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1.Counterpoint: Samsung is turning to a semiconductor and systems company;
January 30, 2018 Market research firm counterpoint pointed out that Samsung Electronics released its fourth quarter and full year results 2017, with impressive results, setting a record high in history. Only the fourth Quarterly revenue of 60 billion and operating profit of nearly 19 billion U.S. dollars.Annual revenue hit a historical high of 212 billion and operating profit approached 48 billion U.S. dollars, surpassing the sum of operating profits in 2016 and 2015. According to the data, the top and bottom The main driver of growth is the semiconductor business rather than mobile business units, showing that Samsung Electronics main business is likely to move closer to the semiconductor.
Demand for Samsung's electronic memory solutions, which skyrocketed as NAND flash memory and DRAM memory have increased, has become an integral part of smart phone, computing and cloud data center applications, and Apple and other domestic brands are adopting higher Capacity storage products, making DRAM demand maintained at the highest level in history.
However, the industry is rapidly moving to 3D NAND, especially TLC 3D NAND, which will help to further ease the pressure on manufacturers and bring the price of DRAM to a more reasonable level.Because of the increasing demand for DRAM, the supply situation is very tight, As a result, DRAM prices have been so high that Samsung Semiconductors contributed nearly three-quarters of operating profit.
Samsung Semiconductor Group revenue in the fourth quarter of 2017 increased by 50%, profit soared 131% .Samsung Semiconductor currently in its solution operating profit margin close to 52% if you remove the LSI and foundry business, the storage part of the profit Will be higher.
In comparison, the profit margin of the mobile business unit fluctuated only at 10%, while the Samsung monitor business benefited from the launch of the iPhone X OLED model with revenue up 58% YoY in the fourth quarter, but operating profit Only a 10% increase, due to the cost of Apple's custom displays, but expected profits to rise as costs are spread over the life of the device.
Since Samsung Semiconductor is the key to Samsung's revenues and profits, even if Samsung's mobile business loses the top three most important and largest mobile markets in the world: China, India and the United States, it is expected to resume growth in 2018. Europe, Middle East Africa and Latin America are still home to Samsung Electronics, but Huawei, Moto, Tecno Group, BBK Group (OPPO, Vivo and OnePlus) and Xiaomi will challenge the Korean maker this year.
Overall, Samsung Electronics is effectively outperforming consumer business due to strong quarterly performance of its components business, effectively transforming Samsung into a semiconductor and systems company, and Samsung's components business will surpass its DMC (CE + Telecom) business. (Proofreading / small autumn)
2.208 microprocessor market will reach 74.5 billion U.S. dollars in total, X86 contributed;
Microprocessor News (Compiled / Danyang) Microprocessor first appeared in the early 70s of last century, when the calculator for the development of four computing devices the earliest microprocessor (MPU), is the market today, one of the most complex integrated circuits Over the past 40 years, powerful microprocessors have been constantly updated to develop multi-core, parallel computing, 64-bit architectures and other designs that are becoming increasingly powerful.
In addition to all the features of a central processing unit (CPU), it adds more and more system-level functions and acceleration modules such as graphics, video and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as personal computers, Servers and mainframe computers, it can also be used for embedded processing of various systems such as network devices, computer peripherals, medical and industrial equipment, automobiles, TVs, set-top boxes, video game consoles, wearable products and IoT applications Wait.
The latest McClean Report from IC Insights points out that the fastest growing microprocessor types in the past five years are mobile SoCs for tablets and data-enabled cell phones and MPUs for embedded applications.
The McClean report also predicts that computer processors (standard PCs, servers, mainframe computers) will account for 52% by 2018, embedded processors by about 16%, tablets with 4% market share for mobile application processors, and mobile handsets Application processor accounted for 28% It is estimated that by 2018 more than 50% of microprocessors will come from Intel and its rival AMD sold X86 architecture products.
Between 2010 and 2014, SoCs in mobile phones and tablets are the main growth drivers for microprocessors, but both have slowed down since 2015. Market saturation and smartphones Market maturities have slowed the growth of handset applications processors, which have seen flat shipments of handset applications processors in 2016 and 2017 and are expected to grow only 0.3% by 2018 and reach a record high of 1.8 billion this year.
Microprocessor business continues to be dominated by Intel, the world's largest chip maker, with 75% of the world's microprocessor market dominated by Intel over the past decade, but due to the strong growth of ARM-based SoC processors in handsets and tablets, Intel's market share dropped to as low as 60% .In the past, Intel's huge microprocessor business for personal computers, only one competitor AMD, but now with the rise of smartphones and tablet PCs in a variety of applications, Intel has entered the ' After the PC era ', competitors also increased significantly.
