remi francard's List: semi-conductor

• In terms of worldwide fab capacity in 2010, Japan will hold 26 percent of the market, followed by Taiwan (19 percent), Americas (18 percent), Korea (12 percent) Europe and Middle East (12 percent), China (7 percent), Southeast Asia (5 percent), according to Christian Gregor Dieseldorff, an analyst with SEMI.

• However, there appears to be an alarming trend of fewer in-house and third-party solutions available despite the growth prospects of the mobile market

• The silicon foundry giant's 40nm yield problems surfaced earlier this year but the company claimed it largely resolved the problem. However, during a conference call last week, graphics chipmaker Nvidia Corp. discussed 40nm capacity and yield constraints at its foundry partner—TSMC.

  • few actors have the right techno for the market.
    Is 40 nm on track for mass production ?
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• Nvidia's Q3 sales increased to $903.2 million, up 16 percent compared to Q2 and up less than 1 percent compared to Q3 08, the company said Nov. 6.
• The graphics chip vendor recorded a Q3 GAAP net income of $107.6 million, or 19 cents per share, up from $61.7 million, or 11 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter, the company said.
• Nvidia guided Q3 sales to grow 2 percent sequentially to $921 million, better than the Street estimate of $868 million. Management's conservative bias was driven by supply constraints, low 40nm yields at TSMC, and current lead times of 12 to 13 weeks

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• During the opening keynote, Otellini took the opportunity to flex Intel's manufacturing muscles, holding up an Intel manufactured 22nm SRAM test wafer.  32nm is in mass production today but 22nm technology is being test piloted now and is expected to become a production vehicle for 2H 2011.  Incidentally, the wafer is made up of 364Mb SRAM devices comprising some 2.9 billion transistors

• Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC) of Abu Dhabi announced the creation of a leading-edge global semiconductor manufacturing company, born from AMD's existing fabrication infrastructure. That company officially became Global Foundries

• ARM® (LES : ARM) (Nasdaq : ARMH) et GLOBALFOUNDRIES® annoncent   aujourd’hui une relation stratégique à long terme visant à fournir à   leurs clients mutuels un programme d’habilitation SoC innovant. Afin de   soutenir cette relation à long terme, GLOBALFOUNDRIES et ARM ont signé   un accord large portant sur une implémentation de processeur et une   optimisation de circuit en vue de fournir à leurs clients mutuels un   programme d’habilitation robuste axé sur les applications de la   prochaine génération.
• « Ce partenariat hautement complémentaire   exploite le leadership architectural d’ARM et la technologie avancée de   GLOBALFOUNDRIES pour autoriser le déploiement de conceptions SoC en   28 nm caractérisées par une performance exceptionnelle pour les   dispositifs grand public de la prochaine génération. »

• By 2013, a mobile device may use multicore processors, based on 22nm process technology, he said. Such a device could also embrace emerging LTE and 4G networks, DVC and other features for use in high-speed gaming and other functions.
• There might be other issues for ARM as well. ARM is set to outperform Intel in the netbook and smartbook markets over the next two and three years, but that prospect of success could trigger a takeover bid for the company, according to one analyst.

• "The goal is performance, performance, performance," said Eric Schorn, VP of marketing for ARM's processor division. "We are into unlocking some new markets: netbooks, smartbooks, MIDs, consumer electronics in TV and entertainment devices, and enterprise networking, such as things like printers."
• The speed-optimized implementation is aimed at enterprise servers, networking, printers and other peak performance applications requiring clock frequencies up to and in excess of 2-GHz.
• 10,000 Dhrystone MIPS while consuming about 1.9W.

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• Intel designed its six-core Xeon processor in India. IBM has over 100,000 employees in India. A large number of these are building Big Blue’s most sophisticated software products.

• Global pure-play semiconductor revenue is set to amount to $5.6 billion in Q4 09, up an apparently impressive 53.7 percent from the same period in 2008. However, Q4 08 marked the beginning of a sharp downturn in the global pure-play foundry business. Revenue in the Q4 08 amounted only to $3.7 billion, a 32.3 percent and $1.7 billion plunge from $5.4 billion during the previous quarter.
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• with utilization having risen at the end of the year, companies no longer are willing to compromise on pricing for mature technologies

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• iSuppli Corp. sees a mild recovery in the global consumer electronics market in 2010. It expects the revenues to expand by 1.6 per cent after a 6.7 per cent drop in 2009
• Worldwide CE OEM revenue will rise to Rs.1,485,669.36 crore ($317.3 billion) in 2010, up from Rs.1,462,258.24 crore ($312.3 billion) in 2009
• The next biggest growth area in terms of dollars will be digital STBs, which will see OEM revenue rise to Rs.85,216.46 crore ($18.2 billion) in 2010, up Rs.8,896.22 crore ($1.9 billion)—or 11.6 per cent—from Rs.76,320.23 crore ($16.3 billion) in 2009.
• Consumers are snapping up premium STBs that support advanced features like HD and digital video recording

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• Wi-Fi chip shipments in 2009 increased approximately 28 per cent y-on-y,
• Total revenue achieved an estimated CAGR of 18 per cent between 2009 and 2014
• The demand for Wi-Fi ICs in mobile devices and consumer electronic devices are the two key engines for Wi-Fi IC's market growth
• The most significant variation in Wi-Fi enabled products is the protocol type of the embedded Wi-Fi

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• where the company intends to challenge the industry's prevailing pre-conception that ARM is for mobile handsets
• We hope to demonstrate to the industry [operators, chip suppliers and mobile handset manufacturers included] what's possible with MIPS, which has already deeply penetrated the 3.5G and 4G mobile infrastructure
• MIPS is announcing a partnership with SySDSoft to enable LTE on the MIPS architecture. By working with SySDSoft, now a new member of the MIPS Alliance Program, to develop an optimized MIPS32 LTE protocol stack

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• NEC Electronics comes the EMMA Mobile EV SoCs designed for full HD portable audio-visual devices delivering 3D graphics
• Through a dedicated A/V engine, the EMMA Mobile/EV can decode H.264, MPEG2, MPEG4, VC-1 content up to Full-HD (1920x1080 pixels) on portable devices.

• The PowerPC 476FP hardcore is expected to be available to support designs starting in Oct 2009 with production in 4Q 2010. A synthesizable version is also expected in 4Q 2010.

• In turn, AMD will commit to substantially invest in AMD Fusion processor-related R&D activities in Markham, and retain and create hundreds of high-value R&D jobs during the grant time frame.
• "With this partnership, Ontario will be at the forefront of helping to bring this game-changing technology to market, and will deepen the province's reputation as a seat of technology innovation," said Dirk Meyer,

• ARM Holdings plc have detailed two 28nm manufacturing process technologies for wireless products
• 28nm "super" low-power process for mobile
• The combined benefits of ARM IP and GlobalFoundries 28nm HKMG process enables up to a 30 percent reduction of power consumption and 100 percent increase in standby battery life compared to 40-/45nm.

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• We are extremely excited to continue our work with Wipro to help customers quickly create unique Android-based designs on the OMAP 4 platform," said Sharada Satrasala, director, OMAP SW ecosystem (Asia)
• achieve the next step in the Android journey," said Nagamani Murthy, VP of mobile, auto and consumer business in Wipro Technologies

• In the foundry segment the situation is just as extreme: TSMC is generating some 60 to 65 percent of the total revenue of the entire foundry industry. And, even worse, they account for at least 80 percent of all profits earned in this industry