December 13th, 2011 by Mark
Some very interesting news coming out of Europe yesterday as both EE Times and Electronics Weekly reported that, in a Nordic Hardware interview, Intel’s managing director for northern Europe, Pat Bliemer, stated that the company has a 14nm process producing ICs in its laboratories. No ‘official’ news has been released by Intel yet to either confirm or deny this, but the interview, and the reaction to it, is certainly worth noting.
For example, Electronics Weekly’s David Manners covered the development in his blog -’Intel makes 14nm ICs’ – and there were some interesting comments from Malcolm Penn, CEO of industry analysts Future Horizons regarding Intel, Samsung, TSMC and AMD… It’s worth reading for the readers’ comments alone. You can read David’s blog here.
The suspense is palpable 
December 6th, 2011 by Mark
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported today that it has endorsed the projection by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) that 2011 semiconductor sales will be in the region of $302 Billion. According to the SIA’s announcement, “reaching the $300 Billion mark for the first time and representing a 1.3 percent growth rate over the record-breaking year in 2010.” Looking ahead, the WSTS predicts that the semiconductor industry will grow by 3.7% in 2012 and 5.8% in 2013. This tracks with IHS iSuppli’s predicted low single digit growth for 2012, with a rebound in growth delayed until 2013.
You can read the full SIA release here.
December 3rd, 2011 by Mark
EE Times reported December 1st that Intel is set to become a $50 billion company in 2011, with expected growth of 23%.
EE Times’ Peter Clarke reports that “Intel is benefiting from its presence in microprocessors and NAND flash, two product areas that IHS considers “hot” in 2011 and set to generate double-digit revenue growth.” Second placed Samsung is “also benefiting from NAND flash sales, in which it is the world’s leading supplier as well as progress in applications processors, CMOS image sensors and display driver ICs, but this is offset by its exposure to the DRAM market. IHS expects the DRAM market to decline by 27 percent in 2011.”
Above are the top 20 semi companies, as listed by IHS iSuppli (December 2011). The article, which can be viewed in full here, includes some interesting projections about the chip market, with IHS predicting “that ‘extremely weak’ economic conditions will keep 2012 chip market growth at a low single-digit percentage and any rebound in revenue growth will be delayed until 2013.”
November 22nd, 2011 by Mark
Interesting report by Christian Gregor Dieseldorff, SEMI Industry Research and Statistics, that examines how the Japanese semiconductor industry has recovered following the devastating events back in March.
According to Dieseldorff, “Japan’s semiconductor industry has once again proven that it can overcome disaster and recover quickly. Japan is home to a large number of semiconductor companies and has the largest share of total installed fab capacity. In addition, fabs in Japan lead in cutting-edge technology such as 24nm and 19nm NAND Flash. Japan houses the world’s two largest fabs, Flash Alliance’s Fab 4 and Fab 5 in Yokkaichi, reportedly designed for installed capacity of up to 220,000 and 240,000 wafers per month (300mm equivalents).” This technology and capacity growth has been attributed, for the most part, to Toshiba, and its alliance with SanDisk.
The article goes on to look at the share of worldwide capacity for countries with share greater than 15%, worldwide 300mm capacity, and the number of companies with volume fabs by country.
Definitely worth a look. Check it out here.
October 12th, 2011 by Mark
With the Autumn/Fall leaves starting to fall, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, Issue IV 2011 of the quarterly and rather magnificent EuroAsia Semiconductor is published.
The current issue features a cover and in-depth lead article from Geoff Irvine and Xiaohong Chen. The topics discussed include developments in the semiconductor market that reinforce the importance of strategic and highly collaborative partnerships to meet challenges around the introduction of new materials for future technology. The article also looks at the future memory developments and what we might see in coming iterations of semiconductor devices.
So, make some warm cocoa, hunker down and read the online version by clicking here.
