ST Makes it Official: Chery to Succeed Bozotti
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ST Makes it Official: Chery to Succeed Bozotti

　　STMicroelectronics made official what had been widely presumed: that Jean-Marc Chery, currently the company's chief operating officer, will take the reins from CEO Carlo Bozotti when Bozotti retires later this year.　　ST (Geneva) reported fourth quarter and year-end results that bested analysts' expectations, driven by strength in the automotive sector and growth across the board. ST's 2017 sales increased by 20 percent overall, with automotive sales growing by 9 percent.　　ST said Chery, who last April was elevated to the position of deputy CEO, will assume the role of president and CEO and become the sole member of the company's managing board immediately following its annual shareholder meeting expected in April or May. Chery has been with ST since its formation in 1987.　　Bozotti's retirement has been anticipated in recent years. He has been CEO of ST since 2005 and is widely credited with turning the company around after years of lackluster financial performance.　　In a conference call with analysts to discuss ST's quarterly and fiscal year financial results, Bozotti largely focused on the automotive sector and the Internet of Things, saying areas like imaging will play an important part in automotive over the next 10 years. "We want to be there," he said.　　Other key areas that will be a focus of ST in the near future will be microcontrollers for industrial, wireless connectivity, security and intelligence in the microcontroller, enabling AI at the edge, he said.　　"We are executing on a growth strategy centered on the most promising application domains: smart driving, internet of things, including industrial, and the non-digital part of smartphones," Bozotti said. "This enables us to cover 40 percent of the total semiconductor market.  Importantly, our unique product portfolio offers all of the essential blocks to serve the IoT and smart driving applications."　　ST announced 2017 net revenues of $8.35 billion, up 19.7 percent over 2016, with fiscal fourth quarter net revenue of $2.47 billion, up 15.5 percent sequentially.　　Revenue from ST's top 10 customers – Apple, Bosch, Cisco, Conti, HP, Huawei, Nintendo, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital – was up 37 percent in 2017.  Growth by product group was highest from the analog, MEMS and sensors group, where revenues were up 41.4 percent, as a result of triple-digit growth in imaging and strong growth in both analog and MEMS. The microcontroller and digital IC group revenues increased 15.8 percent and the automotive and discrete group revenues increased 8.8 percent.　　Bozotti said the average ST content in a car has continued to increase, with the company now providing up to 1,000 semiconductor components in a premium car like the Audi A8.　　"In the area of safer driving we made good progress in product development and production ramp up, and we achieved substantial growth with ADAS-related components," he said.　　In other product areas, Bozotti added, “We also continued to see strong growth and market traction with our 32-bit microcontroller families for automotive, particularly in body and gateway applications at several car makers.”　　On the technology development front, Chery said ST would focus in 2018 on developing differentiated flavors of its BCD [bipolar, CMOS and power DMOS] technology family, which allows the company to address higher power and voltage applications as well as galvanic isolation, and on further developing its next generation of imaging technologies. He said the company would launch a new single photon avalanche diode (SPAD) in 40nm technology enabling "a step change" in performance for time-of-flight applications.　　Chery said ST's CMOS technology roadmap is evolving along three axes of development. "First, we are enriching our 28nm FD-SOI platform with additional features to address RF and space applications," he said.　　"Second, we recently announced our adoption of 22FDX foundry technology as the next node in our FD-SOI roadmap targeting specific high performance and low power products. And, third, we are working with 16 and 7nm FinFET platforms from foundry partners where we are designing products for high density digital applications including SoCs for autonomous driving.
