Page 13 - Chips Components News Today

Niche-market memory IC design house Elite Semiconductor Memory Technology (ESMT) started seeing shipments of memory known-good dies (KGD) pick up in March, which the company views as an indication of demand recovery.

India has offered nearly US$100 billion to encourage locally-made chips. However, most applicants for the incentive scheme are having difficultines in getting licensed production-grade technology.

In recent years, the scale of the industrial IC market has followed the development track of industrial IoT and has gradually become a key market thats garnering the attention of major semiconductor suppliers. Among them, the industrial microcontroller unit (MCU) market has emerged to be a field that western IDMs like STMicroelectronics (STM), Analog Devices (ADI), and Texas Instruments (TI) are closely following.

As charging and storage space demand for mobile devices like handsets, notebooks, and tablets continues to rise, major consumer electronics brands and third-party suppliers of accessories are successively releasing fast charging devices adopting third-generation semiconductor GaN technology, according to industry sources.

Nvidia has just released its midrange gaming GPU, RTX 4070, but its backend partners have yet to see the client show intention of scaling up production for the RTX 40 series, according to industry sources.

The global semiconductor market reached US$575.1 billion in 2022, but the figure only covers the IC design and IDM sectors. The entire semiconductor value chain should come close to US$1 trillion if all the other sectors in the ecosystem, including wafer foundry, packaging, testing, equipment, materials and EDA/IP, are taken into consideration. In terms of the market, Taiwan accounted for only 8%. But in terms of the entire value chain, Taiwan had an over 17% share. And Taiwan leads anyone else ...

Samsung Electronics recently announced its "artificial" production cut, leading the South Korean industry to shift its focus to the potential scale of the cut and its impact on the market. Most analysts believe that even if Samsungs overall production cut reaches 20%, the memory chip market would still be difficult to "recover" before the end of 2023. Winter for the memory chip industry may last throughout the year.

On April 11, SEMI Europe has won up to EUR 4 million in funding to develop the European Chips Skills Academy, an initiative to help tackle the skills and talent shortages in Europes electronics industry and propel its long-term growth. The initiative is backed by more than 30 partner research organizations, vocational and education training providers, certification agencies and industry stakeholders.

Samsung Electronics recently announced the implementation of an "artificial" production cut in memory chips. The South Korean tech giant typically increases its investment in times of crisis, contrary to the predominant market trend. Despite production cuts, Samsung allegedly intends to invest KRW50 trillion (approximately US$38 billion) in 2023. The company hopes to maintain its lead in the memory industry and reap the benefits when the economic winter finally thaws.

The Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ) announced that the domestic and foreign sales of Japans semiconductor equipment have declined for five consecutive months through February 2023. It is also the second month in a row where sales have fallen below JPY300 billion (US$2.3 billion). Although power semiconductor demand is strong, it is unable to compensate for the sharp decline in memory demand, which has caused manufacturers to tighten their investments.