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1. Broadcom strong acquisition Qualcomm, the server market?
Set micro-grid comprehensive coverage, CNBC reported on the 28th, Broadcom is currently being determined to replace the Qualcomm board all members of the list of candidates Qualcomm director candidates nomination deadline is December 8. Currently, the Qualcomm board of directors has 11 directors. Broadcom's director nomination list will be submitted next week.
Some analysts believe that Broadcom's acquisition of Qualcomm is determined to win, so the offer may be raised to 80 dollars per share or 90 US dollars.Also there are reports that, in consultation with Qualcomm's major shareholders, Broadcom is considering raising the purchase price To be precise, it is maintaining the cash portion of the purchase price to raise the quoted price of the shares, while Broadcom may raise its bid for the Qualcomm Board of Directors by competing for a proxy battle to obtain Qualcomm board seats The acquisition proposal.
Qualcomm also announced the first commercial shipment of the Centriq 2400 Series ARM server chips while considering Broadcom offerings, and the industry's view that the acquisition of Qualcomm will provide Broadcom with the opportunity to enter the server market due to cost and energy efficiency advantages , The industry generally believes that in the data center processor market, ARM architecture will eventually outperform the x86 architecture.After Intel's Atom processor plunged in the Tablet PC market, has proved that x86 processors do not have the cost advantage.
The immediate challenge for the ARM camp, however, is the need to come up with a dedicated ARM-based processor that rivals Intel Xeon processors at specific data center nodes. "Recently, a multinational hosting service was implemented in a real-world environment A series of running sub-tests, we can see that Qualcomm's products are indeed successful.
An engineer from Cloudserve, a hosting service, performed the run-of-the-mill test and summarized the results on his blog, comparing the products for $ 1373, a single socket, a 46-core Qualcomm Centriq 2452 processor, and Two dual-socket server systems consisting of two Xeon Silver 4116 Skylake processors based on Intel's data that cost $ 1002 each.
Intel processors continued to show better single-core performance in these run-level tests, while Centriq's Falkor core performed better on all core-enabled tests, although the Centriq processor did not perform in all run-in tests Both perform as well as the Xeon processor, but one of Centriq's big strengths is energy efficiency. Cloudflare used NGINX to measure power consumption by designing two processors with the same load load, and the measure of performance was the server's request per second The number of CPU energies consumed was monitored using on-board server diagnostics, and CloudFlare found that Centriq was twice as efficient.
ARM camp processor technology has not lost Intel
ARM camp chip companies are using the same 14-nanometer Intel manufacturing process, or more powerful 10-nanometer manufacturing process.For example, Qualcomm is using 10-nanometer process to produce Centriq.Samsung is Centriq chip foundry.With the 7-nanometer Technology plans to go into operation in 2018, ARM chip makers are likely to at least lead in the field of server Intel.It is unlikely that Intel will launch 10-nanometer server chips by 2019.
After leading Intel in manufacturing processes, ARM chipmakers can take full advantage of the efficiency benefits of the ARM architecture, which typically results in lower cost and energy efficiency than Intel chips. Not only has the ARM-based processor made advances in the datacenter, it has taken its place in computing scenarios such as PCs, laptops and tablets, etc. In mainstream ARM processor architects such as Apple, Samsung and Qualcomm, Processor performance has reached a similar level of Intel.
For Qualcomm, ARM-based architecture as the "next Intel", providing ubiquitous computing power, so the prospect of attractive.In the cloud computing + terminal computing scene, Qualcomm previously occupied only half of the market.But the actual The performance level of the Centriq family of server processors shows that Qualcomm's server market is long overdue and Qualcomm may well have a well-planned plan to intrude systematically and rhythmically into Intel's traditional territories.
Cloud computing + terminal, if Qualcomm can win the two markets at the same time, then the future is very imaginative.Botong made the acquisition of Qualcomm, it is robbed force in the Qualcomm server market, shot before the arrival of the shots 'sweep goods.' And Under Broadbeat aggressive offensive, the maximum capital of Qualcomm's board of directors and senior management team will also be the story and imagination of the future in the server market.