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China Forecast to Miss Chip Targets
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China Forecast to Miss Chip Targets

　　China’s ambitious drive to expand its semiconductor industry will fall far short of its targets, according to Bill McClean, president of IC Insights. In the short term, 2018 will be a good year for the global chip industry, despite the ups and downs of the DRAM market and capital spending, he said.　　China will fill 15 percent of its semiconductor needs in 2020 and perhaps 20 percent in 2022, McClean predicts. That’s significant growth, but far from the targets of 40 percent in 2020 and 70 percent in 2022 that the China government has set.　　The goals are “just ludicrous…China taking over the rest of the world in IC production is not happening,” McClean said at an annual talk here.　　The country has pledged as much as $120 billion to fund its chip industry, in part because it spends more on importing semiconductors than on oil. But McClean expects only about 10 percent of those funds will be spent over the next three years on capital equipment.　　He pegged China IC production in 2022 at $33.6 billion, 7.2 percent of the worldwide total, up from five percent last year. “Even with some upside, China will still make less than 10 percent of the world’s production by 2022…I could see China getting 10 percent of the DRAM market, but not taking big chunks out of Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix,” he said.　　McClean believes Samsung’s decision to spend $26 billion on capex last year — more than twice its average — was motivated largely by China’s ambitions. “They are firing the first shot against the China companies. They want to get so much capacity it will shut them down immediately,” he said.　　Samsung's capex investment, announced last fall, is more than Intel and TSMC spent on capex combined. “It was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in the industry,” said McClean who started his career as an analyst 38 years ago.　　“Maybe I’m too skeptical. Some say China will do what it did in steel and other industries, but chips are not the same thing — 18nm DRAM technology is not easy to master,” he said.　　China is expected to consume 43 percent of the world’s ICs in 2022, up from 38 percent last year. That includes big assemblers such as Foxconn making iPhones in China for world markets. DRAM is the biggest part of China’s spending, about $27.5 billion last year, McClean estimated.　　SK Hynix owns the biggest fab in China by far, a DRAM operation in Wuxi expected to kick out $8.4 billion in memories by 2022.  Samsung is a distant second, expanding its 3D NAND production in China to an estimated $6.1 billion by that year.　　“Of the top six IC makers in China, only two are Chinese companies,” McClean noted.　　SMIC is a distant third, reaching $4.6 billion in 2022. XMC is expected to rise from eighth to fifth as part of the new Yangtze Memory Technology Corp. (YMTC), hitting $1.8 billion that year.　　In 2006-7, China fabs took 13.3 percent of the pure-play foundry market. McClean doesn’t expect them to return to that level now that Samsung, Globalfoundries and Intel are gunning for share.　　As for memory, Tsinghua Unigroup announced plans to spend $30 billion on YMTC to make 3D NAND and eventually DRAM. However, the spending comes in phases and “I don’t think it’s all going to hit… if they only get 50 percent utilization of first phase, they won’t do the next phase,” he said.　　McClean expressed doubts YMTC’s partner, Spansion, which is now part of Cypress, has the memory technology the China fab will need. Similarly, he believes UMC’s embedded DRAM, said to be the basis for products at Jin Hua Integrated Circuit Co. (JHICC), and ISSI’s memory technology to be used for mobile DRAM at a $2.7 billion fab called Innotron, will prove insufficient.　　Micron sued UMC for trade secret violations as part of its JHICC partnership. “This is just the start” of patent disputes, to come, McClean said.　　After ZTE was fined a record $892 million for shipping systems to Iran, and Tsinghua Unigroup made a bid to buy Micron in 2015, “all the governments are on high alert.” China’s opportunity for purchasing chip technology has largely “faded away,” he said, noting a failed effort to buy Lattice.　　Overall, chip sales could hit $393.93 billion this year, up another eight percent from last year’s unusually high 22 percent growth. Unlike the 58 percent surge largely in memory prices in 2017, this year’s rise should be based on unit growth and more evenly split among logic, analog and memory.　　“I think it’s going to be a good year,” McClean said.　　“Overall the China economy is relatively healthy, and all the largest markets — PCs, smartphones... are in China — so a healthy China market is key to a healthy market overall,” he said.　　Chips will rise again in 2019 to hit $416.6 billion before semiconductor and world economic markets are expected to have a correction of unknown magnitude. “We expect a cyclical slowdown in worldwide GDP in 2020, but it’s unclear when it will come,” he said.　　DRAM prices rose an “incredible” 60 percent last year while unit production fell. Overall memory ASPs should only rise another 5 percent this year, IC Insights predicts.　　“I think we will see DRAM pricing tone down a bit because it’s starting to impact customers negatively — China’s smartphone companies are complaining to their government about Samsung,” he said.　　Both DRAM and 3D NAND are forcing big increases in capex. Western Digital showed estimates of at least a five-fold rise in cost per wafer moving from planar to 3D NAND.　　The memory surge boosted Samsung past Intel by just $100 million to become the top semiconductor company last year. “It’s more a case of Samsung doing well than Intel doing poorly,” McClean said, noting the South Korean giant’s steady rise to a 13.9 percent market share in chips last year from 3.8 percent in 1993.　　Overall, industry capex could be up or down 8 percent based on whether Samsung continues to spend 40 percent of sales or goes back to average levels. China may pick up the slack in capex, and Toshiba is expected to surge its spending this year after keeping a lid on during its tumultuous 2017, he said.　　Finally, McClean predicted either Qualcomm will buy NXP or Broadcom will by Qualcomm.　　“I thought Broadcom might have a good chance, but if Qualcomm buys NXP that’s a big fish to swallow with questions of a monopoly — it gets more difficult,” he said.　　Qualcomm becomes a $26 billion company with NXP, the largest semiconductor acquisition announced to date. McClean expressed surprise the EU recently approved the deal, potentially leaving just two chip vendors based in Europe.　　If China gives its approval to the NXP deal, the world’s largest fabless company would suddenly own seven fabs.　　“Qualcomm is excited to have fabs as a new toy to play with, so I think they will keep or expand them. It will shake up the whole fabless/IDM thing,” he said.
