports from Asia by 2 to 3 months.

It is reported that the data of China Taiwan's exports in August will be released on Tuesday this week.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

source：aijiwei

Research firm TrendForce recently published a forecast of the power battery market, showing that the power battery market demand will continue to grow at a rapid pace, by 2024, the global installed power battery scale will exceed 1TWh (1000 GWh), by 2030 will exceed 3TWh, of which, China's market size will occupy a global share of about 45%.

From the supply side, Ningde Time, LG New Energy, BYD, Sinova, Samsung SDI, Panasonic and other major global power battery manufacturers are accelerating their production expansion, with a total of about 4.2 TWh of power & energy storage battery capacity planned by 2025, of which Chinese manufacturers account for about 3.1 TWh, leading the world in capacity expansion rhythm.

TrendForce also pointed out that the boom in power & storage batteries, so that the upstream lithium, cobalt, nickel and other mineral resources supply bottlenecks are increasingly prominent, lithium carbonate and other lithium-ion battery raw materials prices also continue to be high, the power battery production cost pressure is expected to continue until 2024, but the agency also pointed out that the high price of lithium materials will accelerate the application of sodium-ion battery technology, the vertical integration of downstream enterprises layout, will also inject more resources into the development of lithium, cobalt and nickel resources, helping to accelerate the relief of supply tension.

Source：aijiwei APP

Sources at Taiwan-based IC design firms said inventory adjustments for ICs could continue into the first half of 2023 due to weaker-than-expected demand for high-end consumer electronics, Digitimes reported.

So far, disappointing chip orders for high-end notebooks and smartphones in the second half of 2022 have prompted many fabless chipmakers to be conservative about their sales prospects for the rest of 2022, the sources said.

Fabless companies are also concerned about whether branded manufacturers' sales strategies, such as price promotions and greater use of commodity ICs rather than high-priced ICs, will adversely affect their ability to maintain profit growth in the second half of the year, the sources said.

Some downstream device assemblers believe that customer inventory corrections could end within a quarter or two, allowing them to achieve a seasonal pickup in sales later in the year. However, many IC design companies have indicated they will be more cautious given that customer orders show no signs of picking up, according to industry sources.

source：aijiwei

On September 13, the Nikkei News reported that DRAM prices hit a 1-year, 9-month low as PC shipments shrink and prices of memory and other components continue to fall.

Image source: Nikkei News

Among them, the wholesale price of DDR4 4GB was around $2 in August, down 3% YoY, having fallen for 4 consecutive months and hitting the lowest level since November 2020; DDR4 8GB was around $2.48, down 3% YoY.

In the quarterly negotiations, DRAM prices for each category in July-September were about 10% lower than in April-June; for NAND flash memory, TLC's 256GB products were around $2.80 each in July-September, down 10% from April-June.

In addition, the LCD panel is also reducing prices. 15.6-inch TFT panels for notebook PCs were around $26.50 each in August, down $0.50 (2 percent) from July.

The report believes that due to the increase in prices of products and services, consumers' purchasing power is declining, while companies also seem to be reducing the renewal of PCs for employees. it is expected that the reversal of the market will take a longer time.

source：aijiwei

September 7 news, according to the industry breaking information, Intel has issued the latest notice: is expected to start from the fourth quarter of 2022 for all products planned to implement price increase policy, the range of 10-20%, will involve Intel motherboard chipset products.

In July this year, there are media reports that Intel has informed 3C brand manufacturers, will be three months after the price increase, raise the price of most microprocessors and peripheral chips products, the increase may be as high as 10% to 20%. The reason for the price increase is the increase in raw material prices resulting in higher costs. However, the industry judges that this is a move to improve their own financial margins.

After releasing its earnings for the second quarter of 2022, Intel said it missed its double-digit revenue and earnings per share targets. Intel's customer computing and data center divisions both saw large declines in revenue, and while the company reiterated that they are trying to do better and launch a very good set of products in the second half of 2022, it will be raising prices on most of Chipzilla's components, including CPUs.

source：xinzhixun

Global shortage of automotive chips in the past serious problems, TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia has revealed that there are senior to TSMC urgently asked for 25 wafers, so he was quite dumbfounded, because the company received orders at least 25,000 pieces of the jump. However, the current tight supply and demand for chips has improved significantly, according to the Nikkei News, the world's four largest automotive chip makers, including Renesas Electronics, Infineon, NXP, STMicroelectronics and other inventory has returned to the level before the new crown epidemic, car manufacturers are expected to gradually resume production.

The report pointed out that the above four car manufacturers in 2022 during April to June inventory turnover of 3.48 months on average, almost equal to the annual average of 3.51 months in 2019, showing that the tight supply and demand situation for chips that lasted nearly two years has improved.

The report mentions that when the new crown pneumonia epidemic first broke out, the inventory turnover months swelled to 3.9 months in April~June 2020, and in the second half of 2020 due to the global chip shortage, the inventory turnover months decreased to 2.85 months in January~March 2021, which severely impacted the production of vehicle manufacturers.

The report pointed out that the tight supply and demand situation for chips has improved, but for each chip factory, inventory fears become pressure, because once the supply surplus, fears make trading conditions deteriorate.

In response to the chip market conditions, FOSS Treasurer Arno Antlitz said at the end of July, the second half of the chip supply shortage is expected to slow down.

source：aijiwei

September 6 news, according to Nikkei News reported that the world's top four original automotive chip manufacturers - Renesas Electronics (Renesas), Infineon (Infineon), NXP Semiconductors (NXP Semiconductors), STMicroelectronics ( STMicroelectronics) inventory has returned to the level before the new crown epidemic, which also means that the tight supply and demand situation for automotive chips has improved.

Reports show that the trend of inventory turnover months after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in 2020, the average inventory rose to 3.9 months in April-June 2020 when the car makers mass production cuts, but then since the second half of 2020 due to the global shortage of chips, the average inventory cycle has been reduced to 2.85 months in January-March 2021. The average inventory turnover of these four automotive chip makers is 3.48 months during April-June 2022, almost equal to the annual average of 2019 (3.51 months), indicating that the tight supply-demand situation for automotive chips that has persisted since 2020 is showing improvement, which is expected to bring about an improvement in the resumption of production by car manufacturers (to fill the gap previously caused by chip shortages). is expected to contribute to the resumption of production (to fill the gap forced to reduce production due to chip shortages).

Volkswagen's chief financial officer (CFO) Arno Antlitz said in late July, "the second half (July-December) chip supply shortage is expected to ease.

The report also pointed out that although the tight supply and demand situation for chips has improved, but on the other hand, for each chip factory, inventory growth may become downward pressure on performance, and once the supply turns to excess, it is feared that the performance will deteriorate. In addition, the soaring prices of raw materials is also one of the hidden worries. Renesas president Shibata Hidetoshi pointed out that "some raw materials do not pay 10 times the previous price, you can not buy".

source：xinzhixun

The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Resources of South Korea has released a briefing on the country's foreign trade operations in August.

Data reality, August South Korea's export trade volume rose 6.6% year-on-year to 56.7 billion U.S. dollars, imports rose 28.2% to 66.2 billion U.S. dollars, trade deficit of 9.5 billion U.S. dollars, for the fifth consecutive month in the state of excess.

Among the 15 categories of major commodities, semiconductor exports saw negative growth for the first time in 26 months, with system semiconductor exports up 31% to $4.7 billion, while storage semiconductor exports declined, with SSD exports plunging 28.2% to $970 million.

In addition to semiconductors, wireless communication equipment, displays, computer exports also fell year-on-year, OLED panel exports fell 8.7% to $1.3 billion in the month.

According to export destinations, Korea's exports to the United States, ASEAN, the EU, Japan, India, the Middle East and other regional exports remained positive growth, while exports to China, Latin America and the CIS countries shrank.

source：aijiwei

September 2, according to the latest International Data Corporation (IDC) global quarterly personal computing device forecast report, PC and tablet PC market is about to usher in a period of turmoil.

IDC expects global traditional PC shipments to fall 12.8% to 305.3 million units in 2022, while tablet shipments will fall 6.8% to 156.8 million units. Inflation, a weak global economy and a surge in purchases over the past two years are the main reasons for the decline in shipments over the next two years.

IDC: Global PC and tablet shipments to decline further in 2022 and 2023

IDC noted that further contraction is expected in 2023 due to a slowdown in consumer demand, coupled with education demand that has largely been met, deteriorating macroeconomic conditions and crowded out enterprise demand. The combined market for PCs and tablets is expected to decline by 2.6 percent in 2023 before resuming growth in 2024.

Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said, "Although demand is slowing, the outlook for shipments is still higher than it was before the epidemic," IT House learned.

"As economic headwinds accelerate, we expect deteriorating consumer sentiment to lead to further contraction in the consumer market over the next six quarters," added Linn Huang, vice president of device and display research, "with a timely economic recovery likely to drive our forecast before the next major update cycle. for some growth in the external years. While sales will not reach the peak seen during the epidemic, we expect the consumer market to move toward the higher end of the market."

source：IT zhiijia

Recently, there is news that AMD and Nvidia have received a notice from their headquarters to cut off the supply of high-end GPU chips to their customers in China.

Specifically to AMD, it is understood that AMD informed its headquarters received an urgent notice: one is to suspend the shipment of all data center GPU cards MI100 and MI200 in China; the second is to count the amount of Ml 100 shipped in China; the third is to count the list of customers shipped in China MI 200 and shipment details. In this regard, AMD analysis may be the U.S. government to restrict the sale of high-performance GPU cards to China, especially for the Chinese HPC double precision high-performance cards.

NVIDIA has also informed that it has received the following notices: First, NVIDIA China has received a request from headquarters to suspend the shipment of A100 and H100 data center GPU cards to all agents of all customers in China, while other GPU cards are not affected; second, the existing inventory of A100 GPU cards of server OEMs can continue to be delivered to their respective industry customers at this time. It is reported that NVIDIA headquarters is still analyzing the U.S. government's policy requirements, and it is expected that it will take 2~3 days to have the communication caliber to the customers and partners in China.

In this regard, Jiwei.com contacted AMD China, but the other party did not comment; in addition, NVIDIA also did not comment.

It is understood that with GPU's own advantages in parallel processing and general-purpose computing, it has gradually expanded its derivative demand in servers, automobiles, mining machines, artificial intelligence, edge computing and other fields.

Figure: Overall growth of GPU market, data source: www.T4.ai

Thanks to the increasing industry demand and the gradual penetration of new fields, the GPU market has been growing steadily. According to the data, the GPU industry will be $20 billion in 2020. From 2015 to 2025, the GPU industry is expected to grow at an average of 13% per year, expanding from $8 billion to $35 billion in size.