Shortly before the tender offer to Qualcomm, Broadcom CEO Hock E. Tan (Chinese name Chen Fuyang) talked about the M & A trend in the semiconductor industry at the 30th anniversary of TSMC. He said that in terms of demand, the semiconductor industry in eighty-ninety The annual growth rate of more than 30% a year, but now the growth rate of less than 5% a year, and GDP growth rate is almost the semiconductor industry to early investors over-remuneration, or the so-called industrial gold rush has ended.
In the industry squeeze each other, business growth is slow, we can only through the mergers and acquisitions to PE, revenue, profit up, so the acquisition of Broadcom Broadcom, Broadcom acquisition of Qualcomm is another feast of capital.
2.Yole: Unbalanced supply and demand promote the rise of memory chip prices, the market average annual growth of 9%;
The memory industry is in a phase of strong growth Yole predicts in its 2017 Memory Encapsulation Market and Technology report that the entire memory market will grow at a CAGR of about 9% between 2016 and 2022 and will reach $ 135 billion by 2022, In addition, the market share of DRAM and NAND together accounts for about 95% .In addition, imbalance between supply and demand is driving up the price of memory semiconductor chips, resulting in a record profit for memory IDM vendors!
The demand for memory comes from all walks of life, especially in the mobile and computing (mostly server) markets. On average, each smartphone's DRAM memory capacity will more than tripling and is expected to reach 6GB by 2022, with each NAND memory capacity of smart phones will increase more than 5 times and it is estimated to reach more than 150GB by 2022. It is estimated that the DRAM memory capacity will reach 0.5TB or more by 2022 and the enterprise market SSD NAND memory capacity will be as high as 5TB These growth drivers for these markets come from deep learning, data centers, networking, AR / VR and autopilot.
The automotive market, which typically uses low-megabyte memory, will see the introduction of DRAM memory dominated by autonomous driving and car infotainment. The NOR flash memory market is also recovering and is expected to start at a staggering 16% CAGR Growth is expected to reach 4.4 billion US dollars by 2022, mainly due to its applications in new fields such as AMOLED displays, touch display driver ICs and industrial Internet of Things.
On the supply side, the advent of advanced nodes is more difficult due to vendor consolidation and technology challenges, and substantial investment is required in moving from 2D to 3D NAND, resulting in a shortage of DRAM and NAND memory supplies DRAM makers want to maintain High product selling price and profitability, so as to rationalize their huge capital expenditures in advanced node migration, so the tendency will not increase capacity.
Memory chips use a variety of packaging technologies, from leadframes to through-silicon vias (TSVs)
There are a variety of packaging options for memory chips, ranging from pin-count, small outline SOPs to pin-count TSVs, and the choice of these technologies depends on density, performance, and Cost, etc. Yole analysis identifies five core memory chip packaging platforms: lead frame, wire bonded BGA, flip chip BGA, wafer level chip scale package (WLCSP), TSV. Each of these technologies Includes many different variations and different terminology.We expect the CAGR of the entire memory chip packaging market to grow by 4.6% from 2016 to 2022, surpassing $ 25 billion in 2022.
Leaded-bond BGA accounts for more than 80% of the memory chip package market in 2016. Also in 2016, the flip-chip BGA began to enter the DRAM memory chip package market and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 20% over the next five years , Will account for about 10% of the total memory chip packaging market share.With the demand for high bandwidth, DRAM PC / server applications are increasing, driving the flip chip market growth.Samsung Electronics (Samsung) has its More than 90% of DRAM chip packages are converted to flip chips, and SK hynix is also beginning to transition, as other vendors are moving toward flip chip adoption in the future. In fact, we believe all DDR5 memory for PC / servers will eventually be used Flip chip.