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Intel Promises More Secure Chips This Year
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Intel Promises More Secure Chips This Year

　　Intel will begin releasing later this year redesigned chips that address recently disclosed processor security vulnerabilities, CEO Brian Krzanich said during a conference call with analysts after the company reported fourth quarter results and gave a first quarter forecast that beat Wall Street's expectations.　　Intel reported reported that sales grew by 4 percent in the fourth quarter to reach $17.1 billion and 6 percent for the year to reach a record $62.8 billion. The company expects sales for the current quarter to be between $14.5 billion and $15.5 billion, compared to $14.8 billion in the second quarter of 2017.　　"We just wrapped up the best year in Intel's history with the best quarter in Intel's history," Krzanich told analysts on the conference call.　　Continuing with what has been a reoccuring theme in recent years, he emphasized Intel's progress in transforming itself from a PC-centric chip supplier to a "data-centric" chip supplier, reflecting the broader role of semiconductors in society amid continual decline in PC sales. Intel's non-PC revenue grew by 21 percent in 2017 to reach 47 percent of the company's total sales.　　Krzanich also took pains to highlight Intel's focus on security in the wake of the disclosure earlier this month that researchers from Google and other organizations had discovered security vulnerabilities in processors that could expose data to hackers using sophisticated software analysis methods. Krzanich said Intel has been working "around the clock" with customers and partners to address the vulnerabilities, known as Spectre and Meltdown.　　Firmware patches and other software mitigation issues that have been available since shortly after the vulnerabilities were disclosed have a negative impact on system performance depending on the workload, and Intel said recently that the patches can cause systems to reboot prematurely and recommended that users stop implementing them until revised versions are available next week.　　"While we've made progress, I'm acutely aware that we have more to do," Krzanich told analysts. "We've committed to being transparent keeping our customers and owners appraised of our progress and through our actions, building trust."　　While Intel's immediate focus is on delivering better mitigation patches, the company has already begun working to incorporate silicon-based changes to future products that will directly address the Spectre and Meltdown threats, Krzanich said. These products will begin appearing later this year, he added.　　"This will be an ongoing journey, but we're committed to the task and confident we’re up to the challenge," Krzanich said.　　While Intel's data-centric revenue grew significantly in both the fourth quarter and in 2017 as a whole, PC-centric revenue of $9 billion in the fourth quarter was down 2 percent year-over-year. For the year, though, PC-centric revenue of $34 billion was an increase of 3 percent compared to 2016.　　Krzanich said Intel was helped during the quarter by in improved environment for PCs and declining manufacturing costs for 14nm chips.　　Intel also said it would increase capital spending this year to about $14 billion, up from about $12 billion in 2017. About $2 billion of the $14 billion is set to come from customer prepayments from memory supply agreements.
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JDI's Finger Sensor: Too Little Too Late?
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JDI's Finger Sensor: Too Little Too Late?

　　In search of a new market beyond smartphones, Japan Display Inc. (JDI) unveiled a transparent glass-based capacitive fingerprint sensor.　　For JDI, a Sony-Toshiba-Hitachi collaboration that has been mired in the red, sensors represent a whole new market. Although its TFT-based fingerprint sensors have certain advantages over silicon-based solutions, JDI might be arriving too late with too little, observed industry analysts.　　Katsuhisa Yuda, executive officer and president of JDI's Display Solutions Company, explained during a media briefing here that the new sensors were developed as an extension of the company’s LCD module, known as in-cell Pixel Eyes.　　With Pixel Eyes, JDI had already integrated a basic touch function into the glass substrate of the TFT display. Pixel Eyes eliminates the need to add an external touch-panel module.　　But with the new technology, “We have gone a step further,” explained Yuda. The glass substrate can now not only identify where a finger touches, but also "read" the changes in capacitance caused by the recesses and ridges of an individual fingerprints.　　The end result is a capacitive fingerprint sensor on a pane of glass. JDI is hopeful that the high transparency of the glass substrate will open the door to a broad range of new applications not possible on widely available silicon-based fingerprint sensors. The goal is to go beyond smartphone displays to credit cards, door locks and elsewhere. “We can combine it with a backlight, or use it on a flexible surface,” Yuda said.　　There are two approaches to TFT-based circuitry for fingerprint solutions. The first replaces the silicon but still offers a stand-alone fingerprint module. The other integrates sensor circuitry into the display’s TFT backplane for an in-display solution. What JDI is offering here is the former. The company provides a sensor module with an effective sensor measuring 8.0mm x 8.0mm. With 508 dpi pixel density, it offers 256 gradation and 160 x 160 resolution.　　