Currently, the GPU industry market is mainly occupied by two Nvidia and AMD. GPU industry market share in terms of AMD's solo display share is 17%, while Nvidia has grown to 83%.

source：aijiwei

The U.S. analog chip giant ADI recently issued a price increase letter to its distributors, saying that "due to the supply chain was affected by inflation in the past year, although we tried our best to reduce the impact on end customers and did not raise prices, but now we must raise prices on some models of chip products to maintain our gross margin level." ADI stressed that the price increase is not intended to expand profit margins.

According to the price increase letter circulated in the industry, ADI will increase the price of the entire product line, including new orders and existing booking requirements, but did not disclose the specific rate of increase, the price increase will be implemented from September 25, 2022 onwards.

Figure source: industry insiders

It is reported that ADI mainly produces high-end analog chips that can be used for heat source management and thermal control, the target market is mainly industrial and automotive and other fields, which can avoid the impact to a certain extent in the current weak market demand for consumer electronics end market.

According to Bloomberg, ASML's new-generation EUV consumes about 1 megawatt of electricity each. Samsung, TSMC and other chip manufacturing majors consume huge amounts of energy; TSMC is highly dependent on fossil fuels and will consume an estimated 12.5% of Taiwan Province of China's energy in 2025.

ASML, the world's only EUV company, has a new generation of EUV lithography machines costing up to $150 million, containing 100,000 components and up to 2 km of wiring. euv lithography embodies the manufacturing process of more advanced chips is becoming complex and energy intensive. ASML's current rated power consumption per EUV is about 1 megawatt, about 10 times that of previous generations of equipment, but since there is no alternatives to make state-of-the-art semiconductors, the chip industry could become a major stumbling block to reducing global carbon emissions.

TSMC has the most EUV lithography machines in the industry, and the company currently has more than 80 EUVs, with a new generation of equipment still being installed. TSMC alone is expected to account for 12.5% of the overall energy consumption of all of Taiwan Province of China by 2025, up from 6% by 2020.

In addition to TSMC, another major storage chip maker Micron Technology plans to use at least one EUV lithography machine at its plant in Taiwan, China. According to Bloomberg analyst Charles Shum, within three years, a quarter of the chip manufacturing in China's Taiwan foundries will use EUV lithography.

For the chip manufacturing energy consumption problems, environmental groups Greenpeace (Greenpeace) climate energy project director Zheng Chu Xin has said that the lack of electricity is bound to happen, other industries will be implicated by it. Belgium Microelectronics Research Center (Imec) Lars-AkeRagnarsson pointed out that in the use of high energy-consuming equipment chip factory, renewable energy becomes urgent and necessary.

Bloomberg suggested that the impact of chip manufacturing on the environment will depend on the source of electricity consumption. TSMC is said to be highly dependent on fossil fuels. in 2016, the Chinese authorities in Taiwan set a target of achieving 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025, but its latest energy assessment released in July showed that only 6% of its electricity would come from renewable sources by the end of 2021.

South Korean chip manufacturing giant Samsung is facing similar energy consumption problems. Samsung has six semiconductor manufacturing sites in South Korea, accounting for 3 percent of its power consumption in 2021. To compete with TSMC for more customer orders, Samsung is expanding its use of EUVs. The company has not publicly stated the number of machines it owns. in early June, JayLee, head of Samsung Group, traveled to the Netherlands to strike a new deal with ASML.

source：aijiwei

Tibco News, the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) announced on August 23, lowered the global semiconductor market size growth expectations, is expected to grow 13.9% this year and 4.6% next year. In June, the WSTS expects growth of 16.3% this year and 5.1% next year, with overall expectations revised downward.

For the semiconductor market accounted for more than 20% of the memory chip, WSTS had predicted in June, the market size will grow 18.7% this year, but the expectation has been revised down to 8.2%, at $ 166.517 billion. In addition, its expectations for next year fell to 0.6%, at $ 167.494 billion. This means that the memory chip market is contracting faster than expected.

From the latest WSTS report, the overall growth rate of the semiconductor market will slow down significantly this year and next year, not just memory chips, separation semiconductors, sensors, analog chips, microprocessors, logic chips market size growth will slow down, but these major product categories next year, the minimum market size growth rate of 3.6%, much higher than the 0.6% of the memory chip market.

source：aijiwei

Tibco News, Aug. 24, DIGITIMES reported that sources at network equipment makers said that some network IC suppliers are reducing their lead times from more than 50 weeks to 30 weeks, indicating that the chip shortage is easing.

Image source: DIGITIMES

The IC shortage faced by network communication products over the past year is gradually easing in the second half of 2022, the report said. This is largely due to weak demand for consumer electronics, freeing up supply for network communications customers.

Unizyx CEO Gordon Yang noted that the company faces supply chain challenges in the first half of 2022. The company's operations will improve significantly in the second half of the year as lead times are reduced to 30 weeks and transportation costs are lower, while Sercomm Chairman James Wang said material supply remains tight, but their order fulfillment rate has improved from less than 80 percent to nearly 90 percent.

In addition, Arcadyan noted that lead times for major chips remain at 50 weeks or more, but supply has increased significantly. The order fulfillment rate improved from 75% in the second half of 2021 to 85% in the second quarter of 2022 and is expected to reach nearly 90% in the third quarter.

Wireless broadband and networking equipment manufacturers such as Unizyx, Arcadyan and Sercomm all believe the industry will continue to grow, driven by demand for broadband networks, according to the report. Demand for broadband networks is not expected to change, even if inflation curbs consumer spending levels.

source：aijiwei

According to the latest data released by IC Insights, a leading semiconductor analyst firm, shows that the three years from 2020-2022 will be the first three-year period since 1993-1995 when capital expenditures achieved double-digit growth.

IC Insights adjusted its 2022 global semiconductor capital expenditure forecast, which now shows a 21 percent increase this year to $185.5 billion, as follows：

This is a decrease from the $190.4 billion and 24% growth forecast earlier this year. Despite the downward revision, the revised capex forecast still represents a new high level of spending.

Utilization rates remain well above 90% for many IDM plants and 100% for many pure-play foundries in the first half of the year, as the economic recovery during the epidemic kept orders strong.

Semiconductor capital spending is now expected to reach $338.6 billion for the two years combined in 2021 and 2022. IDMs and foundries are investing heavily in expansions for the manufacture of logic and storage devices using leading-edge process technologies. However, strong demand and continued shortages of many other important chips, such as power semiconductors, analog ICs and various MCUs, have led suppliers to increase manufacturing capacity for these products as well.

Despite all of this positive news, soaring inflation and a rapidly slowing global economy caused semiconductor manufacturers to reassess their aggressive expansion plans mid-year. Several (but not all) suppliers, particularly many of the leading DRAM and flash memory manufacturers, have already announced cuts to their capital expenditure budgets for the year. More suppliers are noting that they expect to cut capex in 2023 if they assess capacity needs based on the industry absorbing three years of strong spending and slowing economic growth.

source：aijiwei

According to the Economic Daily News, UMC has made great progress in its automotive layout, and recently won new certifications from Texas Instruments, Infineon and other automotive chip makers, with eight key areas of automotive certification in hand, and availing itself of the world's top-tier automotive chip makers.

The supply chain pointed out that UMC has obtained Infineon, NXP, Texas Instruments and other automotive chip makers large single, these customers in the global automotive chip market share of more than 30% of the total, the recent also in the fight for 22nm related automotive certification, all-out assault on the automotive market. Due to the reliability of automotive chips to be greater than 15 years, coupled with the Zero Defects (Zero Defects) requirements, UMC has received new certifications from a number of major manufacturers, highlighting the technical competitive advantage.

It is understood that UMC has taken eight key certifications in the field of automotive chips, covering power semiconductors, WiFi/Bluetooth and other wireless communication applications, millimeter wave radar sensors (Radar sensor), Auto AP, microcontrollers (MCU), CIS sensors, OLED/LCD driver ICs, micro-electromechanical sensors, etc. Almost all the necessary certifications for automotive chips have arrived.

UMC's third-generation semiconductor business has also reported good news. Benefiting from the strong demand for 5G and automotive applications, UMC's third-generation semiconductor business has made profits for five consecutive quarters in the second quarter of this year and has been growing quarter by quarter.

According to UMC's financial results, the company's revenue in July was NT$24.827 billion (same unit below), an annual increase of 35.18%, and has set a new revenue record for ten consecutive months. UMC's consolidated revenue for the first seven months of this year was 160.305 billion yuan, an annual increase of 37.75%.

source：aijiwei

IC design companies remain cautious about demand for this year's year-end shopping season, given the uncertainty of order visibility, industry sources said, according to DIGITIMES on Aug. 19.

Fabless chipmakers agree that replenishment demand from PC customers is unlikely to pick up significantly until at least 2023, the sources said. Demand for PC-related commodity chips will remain subdued through the fourth quarter of this year.

Whether the upcoming iPhone will spur demand for mobile chips as a whole remains to be seen, the sources said. Sluggish sales of Android smartphones in China during the Double 11 shopping festival also prompted Fabless chip makers to be conservative about sales. In addition, sales of Android phones during this year's 618 online shopping in China were also sluggish.

Meanwhile, sources noted that back-to-school demand has also been disappointing so far. The market for educational PCs and other mass-market electronic devices is becoming increasingly saturated.

According to the sources, whether demand for chips for cell phones, PCs and other consumer electronic devices will pick up in the fourth quarter may not be determined until October. By then the new iPhones will hit store shelves and Chinese channel players will be making purchasing decisions for the upcoming shopping season.

"As momentum in smartphone, PC and consumer end markets rapidly slows, supply chains in related industries will engage in inventory adjustments throughout the second half of 2022," TSMC CEO Chieh-Chih Wei said during a July earnings call, adding that such adjustments are justified after two years of home demand driven by the new crown epidemic.

source from：aijiwei app

Tiburon News, TSMC has raised its full-year revenue target at the same time many companies are cutting or canceling orders. Recently, sources told digitimes that TSMC's confidence in its performance stems from securing orders from six major customers, including Qualcomm, Intel and Nvidia.

The main driver of TSMC's second-half earnings growth came from a large order from Qualcomm. In addition to the 7nm process, Qualcomm has placed orders for 5nm and 4nm chips, which are expected to make up for reduced orders from other customers.

It is understood that TSMC's 5nm and below processes have better yields and performance than competitors, and sources said Qualcomm's cooperation with TSMC will continue on 3nm and 2nm.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm recently signed a long-term purchase agreement with Ge-Core. Qualcomm will buy a total of $7.4 billion from GF through 2028, more than double the $3.2 billion in the previous agreement. 12nm and 14nm and above special processes do not affect Qualcomm's cooperation with TSMC at 7nm and below.

TSMC has noted weaker market demand on the consumer side, but demand for data center and automotive electronics applications has remained stable. TSMC has been able to support these demands by reallocating capacity. Even with continued inventory adjustments, customer demand continues to exceed TSMC's capacity supply. As a result, capacity is expected to remain tight throughout 2022.

The semiconductor industry believes that eventual inventory adjustments will continue through the first half of 2023.

