Items tagged with semiconductor
For years, we have known that AI can beat humans at games like Go, Starcraft, and up to 57 different Atari 2600 games. However, it is commonly believed that AI cannot beat humans at designing things, but that is not necessarily the case. Google has decided to use AI to design microchips for its next generation of Google Tensor Processing Unit, and it can be done in 6 hours, whereas humans can take several months or longer. When it comes to designing computer chips, one of the more laborious yet highly important tasks is laying out the components in what is called a chip floorplan. Where all the physical parts go can have a massive impact, affecting power consumption, performance, and chip area....
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We reported last week that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is allegedly looking to vastly increase its investments in the United States concerning fab capacity. The company announced its decision to build a $12 billion fab in Arizona in May 2020, and the report alleged that TSMC further committed to building up to six fabs in the state to keep up with rising demand. Now we're learning that TSMC might go a step further by shifting the focus of the already announced Arizona plant from the relatively mature 5nm process node to the more advanced 3nm node. The first products using the 3nm process node are likely a year or more away from shipping in production devices and will be highly...
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If you're a semiconductor manufacturer pumping out DRAM and NAND for today's hordes of electronic devices, you might be sitting in a corner crying right now. But for us enthusiasts that need to purchase DDR4 modules and PCIe NVMe SSDs for our gaming rigs, the closing months of 2019 might be a prime opportunity to make new purchases. The semiconductor industry is staring down the barrel of a 9.6 percent decline in revenue for 2019, taking totals for the year to $429 billion versus $475 billion during all of 2018. To put that in perspective, it was forecast that revenue for the year would only be down by 3.4 percent, but a perfect storm of variables has turned those projections upside down. As...
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Following an incredibly long tenure at the top of the semiconductor sales charts, Intel found itself playing second fiddle to Samsung in 2017, thanks to a booming memory business. According to a new report by IC Insights, however, the Korean chip giant is not going to be sitting on top for too long - and it's due more to its own losses than Intel's gains. In 2016, Intel peaked hit $57.0B in sales, easily placing itself in first ahead of Samsung's $44.3B. Despite a healthy sales surge, Intel's $61.7B revenue number in 2017 wasn't enough to take out Samsung at $65.9B, although in 2018, both companies continued to enjoy prosperous revenue growth. Things look to be changing soon for Samsung, however....
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With much of the performance computing market sitting on top of 14nm (or similar) nodes, it's time to look to the future. GlobalFoundries is looking past 10nm, as it sees 7nm as the next major step in process technology, and it's not alone. In a new announcement, the semiconductor foundry said that it will be able to deliver 7nm production soon, based on FinFET designs. Complementing that, it'll be able to "significantly" re-use much of the same equipment that was used for 14nm, which is currently being used at its Fab 8 campus in New York. Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst at TIRIAS Research, said that this was a good move for the foundry. According to McGregor, the move to 10nm simply...
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Say it loud and clear with us: "Seven nanometers." That's pretty much a pipe dream right now, both in terms of how far removed we are from that achievement -- 7nm represents a chip technology that's three generations away -- and the technological hurdles required to get there. Nevertheless, IBM wants to make sure we get there, and help accelerate the process, the company announced plans to invest a hearty $3 billion over the next 5 years into chip R&D efforts. IBM's investment will be split into two broad research and early stage development programs, both of which are intended to push the limits of chip technology to meet the emerging demands of cloud computing and Big Data systems. The...
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Normally, we cover conference and earnings calls from major companies by hewing pretty strictly to the number and discussing factors that directly relate to them. Today, we're going to break with that format a bit, and examine what Intel's Q3 earnings tell us about the larger PC market, what to expect from AMD when its own conference call happens tomorrow, and what consumers should expect over the next six months. Intel reported $13.6B in revenue for Q3 2012, slightly above its revised expectations. What's troubling analysts and investors is that the entire PC market is sluggish. Normally, the PC industry is weakest in Q1, somewhat stronger in Q2, and significantly better in Q3 thanks to the...
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There are plenty of economic uncertainties to go around in the global market, but despite it all, International Data Corporation believes the demand remains strong for semiconductors, particularly those used in smartphones, media tablets, and automotive electronics. By the time 2012 comes to a close, IDC predicts worldwide semiconductor revenues will have grown 4.6 percent to a healthy $315 billion. From there, IDC's crystal ball sees semiconductor revenues growing an additional 6.2 percent to $335 billion in 2013, and topping $380 billion four years from now. "As we forecasted earlier this year, the cyclical semiconductor downturn that started in the middle of last year reached bottom in the...
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Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's CEO, is a canny and intelligent leader who has capably helmed the company through both rough patches and successes, not least of which is the recently launched GTX 680. He's known for strong opinions, but not crazy, off-the-wall statements, which is why his recent remarks regarding Intel are so surprising. Speaking to a group of analysts last week, Jen-Hsun casually suggested that Intel, one of Nvidia's chief rivals and competitors, ought to open up its foundries and manufacture hardware for the ARM SoC ecosystem. "Why not be a foundry for all the mobile companies?" Huang said. “There’s no shame in that." No shame -- but an awful lot of crazy. Intel has made...
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The IT industry has begun to warm to the idea of a sustained recovery after the hammering it took in 2009 through the first part of 2010, but industry analysis firm iSuppli has warned that the current level of inventory buildup could cause problems if market demand slows in 2011. Original graph, data from iSuppli At the end of 2010, inventory levels stood at 83.6 days, uncomfortably near to the 84-day level that kicked off the industry downturn in 2008. Current levels don't automatically mean a second downswing is imminent, but Sharon Stiefel, semiconductor analyst with IHS, notes that the situation bears watching. "Inventory levels arguably now are high by any standard, illustrating the difficulty...
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IM Flash Technologies is a joint venture between Intel and Micron which produces NAND flash memory. With a focus on research and development, IMFT has doubled NAND density approximately every 18 months. In 2006, they started production with a 50nm process, then moved to a 40nm process in 2008. This inevitably leads to smaller, more affordable products featuring higher capacities, much like we have witnessed in the SSD market and among USB drives the past couple of years. February 1, 2010 marks the official announcement of 25 nanometer NAND technology--a major advancement for the company. Intel and Micron now lay claim to the smallest production ready semiconductor process technology in the industry....
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IM Flash Technologies is a joint venture between Intel and Micron that is targeted for producing NAND flash memory. With a focus on research and development, IMFT has doubled NAND density approximately every 18 months. In 2006, they started production with a 50nm process, then moved to a 40nm process in 2008. This co-development inevitably lead to smaller, more affordable NAND flash-based products featuring higher capacities, much like we have witnessed in the SSD market and with USB flash drives over the past couple of years. February 1, 2010 will mark the official announcement of IMFT's 25 nanometer NAND technology--a major advancement for the company. Intel and Micron now lay...
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In addition to TSMC, UMC, and IBM, NVIDIA will now be adding Chartered Semiconductor to their list of current foundry partners. The driving factor behind this new business relationship is to provide NVIDIA with more leverage in terms of pricing with key foundry partner TSMC. This will be accomplished by having NVIDIA allocate a certain percentage of GPU production away from TSMC and towards UMC and Chartered. The first NVIDIA product manufactured at Chartered will be a GeForce 7100 GS with no other products currently slated for production at this time. With Chartered also manufacturing AMD processors and likely ATI GPU's, it will be interesting to see how NVIDIA manages...
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