(1) The tide of mining chips is low, and supply chain manufacturers are difficult to continue.
According to the micro-network news, the excavation boom has driven the performance of GPU and ASIC chips and related supply chain companies to record highs. However, after reaching historical peak in March of this year, both the industry and the supply chain have grown for the future. Look down.
Taking the two major GPU manufacturers as examples, both Nvidia and AMD have reported in their previous financial reports that the demand for mining chips will slow down. Nvidia even said in its earnings conference call that it expects the company’s second-quarter cryptocurrency mining chip. Sales will likely fall by two thirds month-on-month. AMD also expects its second-quarter GPU sales to decline moderately due to blockchain factors. Especially in April and May, the signs of deceleration in the supply chain have gradually Appearance. In April, the demand for mining chips was greatly reduced, which led to a significant decline in the performance of many highly dependent manufacturers of mining chips. Although the performance has recovered in May, the market’s prospects for mining chips are no longer optimistic. .
GPU, ASIC chip company turning
The demand for mining chips has been completely reduced. On the one hand, due to the fall in bitcoin prices, the demand for chips has been weakened. On the other hand, due to the tightening of government regulations in various countries, mining has become less profitable.
It seems that ASIC miner chip makers also anticipated this scenario early on.
Whether it is the first continent in the ASIC chip market or the newly applied IPO, Kennan Minzhi has been presenting a trend in recent years: It has expanded the use of products and turned to artificial intelligence.
In the case of Kenan Minzhi, in addition to mining machine chips, Kennan Minzhi began developing ASIC chips for artificial intelligence applications in 2016, and plans mass production in the fourth quarter of 2018.
At the same time, Kennan Minzhi stated in the prospectus that its future growth will largely depend on whether it can penetrate into new markets other than bitcoin mining applications, especially other types of encryption that require high performance and high computing power. The application market for ASIC chips for currency, or artificial intelligence products.
At the same time, the top ranked mainland in the mining machine chip market is taking a similar path.
According to Cointelegraph, BitContinent is turning to artificial intelligence to seek alternative sources of income. Bit Neuss CEO Wu Jin-Chan said that the field of artificial intelligence requires a lot of calculations. For Bitland, this is a natural choice. Wu Jihan predicts that AI chips are in five. It can occupy 40% of the income of Bitland during the year.
In November 2017, Bitland 'entered' artificial intelligence, released its AI brand 'Fufeng', and the tensor acceleration computing chip BM1680, is the production volume of the board SC1/SC1+ and intelligent video analysis server SS1.
Bitland not only went upstream in the industry chain - chip, but also acquired downstream - application service providers (such as early education robot service provider Radish Technology).
On the other hand, as mentioned before, GPU vendors Nvidia and AMD have also been losing sight of the mining chip market.
Supply chain vendor influence geometry?
It is understood that from April 2017 to March 2018, the GPU is completely in short supply. However, Nvidia has also made it clear that mining-related quarterly revenue will be reduced by 65%. It is feared that the reduction is not only so. AMD executive director Su Zifeng also admitted that the virtual currency has changed quite a lot. Currently, the demand for mining is slowing down. The second half of the year should be continuous cooling.
In addition, according to Taiwan's DIGITIMES report, the performance of video card manufacturers including MSI, Gigabyte, and Asustek has significantly declined.
Although the demand for mining chips increased slightly in May, the demand has already fallen sharply compared with the previous year. Especially in the case of continued weakening of mining efficiency, small-scale construction will be launched gradually, and the purchase scale of large and medium-sized miners will be reduced. Will make GPU and ASIC chip demand back to the original shape.
Take the ASIC mining machine chip as an example. This market was mainly based on Bitcoin. Now, according to the supply chain, BitContinent may disperse the foundry and DRAM procurement, but this is not due to the increase in the shipment of Bitland. , but because their orders are not as expected.
In addition, due to the decline in shipments of ASIC miner chips, the supply chain has also been affected. The supply chain vendors including Zhiyuan, Chuangyi, Riyueguang, and TSMC will not be able to achieve the same benefits of ASIC as expected at the beginning of the year. Take TSMC as an example. In the fiscal report released by TSMC on May 31st, TSMC’s net profit for the first quarter increased by 2.5% year-on-year, which is less than market expectations.
According to Wei Zhejia, general manager and co-chief executive of TSMC, this is due to the weakness of the smart phone market since the end of last year, especially the demand for high-end models, as well as the unpredictability of mining demand. This part of the application is precisely the advanced technology of TSMC. The main user of the round.