Through-silicon vias (TSVs) are being used in high-bandwidth memory chips due to the high bandwidth and memory chips' low latency requirements for high-performance computing in a variety of applications. The TSV market in 2016 is in the memory chip packaging market Less than 1%, but with a CAGR of more than 30% over the next five years and is expected to have a TSV market share of 8% by 2022. Meanwhile, the wafer-level chip scale package (WLCSP) Will be adopted by NOR flash and niche market memories (EEPROMs / EPROM / ROM) and is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 10%. However, by 2022, the market share of Wafer-level Chip Scale Package (WLCSP) is less than 1% .
For mobile applications, memory chip packaging will primarily be held on wire-bonded BGA platforms, but will soon begin to move toward multi-chip packaging (ePoP) for high-end smartphones. The primary requirement for NAND flash chips is the low cost of high storage density NAND uses a wire bond stack to provide high density in a single package.
NAND flash chip packages will remain in the form of lead-bonded BGA and will not migrate to flip-chips, but Toshiba will begin using silicon-vias (TSVs) in NAND flash chips to boost data rates for high-end applications. , We believe Samsung Electronics and SK hynix will launch TSV package NAND chips.
The value of memory chip package is high, mainly by IDM 'control'
The market for memory chip packaging is about $ 20 billion in 2016. While many outsourced semiconductor package testing vendors (OSATs) are involved in the memory chip packaging business, more than 80% of the packages are still in-house by memory chip IDM vendors, with leading global IDM vendors Packaging has a wealth of knowledge, accumulated many years of project experience, and has a strong internal manufacturing capacity.
OSAT vendors are impacted by IDM vendors and have limited opportunities to package their business in memory chips However, many Chinese companies are investing more than $ 50 billion in memory, unlike in the world-leading IDM vendors, which are lacking in memory chip packaging Experience, they will outsource the packaging business to OSAT vendors.
3. Superweather frustrated! Virtual currency mining hardware dependence on the reduction, GPU demand fears;
Bitcoin quotes hurricane and is now approaching $ 10,000 integer levels, surging more than 750% year-to-date and the so-called Tektopix soaring as much as 5,800% this year (2017), quoting it at $ 470. Drawings needed for virtual currency mining operations However, analysts warn miners will likely switch to software solutions next year, relying less on hardware, and graphics chips next year's demand may not be as high as everyone imagined.
MarketWatch, Business Insider and other foreign reports, Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh 27 published research report pointed out that the virtual currency of the mining operation is extremely complex, many miners decided to abandon the use of hardware (to rely on the graphics processor) indigenous steelmaking, mining software Solutions such as pool mining with a combination of people, or cloud mining using large application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) tools.
For these reasons, Rakesh believes that despite the soaring Bitcoin and Ether price hikes and the recent Nvidia and Hyper-V prices, the stock price momentum triggered by the virtual currency mining boom is likely to plummet (2018).
According to Rakesh, mining-related operations account for only 10% of Chauweis revenue and about 6% of Nvidia revenue.Nvidia's chief executive, Jen-Hsun Huang, also said at a recent earnings conference that virtual currency only accounts for a small portion of the company's operations, It is estimated that the mining revenue in Q3 will be cut to about 70 million U.S. dollars from the previous quarter.
On the 28th, the United States of America's graphics chip giant was hearing weakness, with AMD dropping 3.29% to $ 11.17, the highest-ever decline in 30-component semiconductor and a year-to-date 1.5% decline. Nvidia Corp. fell 1.6 % To close at US $ 210.71, but up by 97.40% so far this year, mainly driven by the AI hardware business.
Benzinga, Barron's Nov. 13 reported that Morgan Stanley chip analyst Joseph Moore reported that Bitcoin continued to rise, the outside world more than that Bitcoin mining needs, driven GPU sales, the actual Many years ago, Bitcoin switched to "ASIC," which bought mainly from ether.
The problem is the declining mining remuneration of Ethereum. At present, Ethereum is carrying out a "Metropolis" hard-fork. Metropolis is divided into two phases. The first phase started on October 16 and the second phase is expected to be implemented next year, which will reduce mining Earnings Moore estimates that it will no longer be profitable to tap into the area where electricity costs are high until the first quarter of next year, pointing to the fact that GPU sales in 2017 were about $ 800 million in 2018 Sales will be halved unless the price of ether soaring, or next year's downside risk is greater than the uplink risk.