The winter for fingerprint sensor suppliers?　　Had this innovation come a year ago, when the industry was worried about the emerging trend of removing the home button from smartphones, this might be a different story. Then, OEMs, controller IC makers and panel makers were frantic for display-based fingerprint sensors with a variable sensing area for greater flexibility, as well as multi-finger input assigned through the OS for more convenience.　　IHS Markit then argued the advantages of display-based fingerprint sensors as being “invisible and not affecting the appearance of the set.” The firm also argued that display-based sensors might be cheaper than their silicon-based counterparts.　　A year later, though, the market research firm’s latest “Fingerprint Sensors Overview Report," issued earlier this month, introduces a fresh plot twist.　　Jamie Fox, principal analyst for LEDs and lighting at IHS Markit, wrote: “The fingerprint sensors market is facing a major disruption following the introduction of Face ID, a facial recognition system designed and developed by Apple Inc. for its iPhone X, along with the forthcoming arrival of in-display sensors and Chinese vendors winning market share from Western vendors.”　　He noted, “Overall, Apple’s decision to replace Touch ID with Face ID will lead to 1.1 billion fewer fingerprint sensors produced by the end of 2021 than if Apple had maintained Touch ID in iPhones.”　　During the press briefing, Yuda was asked if JDI plans to test the smartphone market with its new fingerprint sensor. He said JDI is “undecided,” an indication of its reluctance to engage an already brutally price-competitive market.　　The lay of the lan　　Calvin Hsieh, director of touch and user interface at IHS Markit, doesn’t believe JDI has much chance in the smartphone fingerprint market. He told EE Times this week, “JDI cannot get into the smartphone fingerprint sensor market, because of the falling ASP (average selling price) trend.”　　He explained that silicon- and display-based fingerprint solutions are positioned differently. With silicon, he said that capacitive type is mainstream, mostly made of silicon and mature for all product segments. Its ASP is $1.20 to 3.　　In the display-based segment, he noted, “So far, CIS under-display solution is mainstream, only for AMOLED (cannot be applied to LCD), and high-level. Its ASP is $10-$12.”　　Qualcomm Sense ID — ultrasonic fingerprint solution — is display-based, he said, but won’t be ready until the end of the first quarter this year. Hsieh said its ASP is not yet known. “Its advantage [over CIS] is live-body detection,” he added.　　In short, with or without JDI’s glass-based capacitive sensor, the smartphone market has enough related technologies.　　Silicon-based vs. TFT-based　　So, what are the pros and cons of silicon-based vs. TF-based fingerprint solutions?　　TFT-based (on glass or plastic) solutions — JDI’s fingerprint sensor among them — “can make use of lower-cost TFT process,” Hsieh said. “It also can digest panel markets’ smaller gen sized fabs.” He added, “To lower ASP, IC maker is the key — 508 ppi (no display circuits) is not difficult to panel makers but they need read-out IC.”　　Silicon-based solutions are “very mature and affordable now,” Hsieh said.　　Hsieh’s bottom line is that TFT-based fingerprint sensor is “one year late to enter the smartphone market.” For JDI, commercial (highlighting low cost and flexible endurance) market is the way to go, he concluded.　　JDI’s Yuda believes that in the growing world of the Internet of Things (IoT), high security devices are paramount. “Individual certification systems also require even higher security systems, and use fingerprint sensors,” he predicted. “Transparent fingerprint sensors should improve the degrees of design freedom to enable such sensors to be installed in nearly every device to make security enhancement much easier.”　　Yuda predicts that TFT-based fingerprint solutions will replace silicon. Silicon, he noted is brittle. “It can break.” Hsieh agreed. “If it can be TFT-based and flexible, endurance can be the winning factor,” he said.　　JDI will start commercial shipments of its new fingerprint sensors during its 2018 fiscal year, which ends in March of 2019.　　JDI’s non-smartphone business　　Yuda became the head of JDI’s Display Solutions Company last fall. His charter is to cultivate new markets other than smartphones. “Although my company has ‘display’ in its name, our business is not constrained to displays,” he said.　　Among Display Solutions Company’s product portfolio, existing products are screens for high-end digital cameras, reflective LCDs for wearable devices and displays for VR headsets and high-end notebook PCs. By fiscal 2020, the goal for Yuda’s group is to generate revenue of 100 billion yen. The group is already halfway there based on current product lines, according to Yuda. A range of products currently gestating at JDI’s Display Solutions Company include fingerprint sensors and reflective displays for in-store tags — designed under a partnership with E-Ink.　　JDI’s current financial woes stem largely from its late entry into OLED technology. JDI, whose business was traditionally dependent on Apple’s iPhones, suffered a hit from Apple’s recent decision to switch to OLED panels for iPhone X.　　JDI will begin making smartphone OLED panels in 2019. However, by then, several rivals who began OLED investment earlier are widely expected to have started production.