TSMC's largest customer is believed to be Apple, accounting for more than 25 percent of its revenue. The customer is gradually increasing TSMC's Mac series orders, and TSMC will become the exclusive manufacturer of Mac chips in 2023, sources said.

TSMC will also benefit from favorable exchange rates and overall price increases in 2022. In addition, the average selling price (ASP) of the 7nm and 5nm processes, which account for 51% of the company's revenue, has increased significantly. The 28nm process is estimated to have risen to more than $3,000. 16nm and 12nm wafers are priced at around $5,000, 7nm at close to $10,000, and 5nm and 4nm at $16,000-$20,000.

After the merger of AMD and Xilinx -- both of which are TSMC customers -- their data center platform shipments and market share have increased, while TSMC's orders have not dropped significantly, the sources said.

Intel and Nvidia will not be TSMC's main revenue growth drivers in 2022, the sources noted. Intel's 7nm and 5nm process orders are contributing less revenue, while Nvidia's RTX30 series has a higher inventory with Samsung's 8nm process.

Intel's next-generation Meteor Lake processor platform reportedly won't be available until the first quarter of 2024, which has also delayed the adoption of TSMC's 3nm process by U.S. customers, the sources said. However, Intel will reportedly expand its 7nm and 5nm orders to maintain its relationship with TSMC, the sources said.

NVIDIA's next-generation RTX40 series using TSMC's 5nm process was originally scheduled to launch in August, but has been delayed by at least a quarter and may not even launch until the first quarter of 2023, the sources said. TSMC already has other customer orders to make up for the delay, and the two sides have reached an agreement on an order contract, the sources added.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

source from：jiweiwang

Tibco News, according to data agency IDC report shows that global smartphone shipments fell 8.7% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2022, with shipments dropping to 286 million units in the quarter, down 3.5% from expectations. This time is the global smartphone shipments fell for four consecutive seasons.

Similarly, Canalys released a report on Aug. 1 saying that global smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2022 were the lowest quarterly point since the second quarter of 2020.

Nabila Popal, IDC's global research director, said original equipment manufacturers have cut orders for the rest of the year, with the biggest cuts coming from their Chinese suppliers. Demand is expected to start picking up in some regions by the end of the year, but smartphone market shipment expectations are bound to be revised downward in 2022. IDC believes that the current decline in various figures is not a disappearance of demand, but is being brought forward.

From a regional perspective, the most obvious part of the decrease in Q2 2022 is Central and Eastern Europe. Due to the ongoing impact of the Russia-Ukraine war, shipments to Ukraine fell 36.5% year-over-year in the second quarter. In terms of volume, the decline in global smartphone shipments came primarily from China, where shipments fell 14.3% year-over-year in Q2.

Despite the downward revision in industry sentiment, the ranking of suppliers did not change much in 2Q2022. Samsung held the No. 1 position with a 21.8% market share, Apple came in second with 15.6%, while Xiaomi came in third with 13.8% and closed the gap.

source from：aijiwei

On July 28, EST, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Chip and Science Act" to subsidize the U.S. semiconductor chip manufacturing industry.

In this regard, the market research agency TrendForce predicts that the 7nm (including) the following advanced process capacity, to 2025, China Taiwan accounted for about 69%, China 1%, South Korea 18%, the United States 12%.

In terms of global 12-inch production capacity by region, by 2025, Taiwan will account for 43%, followed by mainland China 27%, the United States 8%, and South Korea 12%. Compared with the pattern in 2022, it is clear that the U.S. will increase the proportion of advanced process capacity in the next three years, while mainland China will be the main axis of the mature process.

It is understood that the bill, which has undergone several redactions, was finally named the "Chip and Science Act," which will provide about $52 billion in government subsidy funds for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and $24 billion worth of investment tax credits for chip factories, and is expected to fund 10 to 15 new semiconductor factories in the next decade. It also includes more than $170 billion over five years to authorize the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Commerce and others to increase investments in science and technology research and development in key areas to promote scientific research in the United States.

In addition, TrendForce pointed out that in addition to actively cultivating domestic production lines through the chip bill, the U.S. has frequently sought to increase the intensity and depth of sanctions against mainland China's semiconductors to curb their development through additional restrictions, in line with the entity list ban that had been in place for several years before the epidemic.

Source from：ITzhijia

According to the report from DIGITIMES on July 27, the supply of automotive and industrial chips remains tight, while consumer chip inventories continue piling up throughout the supply chain.

Industry sources said consumer IC inventories held by distributors and downstream device vendors have reached alarming levels; nearly every segment of the consumer IC industry is in a state of overstock.

In the best-case scenario, it may take half a year for consumer IC suppliers to complete their inventory correction, according to the sources. Thus, the outlook for consumer electronics demand in the second half of 2022 is generally pessimistic.

TSMC has previously warned that customers may adjust inventory through the first half of 2023.

TSMC CEO CC Wei said in the latest earnings conference call that with smartphone, PC and consumer end market momentum slowing down, related industry supply chains will be involved in inventory correction throughout the second half of 2022.

Additionally, the outlook for automotive, industrial and other non-consumer IC demand remains promising, according to industry sources. IDMs, such as NXP Semiconductors, continue to see their automotive and industrial chip supply fall short of demand.

Source from ijiwei

According to the report on July 26, Chipmaker Texas Instruments Inc on Tuesday announced its 22Q2 revenue increased by 14% year-on-year, 6.3% quarter-on-quarter, to $5.212 billion, better than the expectation of $4.65 billion. Meanwhile, its revenue grew by double-digit percent year-over-year for six consecutive quarters.

The gross profit for Q2 was $3.625 billion, up 18% year-over-year; operating profit was $2.723 billion, up 23% year-over-year; net income was $2.291 billion, up 19% year-over-year; and diluted earnings per share were $2.45, better than the expectations of $2.12, compared to $2.05 in the same period last year.

Analog revenue grew 15% to $3.992 billion, Embedded Processing grew 5% to $821 million, and other segments grew 19% from the year-ago quarter to $399 million.

Dave Pahl, director of DEI Investor Relations of Texas Instruments, pointed out that the industrial market was up high-single digits, and the automotive market was up more than 20%. Weakness could be seen throughout the quarter in personal electronics, which grew low-single digits. Next, communications equipment was up about 25%. Finally, enterprise systems were up mid-teens.

Rafael Lizardi, treasurer of Texas Instruments, said in the teleconference the inventory days in Q2 were 125, down two days sequentially and below desired levels.

Texas Instruments CEO Rich Templeton said Q3 revenue is estimated to range from $4.90 billion to $5.30 billion (median $5.10 billion). EPS is estimated to range from $2.23 to $2.51 (median $2.37).

Lizardi added that Q3 financial expectation has considered the weak demand, especially in the personal electronics market.

According to the analysis on Yahoo Finance, the Q3 revenue of Texas Instruments is estimated to be $4.97 billion, and EPS is expected to be $2.26.

Source from Xinzhixun

According to the report from cnYES, automotive chipmaker NXP Semiconductors N.V. reported financial results for the second quarter on July 25. The report pointed that owing to the strong demand within the Auto and Industrial and IoT end-markets, NXP's quarterly revenue increased by 36% year-on-year to $1.713 billion. Hence, the company delivered better earning expectations for Q3.

NXP reported a year-on-year revenue increase of 27.6% to $3.31 billion, a Non-GAAP EPS increase of 78% to $3.55 and a Non-GAAP gross margin increase of 57.8%, for the three months ended July 3, all exceeding the expectations.

In terms of the performance of each division, NXP's Q2 automotive revenue increased 36% to $1.713 billion, industrial and IoT revenue increased 25% to $713 million, mobile revenue increased 12% to $388 million, and communications infrastructure and other revenue increased 20% to $498 million.

NXP announced Q3 revenue will be between $3.35 billion and $3.5 billion, better than analysts' estimate of $3.32 billion, and gross margin is estimated to reach 58.3%, better than the expected 57.6%.

Source from Tencent

South Korea said it aims to increase the share of local enterprises in the global non-storage semiconductors market from 3% to 10% by 2030, reducing the reliance on imported materials, components and equipment from 70% to 50%.

As reported by Business Korea, the government will enlarge the tax break for semiconductor development and infrastructure investment. The tax deduction rate for infrastructure investment for large firms will increase from 6-10% to 8-12%. The government is also looking at establishing a training center for semiconductor engineers this year to provide at least 150,000 people over ten years to bolster the semiconductor labor force.

The government revealed that the volume of semiconductor production hubs would be enhanced from 350% to 490%, increasing the clean room facilities in Pyeongtaek and Yongin from 12 to 18 and 9 to 12, respectively,  expecting to create 9,000 jobs.

Additionally, South Korea will also spend 450 billion and 500 billion won on feasibility studies on the development of power and auto chips from 2024 to 2030, 1.25 trillion won to develop artificial intelligence chips in the next seven years, and 1.5 trillion won to invest in 30 promising fabless semiconductor companies.

Source from ijiwei

Intel, Qualcomm and Marvell have recently informed clients of the price hiking. According to insiders, Broadcom and Texas Instruments will also hike the chip prices these days.

According to the report from Digitimes, the insider said as the demands for 5G and Wi-Fi 6 devices continue to exceed the supply of wireless network chips, Broadcom has informed the customer that the price of its network communication chips will increase by 6-8% starting in January 2023.

The insider pointed that despite the low demand for consumer electronics, the analog IC suppliers still profit from the strong demand for automotive electronics and industrial controls. Texas Instruments has announced to clients the prices of some specialized ICs, including server ICs will increase by around 10% in Q3 2022.

Source from ijiwei

As reported by Taiwanese media MoneyDJ, influenced by the shortages of chips and other parts, Japan’s leading automotive manufacturer Toyota is expected to reduce global production volume by 20% in August. EV production line in Japan will be suspended for one month.

Toyota announced on July 19 that its global August production is expected to hit around 700,000 cars, including approximately 200,000 units produced in Japan and 500,000 units produced overseas, down from the 850,000 it intended to make when briefing suppliers at the start of the year. Toyota still says its global production volume for August through October is estimated to average about 850,000 units per month, and its production forecast for April 2022 to March 2023 fiscal year remains unchanged at approximately 9.7 million cars.

At the same time, Toyota will suspend production at nine lines across 6 of its 14 plants during August. The pauses will vary depending on production lines, with a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 18 days.

Source from ijiwei

According to the reports from foreign media, on July 19, Qualcomm, Marvell, Intel and TSMC began to raise chip prices.

Qualcomm and Marvell have informed customers that price increases could begin as early as August, according to Taiwanese media reports. Several chip suppliers, including Intel and TSMC, are also planning to raise prices despite growing concerns about fluctuating demand.

Intel told customers that the company would begin hiking prices in the second half year by 10-20%, as reported yesterday.

The company informed that due to the increasing costs caused by global inflation, the prices of CPU processors, peripheral chips, and other core servers are expected to hike. The price volatility varies by type, with the lowest in a single-digit percentage, and some product prices may increase by up to 20%.