Moore pointed out that mining GPU demand plunged, the impact on AMD greater than Nvidia.He in 2014, for example, pointed out that bitcoin to abandon the GPU, switch to ASIC mining, resulting in a substantial reduction in sales of the Super Granville GPU.
Jordan Belfort, the protagonist of the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street," has just been bitter about Bitcoin as a scam.
British Financial Times reported on October 22 (see this), Belfort in an interview claimed that bitcoin is the history of the largest fraud, will burst in front of many people, the severity of all his past than have to He points out that roughly 85% of salespeople at Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) are not malicious, but it can also be catastrophic if 5-10% of people try to scam customers.
Belfort said ICO salespersons, much like the pump and dumping techniques used in the Boiler room, are getting supplies, actively promoting, leaking a bit to the market, sparking public interest through celebrities, And then take out all stocks before the price collapses.Now everyone and their grandmother want a cup of tea, not to say that the virtual currency, and even where the tulips are not good, all problems are about to jump into the market, and then let the whole concept Smelly people
4. Li Weixing: IOT chips using Qualcomm terminal shipments of more than 1.5 billion;
Xinhuanet Beijing November 29 (Ling Jiwei) November 29, '2017 China Future Operations Summit - Opens up the era of intelligent operation' held in Beijing.American Qualcomm's vice president of global technology Li Weixing in the forum presentation of the Internet of Things Connectivity Technology and Qualcomm IoT Solutions.
'The global number of IoT devices using QUALCOMM's chips has shipped more than 1.5 billion units. "According to Li Weixing, current LTE technologies provide an extensible IoT connectivity platform to improve performance and mobility, reduce complexity and power consumption, and LTE IoT The included NB-IoT and eMTC are complementary narrowband technologies for use in low-power wide-area IoT use cases. In his opinion, the LTE terminal ecosystem continues to expand and the LTE IoT evolutionary path is strong and will be an important part of the 5G platform Part, with support for multi-technology coexistence, deployment more flexible, 2G spectrum can be re-plowed for NB-IoT and other features.
As the two mainstream narrowband LTE technologies for cellular Internet of Things, NB-IoT and eMTC are both complementary to each other and support a wide range of cellular IOT use cases and applications. EMTC has high reliability and mobility, with delay-sensitive NB-IoT has deep coverage and cost advantages. "EMTC and NB-IoT are the cornerstones of evolution to 5G." He said more than 35 mobile operators worldwide are committed to deploying eMTC and NB-IoT.
In addition, Li believes that VoLTE capabilities are critical to many IoT applications, such as security / alerting devices in the building or elevator, care-of-elderly terminals, and wearable devices, and eMTC is a requirement for LTE IoT to support VoLTE.
'Intelligent IoT endpoints are essential for the efficient management of IoT data analytics.' "Li stressed that to take advantage of end-side intelligence to increase efficiency because end-side intelligence can optimize data transfer, maximize end-of-battery life and network capacity, and reduce transmission to the cloud The amount of data to reduce IoT data analysis of the total management costs.
At the meeting, Li Weixing also introduced the Qualcomm MDM9206 global multi-mode cellular Internet of Things products. MDM9206 is Qualcomm launched in early April this year for the Internet of Things smart chip, it is not only a communication chip, but also a system controller, or even as A small SoC with computing power, with lower power consumption and longer distance connections, and most importantly, thanks to integrated support for multi-mode, MDM9206 through a chip to meet the global operator and the Internet of Things operations Diversified deployment needs of enterprises, bringing a very cost-effective.