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Microsemi Reportedly Mulls Sale
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Microsemi Reportedly Mulls Sale

　　Chipmaker Microsemi has been approached with a takeover offer and is exploring its options, including possible sale, according to a report by the Reuters news service.　　The report, which cites an anonymous source said to be "familiar with the matter," says that Microsemi hired investment bank Qatalyst Partners to advise the company on its the prudent course of action.　　Microsemi (Mission Viejo, Calif.) did not respond to a request for comment made by EE Times.　　The merger and acquisition wave that has gripped the semiconductor industry over the last two years subsided somewhat last year, with the total value of semiconductor industry M&A deals announced falling to $27.7 billion, down from $107.3 billion in 2015 and $99.8 billion in 2016, according to market watcher IC Insights. A dwindling number of chip companies considered ripe for takeover is one of the principal reasons that market watchers believe the M&A fervor has cooled.　　However, Microsemi is considered a high-value target, with 2017 revenue of around $1.8 billion, up from $1.66 billion in 2016. The company has a leadership position in chips for military and aerospace applications, as well as products for data center and industrial markets.　　Analysts, including Christopher Rolland of Susquehanna Financial Group, have included Microsemi among their leading candidates for acquisition among semiconductor companies in 2018.
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Startup Claims AI Design Wins
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Startup Claims AI Design Wins

　　Startup Gyrfalcon is moving fast with a chip for inferencing on deep neural networks, but it faces an increasingly crowded market in AI silicon. A year after it got its first funding, the company is showing a working chip and claiming design wins in smartphones, security cameras, and industrial automation equipment.　　Data centers typically train deep neural networks and run inference tasks on them using banks of servers. Increasingly, client and embedded systems from cars to handsets are adopting accelerators to speed the inferencing jobs.　　Apple, Google, and Huawei are already shipping smartphones with inferencing blocks in their custom SoCs. Google and Microsoft built inference accelerators for their data centers.　　Among merchant suppliers, Movidius, now part of Intel, is shipping inference chips while Cadence, Ceva, and Synopsis are supplying IP blocks and Imagination and ARM have announced plans. At least a dozen other startups are still in stealth mode with AI siliconincluding Groq, founded by a group of former Google chip developers to build an inference chip.　　“Most of the action in inference is from the IP suppliers; largely, this will be a market for integrated chips,” said Linley Gwennap, principal of market watcher The Linley Group.　　For its part, Gyrfalcon has been showing since late last fall working silicon for its Lightspeeur SPR2801 processor for convolutional neural nets (CNNs). The 28-nm TSMC chip fits in a 7 x 7-mm package and packs tens of thousands of proprietary cores and embedded SRAM to crank out 9.3 TOPS/watt without external DRAM. The cores are mainly ALUs with associated memory and logic for controlling dataflows.　　The chip uses ideas that one of its co-founders, chief scientist Lin Yang, articulated in a 1988 Ph.D. paper about CNNs while he was at UC Berkeley. The chip only accelerates CNNs, one of the most popular of a wide variety of neural nets in use.　　A top-five smartphone maker will use the chip in a future flagship phone, said Frank Lin, co-founder and president of the startup. In China, a large insurance company will design it into surveillance cameras and a steelmaker in Shanghai will use it in inspection systems.　　“We moved very fast from getting our first funding in February last year to having an FPGA verified in April and a chip back from TSMC in mid-September,” said Lin.　　Gyrfalcon announced in December that its chip will be used next to a parallel processor from Socionext of Japan in a platform for video analysis. The joint product should be available in March, with Bilkon Ltd., a surveillance systems maker in Turkey, as its first customer.　　QuickLogic is evaluating the Gyrfalcon chip for possible use along with a future generation of its sensor hub for detecting wake words in a variety of “hearable” products. Of a dozen companies building inference chips and a handful that QuickLogic has evaluated, “they are targeting our market more closely than others we’ve seen,” said Timothy Saxe, QuickLogic’s CTO.　　AI agents such as Amazon’s “Alexa will drive people to want more natural-language processing over broader vocabularies, so we need to partner with someone who can accelerate that,” said Saxe.　　Gyrfalcon has ambitious plans to field a second product by June, with increased performance and a whole new family of chips by the end of the year. It also is exploring the possibility of custom versions consuming as little as 50 milliwatts for high-volume customers.　　The startup designed a PCI Express card for using its chip in servers. It will follow in the footsteps of Movidius, releasing by April a $69 USB dongle with its chip, aimed to attract a broader set of CNN software developers.　　“We don’t want only Ph.D.s to do this work — the dongle has several neural network models preloaded and it’s very easy to use,” said Lin, who helped China Mobile launch its international business before joining the startup.　　Lin would not say how much money the startup has raised from investors in China, Korea, Japan, and the U.S. in two rounds so far. “For 2018, the money we raised can support us, and with our design-ins and potential orders, we’ll have revenue this year and even hope to break even,” he said.　　So far, the company has 41 employees, most of them based in Silicon Valley.
