From: BeenRetired | 4/8/2021 8:17:57 AM | | | | IC design houses see March revenues surge Cage Chao, Taipei; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES Wednesday 31 March 2021
Taiwan-based IC design houses, particularly those specializing in smartphone-use chip solutions, are expected to post impressive sales results for March 2021, thanks to robust demand from Android-based smartphone makers, according to industry sources |
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To: BeenRetired who wrote (17013) | 4/8/2021 8:20:19 AM | From: BeenRetired | | | Additional ABF substrate output to buoy Nan Ya, Kinsus in 2021 Jay Liu, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES Thursday 8 April 2021
Nan Ya PCB and Kinsus Interconnect Technology are both poised to expand capacity for ABF substrates with additional output set to come online later this year, according to industry sources. |
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From: BeenRetired | 4/8/2021 8:23:36 AM | | | | VPEC posts record [+52% YoY] March revenues Julian Ho, Taipei; Adam Hwang, DIGITIMES Thursday 8 April 2021
III-V compound epitaxial wafer maker Visual Photonics Epitaxy (VPEC) has reported consolidated revenues of NT$341.6 million (US$12.0 million) for March, the highest-ever monthly level, growing 24.42% sequentially and 52.47% on year.
Demand for PAs (power amplifiers) used in 5G and Wi-Fi 6 applications has been strong, pushing up demand for GaAs epitaxial wafers. Demand for 4G- and 5G-use PAs has been particularly strong from Chinese smartphone vendors, according to industry sources.
Apple is expected to unveil new iPhone models in second-half 2021 and shipments for corresponding PAs will begin in June, the sources said.
Qualcomm will also launch new 5G-use PA modules in second-half 2021, and VPEC is expected to see robust demand in the second and third quarters of 2021, the sources indicated.
VPEC posted consolidated revenues of NT$889.2 million for first-quarter 2021, increasing 17.43% sequentially and 36.88% on year.
Also:
III-V IC firms embrace growing PA, RF demand as revenue booster Julian Ho, Taipei; Willis Ke, DIGITIMES Wednesday 7 April 2021
Taiwan's III-V semiconductor players including foundries Win Semiconductors and Advanced Wireless Semiconductor (AWSC), and IDM Transcom have all reported impressive sales results for March 2021, driven by a ramp-up in power amplifier (PA) and RF demand for smartphones and Wi-Fi 6 devices, according to industry sources.
Win Semi's March revenues rose 4.29% sequentially to NT$1.988 billion (US$71 million); AWSC's corresponding revenues gained 10.88% sequentially and 36.29% on year reaching NT$370 million; and Transcom's shot up 123.65% on year to NT$87.94 million.
The sources said Chinese handset vendors Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi and system makers Wingtech, Longcheer and Huaqin Technology have all strengthened procurement momentum for 4G and 5G PA and RF frontend modules (FEM) amid fears about components shortages, providing a solid growth driver for Win Semi, AWSC and epi-wafer supplier Visual Photonics Epitaxy (VPEC) in 2021.
The three makers are expected to benefit further from Qualcomm's planned launch of new 5G PA products carrying high price-performance ratios in the second half of the year to meet increasing demand for smartphone and Wi-Fi 6/6E applications, the sources continued.
Win Semi is expected to challenge a 40% share of the 5G PA foundry segment in 2021, and AWSC is set to tap into the segment in the second half of the year with a chance to grab a double-digit market share, the sources noted.
AWSC has taken the lead to raise its foundry quotes. The company is set to boost its monthly capacity to 15,000 wafers in late June and further to 20,000 by the end of the year to meet increasing outsourcing orders from US RF IDMs, the sources said.
VPEC is deepening its partnerships with first-tier automotive electronics vendors worldwide by providing epi-wafers for car-use LiDAR applications, while continuing to embrace strong demand for 3D sensor, ToF and optical communications.
Besides striving for more orders for GaAs-based PA devices for military applications, Transcom is also keenly developing mmWave PA components for 5G small cells. |
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From: BeenRetired | 4/8/2021 8:32:23 AM | | | | Semiconductor units forecast to exceed 1 trillion devices in 2021 Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES, Taipei Thursday 8 April 2021
Total semiconductor shipments including shipments of ICs as well as optoelectronics, sensor/actuator and discrete (O-S-D) devices are forecast to rise 13% to a record high of 1.135 trillion units in 2021, according to IC Insights. It would mark the third time that semiconductor units have surpassed one trillion units in a calendar year - the first time being in 2018.
The 13% increase follows a 3% increase in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was wreaking havoc across many segments of the economy, IC Insights indicated. From 1978, when 32.6 billion units were shipped, through 2021, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for semiconductor units is forecast to be 8.6%. The strong CAGR also demonstrates that new market drivers continue to emerge that fuel demand for more semiconductors.
