Semiconductor companies are spending more than ever to stay competitive.  In 2015, the total amount spent is forecast to be $68.7 billion, up 9% from 2014’s $63.3 billion.  This breaks the previous record set in 2011 at $63.8 billion, as shown in the following graph. 

Total Semiconductor Capital Expenditures, 2009-2015

Source:  Semico Research Corp.

The Top 15

Accounting for almost 90% of the total spending are fifteen companies.  The top fifteen companies stayed the same from 2014 to 2015, but their order did change somewhat.  The top five spenders are no surprise, with Samsung in the top spot, followed by TSMC.  What is unusual is Intel slipping into the third position.  To round out the top five, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Hynix switched places as the foundry expects to increase spending 22% this year versus Hynix’s 5% increase.  In the top fifteen, the company with the largest increase is Sony, with a 207% increase to almost US$2 billion.  The bulk of this increase is to expand image sensor production capacity, but some will also be spent on camera module production capacity, a relatively new market for Sony.  Sony’s dollar increase is second only to Samsung’s, but this is partly due to the decline in value of the yen.

On June 16, 2015 at the E3 show AMD rolled out its high end graphics GPU, Fiji, which features its High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) on its high end desktop graphics cards, the Radeon R9 300 series.

AMD’s top of the line GPU, Radeon Fury X has 4 GB of HBM delivering up to 512 Gbits/sec of memory bandwidth (increase of 63% over previous generation), with 4,096 stream processors and 64 compute units up to 1.05 GHz. The 28nm Fury X is liquid cooled. AMD also introduced air-cooled models, Fury with 56 compute units operating at 1 GHz and the R9 Fury Nano. All of these GPUs use HBM.

AMD is touting HBM for its improved performance and power consumption compared to GDDR5. The memory technology was developed by SK Hynix. The resulting solution offers three times the performance per watt with 94% less PCB area. This enables a smaller graphics card for the Fury nano card.

The enabling technology for HBM is the 2.5D packaging technology.  AMD and SK Hynix partnered to define and develop the first complete specification and prototype. The technology employs through silicon vias (TSVs) and micro-bumps to connect one stacked DRAM to the next. The stacked die also connect via TSV and micro-bumps to a logic die which provides the PHY interface to the GPU. Up to 4 stacks surround the GPU on an interposer.