Besides Intel, other chipmakers have also begun to increase their product prices to some extent. Samsung announced it will increase chip prices by 20% in March. TSMC also told customers it will raise prices by a “single-digit” percentage.

Source from TechWeb

According to the reports from foreign media on July 18, chip giant Intel told customers that the company would begin hiking prices on its chip products in the second half year by 10-20%.

Intel indicated it would increase pricing in certain segments of its business due to inflationary pressures in its April earnings report. Recently, the company has informed that it would begin hiking the prices on CPU processors, peripheral chips, and other core servers to deal with the increasing costs caused by inflation and that the price volatility varies by type, with the lowest in a single-digit percentage, and some product prices may increase by up to 20%.

The price increases are set to take place just as PC shipments experienced a big decline, and inflation is already impacting average selling prices of PCs. Gartner revealed this week that worldwide PC shipments dropped nearly 13 percent this quarter. “This is the sharpest decline in nine years for the global PC market, brought on by geopolitical, economic and supply chain challenges impacting all regional markets,” said Gartner in a press release.

Reportedly, the CPI of the U.S. in June increased 9.1% year-over-year, reaching a record in the past 40 years.

As inflation increases in the U.S., Europe and much of the world, other chipmakers also begin to increase their product prices to some extent. Besides Intel, Korean technology giant Samsung announced it will increase chip prices by 20%; TSMC told customers it will raise prices by a “single-digit” percentage.

Source from Xinzhixun

According to the report from Bloomberg on July 14, Dutch foreign minister Wopke Hoekstra confirmed that the Netherlands and the U.S. are holding discussions on blocking ASML Holding NV from selling to China technology used in making a large chunk of the world's chips.

Wopke Hoekstra said in an interview in The Hague, "What I can tell you is that it does make sense that you always liaise with friends when certain goods have broader strategic implications and ramifications across the globe. Of course, you have conversations about that, and that we do."

On July 6, Bloomberg quoting a person familiar with the matter reported that the U.S. was pushing the Dutch government to restrict ASML from selling the Chinese Mainland the essential equipment used in most chip manufacturing, including the major lithography machine DUV machine, to restrain China's semiconductor rise.

On July 8, Bloomberg again reported that the U.S. Commerce Department responsible for export controls was discussing the possibility of banning the export of chip manufacturing equipment to China's fabs able to make process chips at 14nm and below.

It was also reported that if the U.S. Commerce Department moves forward with this concept, which has not yet been drafted as a formal proposal, the U.S. will look to bring in allies such as the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea, which have top chip manufacturing equipment.

The response from the Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra demonstrated the U.S. and the Netherlands are indeed holding discussions on blocking the lithography machine giant ASML Holding NV from selling technology used in chip manufacturing to China.

Last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lijian Zhao criticized the U.S. at a press conference for abusing state power to impose a technology blockade on other countries, which will only prompt them to become independent and self-reliant in science and technology quickly. "Those who seek to block others' way will only end up blocking their own way," said Zhao. He also implicitly appealed to the Netherlands and Japan to adopt an objective and impartial stance on this matter and make independent decisions based on their own long-term interests and the market principles of equity and fairness.

The Dutch government has not agreed to the restriction. China is the third largest trading partner of the Netherlands, after Germany and Belgium.

ASML's CEO Peter Wennink said earlier this year that he opposed a ban on selling DUV lithography equipment to Chinese customers because it is already a mature technology. Based on the data revealed by the company and Bloomberg's investigations, ASML's plants located in China contribute to 14.7% of its total revenue in 2021.

Source from Xinzhixun

SEMI announced in its recent report that 2022 global sales of total semiconductor manufacturing equipment are forecast to reach a record $117.5 billion, rising 14.7% from the previous industry, and increase to $120.8 billion in 2023.

Regionally, Taiwan, the Chinese Mainland, and Korea are projected to remain the top three equipment buyers in 2022, among which Taiwan will gain the top position in 2022 and 2023.

According to SEMI, the wafer fab equipment segment, including wafer processing, fab facilities, and mask/reticle equipment, is projected to expand 15.4% to a new industry record of $101 billion in 2022. In 2023, the sales are expected to continue increasing by 3.2%, reaching $104.3 billion.

SEMI said in line with the semiconductor industry’s push from huge investments in digital facilities to increase and upgrade capacity, the wafer fab equipment segment could reach the $100 billion milestones for the first time in 2022.

Driven by demand for leading-edge and mature process nodes, the foundry and logic segments are expected to increase 20.6% year over year to $55.2 billion in 2022 and another 7.9%, to $59.5 billion, in 2023.

In terms of memory and storage, the DRAM equipment segment is expected to grow by 8% to $17.1 billion in 2022, while a decline of 7.7% is forecast in 2023; The NAND equipment market is projected to grow 6.8% to $21.1 billion this year, followed by a 2.4% decrease in 2023.

SEMI also estimated the packaging equipment segment is expected to grow 8.2% to $7.8 billion in 2022 and down 0.5% to $7.7 billion in 2023. The test equipment segment is forecast to grow 12.2% to $8.8 billion in 2022 and continue to increase by 0.4% in 2023 on demand for high-performance computing applications.

Source from Xinzhixun

According to the latest report from IC Insight, the financial results in this quarter of Micron Technology Inc., a large memory and storage solution provider, were far worse than expected. Taiwan top 10 semiconductor suppliers mostly show a decrease in revenue in June, which is a warning of the reversal of the semiconductor industry boom.

Micron estimated its quarterly revenue will be $7.2 billion (up or down $0.4 billion), decreasing by 17% compared with the last quarter. IC Insights pointed that the sharp decline in Micron’s quarterly revenue is a warning of the weak memory demand in Q3.

IC Insights said the semiconductor suppliers in Taiwan also sound an alarm. The top 10 semiconductor suppliers showed a decline in monthly revenue by 5%. Among the top 4 suppliers, TSMC, MediaTek, and Rayson’s revenue reduced from last month. The monthly revenue of Uniwin, the leading manufacturer of drive ICs, decreased by 26%. DRAM manufacturer Nanya Technology’s revenue also decreased by 16%.

In addition, the report suggested that TSMC's revenue in June decreased by 5%, but its June revenue from 2016 to 2021 averagely increased by 14% and decreased by 13% in 2018 only. Reportedly, TSMC will announce its 2022Q2 revenue on July 14.

Source from Sina

Taiwan media reported on July 11 that Samsung recently notified its supply chain that the suspension of procurement, which had been planned to end up at the end of July, has been postponed to the end of August. Some categories of materials will not be purchased until the end of the year. The performance of related manufacturers in the next half-year may be hurt.

Reportedly, Samsung extending the suspension of procurement means an overall high inventory level. The previous repeated ordering may bring more serious results than expected, among which the sales of mid-range smartphones have been most heavily affected. Hence, Samsung’s current suspension mainly focuses on the manufacturers related to the supply chains of smartphones. Some industrial insiders said Samsung’s suspension of purchasing could be even worse than cutting orders. After all, order cutting means decreasing quantity, while purchasing break means null.

It was originally believed that if Samsung pauses the procurement in July only, the supply chain could maintain its agility by stockpiling goods in distributors or other methods. However, there will be no place to store the components if the purchasing suspension is extended to the end of August, resulting in a bad performance in the traditional peak season in the second half-year.

The supply chain revealed that inflation leads to the decline in public consumption, hitting the sales of mid-range smartphones, which triggers Samsung to pause purchasing further.

Source from Xinzhixun

Although the supply of consumer MCUs has recently eased, automotive MCUs continue to be in short supply due to the explosion of the new energy vehicle market. Recently, Renesas Electronics, a large automotive MCU manufacturer, was forced to shut down one of its MUC plants due to the voltage drop caused by lightning. The supply of automotive MCUs may become even tighter.

According to the announcement on Renesas Electronics' website, lightning hit an electric line supplying its plant in Kawashiri, Japan, as Typhoon No.4 led to a local thunderstorm, resulting in a temporary suspension of production facilities at the plant.

Although Renesas Electronics activated its UPS immediately after the voltage dropped, the duration of the voltage drop was significantly longer than the historical records and expectations over the past ten years, halting 90 percent of the equipment. Fortunately, the plant's cleanroom function remained in effect after the voltage drop.

Renesas Electronics said it had restarted production facilities and that a part of the production will recover from July 6. The production capacity expected to return to the normal minimum on July 11.

In addition, Products in the middle of the manufacturing process at the moment of voltage drop were ruined and will be thrown.

The incident is estimated to cause the loss of two weeks' worth of output.

According to the global MCU supplier ranking in 2021 published by IC Insights, a semiconductor research organization, Renesas Electronics is the third-largest MCU supplier in the world, with $3.42 billion in sales and 17.0% market share.

And Renesas Electronics mainly focuses on automotive MCUs. According to Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, in 2020, Renesas Electronics ranked first with a market share of up to 30% in the global automotive MCU market.

Obviously, the voltage drop at Renesas Electronics' Kawashima plant will lead to an even tighter supply of automotive MCUs, under the current circumstance of automotive MCU shortage.

Source from Xinzhixun

According to Taiwan Economic Daily, due to the global shortage of network communication chips and the surging chip price of the U.S. leading manufacturers, customers cannot get their chips as scheduled even if they accept the increased price. Therefore, some telecom customers in Europe and America asked the Netcom factories to change the terminal designs and transfer to the chips produced by MediaTek and Realtek.

Industrial insiders revealed that the telecom industry previously adopted the chips produced by the U.S. leading manufacturers， and the communications operators were responsible for the design and manufacturing of xDSL, client optical fibers, IAD integration devices, IP STBs, etc. But recently, some customers have been impatient with the leading manufacturers who raise prices but cannot deliver products. They have transferred to the chips manufactured by MediaTek, Realtek, etc.

MediaTek responded that they would not comment on the orders placed by customers. At the same time, Realtek said it would continuously optimize product portfolios to cooperate with more customers.

Industrial insiders pointed out that the situation that leading international chipmakers delay deliveries and focus on more advanced products gives the manufacturers like MediaTek opportunities. Since the beginning of this year, some manufacturers have been unwilling to wait for the delivery of the leading chipmakers and considered transferring to other chips. Still, it is estimated that they won’t get their new chips until the second half of this year.

Source from TechWeb

According to Taiwan Economic Daily, TSMC will catch up withe Intel for the first time this quarter to become the second-largest chipmaker behind Samsung, and will further widen the gap in Q3, as the peak season.

TSMC’s performance has grown steadily in recent years, while Intel’s is relatively unstable. TSMC’s revenue in Q2 will reach a new high for the 7th season if it successfully reach the financial target. In the contrary, the quarterly revenue of Intel declined for two consecutive quarters in the first half of this year after hitting a record high of $20.5 billion in Q4 2021. Based on the projected revenues announced by TSMC for April and May, there is no concern about reaching the target revenues of $17,6 billion to $18.2 billion. Intel expects revenue target of $18 billion for this quarter.

