Semico is a semiconductor marketing & consulting research company located in Phoenix, Arizona. We offer custom consulting, portfolio packages, individual market research studies and premier industry conferences.
To combat rising SoC design costs and increasingly complex software applications, a solution has been developed: the incorporation of AI functionality into existing EDA tools as an aid to silicon and software designers. A new report from Semico Research, Designing New Directions in the EDA Market: Designing with AI Tools (SC109-20) projects that cost savings from using AI EDA tools for SoC designs ranges from 20% to 30%.
Analog ICs are critical to nearly all electronic devices. The global electronics market is expected to consume over 160 billion Analog ICs in 2020. This translates to several Analog ICs per electronic device but is down 1.5% compared to 2019 unit sales. While Analog ICs are essential to electronic systems, this will mark the second year in which revenues and units both register declines. That has not happened before during the past 20 years. The Analog average selling price has been dropping for five years and is expected to fall to only $0.318 in 2020.
Semico tracks over 1,000 semiconductor fabs in its Fab Database. The database includes detailed information about the fabs, including the operating status of the fab, its location, process and products, wafer size and capacity, and more. The other document included with the database is a Word file containing a summary of updates made to fabs by company type: Memory, Foundries, and Other.
published by Rich Wawrzyniak on Mon, 2020-09-14 23:42
On September 13, 2020, NVIDIA announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Arm Holdings from SoftBank for $40 billion in a combination of NVIDIA stock and cash. SoftBank will retain a 10% interest in Arm. While there are regulatory issues to be resolved in the UK, the US and China, NVIDIA anticipates this process will take 12 to 18 months. The process of integrating the two companies will not start until the deal is consummated.
With first half results in, we have some perspective on this historic year. Revenues were up 5.9% from 1H 2019, and they were down 3% from 2H 2019. Revenues in 2Q 2020 were down only 0.9% from 1Q 2020, and they were up 5.0% from 2Q 2019. Units in the 2Q were down 2.4% compared to 1Q 2020, and they were down 2.7% compared to 2Q 2019.
On a regional basis, China had the best results in 2Q 2020, with revenues up 6.6% and units up 7.1%. This reflects the country recovering from the devastating lockdowns the country experienced ........
The unanticipated COVID-19 pandemic is playing havoc with both the world economic scene as well as the semiconductor industry outlook. In January 2020, as Wuhan, China and other surrounding areas shut down, there was speculation that the world would experience an interruption in the supply chain. Today it is clear that the U.S. and world GDP have been affected, and most forecasters adjusted their numbers down. On the other hand, the semiconductor industry is experiencing some positive results by responding quickly to the warning signs from China and the shelter-at-home directive.
Our interaction with electronic devices has changed much over the decades. We have gone from command-line to graphical user interfaces to touchscreens. We have now arrived at a new user interface: voice interaction with assistants such as Amazon's Alexa. Smart speakers installed with a voice assistant are the new way to easily play music or get information. Speakers have transitioned to interactive, connected devices that can operate in concert with other smart devices in the home.
Our interaction with electronic devices has changed much over the decades. A big step up was the transition from command-line to graphical user interface, along with keyboards and mice. The next big jump was the touchscreen, which had been around for decades before being popularized on a global scale by Apple’s iPhone in 2007. We now have arrived at a new user interface: voice supported by natural language processing.
published by Rich Wawrzyniak on Thu, 2020-07-23 21:37
On June 23rd, 2020, Siemens AG signed a letter of intent to acquire Cambridge, UK-based 3rd Party Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) vendor, UltraSoC. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed except to say Siemens plans to integrate UltraSoC’s technology into the Xcelerator portfolio as part of Mentor’s Tessent™ software product suite. The acquisition is expected to close in Siemens 4th fiscal quarter this year.
There are several areas where this acquisition is impactful to the SIP market, the EDA market and the broader semiconductor market.
The Wafer Demand Summary and Assumptions is a quarterly publication. It includes an excel spreadsheet with annual wafer demand by product by technology from 2010-2024. Product categories include DRAM, SRAM, NAND, NOR, Other Non-volatile, MPU, MCU, DSP, Computing MOS Logic, Communications MOS Logic, Consumer MOS Logic, Automotive MOS Logic, Other MOS Logic, Programmable Logic, Standard Cell, Gate Array, Analog, Discrete, Optoelectronics, Sensors and Digital Bipolar.