Between 2004 and 2007, semiconductor shipments broke through the 400-, 500-, and 600-billion unit levels before the global financial meltdown led to a steep decline in semiconductor shipments in 2008 and 2009. Unit growth rebounded sharply in 2010 with a 25% increase and surpassed 700 billion devices that year. Another strong increase in 2017 (12% growth) lifted semiconductor unit shipments beyond the 900-billion level before the one-trillion mark was surpassed in 2018, IC Insights said.
The largest annual unit growth rate across the 43-year span was 34% in 1984 and the second-highest growth rate was 25% in 2010, IC Insights noted. In contrast, the largest annual decline was 19% in 2001 following the dot-com bust. The global financial meltdown and ensuing recession caused semiconductor shipments to fall in both 2008 and 2009 - the only time there have been consecutive years of unit shipment declines.
Total semiconductor shipments are expected to remain weighted toward O-S-D devices in 2021, IC Insights said. O-S-D devices are forecast to account for 67% of total semiconductor shipments compared to 33% for ICs. With 38% share, discrete devices are expected to account for the largest portion of semiconductor shipments followed by optoelectronics (26%), and analog IC devices (18%). Product categories that are forecast to see some of the strongest unit growth in 2021 are components that target network and cloud computing systems, contactless (touchless) systems, automotive electronics including autonomous systems, and devices that are essential to the rollout of 5G technology applications. |
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From: BeenRetired | 4/8/2021 8:34:50 AM | | | | Taiwan fab toolmakers see order visibility extended to 2023 [Read EUV] Monica Chen, Hsinchu; Jessie Shen, DIGITIMES Thursday 8 April 2021
Taiwan-based fab toolmakers are set to join their international bigger peers to gain from higher capital spending among major foundries from 2021 through 2023, judging from their order visibility already extended to 2023, according to industry sources.
Foxsemicon Integrated Technology, Gongin Precision Industrial (GPI), Grand Process Technology, Gudeng Precision Industrial, Marketech International and United Integrated Services (UIS), as well as backend equipment specialists such as All Ring Tech and Scientech, are all poised to generate impressive sales over the next three years, particularly those in TSMC's supply chain, the sources said.
Gudeng, which commands the majority of the global supply of EUV pods thanks to orders from TSMC, is reportedly expanding its factory site in northern Taiwan with construction of the new facilities slated to complete at the end of 2022. The expanded site will boost the overall output at the site by over 100%, the sources suggested.
Foxsemicon, a contract manufacturing partner of Applied Materials, is also expected to gain more businesses from its close tie with the US-based front-end equipment vendor, the sources indicated.
TSMC already set its capex target for 2021 at a record-high US$25-28 billion, and disclosed recently plans to spend a total of US$100 billion on capacity expansion projects in the next three years.
Some market observers expect TSMC to raise its capex target this year. The foundry is scheduled to hold its quarterly investors conference call on April 15.
According to SEMI, the global semiconductor industry is on track to register a rare three consecutive years of record highs in fab equipment spending with a 16% increase in 2020 followed by forecast gains of 15.5% this year and 12% in 2022. The bulk of fab investments in 2021 and 2022 will be seen in the foundry and memory sectors. |
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To: BeenRetired who wrote (17017) | 4/8/2021 8:38:28 AM | From: BeenRetired | | | EUV pod guy Gudeng 2Xing output. 'Nuff said...
Gudeng, which commands the majority of the global supply of EUV pods thanks to orders from TSMC, is reportedly expanding its factory site in northern Taiwan with construction of the new facilities slated to complete at the end of 2022. The expanded site will boost the overall output at the site by over 100%, the sources suggested. |
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To: BeenRetired who wrote (17017) | 4/8/2021 8:40:34 AM | From: BeenRetired | | | "all poised to generate impressive sales over the next three years"...
Foxsemicon Integrated Technology, Gongin Precision Industrial (GPI), Grand Process Technology, Gudeng Precision Industrial, Marketech International and United Integrated Services (UIS), as well as backend equipment specialists such as All Ring Tech and Scientech, are all poised to generate impressive sales over the next three years, particularly those in TSMC's supply chain, the sources said. |
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From: BeenRetired | 4/8/2021 11:04:47 AM | | | | EUV @SPIE '21: "a lot of progress in one year!"...
SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium 2021 – day 5 March 2, 2021 Chris Leave a comment
One advantage of the all-online format of this year’s symposium is that the conference can be stretched from the normal four days to five without significant cost impact. This means that several ‘live” events were spread out through Friday, including several very good keynote talks and a second tutorial talk. Jara Garcia Santaclara of ASML spoke on resist development for high-NA EUV lithography. (Jara has what I think is the world’s best job title: EUV Resist & Processing Architect. I love it!) One of the biggest concerns for high-NA EUV imaging is the need for a much thinner resist (20 nm, maybe less), with numerous consequences stemming from that fact. Metal-containing resists are the leading candidates here, since their higher absorption enables thinner resist films. This nice overview talk led well into the second Patterning Materials keynote by Rich Wise of Lam Research. A year ago, Rich introduced a new resist offering by Lam based on a dry-deposited, dry-developed metal-based material that they developed. The early results a year ago looked promising, and the updated results this year look really good. They have made a lot of progress in one year! Could it be that Lam will beat the industry track record of requiring at least one decade to introduce a new resist platform? It looks like Inpria has some competition.