TSMC had previously said that the second quarter's earnings may decline due to the slowdown in demand for bitcoin mining chips.
Morgan Stanley analyst Charlie Chan believes that Bitcoin mining hardware demand and prices will further decline and affect TSMC's wafer demand. TSMC's current revenue is about 10% dependent on cryptocurrency mining demand.
Now, as the mining boom continues to cool, in addition to wafer foundry, packaging and testing of these previously benefited companies will also be affected. (Proofreading / Maocao)
2. MediaTek, Qualcomm and Hasss demand, TSMC accelerated mass production at 7nm process;
TSMC's 10nm chip has been in volume production for a year. Apple A11, Kirin 970 and so on are all products of TSMC's 10nm process. This year, TSMC will launch a 7nm process. Industry sources said that MediaTek is increasing demand for MediaTek, Qualcomm and Hass. Accelerate mass production of 7nm chips and launch second-generation 7nm EUV process in 2019.
Digitimes broke the news that TSMC's 7nm process has received more and more customer needs. It will use 7nm process for customer foundry chips. More fabless factories are planning to skip the 10nm node and use the more advanced 7nm process directly.
Hass, MediaTek, Xilinx and NVIDIA all expressed their willingness to use TSMC's 7nm process to produce next-generation chips, while IC design service providers Global Unichip and Alchip are also providing solutions to help customers accelerate 7nm chip development.
TSMC's 7nm process will be mass-produced in Q2 this year. TSMC expects that 7nm process will contribute 20% of revenue in Q4, and its annual revenue contribution will be around 10%. In addition to mobile chips, server processors, network processing Devices, games, GPUs, FPGAs, cryptocurrencies, automotive electronics, and AI artificial intelligence are the target markets for 7nm chips.
According to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. will launch a 7nm N7 Plus process based on the EUV process after the 7nm N7 process.
At present, TSMC's 10nm process contributed 19% of revenue in Q1 quarter, but the official confirmed that the contribution of 10nm process in the Q4 quarter will fall to less than 10%.
3. Intel has been able to produce all-silicon wafers for quantum computing chips;
Last year, the commercialization of Intel's vector sub-computings took a small step towards the adoption of 17 qubit superconducting chips. Then CEO Brian Krzanich showed a test chip with 49 qubits at CES 2018. Intel's mass production efforts are different. This latest batch of wafers focuses on spin qubits instead of superconducting qubits. This secondary technology still lags behind superconducting quantum power, but it may be easier to expand.
Looking ahead, Intel is now able to produce as many as five silicon wafers per week, which contains as many as 26 qubit quantum chips. This achievement means that Intel has dramatically increased the number of existing quantum devices, and is expected to The number of quantum bits has steadily increased in the year. Intel's Quantum Hardware Director Jim Clarke said in an interview that the technology currently used for small-scale production may eventually expand to more than 1,000 qubits. The expansion and shrinkage limitations caused by temperature fluctuations make it impossible for engineers to simply Extending the number of qubits on a chip. Currently, each wafer consists of quantum dots that must be carefully sliced so that each chip ends with the appropriate number of qubits. Due to defects and physical limitations, the finished chip may eventually have 3 , 7, 11, or 26 qubits. Regardless of which type of quantum computing prevails, Intel's goal is to build an architecture that can scale to more than 1 million qubits. This will allow the use of the same basic structure but improved quantum Bit Overtime does not have to return to the origin each time a new quantum break is generated.
According to Clarke, '1000 qubits in five years is not unreasonable.' He compared the time between the world's first integrated circuit and the Intel 4004 processor with only 2,500 transistors. In terms of quantum technology, Clarke believes that Intel may reach 1 million qubits within 10 years, but he said he may be a bit optimistic in this regard.
One of the challenges still to be solved is the extreme cold temperatures required to operate the quantum processor. Since the temperature needs to be kept as close to absolute zero as possible, the performance of the quantum computer needs to be much higher than that of traditional silicon to make it cost-effective. With the advancement of technology, its practicality will increase rapidly. cnbeta
4. MOSFET, IGBT wafer foundry prices;
Power semiconductors such as MOSFETs and insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are likely to be out of stock in the second half of the year, and IDM plants and IC design plants are rushing to compete for wafer foundry capacity, including Mao. Silicon, Han Lei, World Advanced, New Tang and other MOSFET or IGBT orders reached the end of the year, the third quarter has been confirmed price increases, including 6-inch foundry prices rose by 10 to 20%, 8 foundry foundry prices Increased 5 to 10%.