Some analyst said TSMC’s revenue for the quarter is expected to overtake Intel mainly because it diversely applies its customer base, and its customers are mostly from the North American market. TSMC concentrates its production capacity in Taiwan, China, while Intel encounters the tests from the lockdown in China’s mainland, supply chain dispatch, concentrated end-use applications in a single personal computer (PC), and servers.

Source from ITHome

Although the demand for consumer electronics is decreasing, the supply of automotive MCUs is expected to stay tight until 2023, according to industry sources.

According to Digitimes, the electrification of vehicles is driving the use of electronics in vehicles. Demand for key automotive microcontroller units (MCU) continues to be hot. Taiwan-based semiconductor manufacturers estimate a single vehicle needs 20-30 MCUs. In the future, luxury vehicle models may need up to 100 MCUs, which is higher than the previously estimated 70 units.

With respect to the automotive MCUs, the manufacturers based in Chinese mainland constantly achieve great breakthroughs. For example, GigaDevice Semiconductor said that its sample of the 40-nm automotive MCU had been sent to the customers. SinoWealth estimated that its newly-developed automotive MCU would be released in the middle of the year. Chipsea also announced it is developing the MCU chip, mainly divided into M-series and R-series; the M-series chip is mainly introduced into the manufacturing of bodywork including windows, wipers, lamps, etc.; the R-series chip is introduced into manufacturing chassis and dynamical system. The above products are being developed as planned.

Source from ijiwei.com

According to Ijiwei.com, STMicroelectronics opens new production line for electronic car SiC power device packaging in Bosquekula, located in Casablanca-Setat region, Morocco. The $244 million investment will expand the current production area by 7,500 square meters. The manufacturing unit is now ST’s second largest plant.

According to eeNews, STMicroelectronics is the key supplier for Tesla, an American electronic vehicle manufacturer, covering from powders needed in ingot manufacturing, to SiC wafers and the fabs in Catania, to the chips packaged in Morocco. The new plant will be essential for ST to further expand its supply chain of silicon carbide equipment to Europe.

Reportedly, a number of high-profile officials attended the inauguration, including the Executive Vice-President of the Back-end Technology and Manufacturing organization, Fabio Gualandris; Morocco’s Minister of Industry and Trade, Ryad Mezzour; and the Governor of Nouaceur Province, Abdellah Chater.

Source from ijiwei.com

At the end of 2020, 17 of the 27 countries in the EU jointly issued a joint statement on European processors and semiconductor technologies, aiming to encourage research and investment in advanced processors and semiconductor processes in the EU. The European Union has schemed to increase its global semiconductor market share, hoping to account for 20% of global production by 2030. Its current market share is 10%, lower than in East Asia and North America.

One step to achieve the goal is to encourage the manufacturers from other countries to set up new fabs in Europe, such as attracting Intel to build a new fab in Magdeburg, Germany; while TSMC, the world's largest foundry, does not seem to be very interested in it owing to its lack of customers and the high fab-construction costs in Europe. Other companies that already have had fabs in Europe are eager to take actions for the sake of high subsidies, including STMicroelectronics and GlobalFoundries.

According to the relevant media, ST and GlobalFoundries aimed to get high subsidies like Intel to reduce construction costs. ST is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with a new fab located in France; GlobalFoundries is headquartered in New York, the U.S., currently owning a large fab in Dresden, Germany, and may expand it nearby.

Since the main foundry markets of ST and GlobalFoundries are MCUs, sensors, MEMS, and automotive chips, they will not depend on cutting-edge manufacturing processes in production. Earlier this year, ST and GlobalFoundries announced a partnership. Some industry insiders speculate that the new fabs are likely to focus on chips needed in European industries such as automotive.

Source from Tencent

According to the news reported by IT Home on June 15th, NBS (National Bureau of Statistics) data show that the industrial added value above designated size actually increased by 0.7% year on year (the following growth rates of added value ignore the price factors), and increased by 5.61% over the previous month. From January to May, the industrial added value above designated size increased by 3.3% year on year.

IT Home learned that the output of integrated circuits in May 2022 was 27.5 billion pieces, decreasing by 10.4% compared with May 2021. From January to May, the cumulative production was 134.9 billion pieces; the month-on-month decrease was 6.2%.

In addition, the production of microcomputers in May 2022 was 34.61 million units, with a 6.1% year-on-year decrease. The cumulative output from January to May was 170.89 million units, decreasing by 5.8% year on year. The production of mobile communication handheld production in May was 126.66 million units, down 4.6% year on year. The cumulative production volume from January to May was 608.71 million units, with a 1.7% year-on-year decrease.

Source from IT Home

Halfway through 2022, after being influenced by the pandemic for more than half a year, Flyking hopes to give a satisfactory answer for customers. In the face of the changing market, we reallocate resources and innovate development strategies to seize more opportunities.

New vision, for a greater mission.

Close to Flyking, access to global inventory. In addition to focusing on chips, Flyking hopes to connect the global intelligent manufacturing enterprises and expedite the last-mile delivery process of the supply chain of electronic components. In the future, Flyking will create an intelligent technology ecosystem with its industrial experience and technological talents to help customers upgrade and iterate their products.

New quality, to deliver more reliable products.

Quality is essential for our success. To deliver fully satisfactory products to customers, Flyking has coordinated with a well-known domestic third-party testing institute, MATT Lab, to build an associated electronic component testing laboratory. Dedicated to the examination environment, test equipment, and professional team, we will comprehensively improve the product delivery process and provide more complete and accurate testing reports for our customers.

New service, to win a broader market.

The development of China’s domestic chips is in full swing. The irreversible trend of homemade substitutes occurs in multiple industries. Flyking seizes the opportunity and vigorously develops the domestic chip market. So far, we have obtained the authorization of more than 40 domestic chip brands in China, helping Chinese chip brands expand their market, connecting upstream and downstream, and creating a win-win situation.

We will adhere to our originality and respond to customers' expectations with full heart in the future. This film is dedicated to all who support us and trust us.

The two-year chip shortage has only influenced the low-end chips so far, but that could change as semiconductor manufacturers struggle to get the equipment to manufacture more advanced processors.

The report points out that the supply gap of advanced chips is likely to reach 20% by 2024, which will have a knock-on effect on the relevant industries such as AI, high-performing computing, and self-driving cars.

Due to technical obstacles and the huge investment required, only two chip-makers, TSMC and Samsung, have the ability to produce high-end chips.

In some cases, the delivery period of new orders has been extended by two to three years. An industry insider revealed that some customers of TSMC have received warnings that equipment procurement problems may prevent the company from increasing production in the next two years.

In the face of these challenges, both TSMC and Samsung Electronics stated that they were working to avoid interference in chip production.

Source from ECCN

Recently, after the approval of Shenzhen Electronics Industry Association, our company has officially become a member of Shenzhen Electronics Industry Association.On April 14,2022, Xu Chunyan, deputy secretary-general of Shenzhen Electronics Industry Association, led a team to visit our company and held the awarding ceremony.

Wang Zhongliang, chairman of our company, first extended a warm welcome to the association, and briefly introduced the development process and business scope of the company, as well as expressed concern for the association under the impact of the current epidemic.In the following exchange, Deputy Secretary General Xu of the Association and others also cared about the problems encountered in the development process, and expressed their willingness to actively help our company expand the market and discuss the issues of common concern. This negotiation further strengthened the confidence of both sides in deepening cooperation and common development.

Shenzhen Electronics Industry Association was established in 1986, which is the first industry association established by Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.Based on the principle of "safeguarding enterprise interests, helping enterprise growth, promoting industry development", the association provides information and services on policy, economy, management, technology, products, market, talents, research, statistical analysis, industry planning, industry operation research, thematic research, international cooperation, policy suggestions, policy implementation and promotion, and establishes a new comprehensive service function and operation system for members, industry and government.

Flyking Technology Co., Limited as a set agent, distribution, design and development as the main business of one-stop electronic components well-known service providers, in the industry with strong influence and competitiveness, the time to become the largest Shenzhen electronic information industry Shenzhen electronic industry association, this is not only the trust of our company, but also an honor, the future will give full play to their respective advantages, in the near term and future to promote business development and strategic layout.

Under the wave of "core", in order to upgrade the company quality management system, build testing technology platform, provide customers with better service, Flyking Technology Co., Limited well-known third party testing agency MTT Lab, establish a joint electronic components testing laboratory, the two sides will play their respective advantages, build the whole process of product reliability test experiment, provide customers with a full range of chip testing services, further expand the company's core service advantage.

As a world-known service provider of electronic components for more than 10 years, in the field of semiconductor industry distribution, with quality service with the rapid development of the industry, we adhere to the enterprise mission of "making customers no longer lack core", and continue to provide customers with high-quality value services.The establishment of Flyking Technology Co., Limited Quality Testing Laboratory has consolidated the quality assurance ability of our company. Since the launch of the testing laboratory project, our company has continuously improved and invested in equipment configuration, experimental environment and technical personnel configuration and other aspects, so as to provide customers with more accurate and reliable quality assurance services!

Our advantages

Advanced testing equipment: X-RAY, open equipment, gold phase microscope, digital microscope, signal generator, oscilloscope, digital bridge, semiconductor parameter analyzer, X-RF, high temperature aging experimental box, tin furnace and other professional testing equipment.

Complete testing items: the packaging label, appearance, screen printing, key performance parameters, content structure, internal morphology, PIN foot weldability and environmental protection requirements can be tested.

Professional testing team: Flyking Technology Co., Limited Testing laboratory has a high-quality, high level, high efficiency of professional testing team, they have rich testing experience, excellent professional foundation, to ensure the accuracy and fairness of testing data, to ensure that the report issued is true, accurate and reliable.

Efficient testing service: In order to ensure the delivery time of customers, Flyking Technology Co., Limited can record the testing data efficiently and accurately, and also ensure the fast feedback of the testing results. The results can be produced on the same day at the fastest, and the results can be qualitatively analyzed on the testing results.

In order to ensure the quality of each chip, Flyking Technology Co., Limited is committed to providing one-stop testing services and solutions for customers in various fields, with reliability technology, efficient testing services, precision testing equipment and high-standard testing environment, to assist enterprises to comprehensively improve the quality of product delivery!

The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Association grew 26.2 percent in 2021 (WSTS) expects the global semiconductor market to grow 16.3 percent to $646 billion in 2022 and continue to grow 5.1 percent in 2023 to $680 billion, according to foreign media reports.

During the pandemic, more and more people work and study from home, leading to increased global demand for various semiconductor products, such as chips used in smartphones and computers, but semiconductor products are in short supply.Industries, including cars, mobile phones, game consoles and PC, have been affected by the global semiconductor supply shortage.

In addition, semiconductor has become an integral part of modern cars, it is in the aspect of engine management, temperature control, car entertainment and collision safety play a positive role, but the global supply shortage of Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen, ford, Fiat Chrysler and nissan brands were forced to cut production, even forced to stop production.