AMD will continue to aggressively attack the x86 server market in 2018 with the introduction of the company's new highly-parallel Zenith architecture MPU, and Intel will also introduce the Xeon 64-bit X86 processor to address these challenges. Machine-learning AI processors and coprocessors in applications such as servers, personal computing platforms, smartphones and embedded processing.
In addition, the McClean report shows that the overall MPU market slowed down in 2018 with 4% growth in 2018 to reach 74.5 billion U.S. dollars, up from 5% in 2017 and 9% in 2016. From 2018 to 2022, MPU sales With a compound annual growth rate of 3.4%. On the shipping side, it is estimated that the microprocessor shipments in 2016 will reach 2.6 billion units, up 2% over the same period of last year. From 2018 to 2022, the overall MPU shipments will grow at a compound annual growth rate Was 2.1%. (Proofreading / Le Chuan)
3. The "rejuvenation period" of IC design came?
No matter Moore's Law is dead or alive ... The vitality of IC design technology is still endless
In a panel discussion at the annual DesignCon conference, technology experts from AMD, ARM and Intel said that no matter Moore's Law is dead or alive, the development of the semiconductor technology roadmap brings with it both challenges and opportunities.
Speakers at the talks disagreed on whether the number of transistors on a chip would continue to double every two years, as Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed in 1965. "At least one thing is, the process Node conversion speed is slowing down; "ARM Academician Rob Aitken, technical director, pointed out that both the 16-nm and 10-nanometer manufacturing processes are delayed by three years and that in the circuit types we deal with, Denard's Law of Minification The 90nm node has expired. "
Rory McInerney, vice president of Intel Platform Engineering Group and director of server development group, said the company's research is to provide process technology development forecast of 5 years, so its internal technology blueprint is to the 5-nanometer node: "We did not See Moore's Law ending signs. "
He pointed out: "Moore's Law is also a law of finance and ambition. The market demand for advanced process technology is endless. In the field of artificial intelligence (AI) that I am responsible for, people are trying their best More stuffed into the chip. "
The Intel competitor AMD view is that nodes and nodes are lengthening the time interval, and whether it is the chip design or fab manufacturing costs are rapidly soaring; AMD academician and product technology chief Joe Macri said: "This is our Far-reaching business impact ... We have to adopt more innovative architecture and packaging technologies at each node. "
As for the 5nm process, ARM's Aitken expects that moving to a vertical nanowire architecture will result in a change in impact on some RTL designs, especially in high-speed circuits, but he also Pointed out that such changes should not disrupt the abstraction employed by typical digital logic design engineers.
McInerney predicts that innovations in the pipeline and transistor architecture of transistors and interconnects, especially for I / O circuits, will solve a series of bottlenecks before the industry encounters barriers: "To some extent, you have miniaturized Single-digit atom and things become unmanageable, physical limitations are encountered in some parts of the process. "
Chip architect resurfaces
Experts participating in the symposium agree that the emerging computer and memory architecture will help ease the slowdown in Moore's Law Macri, in charge of the GPU and memory stack AMD released in June 2015 Macri, developed by Fiji, says combining memory and storage Chip and Software Development: "We're going to make progress ... we're going to make a leap forward ... we're starting to see a lot of cool memory applications."
Aitken of ARM points out, a series of advanced capsulation technologies are rising, include a kind of "relatively low order version technology, can put the cheap standard component to pile up on a base plate, in order to make the value about 50 cents (about 15 NT dollars) Cost toy solution - it's really crazy. "
Intel's McInerney said the combination of network links, new AI and memory architecture is creating a "renaissance" of chip design engineers: "It's a great time to participate in the design of the chip architecture - it feels like a wave of innovation Coming. "
He pointed out: "The top 10 data center operators such as Apple, Alibaba and Amazon are generally well-capitalized and are developing their own chip design teams - they are trying to solve some special problems," and they are working on a number of acquisitions Chip design startups.
Aitken cited the recent Meltdown and Specter processor vulnerabilities in Intel as an example of the industry's need for a new architecture for security design; he called for new ideas on how to deal with those security holes and possible side-channel attacks in the future , As well as a new way to measure product safety.