Regina Freed of AMAT gave a nice keynote on etching. I especially liked learning about some of the unique challenges of DRAM manufacturing. The day ended with a very well-done tutorial talk about lithography’s endgame by Ralph Dammel. After a resist-focused history of wavelength transitions (Ralph is a consummate resist chemist, after all), he suggests (perfectly correctly, in my opinion) that 13.5 nm will be our last wavelength. This means that the end of lithography-based scaling is near, and non-scaling-based innovations in chip making (in particular, vertical scaling) will enable a continuation of Moore’s Law in a new way. I couldn’t agree more, though I would add that alternate chip architectures, new materials enabling new types of chip components, and innovations in chip design will probably keep Moore’s Law going for quite a while as well.
All-in-all, this digital forum for Advanced Lithography went better than I expected. Still, I’m looking forward to next year’s in-person version, perhaps with some of the best practices of this year’s version blended in. We shall see. |
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From: BeenRetired | 4/8/2021 11:14:40 AM | | | | DUV: The overlooked wunderkind
ASML continues to make investments in its DUV systems to further improve productivity and matching. The new NXT:2050 now delivers 295 wph and the NXT:1470 delivers 300 wph. The matched overlay between an NXT:2050 and NXE:3400 is now at 1.2 nm – nearly as good as each individual system.
Not enough EUV for Intel 7nm? | SemiWiki |
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From: BeenRetired | 4/8/2021 11:32:58 AM | | | | Webinar: Annapurna Labs and Altair Team up for Rapid Chip Design in the Cloud by Mike Gianfagna on 04-07-2021 at 6:00 am Categories: Altair, EDA, Events
This is a story of strategic recursion. Yes, a fancy term. I just made up. If you’re not into algorithm development you can Google recursion, but the simple explanation is we’re talking about using the cloud to design the cloud. The story begins with Annapurna Labs, a fabless chip company focused on bringing innovation to cloud infrastructure, now part of Amazon. To more effectively utilize the vast resources of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build their advanced designs, Annapurna Labs turned to Altair. Altair’s solutions made a substantial impact on these projects and the details of this successful collaboration is the subject of an upcoming webinar. Read on to learn how Annapurna Labs and Altair team up for rapid chip design in the cloud.
First, a little about the presenters. David Pellerin, head of worldwide business development for semiconductor at AWS presents the chip design side of the story. Dave has a long history in EDA, embedded software, chip design and cloud enablement. He is also an author, with several books on FPGA usage and design. Dave has the perfect background to tell the chip design side of this story.
Presenting for Altair is Andrea Casotto, chief scientist, enterprise computing core development there. I’ve known Andrea for a long time. He’s well known to a lot of folks in Silicon Valley. Andrea led Runtime Design Automation for 22 years before being acquired by Altair almost four years ago. Before that he was a researcher at Siemens. Andrea holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley. He has forgotten more about chip design methodology than most people know. He is the perfect person to tell the cloud enablement story. I wrote about a cloud enablement presentation from Andrea here.
Now to the story told during the webinar. There are two key items covered in this event:
An explanation of Altair Accelerator™ Rapid Scaling technology and how it delivers on the promise of efficient chip design on AWS.A demonstration of how Rapid Scaling works in the Annapurna Labs chip design workflow and a discussion the business merits of this approachThe Annapurna Labs design team was managing workloads on a number of dedicated Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and they could occasionally scale up by manually adding new On-Demand instances. However, the process was not automated and led to high touch, forgotten unused compute resources, and either under-scaling or excessive scaling. When you’re dealing with essentially infinite compute resources, inefficiency can get out of hand quickly. The team at Annapurna Labs is designing some very sophisticated technology including AWS Nitro, Inferentia custom machine learning chips, and AWS Graviton2 processors, based on the 64-bit Arm Neoverse architecture purpose-built cloud server. With this kind of complexity, inefficiency can get very expensive.
By deploying a technology from Altair called Rapid Scaling, the efficiency of the design workflow at Annapurna Labs increased by a spectacular margin. You’ll need to attend the webinar to get the exact statistics and how the solution was implemented. A key part of the strategy is something called a license-first approach. The webinar shares details about how Altair’s technology was deployed and what the impact was on the Annapurna Labs design workflow. You’ll be impressed with the results.
The webinar will take place in two time zones, 11:00am CET and 2:00pm EST on April 28. You can choose your preferred time zone and register for the event here. If you’re considering a move to the cloud and are concerned about how to manage costs, I strongly recommend you attend this webinar to see how Annapurna Labs and Altair team up for rapid chip design in the cloud.
P.S. How much EUV chip demand comes from Cloud & Silicon Brain guys. Speaking technically? A whole bunch. Where are the shill/"expert" WAGs?
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