Strong demand for semiconductor products has driven growth in the semiconductor market.WSTS predicts that chip demand will continue to be strong, with most major categories expected to see higher year-over-year growth in 2022.

Source：TechWeb

Since 2022, the consumer market, as an important driving force of the global semiconductor industry, has been affected by the war, the epidemic and inflation, and the terminal market demand is sluggish, the power of manufacturers to stock up is down, and the inventory level of consumer products has generally increased.In the first quarter of 2022, the proportion of consumer products in the operating revenue of global wafer manufacturers declined.Among them, the proportion of smartphones in TSMC's operating revenue fell to 40%, down about 5 percentage points year-on-year, and consumer electronics also fell to 26% and 52%, respectively, down about 1 percentage point and 4 percentage points year-on-year, respectively.

CINNO Research statistics show that in the first quarter of 2022, the average inventory turnover days of Chinese IC designers increased to 192 days, an increase of about 58 days from the first quarter of 2021.For SMIC, Huahong and other manufacturers, which account for a relatively high proportion of domestic customers, the rising inventory level of domestic IC design manufacturers brings certain variables to their future revenue growth point.

At present, the upstream price of semiconductor to the downstream transfer is blocked, IC in the demand and price is more obvious differentiation.Among:

· CINNO Research data shows that in the first quarter of 2022, the average inventory turnover days of domestic consumer IC design companies increased to 201 days, and the market demand weakened significantly; while the average inventory turnover days of domestic simulated IC designers increased to 135 days, less than the average inventory turnover days of domestic IC designers.

· At present, the semiconductor market has undergone structural differentiation, and automobiles and some HPC and A loT chips still have significant market growth momentum, but the supply and demand relationship between electronics consumption, PC, NB and other markets have changed.

· The analog chip market has the characteristics of long life cycle, wide downstream application and anti-cycle. At the same time, the improvement of the penetration rate of new energy vehicles brings sustainable development momentum to the analog chip market.

At present, although the global semiconductor industry is facing many challenges, such as inventory adjustment, structural capacity shortage, and weakened terminal demand, but the new infrastructure, dual-carbon, Internet of things, new energy and other market power is still good.From the perspective of wafer manufacturing, the global foundry wafer market will remain strong in 2022, and with the continuous optimization of the product portfolio, the confidence of the global semiconductor industry will not decrease.

Source：国际电子商情

On June 6, Shenzhen Development and Reform Commission, Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission, Shenzhen Industry and Information Technology Bureau and Shenzhen State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission released the Action Plan for Cultivating and Developing Shenzhen Semiconductor and Integrated Circuit Industry Cluster (2022-2025).

The Plan points out that by 2025, the industrial revenue will exceed 250 billion yuan, form more than 3 design enterprises with revenue exceeding 10 billion yuan and a batch of revenue exceeding 1 billion yuan, introduce and cultivate 3 manufacturing enterprises with revenue of more than 2 billion yuan, the integrated circuit industry level has been significantly improved, and the industrial structure is more reasonable.

In addition, we will also focus on breaking through the design of high-end general chips such as CPU, GPU, DSP and FPGA, and lay out the development of special chips such as artificial intelligence chips and edge computing chips.

The plan also mentioned that we will take the 5G communication industry as the lead to fully break through the core chips such as RF front-end chips, baseband chips and optoelectronic chips.Focusing on intelligent "terminal" and other pan-Internet of Things applications, to promote the rapid industrialization of ultra-low-power dedicated chips and NB-IoT chips.We will actively foster emerging business formats such as lidar and actively foster upstream chip supply chains such as lidar.

"Plan", to improve core technology research ability, continue to promote key areas research and development plan, around key materials, core equipment and parts to carry out technical research, support EDA whole process design tool system development, realize the core chip product breakthrough, promote high-end chip market proportion, explore new architecture chip research and development.Encourage qualified units to undertake major projects, major technical research plans and key research and development plans.

In addition, Shenzhen plans to build more than 4 professional IC industrial parks by 2025, to form a spatial pattern of integrated circuit industry development with "prominent focus, dislocation and coordination".

Source:IT之家

Samsung has officially abandoned its LCD panel business and fully switched to OLED panels and quantum dot panels, and its previously operational LCD panel production line also ceased operations in June.Since Samsung's display and chip packaging businesses belong to Samsung's equipment solution division, Samsung has transferred its LCD panel factory employees to the chip packaging business.

At the end of 2021, Samsung made changes to its top and major business divisions, with its consumer electronics and mobile businesses merged and renamed the Device Experience division, led by Vice President and CEO Zong Xi.The equipment solutions division, which controls Samsung's display and chip businesses, is run by president and co-executive.This is not the first time that Samsung has transferred 300 Samsung display LCD panel factory employees to the chip packaging business to adjust its two divisions, with similar adjustments in the first and second half of 2021.

Samsung moved Samsung display employees to the chip packaging business, mainly to exit the LCD panel business as planned.As early as 2020, Samsung decided to close its LCD panel production line, but delayed plans to close its LCD production line in the second half of 2020 with LCD panels at the request of its TV business.Last year, Samsung's Samsung Display decided to close its only remaining LCD panel factory in South Korea in June and officially exit LCD manufacturing, but Samsung will not abandon its LCD TV business altogether.As a result, Samsung Video Display Division (Samsung, V D) still has an active shipment and external procurement of LCD plans.

With Samsung completely withdrawing from the LCD panel market, Chinese panel makers such as Chinese panel makers BOE and TCL's Huaxing Optoelectronics are expected to further increase their share of the LCD panel market.

According to Omida, a market research firm, China has gradually become the world's first in LCD production capacity. Its share was only 23% in 2015%, but it reached 46% by the end of 2019. In 2020, it exceeded 50%, occupying more than half of the share, and further increased to more than 60% in 2023.

Over the past three decades, the DRAM market has been characterized by a period of phenomenal growth and devastating collapse years, according to IC Insights, in an excerpt from the MacLean Report.In recent years, the DRAM market has fallen by 37% in 2019, but has soared by 42% in 2021.Whatever the reason, the "boom, depression" cycle has reduced the number of major DRAM suppliers from 20 in the mid-1990s to six today.In 2021, Samsung, the three largest suppliers, SK Hynix, and Micron, had a combined 94% share of the DRAM market.South Korea-based Samsung and SK Hynix accounted for 71.3 per cent of global DRAM sales last year.

With a 44 percent market share, Samsung remained the world's largest DRAM supplier in 2021, with sales of nearly $41.9 billion, the report said.Last year, Samsung advanced its DRAM business in several ways, including mass production of the EUV-based 14nm DRAM in October 2021, after pioneering ultra-UV (EUV) lithography in March 2020.In the process, Samsung increased the number of EUV layers on its most advanced 14nm DDR5 from two to five-layer DRAM processes.

In November 2021, Samsung said it had developed a 14nm 16Gb low-power 5X (LPDDR5X) DRAM for high-speed applications such as 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and other big data applications.The company claims that LPDDR5X DRAM has data processing speeds of up to 8.5Gbps (1.3 times faster than existing 6.4Gbps LPDDR5 devices), saving about 20% of power consumption over LPDDR5 of memory.In addition, the company has released its first DRAM memory module supporting the new computing fast link (Compute Express Link, CXL) interconnection standards, and a 2GB GDDR6 and 2GB DDR4 car DRAM designed for autonomous electric vehicles and high-performance infotainment systems.

SK Hynix ranked second in the 2021 market with a DRAM market share of 28%, with sales of $26.6 billion, up 39%.DRAM accounts for approximately 71% of the company's total semiconductor sales in 2021, with 40% server DRAM; mobile DRAM 35%; PC DRAM 15%, and 5% consumer and graphics card DRAM each.In 2021, SK Hynix released what is said to be the highest-performing DDR5 DRAM in the industry, with a data speed capable of transmitting 163 full HD movies per second.The chip is known as HBM3 because it is Hynix's third generation high bandwidth memory.Like Samsung, SK Hynix has begun using EUV lithography in mass production of 8Gb LPDDR4 DRAM based on the fourth-generation 10nm process (1a nm).

In addition, Micron was the third-largest DRAM supplier in 2021, with DRAM sales up 41% to $21.9 billion, accounting for 23% of the global market share.Overall, DRAM accounts for about 73% of Micron's total annual IC sales of $30 billion.In 2021, Micron launched a 1a nm memory node.The node, driven by a new CPU platform and designed in part to support the transition from data centers to DDR5 DRAM, is expected to begin development later this year and gain growth momentum in 2023.Micron's 1a nm DRAM is also being used in low-power communication applications, including 5G smartphones.Although the process does not require EUV lithography, Micron has ordered EUV equipment and plans to produce DRAM using its 1 gamma (1 g a m m a) nanonode transition to EUV technology from 2024.

Source: 爱集微

May 24 news, according to the latest report issued by American foreign investors, the current first quarter of the end product inventory increase, considering the weakened consumer demand, and OEM, ODM, O D M and components, semiconductor supplier inventory increase, personal computers, smartphone components and semiconductor shipments in the second half of the focus.

Inventories rose 11% in the first quarter, up from the typical seasonal increase, and inventory days rose to 63 days from 53 days in the previous quarter, the report said.

As for downstream company inventory, including automotive OEM / Tier 1, wireless infrastructure and network OEM, personal PC and mobile OEM / ODM, server and storage, OEM and EMS, inventory grew 10% in Q1 this year, above typical seasonal quarterly growth; inventory was 24% above the 3-year average tracked, while downstream inventory increased from 49 days in Q4 2021 to 58 days in Q1 this year, higher than typical seasonal 51 days.

American foreign investors believe that inventory growth in the first quarter of multiple end markets compared with the fourth quarter of 2021 exceeded the typical seasonal factors; the most obvious gap was PC OEM / ODM, which rose 21% in quarter to quarter and 6% in the typical seasonal growth quarter.

On the other hand, the server OEM / ODM is the only inventory continuous changes lower than the typical seasonal model, the inventory amount increased by 17% quarter on quarter, while the typical seasonal growth of 20%.

If from 2021,2022 Q1, the overall inventory of Q1 industry increased by 24% year on year, higher than the overall sales growth of 5%.From the end market, server OEM / ODM, network OEM, PC OEM / ODM, mobile OEM / ODM and automotive Tier 1 inventory has the fastest annual growth rate.

Foreign investors said the total number of days in Q1 industry stocks has increased from 53 days to 63 days this year.In general, the inventory days in the end market should be consistent or higher than the general or seasonal level, but the network OEM, PC OEM / ODM, server OEM / ODM and automotive Tier 1 are all well above the seasonal level.

Source: technews

Semiconductor "cut single storm" officially hit, the panel drive IC factory fired the first shot.Due to the weak demand for panel control, prices falling, the industry, has driven IC factories to cut wafer foundry cast volume, as high as 20 to 30%, last year driven IC factories to earn several share capital has become the past; some consumer IC by the mainland sealing and inflation caused by consumption tightening pressure, also afraid to cut orders.