For MDM9206-based application case, Li Weixing to NB-IoT ultrasonic smart meter, for example, this solution enables mass connection, depth coverage, low power consumption, low cost, to solve the existing smart meter high power consumption and poor communication Of obstacles and remote control.In addition, this year in September, the motorcycle ride using AT & T and Qualcomm's IoT solution in the United States to support its pile-free smart bike.The smart bike lock using Qualcomm MDM9206 global multimode LTE IoT Modem that provides cost-effective services to consumers across multiple regions of the world through a single SKU.
In the long run, Li believes that the global multi-mode approach can support manufacturers in opening up the global market, providing outstanding total terminal costs, improving profitability, shortening commercial time and obtaining higher R & D returns.
5. MediaTek Deputy General Manager Visitor Jie: artificial intelligence everywhere
Blue Whale TMT reporter Mao Qiyin
When the AI becomes an annual hotword, the most cutting-edge chip makers in the industry certainly have the right to speak.
Recently, China Mobile Partners Conference 139 plan released after the MediaTek vice president and general manager of home entertainment products business group Jie Jie accepted the blue whale TMT reporter's interview.
Mr. Jie is a veteran of more than 15 years of MediaTek's technology research and development, as well as high-tech products.MAPC's business is mainly supported by two major business groups, one is a smartphone-based business group and the other is a business The group is a home entertainment business led by Tourists, whose main businesses include television, optical drive, wifi, internet of things and speakers, etc. Due to the promotion of intelligent speaker and internet of things business, The share has been rising continuously, from 20% last year to 25% this year.
In addition, learned from the interview, for the current hot AI and the Internet of Things, MediaTek are firmly in the hand.According to the tourist Jie revealed that all of MediaTek's product lines are valued AI technology, therefore, artificial intelligence each There are local, MediaTek in every area have AI strategy.
First, MediaTek how AI breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence?
Public information shows that MediaTek is a global fabless semiconductor company with a leading position in the markets of smart mobile devices, smart home applications, wireless connectivity technologies and internet of things products. With a total annual capacity of about 1.5 billion built-in MediaTek The chip's end products are listed around the world.
However, from the beginning of the year, MediaTek has divided its business into three segments: mobile computing platforms (smartphones and tablets), growth products (IoT related products such as wifi and voice assistants, power management, ASICs, set-top boxes, auto, etc. ), Mature products (TV, DVD, etc.).
In June of this year, MediaTek Chairman Cai Mingzai said in an interview that all electronic products will evolve from 'connectable to the internet' to 'be smart' in the future.
Today, Apple, Huawei and other manufacturers are introduced with artificial intelligence chips in MediaTek's third quarter earnings conference, the newly appointed CEO Cai Li pointed out that MediaTek will launch two P-series products in the first half of next year, metropolitan Equipped with VPU to enhance mobile phones in AI, face recognition, photography, VR ╱ AR and other rich multimedia applications, but also expected to import 3D sensing capabilities, in order to enhance the mobile phone chip market share.
Tourists Jie revealed that MediaTek one of the most important areas of growth this year from the smart speaker market, during the double eleven days Lynx platform 1 million units sold out at 8:30 in the morning, we can see the supply in short supply.In China, the MediaTek Products also support Alibaba's voice backstage and Baidu's DUOS platform overseas, MediaTek is the first to support Amazon and Google's voice platform.
'This year, MediaTek overall growth rate in the smart voice market last year, especially sales compared with last year, the world is expected to more than ten-fold growth', tourist Jie said.
'Next year, the growth of domestic smart speakers will enter a relatively rapid growth stage.' Tourist analysis that the United States in the international market there will be rapid growth in the market, and in the domestic market by the end of this year, many manufacturers have introduced products, in addition to Millet box, as well as Tencent, Baidu and other related products launched.
It can be predicted that in the future smart speaker will become a main platform in the smart home, it will be connected to the home of light bulbs, air conditioners, washing machines, smart locks and other equipment to form a powerful smart home, which for pre-emptive MediaTek, full Look forward to
In addition to voice, the future of video visual processing, with AI technology, a camera becomes a face recognition settings.It is understood that the Meizu Global Marketing Director @ Boude Ling said on Twitter, Meizu is working with MediaTek, in the The best facial recognition technology developed on smartphones is expected to meet with you in the coming year.Unfortunately, this advanced technology will appear on the Meizu full screen mobile phone in lieu of fingerprinting, which will make MediaTek another AI A huge breakthrough.