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UMC Slashes Capex
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UMC Slashes Capex

　　United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) said it will pare its capital expenditures for this year to $1.1 billion as the company expects no significant increase in sales this year.　　Taiwan’s second-largest foundry will cut its capex by about a quarter from the $1.4 billion it spent in 2017. The company during most of 2017 was targeting a capex of $1.7 billion after spending $2 billion in 2016.　　The spending cuts come as the company’s sales of 28nm products flounder amid strong competition. UMC’s most advanced 14nm process technology, which the company launched in the second quarter last year, accounted for 2 percent of its overall sales during the fourth quarter of 2017.　　"Our 2018 revenue is not going to grow significantly," said UMC Co-President Jason Wang at an event to announce the company’s fourth-quarter 2017 results. The company is going through a restructuring transition that may take as many as two years, he said.　　UMC expects the overall foundry segment to grow in the high-single digits this year, a forecast that’s in line with that of its larger competitor, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).　　TSMC believes it will continue to lead chip industry growth in 2018 with the company’s annual revenue gaining by as much as 15 percent from 2017. The overall growth rate for the foundry segment this year will be about 10 percent while the semiconductor industry will grow by as much as 8 percent, according to TSMC.　　UMC will increase expenditures on its 200mm fabs to about a third of capex, compared with about 9 percent last year. The boosted investment in the company’s 200mm facilities is aimed at upgrading existing capacity and strengthening average sales prices.　　Demand for chips made on eight-inch wafers has been “very robust,” according to Wang, particularly for mobile products, RF switches, microcontrollers and display drivers.　　Wang also said UMC will ramp up 14nm production, without providing a timeframe.　　UMC said it aims to “recover” in the 28nm business by expanding sales of its HPC and HPC+ versions later this year. The company said its 28nm high-k/metal gate stack (28HPCU) process can be used for products such as application processors, cellular baseband, FPGAs and networking ICs. The company says its new 28HPCU+ can provide a 15 percent boost in performance for wearable, IoT and automotive applications.　　Still, analysts were less positive about UMC’s outlook for a recovery in 28nm given increasing competition in that node and the likelihood that more foundry customers will migrate to 22nm during this year.　　"We remain negative on the 28 nm supply/demand dynamics and worry about the competitive pressure from TSMC and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC)," said Mark Li, an analyst with Bernstein in Hong Kong. "The number of new 28nm tapeouts is expected to double this year, but UMC also noted they will be from smaller customers and the individual volumes will be small."　　UMC plans to launch its 22nm process later this year, following TSMC, which has already put its own 22nm technology on the market.　　Focus on Returns　　UMC management repeatedly said during the quarterly results announcement that the new focus for the company is return on investment, a guideline that has made the company "cautious about R&D spending." The company has improved its cash flow and said it may acquire existing older capacity or evaluate mergers and acquisitions.　　UMC and TSMC during this month noted an increase in prices for blank wafers. UMC it said it may pass on those increases to customers while TSMC said it would find ways of internally offsetting the higher wafer prices.
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Micron Puts 64-Layer 3D in Enterprise SSDs
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Micron Puts 64-Layer 3D in Enterprise SSDs

　　Micron Technology's first enterprise SATA SSD using its 64-layer 3D NAND isn't a whole lot different than its predecessor, and that's the point.　　The company just introduced its 5200 series SSDs designed for virtualized workloads that rotating media can't handle, such as online transaction processing, virtual desktop infrastructure and media streaming. In a telephone interview with EE Times, Matt Shaine, a Micron product manager, said the new SATA SSDs draw great deal from the 5100-series launched in 2016. “It's been a tremendous success,” Shaine said.　　However, the company believes it's the first 64-layer 3D NAND SSD for the enterprise market, he said.　　The 5200 SSD has the same architecture as its predecessor, including the same controller. The main changes are the use of Micron's TLC 64-layer NAND, said Shaine, while using the same design. "It's a taller sky scraper," he said.　　Micron expects customers to see a lot of value because of their familiarity with the 5100. They're getting increased speed and the latest lithography, while also reducing qualification times.　　The new SSD comes in two flavors, the 5200 ECO and Pro. The Eco is best suited for scaling storage data center capabilities easily and efficiently with capacities up to 7.68TB in a 2.5-inch form factor. The Pro, also in the same form factor, is an all-purpose drive to power read-intensive workload demands, such as burst-driven transaction waves or sudden high-volume web traffic.　　Aside from using the latest 3D NAND, the 5200 series improves the mean time to failure (MTTF) from 2 million device hours to 3 million. But for the most part, the goal was to enable customers to easily migrate to the 5200 with little reconfiguration, said Shaine. Micron continues to support the 5100 line.　　