Taiwan, China listed cabinet drive IC factory including Lianyong, Silicon, Duntai, Tianyu, Ruida, related industries on the stage are not willing to talk much about this.Some people privately revealed that the current environment is really not good, "should cut (order) or to cut", in order to control inventory, "do not place so many orders behind".

Before the outbreak, IC was the least reluctant to produce wafer foundry because of the worst foundry prices, mostly only to "fill in capacity".Unexpectedly, the epidemic brought good demand for electricity, monitors, TV and so on, making the driving IC instantly in short supply, become the market popular fried chicken, the price rose constantly, related manufacturers operating scenery, last year generally earned several share capital.

Now the demand boom receded, especially the panel market conditions significantly revised, the price fell down, dragging down the driver IC market conditions "from heaven to earth", making the driver IC factory unprepared.

Some people do not shy about saying, "the tide receded, you know who didn't wear pants", last year, whether the first, second or even third-line drive IC factories rushed to bid up the train, "IC is equal to money", and even caused the problem of wafer foundry repeated orders.

Now the market from gorgeous return to plain, manufacturers no longer have the opportunity to make money, than who is a thick foundation, strong product competitiveness, "the industry has become the past".

Have drive IC related manufacturers said, before in short supply, many orders, but the capacity is limited, order shipment ratio (B / B value) is about 1.7 to 1.8, but now customer demand is not before, can only cut down part of the wafer foundry orders, let molecules and denominator adjustment, so at present order shipment ratio remains around 1.15 to 1.2, if not cut wafer foundry orders, B / B value is less than 1.

A driver IC factory, who declined to be named, said customer orders had not been cancelled but had been deferred, so wafer foundry orders have not been cut.Another driver IC factory is quietly saying that fabs orders will be adjusted according to market conditions.

Drive IC factory out of the semiconductor cut the first shot, industry research, some consumer IC by Chinese mainland sealing and inflation caused by consumption tightening pressure, also afraid to take the stick cut the order.

Some consumer IC designers pointed out that this year, some additional purchase capacity, now the situation has changed, this part will assess the order, leaving capacity for other companies who still need.

The sharp change in consumer end demand has also affected the overall supply and demand performance of the semiconductor market this year.

According to Gartner, the global semiconductor market revenue rose 26.3% last year, due to the imbalance between supply and demand, but a larger proportion was due to the price increase of semiconductor devices.With the downturn in the biggest semiconductor demand side, including smartphones, this year, the semiconductor market will be driven mainly by upstream price increases this year, which the agency expects to decline by 2023 and could enter an industry recession in 2024.However, the continued changes in external factors, or may accelerate the arrival of a recession period.

Sheng Linghai, vice president of Gartner Research, told the 21st Century Business Herald that although the overall market, especially in specific areas, the relatively strong —— demand is concentrated in the industrial and automotive sectors.But in fact, since the second half of last year, the semiconductor market has begun to oversupply some products, mainly in communications, mobile phones and other fields.

For the domestic semiconductor industry, in the general market rise, the threshold of domestic Top is also rising, in the global supply system, the domestic semiconductor role still has a large room for growth.

Part of the oversupply

The year 2021 is undoubtedly a bumper harvest year for the semiconductor market. Major chip companies at home and abroad have gained rapid growth in performance, and "repeated new highs" emerge in an endless stream.

However, with the previous production capacity in place, the demand side is tightening, and the external environment continues to change, the semiconductor market may gradually move to the other side of the cycle.

Sheng Linghai analyzed that the growth of the global semiconductor market in 2021 mainly comes from two aspects: the rebound in the demand side, such as cars, smartphones, data centers and other markets; the greater driver comes from the unit price rise, that is, the continuous price growth of many devices due to the supply shortage, such as power devices, network chips and 4G chips.

"So last year's 26.3% growth last year does not mean a surge in semiconductor or consumer electronics consumption, but a large part of a rise in ASP prices.We forecast a 13.6% semiconductor market revenue growth in 2022, but it may not be that big, based on the demand side."He continued that this year, the main driver of semiconductor market growth will remain from unit price growth from some supply shortages.

(Global Semiconductor Revenue forecast, updated as of quarter 12022, Source: Gartner)

It is generally believed in the industry that since the second half of 2021, the supply shortage of main chips on the mobile phone end has been significantly eased, and the demand shortage mainly comes from general devices such as MCU and power management chips.

Sheng linghai told reporters that in the first half of last year, some companies have begun to hoard goods to some extent for the supply shortage.This leads to a rise in demand in the short term and drives the price rise, but when the inventory reaches a certain water level, the purchase volume decreases, leading to a subsequent drop in price. ——, that is, the seasonal supply and demand imbalance caused by the supply problem, typically in the memory industry.

"At present, some chips are already overloaded, including the older generation of 5G chips, some RF front-end chips, CIS (image sensor chips), mobile phone memory, mobile phone-related DDI (display driver chips), and some low-threshold consumer chips."He continued, and the demand related to industry applications, industry and automobiles remains strong, from the product categories, including analog chips, MCU, power management and so on are still popular."It should be said that the entire semiconductor market has shifted from structural out of stock to specific areas out of stock.”

Of course, due to the relatively complex supply chain links of the semiconductor industry, the price adjustment still needs time to bring about by the change in supply and demand, leading to the current upstream impulse to rise.

Seek a higher breakthrough

With tight supply and continuous changes in the external environment, the "multi-supplier" strategy has become a common decision for back-end manufacturers.In this context, domestic manufacturers previously difficult to enter the industrial chain also ushered in a round of introduction and development opportunities.

At the same time, domestic manufacturers in the recent years of entrepreneurship and financing wave, have also consolidated or adjusted the boundary of capacity, showing a rapid rise in the performance level.

A decade ago, the revenue threshold for domestic Top10 semiconductor manufacturers was about $200 million, but by 2021, the threshold had risen to nearly $500 million.Under the birth of the market last year, the vast majority of companies grew rapidly.

(Top25 revenue for Chinese semiconductor manufacturers in 2021, data source: Gartner)

For example, in the main chip, radio frequency devices, MCU, multimedia chip and other fields, domestic manufacturers have better seized the introduction of development opportunities.However, it should be pointed out that the import is only the first step, and if the subsequent capabilities or services cannot continue to follow up, there is still a risk of being eliminated.

It is also worth paying attention to the market share of domestic manufacturers, at present, there is still a large room for growth.

Gartner believes that occupying more than 10% of the market share means that there is a certain voice or dominance of the industry.Some head manufacturers in domestic vertical fields have achieved a certain position through endogenous development and extension expansion, but overall, not many products occupy more than 10% of the position.

Sheng Linghai introduced, according to statistics, the current domestic share in more than 10% of the field including CIS and LED, NAND Flash (flash memory), analog chips, etc.However, there are more concentrated in the 5% -10% range, including MCU, DDI, AP (power amplifier), etc.In the fields below 5%, GPU, FPGA, DRAM, etc., with higher research and development difficulty and entry threshold. The development of these fields requires not only profound chip itself, but also to build a relatively rich semiconductor industry ecology.

(Market share of Chinese semiconductor companies by product type, data source: Gartner)

He further pointed out, " In the past, domestic manufacturers mainly entered the market at low cost, participate in low-dimensional competition, and now grow to a certain extent, the challenge is to no longer win more markets through the 'following model'."So for domestic semiconductor companies, the first thing to find a way to achieve their own market share of more than 10%, and then consider whether to continue to get more revenue in the market segment, or another track development.

"Domestic semiconductor development opportunities also have something to do with the domestic supply chain.For example, mobile phone communication and consumer electronics, the domestic supply chain has an absolute advantage, then the most opportunity; then I think there is a great opportunity in the automotive and industrial fields, especially the industry has national standards, but cars are relatively in the initial stage."He continued, at present there are many semiconductor companies are actively into the automotive supply chain, but gauge itself threshold is higher, verification and import time is longer, but with oems also actively invest in semiconductor companies, forming the industry linkage, hope to be able to see the development of domestic gauge chip, it also need oems to actively embrace.

For Chiplet (small chip / core particle), which has attracted much attention due to the failure of Moore's Law, Shenglinghai told reporters that the current redefined Chiplet is to connect different high-speed chips and transform the PCIe interface between chips into silicon chip connection mode, but no one can do this at present.

"Advanced packaging does not represent Chiplet. It should be said that Chiplet has a smaller range of definitions than advanced packaging.Generally, if you want to do Chiplet, such as now Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Intel to do a lot of related products, all using advanced technology.However, the domestic can not achieve advanced technology, if TSMC does Chiplet, the cost is still high, the mobile phone chip has not used this technology, the 2.5D package Apple uses is not Chiplet; according to the narrow definition of Chiplet, most applications are still in the high price, high cost applications, such as data center."He analyzed.

Source: 21st Century Economic Daily

Photo source：AP

With the demand for semiconductor equipment, the supply of components has been a bottleneck.The delivery time of advanced parts required for semiconductor manufacturing equipment is more than twice longer than usual.The supply of equipment has entered a vicious circle due to the price of rising raw materials and a shortage of equipment semiconductors.

According to ETNews, delivery times for core parts were extended from the usual two to three months to more than six months.Delivery times for advanced parts such as the United States, Japan and Germany have also increased significantly.Products facing bottleneck effects include advanced sensors, precision thermometers, MCU for management equipment, and power line communication (PLC) equipment.Some components, such as PLC equipment, were delayed by more than 12 months.

A person from semiconductor equipment manufacturers said: " Although orders were placed last year, semiconductor equipment manufacturers that did not ensure their inventory encountered difficulties in producing equipment.As the delivery time of the accessories is extended, the delivery date of the equipment is also delayed.”

Manufacturers of test equipment imported from the United States tried to buy parts locally, but failed because of insufficient inventory.With the rising prices of semiconductor raw materials such as aluminum and steel, semiconductor companies have encountered difficulties in ensuring semiconductor accessories and casting accessories.

The shortage of semiconductor equipment components is due to a surge in demand.Orders for semiconductor equipment have surged as global semiconductor companies have invested heavily to address shortshortage for semiconductor equipment.In some cases, the past equipment delivery time of only a few months has exceeded two years.As the equipment industry rapidly increases production in response to surging demand, entire parts stocks have run out.Overseas parts manufacturers have not greatly improved their production capacity, which is also one of the reasons for short supply.Semiconductor equipment companies are responsive to equipment investment and begin to rapidly expand production capacity; however, component manufacturers are slow to respond.

A semiconductor industry official said: " Semiconductor equipment companies can easily improve production capacity, but component companies need to do a lot to build new infrastructure.Because of the heavy large-scale equipment investment burden, parts enterprises have encountered bottlenecks.”

Local semiconductor equipment companies, including South Korea, are also facing delayed delivery priorities.In other words, major overseas parts enterprises will first supply to the application semiconductor, ASML, TEL, Lam Research and other top semiconductor equipment enterprises.Local South Korean semiconductor equipment manufacturers, which had relatively low sales, received fewer parts.