Second, compete for mobile Internet of Things (NB-IoT) cake
In June of this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a document entitled "Notice of the General Office of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Promoting the Development and Construction of Mobile Internet of Things (NB-IoT)". The document explicitly stipulates that "by the end of 2017, NB-IoT will cover all municipalities directly under the Central Government, Provincial capitals and other major cities with base stations reaching 400,000 by 2020. By 2020, the NB-IoT network will have universal coverage nationwide and will provide in-depth coverage for such indoor, traffic and underground pipe network applications. The base station will reach 1.5 million base stations. '
Despite the government's push, deploying NB-IoT base stations requires the most direct hardware upgrades for out-of-base base-station telecom carriers, which indirectly increases the cost and time consumption of NB-IoT network deployments. In addition to the chain to complete the deployment of the first 32 million NB-IoT base station, China Unicom, China Mobile still in the network optimization hard to catch up.
China Mobile also seized the opportunity to launch the '139' cooperation program, which clearly defined China Mobile as a leading technology and broadly-based mobile Internet of Things (IoT) continuous coverage in 346 cities, providing customers with broad coverage Convenient and efficient network service experience.At the same time, relying on the three major alliances including IoT Alliance, as well as 9 key applications, the program activated NB-IoT industry chain.
We know that in the chip area, the industry chain, the most sensitive user experience and price, MediaTek has always been in the price advantage, of course, will not miss this opportunity.
At the Mobile Developers Conference in 2017, MediaTek unveiled the world's first dual-mode IoT (MT2621) SoC that supports the NB-IoT (Narrowband) R14 specification. The chip supports both NB-IoT and GSM / GPRS network modes , With excellent low power consumption and cost advantages, will bring more rich IoT applications such as wearable devices such as fitness trackers, IoT security devices, smart meters and various industrial applications.
Analysis of the industry, the release of the chip, which means that in the past on the basis of the single-mode (NB-IoT), and increased GSM network mode. Traffic using NB-IoT, GSM voice, which is the most economical and cost-saving More importantly, after the introduction of the MT2621, the Internet of Things application scenario has a call function instantly. Similar to the wearable watches, location tracking and other shared bicycles, the new application of smart meter reading breaks the bottleneck that the delay is too long and the user experience is poor.
In response, Visitor Jie said, 'MT2621 is a highly integrated Internet of Things platform, in addition to supporting the NB-IoT network, but also compatible with the existing GSM / GPRS network, providing excellent network coverage and call quality for IoT devices. The built-in power and connectivity features that support existing GSM / GPRS networks and future NB-IoT developments will drive the Internet of Things into the next phase of growth. "
'Connecting the Next Billion' This is the next target of MediaTek, which has now grown to an annual turnover of more than 8.6 billion U.S. dollars (2016) and about 1.5 billion in annual sales from an obscure chipmaker Set of various types of chip globalization companies, MediaTek speeding growth behind a strong investment in technology research and development.Open data show that in the past 13 years, MediaTek accumulated R & D investment in more than 10 billion US dollars, of which in 2016 R & D investment exceeds 17.3 Over the next five years, MediaTek plans to invest approximately US $ 6.6 billion (NT $ 200 billion) in artificial intelligence (AI), 5G communications, Internet of Things, Industry 4.0, automotive networking, software and Service, AR / VR and other seven areas of scientific research and development.
Through the analysis of the company's strong technical products in the field of home entertainment products and the trend of grounded gas, it is easy to see that in the past, with the popularity of mobile terminal chips in the market and Qualcomm, a showdown MediaTek, is undergoing a transformation of transformation, in the era of all things connected, will be a wide range of links, the vertical expansion of the gesture, active in many areas of the global chip industry chain.