Moving to the latest process technology and lithography quickly reflects the vision of Micron's relatively new leadership. “We had to take a different look at SSD development,” he said.　　The idea of reuse is important, said Shaine. About 95 percent of the firmware in the 5200 is leveraged from its predecessor. He said customers like continuity and dislike surprises. "It makes their quals go faster," he said.　　What's notably missing is NVMe support, but Shaine said it's in the roadmap going forward. “We see a very stable SATA market that we think is not going anywhere,” he said, adding that Micron thinks the enterprise SSD market is growing, including SAS, SATA and NVMe. Micron has been able to increase its share in the enterprise segment.　　“A good chunk of that has been driven by the 5100,” Shaine said.　　Steve Hanna, Micron's senior product marketing manager for enterprise SSDs, said consistency is key when it comes to this market and enterprise applications. Micron is focused on differentiating itself with quality of service (QoS) and MTTF, he said, and other features such as flex capacity, which enables customers to tune the SSD for specific workloads that are prone to rapid change.　　Hanna said there's lots of room for Micron to build on its recent growth in the enterprise SSD space. In 2016, only 10 percent of servers shipped with SSDs, he said, and in 2017, 18 percent. “The boots-on-the-ground reality is there hasn't been as much penetration as the chatter,” Hanna said.　　Gregory Wong, founder and principal analyst with Forward Insights, said Micron is one of the early entrants to bring 64-layer NAND to the data center. “For them, it's a milestone,” Wong said.　　For the most part, however, the specs are the same for the 5200 SSD as the prior generation. But the MTTF improvement to 3 million compared with 2 million is notable, Wong said. “They were able to move to a new technology, maintain the performance, and have an improved MTTF spec,” he said, something data center customers will look at positively.　　Wong said Micron has been a relatively small player in enterprise SSD market. In 2016, its share was less than 2 percent. “The 5100 got them a lot of traction,” Wong said. He said the company's share is now more than 5 percent.　　“In the bigger scheme of things, it's still relatively small," Wong said. "But doubling their share is quite an achievement. The 5200 is supposed to continue that momentum.”　　There two aspects to the enterprise SSD market — the traditional OEMs and the data center. “If you look at the enterprise OEMs, a lot of flash going in is replacing high performance drives,” said Wong. “On the data center cloud side, it's not a replacement, they're using flash for specific reasons.”　　Enterprise data center deployments are based on budgets, and storage is part of IT costing, Wong said, but for cloud companies such as Google and Facebook, it's about end user experience. “The cloud guys can monetize it,” he said.　　Despite a lot of discussion that this year will see a tipping point in NVMe adoption, there's still a strong demand for SATA SSDs, said Wong, with prices even going up, thanks in part to NAND flash shortages. “Even with the price increases, on the enterprise side the total cost of ownership still makes sense,” he said.　　And although 8TB is now the highest capacity available for SATA SSDs, the mainstream is still using one or two terabyte drives, he said. “When you get to four and eight, companies are thinking of moving to NVMe,” Wong said.
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Release time：2018-01-25 00:00 reading：1132 Continue reading>>
UMC Expects A Ito Grow to $3 Billion Business
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UMC Expects A Ito Grow to $3 Billion Business

　　United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) expects artificial intelligence (AI) to contribute $3 billion to company revenue by 2021 as demand for edge computing and automotive devices takes off.　　AI is forecast to be one of the fastest growing markets during the next few years as more companies adopt machine learning in everything from autonomous vehicles to cryptocurrency mining. The global AI market for semiconductors is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 63 percent between 2016 and 2022, reaching $16 billion by 2022, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets.　　UMC sees the driving forces behind the foundry business shifting from smartphones to AI and autonomous vehicles. While UMC declined to quantify how much its AI business is currently worth, the company said it is already doing AI-related work for edge computing devices and cars.　　“In recent months, we’ve seen a lot of customers coming to us to talk about the automobile segment,” said UMC Senior Vice President of Marketing Steven Liu in an interview with EE Times. “Not just Europe. We also see a lot of requests from Japan and the U.S.” That demand is coming from both IDMs and fabless companies, he said.　　In the automotive segment, UMC silicon goes into the power train, infotainment systems, ADAS and safety systems. UMC currently builds MCUs for infotainment and ADAS.　　More business is coming to UMC through fabless companies such as Faraday Technology Corp., a company that’s part of the UMC ecosystem.　　“Business for the design houses has been much stronger than I anticipated,” according to Liu. “The customer portfolio is different from before. A lot of the demand is from medium and small AI-related companies. We do see the momentum continuing.”　　