Commenting on the technology used by Meltdown and the Specter processors, Macri said: "When I started chip design in the mid-1980s, we did speculative execution - the reason we made the first move faster, Rounds provide the answer, and the next round is to clarify whether we are correct or not. "
He pointed out that the use of speculative execution and the threat of hacking "will not change, the change will be our view on the needs of end-to-end security; we all live in a glass house ... This is our daily life Part - it's a world that will never be flawless. "
Intel's McInerney, along with Bob O'Donnell, analyst at Technalysis Research, a market research firm that hosts the talk, praised the industry for its cooperation in addressing the security loopholes that Google first discovered, and McInerney pointed out that the incident was a once-in-a-lifetime Cry for better safety tools.
"We have timing and functional testing tools, and now we need tools that let you test those attacks at the foundation functional block level - a lot of innovation is needed in this area," he said.
Compile: Judith Cheng
(Reference text: Chip Heads Gauge Silicon Roadmap, by Rick Merritt) eettaiwan
4. Biography of Samsung's car processor "Exynos Auto" came out at the end;
According to industry sources, Samsung is developing "Exynos Auto" car processor and plans to mass-produce by the end of this year.This is the first Samsung's "NPU" with "Neural Processing Unit" Chip that speeds up machine learning and analyzes images from in-vehicle image sensors to assist with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) to identify lanes and obstructions on the road.
It is understood that Exynos Auto will have a built-in LTE modem that can be kept online at any time. The chips will be used in automotive infotainment systems, digital dashboards and heads-up displays. The major shipments include Samsung subsidiary Harman and the German carmaker Audi ) In early 2017 Samsung had supplied the processor to Audi, which was made from a smart phone chip at the time. Exynos Auto was tailored for the car, with Audi mostly using Qualcomm chips and Samsung is looking to squeeze high against Exynos Auto Pass, grab more Audi orders.
5.iPhone 7 large-scale recall, the signal is not good or baseband processor design failure;
Set micro-messenger news, Apple recently announced a massive recall of iPhone 7, the official announcement that due to a component on the motherboard failure, a small part of iPhone 7 devices may show in the status bar 'no service' (even in the cellular mobile Signal coverage.) Involved models A1660, A1780, A779, sales of countries and regions are mainly China (including Hong Kong and Macao), Japan and the United States.
Earlier, starting from the release of iPhone 7, many users found their cell phones often appear 'no service' status, even if the cellular network is normal, even in the same room, other cell phones have a signal, but the iPhone 7 shows 'no service' .
For the major media use the word 'recall', Apple's official customer service responded: 'The official website released an iPhone 7 no service policy, not a recall, but according to this policy to help repair, free repair. Factory, back to factory normal time is about 7 to 10 working days.
The iPhone 7, Apple's first model to use Intel and Qualcomm dual-baseband providers, has long been generally believed in the industry that Qualcomm's version of iPhone 7 performs 30% better than Intel's version. In the case of weak signals, Qualcomm Edition performance even better than the latter 75%.
The industry broke the news that the fault is likely to be caused by circuit design errors, and the iPhone 7 Plus will have a similar problem.If further verification, is the baseband processor MDM9645 VDD_CORE short to ground, unable to enter the system.
I do not know if this situation has any relationship with the adoption of the two suppliers, but broke the news that this failure is almost impossible to solve through repairs, or at least have to change the motherboard, so Apple had to recall.
Prior to the KGI Guotao analyst Guo Mingtao in the latest investor report pointed out that Intel may become the exclusive baseband chip supplier of all new iPhone in 2018 Apple, and Qualcomm will be completely out.If the iPhone 7 circuit design problems really because of dual supply Business problem, then Intel finally can monopolize Apple baseband orders, or even a piece of cake have yet to be discussed.
6. Former Intel president set up a new chip company
Ampere, a new chip company run by former Intel president Renee James, today introduced a new, highly efficient ARM server chip designed for very large data centers.
The company's first chip is a custom Armv8-A 64-bit, operating at up to 3.3 GHz with 1TB of memory at 125 W. Although James is not yet ready to share pricing, she promises that the chip will deliver unparalleled Cost-effective, will exceed any high-performance computing chip.
James, who spent 28 years at Intel, spent a fortune and a bit of courage in attracting a seasoned industrial giant to build the product, backed by Carlyle Group, which briefly worked when James left Intel A private-equity firm that does not reveal the amount of money Carlyle has given her, but does say her company has enough capital.
Renee James said a significant amount of work shifted to the cloud, requiring a new generation of chips to deliver higher efficiencies than ever before, and in particular, she wanted to build high-performance, high-efficiency chips at low cost. Launched in early 2017 with 300-400 employees, Santa Clara chips from Renee James are being tested with customers and partners and will go live later this year, but she declined Disclose any customer's name, but partners include Microsoft, Lenovo and Oracle.