The global shortage of semiconductor supplies is expected to worsen as production of —— manufacturing equipment, a core element of semiconductor production.With the delayed delivery date of semiconductor equipment under inventory, the equipment investment cycle of semiconductor manufacturers will inevitably slow down.

Gartner, an international electronic business agency, has updated its total global semiconductor revenue forecast for 2022.The agency expects total global semiconductor revenue to reach $676 bn in 2022, up 13.6 per cent from 2021.The latest forecast was revised from its previous quarter forecast, up $37 billion.

According to Evertiq, Gartner, vice President of research Alan Priestley, said, " in 2022, the semiconductor average selling price (ASP) will continue to become the main driver of global semiconductor market growth, but is expected to 2022, the overall supply of semiconductor components will gradually ease, with the improvement of inventory, prices will be stable.”

Chip shortages will continue to be one of the concerns in the electronics supply chain in 2022 and will have different impacts on major electronics device markets depending on different semiconductor device types.

As production enters a slow season and has increased semiconductor supply in the market, most semiconductor shortages in personal computers and smartphones have eased.However, by the end of 2022, some semiconductor devices will continue to be in a shortage in the automotive supply chain.Until 2023, automotive applications will continue to face component supply restrictions, especially in terms of microcontrollers (MCU), power management chips (PMIC) and voltage regulators.

Priestley said: " While unit vehicle production will grow 12.5% in 2022, A S P is expected to remain high after double-digit (19%) growth in 2022."" During the forecast period, automotive high-performance computing, EV / HEV and advanced driver assistance systems will lead the growth of the automotive electronics industry.”

The memory market will remain the largest segment during the forecast period, being expected to account for 31.4% of the entire semiconductor market in 2022.DRAM and NAND are expected to be undersupply in the second quarter of 2022.The NAND market will begin to experience oversupply in the fourth quarter of 2022, and the DRAM market will begin to experience oversupply in the second half of 2023.Second shipments and a higher annual average ASP will maintain revenue growth in 2022, with DRAM expected to grow 22.8% and NAND expected to grow 38.1%.

Smartphone semiconductor revenue is expected to grow 15.2% in 2022, while 5G smartphone production will grow 45.3% to 808 million units, accounting for 55% of all smartphone production.The massive migration of major smartphone chipset suppliers from 4G to 5G has led to a temporary shortage of 4G SoC baseband IC starting from the second half of 2021.The increase in 5G baseband IC inventory will lead to a drop in the prices of 5G smartphones and further accelerate 5G penetration during the forecast period.

With the development of informatization, the Internet age, 5G, artificial intelligence, metaverse, cloud computing and autonomous driving applications, the core processor CPU, GPU, AI computing power requirements is higher and higher, the core processor current demand as high as 1000A, above, high watt number, high efficiency, high density, high frequency of DCDC multiphase power management chip demand rose sharply.

In the field of domestic high-end D C D D power management chip, foreign enterprises with difficult technical barriers, dominated the huge domestic high-end computing market, 10 phase digital control power management chip BPD93010, born, successfully applied in CPU, GPU, AI and other high-power computing chip, can be widely used in PC, server, data center, base station, automatic driving tuyere industry.

BPD93010, supports native 1~10 phase Buck controller, digital control, small package (QFN 5 * 5), in the computing field of high current and high power to seize the localization of power management chip opportunity.In China, it has realized a leap from single phase to multi-phase, from analog control to digital control. Large current technology has now reached the order of 1000A, taking the "pearl" in the crown of DCDC field.

BPD93010 Demo Board

BPD93010, the strong product advantages are:

More intelligent: one key touch, along with the "core" and move!Supporting GUI software, digital control, simple operation, make the application experience more intelligent; powerful Monitor function, always detect and record the chip working status.

More flexible: Many key functions can be achieved both by replacing peripheral R / C devices and by changing some digital configurations; the work interface supports custom settings for more flexible application possibilities.

More powerful: The same control chip can support not only the traditional DCR power detection, meet the low-cost separation solution, but also support a more concise and efficient DrMOS power level scheme.

More stable: digital control mode, automatic loop compensation function, accelerate the transient response ability, enhance the stability of the system.

More secure: with editable UVLO / OTP / O T P / OCP / UVP / OVP / VINOVP / VINUVP.

Cheaper: fewer peripheral R / C electronic component configurations that save more BOM costs and enhance the power density of the system.

Multi-function: support PMBUS / I2C and other voltage control protocols; Unique Multi CFG Detection features, Just change the resistance value of some peripheral resistors, Can solve the complex problem of digital chip material number control; unique Fault Monitors function, A mere simple measurement of the voltage values of certain Pin feet is required, Can assist to judge the working status of the chip, Greatly convenient for the engineer Debug; The Auto Phase Shedding function automatically adjusts the phase number of the controller according to the size of the load; The Interleaving + function can modulate the PWM phase, Helps to reduce the input ripple, Reduce the amount of input capacitance, etc.

Jingfeng Mingyuan DCDC, a strong team of more than 100 top elites in the industry, builds a complete industrial chain of research and development, operation and sales, with digital control IP, high current design IP, BCD process, packaging and other core technologies.High standard reliability laboratory, with a variety of high temperature aging, high acceleration stress, temperature cycle and other reliability identification and reliability monitoring capabilities, each mass production product, has been rigorously tested, to ensure the stability and reliability of the products.Jingfeng Mingyuan DCDC aims to catch up with the technical advantages of international giants and become the blockbuster player of computing power supply.

Wechat news, IC board factory Xinxing announced 28, Kunshan Dingxin Electronics Co., Ltd. and Xinxing Tongtai Technology (Kunshan) Co., Ltd., with the local government epidemic prevention policy, from April 21 to April 27, from April 28 can be closed loop gradually resume production.

Xin xing said the company and its subsidiaries will closely observe the subsequent development of the epidemic and cooperate with local government regulations to take contingency measures to ensure the safety and health of employees.

As the outbreak in Kunshan improves, local factories are gradually resuming production.Guo Ming, an analyst at Tianfeng International, also said Tuesday that the Kunshan plant will resume production as early as this week, assuming the epidemic situation in Kunshan continues to improve.Based on the component situation, phase I capacity is expected to recover by 40 to 60 percent, he said.

Kunshan, as a heavyweight production settlement in China, is also a gathering place for Taiwan businessmen, commonly known as "Little Taipei". From PCB, panels, institutional components to OEM assembly plants, heavyweight suppliers have set up factories.

Shanghai has been closed for nearly a month, and a number of chip factories have also been affected. SMIC recently responded to the latest situation of the Shanghai chip factory, saying that production and operation are normal and employees have entered closed-loop management.

According to the China Securities Journal, SMIC said it began to implement closed-loop management on March 18, realizing the synchronous and integrated closed-loop management in the Zhangjiang factory and the two life parks. The total number of employees in the closed-loop accounts for more than 60 percent of Shanghai employees, effectively ensuring the stable operation during the epidemic.

At present, the company's production and operation are normal, and the capacity utilization rate remains at a high level.

According to SMIC, the executives and employees in the closed loop of the company actively joined the volunteer team, while ensuring production, organized nucleic acid testing, maintaining bus order and garbage transportation, including the factory and living areas, ensuring the normal operation of the company and the community during the epidemic.

After Shanghai issued relevant guidelines on the resumption of work and production, SMIC actively sorted out the returning personnel, handled relevant procedures for employees outside the closed loop, and arranged employees to take shuttle buses back to work.At present, some external closed-loop external employees have successively entered the closed-loop management.

On the evening of March 8, SMIC issued an announcement in A shares and Hong Kong shares, reporting the performance of January to February 2022, revenue rose 59% and profit rose 95%, achieving a good start in 2022, which is the first time SMIC released monthly revenue data.

The announcement showed that from January to February 2022, according to the preliminary accounting of SMIC IC Co., Ltd., the total operating revenue in the first two months was about $1.223 billion, up 59.1% year on year; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the company was about $309 million, up 94.9% year on year.

On April 26, since the outbreak of 2020 global shortage core tide, the Chinese wafer manufacturers have 17 are expanding, production capacity has gradually began to release, but the expansion mainly with 12 inch wafer capacity, 8 inch wafer capacity only smic (Tianjin), sea Chen semiconductor, Shaoxing SMIC, Ningbo SMIC, micro (Hangzhou) and byd semiconductor six manufacturers in expansion, from the point of capacity time, new capacity will be released in 2022.

▲ SMIC and Huahong Semiconductor revenue and wafer sales from 2018 to 2021.(Source: Financial report; organized by Extension Industrial Research Institute, 2022.4)

From the demand side, driven by the 5G industry chain (mobile phones, base stations), data centers, online office and new energy vehicles, the demand for 8-inch wafers will continue to be strong, especially the penetration of new energy vehicles will rise rapidly driven by the policy, and the demand for power semiconductors will also be greatly increased, which will significantly increase the demand for 8-inch wafers.

Due to equipment constraints, 8-inch wafer capacity expansion relative to 12-inch wafer slow, causing some manufacturers to power management IC products from 8 inches to 12 inches, but the technical difficulty is relatively increased, the cost increases, so this change is not common; in addition, the power semiconductor need high reliability, and the supply chain is fixed, so 8-inch wafer still have this powerful end market.

Micro network news, recently the world famous semiconductor community semiwiki published the world core Electronics (Alchip) on ASIC technology research report.According to the report, ASIC was the foundation of the semiconductor industry until the IDM model flourished in the 1980s and 1990s.During this transition period, many semiconductor companies adopted ASIC production mode, which design and manufacture chips for other system companies such as IBM, NEC, Toshiba, and some specialized ASIC companies like VLSI Technology and LSI Logic, which also own their own fab.

Photo source: Network

Fabless has reversed the current situation, and the ASIC market is currently dominated by fabless-type companies.Today, the ASIC business is divided into two categories: ASIC-based fabless (GUC, Faraday, Core, Sondrel, Core, Alphawave, SemiFive, eInfochips, etc.) and other chip companies that are also designing ASIC (Broadcom, Marvell, Mediatek, etc.).Broadcom owns former Avago ASIC business; Marvell acquired ASIC business for eSilicon and Core / IBM; Mediatek develops its ASIC business.

Why is the surge in ASIC business?The reason is the same as why EDA, IP and TSMC thrive.All industries are developing their own ASIC.

World Core (Alchip) released more convincing data, the company's revenue (88%) from 16nm to 5nm FinFET process design, including sophisticated advanced packaging technologies (CoWoS and MCM).

Figure source: Alchip

Johnny Shen, president and CEO of Alchip, expects strong demand for AI, high-performance computing and the Internet of Things in 2022.He also noted that a large number of advanced AI equipment will enter mass production in 2021.In short, the ASIC business is the oldest process in the semiconductor industry, and its development process has been very low-key.