UMC’s revenue contribution from the automotive segment doubled between 2016 and 2017. Due to the stringent safety and quality requirements of the industry, UMC is taking a long-term view toward development work, much of which probably will not pan out until 2020 or even 2030, according to Liu. Power and ADAS are two areas where UMC sees strong demand.　　Automobiles will soon play a different role, and quality, safety and the ability to communicate will become very important. UMC aims to focus on its automotive business by providing better quality and reliability. MCUs and ALRs are devices the company will aim for.　　UMC expects power-related devices to show huge potential over the next 10years. “We have an advantage today, and we will definitely enhance our technology leadership,” according to Liu. UMC will announce partnerships with customers this year, he said.　　Beyond the automotive business, UMC is aiming to provide devices for data sensing in edge computing such as MEMS sensors, audio codecs, control MCUs for robots and application processors for parallel computing.　　UMC is also evaluating emerging memories such as MRAM.　　“There is a chance we can be a leader here,” according to Liu. “At this moment, we are evaluating more than seven kinds of memories. Performance, cost and partnerships are among the factors UMC is considering.”　　Moving in a New Direction　　The company sees opportunity in AI as it moves in a new direction.　　“Rather than chasing advanced nodes and following the giants, at this moment, we need to slow down before we pursue the advanced nodes,” Liu said. UMC’s focus will be on edge computing and end devices. The company sees potential in neuromorphic chips. They don’t necessarily need the most advanced process technology, according to Liu.　　“UMC will have very good technology in sensors, which will be key elements for systems to retrieve data,” Liu said. Also microcontrollers. “MCUs will play a critical role for devices in IoT. That’s one reason why we will aim for strategic MCUs and SIM cards. Those are some of the key things that we see for AI.”　　UMC offers a variety of microcontrollers and some of the most competitive bank card solutions, according to Liu.　　UMC says its ecosystem is starting to change as demand for AI-related ASICs heats up. A lot of OEMs have their own design teams for software, algorithms and hardware. What’s different today is that the hardware also involves chip design. That has created a lot of demand, both direct and through design-service companies.　　“Starting from the second half of 2016 through 2017, the design-service companies, especially in Taiwan, have seen their business go crazy,” Liu says.
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Release time：2018-01-25 00:00 reading：1223 Continue reading>>
EU Hits Qualcomm With $1.2 Billion Antitrust Fine
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EU Hits Qualcomm With $1.2 Billion Antitrust Fine

　　Qualcomm plans to appeal a $1.2 billion fine handed down by the European Union regulators related to a former modem chip supply agreement with Apple, the chipmaker said Wednesday (Jan. 24).　　The decision, which comes amid strained relations between Qualcomm and Apple, brings the total amount of fines levied against Qualcomm in recent years to nearly $4 billion.　　The European Commision (EC), the EU's legislative and regulatory arm, said its investigation, which lasted for more than two years, concluded that Qualcomm paid Apple billions of dollars to keep it from buying LTE baseband chips from Qualcomm's rivals, violating EU antitrust rules.　　"Qualcomm illegally shut out rivals from the market for LTE baseband chipsets for over five years, thereby cementing its market dominance," said Margrethe Vestager, an EC commission in charge of competition policy, in a statement posted on the EC website Wednesday.　　Vestager said payments made by Apple to Qualcomm under a contract in place from 2011 to 2016 were made on the condition that Apple would exclusively use Qualcomm's baseband chipsets in all its iPhones and iPads.　　Qualcomm (San Diego) is far and away the market leader in baseband chipsets, though it faces renewed competition from rivals including MediaTek and Intel.　　The EC decision is the latest in a string of antitrust fines handed down against Qualcomm by various jurisdictions in recent years. Qualcomm was fined more than $900 million by South Korea antitrust regulators in 2016, one year after agreeing to pay $975 million to resolve an antitrust dispute in China. Last year, Taiwan fined Qualcomm $774 million for violations of antitrust policy and the U.S. Fair Trade Commission filed suit against Qualcomm over its sales and marketing practices.　　Meanwhile, Qualcomm's relationship with Apple has also deteriorated, coming to a head last year when the firms traded lawsuits over a contract dispute that caused Taiwanese ODMs to withhold payments hundreds of millions of dollars of payments owed to Qualcomm after Qualcomm did not pay money Apple says it owed to the consumer electronics giant.　　In a press statement Thursday, Qualcomm said it strong disagrees with the EC decision.　　"We are confident this agreement did not violate EU competition rules or adversely affect market competition or European consumers," said Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm executive vice president and general counsel. “We have a strong case for judicial review and we will immediately commence that process.”　　Qualcomm added that the EC decision does not relate to Qualcomm’s licensing business and has no impact on ongoing operations.
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Release time：2018-01-25 00:00 reading：1155 Continue reading>>

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