Thanks to the escalation of MOSFET prices, which led to the price increase of power semiconductor wafer foundry prices, the price of Silicon Metals and Han Lei stocks rose yesterday (11th). The world’s advanced and new Tangshan also rose simultaneously. Legal person said that MOSFET and IGBT Strong demand, 6-inch and 8-inch foundry prices rose in the third quarter, will drive profitability in the second half of the industry.
Silicone Silicone has recently sent a letter to inform customers of price increases. It is expected that the price of wafer foundry will be increased by 15 to 20% depending on the product in July. High-priced customers and high-priced products will be given priority for filming. Orders that have not been put into production will be returned at the end of June. And ask the customer to re-evaluate the demand, and then come back to apply for the wafer foundry price after July has been adjusted.
According to industry news, Silicon Metals notices that engineering trials and trial production of new products will be suspended until the end of August, while non-integral batches of less than 25 wafers will be postponed, and the minimum number of furnace tubes less than 150 will also temporarily reduce production discharge levels. The delivery period will be extended. Meanwhile, MOS also requires customers to cooperate with the provision of EPI silicon wafers and arrive at the factory for a certain time to open the order.
Han Lei convened a shareholders' meeting yesterday. Chairman Xu Jianhua stated that artificial intelligence, automotive electronics, electric vehicles, and the Internet of Things all drive demand for power semiconductors. Hanjing’s silicon wafer fab Jinging’s production capacity reached the end of the year and its foundry business The same orders will be filled until the end of the year. Han Lei will adjust the product structure step by step, expand niche product volume production scale and increase the proportion of wide energy gap products. Hopefully, this year will achieve the goal of profit for the whole year.
Although Xu Jianhua is reluctant to talk more about whether silicon wafers and foundry prices increase, it only emphasizes price increases to consider market and customer relationships. However, the industry pointed out that EPI silicon wafers have been determined to increase prices quarter by quarter this year, coupled with active upstream customers. For the foundry foundry capacity, in the case of the end of the order to the end of the year, it is expected that Han Lei 5 and 6-inch foundry prices will simultaneously increase prices by more than 10%.
In addition, New Tang and the world's advanced companies have also reported news of rising wafer foundry prices in the third quarter. With the influx of MOSFET orders, NTD 6's foundry production capacity has been fully loaded since last year and is currently in hand. Orders have also been sorted to the end of the year, and the third quarter saw a 10% rise in prices. Business Times
5. Flexible solar cell production is challenged, battery packaging and durability are critical;
The realization of wearable solar clothes, automobiles, and 3C equipment can be said to be the dream of today's scientists. The DSSC is considered to be the most promising force, but the reality is often not that simple. Scientists point out that although the DSSC has been gradually For commercialization and mass production, but still have durability, product applicability, battery encapsulation and other challenges.
Unlike common, mass-produced silicon cells, DSSC does not require semiconductor processing, is easy to manufacture, and has low cost. It can absorb sunlight and transfer electrons through “dye”, and the substrate can also use flexible materials. The development of wearable devices was achieved with simple coating, but organic materials were poor in photovoltaic properties and the structure was also destroyed by ultraviolet light, so they remained in the research room stage. Although many studies have gradually solved these problems, they are still consistent. Sex deficiency problem.
Currently, the teams at Aalto University in Finland and Montreal, Canada focus on the latest developments in flexible DSSCs and how to break through the current situation to achieve mass production. The study concluded that DCSS can be commercialized using the Roll-to-Roll process. Inkjet printing can accurately embed dye and electrolyte components, and has a bright future in this process.
Flexible battery packaging is a big challenge for large-scale production. If the package is not tight, liquid electrolyte may leak or impurities may leak into the gap. These problems will greatly shorten the battery life. Research also pointed out that the new battery substrate is needed. The bonding technology, the traditional glass-frit, is only applicable to rigid equipment. If a flexible battery is to be developed, a new bonding process is still needed.
The battery must also have a sufficient life span, said Kati Miettunen, a researcher at the Department of Biological Sciences and Biological Sciences at Aalto University. Flexible solar cells are usually made of metal or plastic, but metals may corrode. Plastics also make water and other materials. Impurity infiltration.
In the future, we must develop a more stable flexible substrate, preferably a cheaper material with a smaller impact on the environment. The study found that it may be possible to use a biological material or a mixture of materials to make wood pulp and use it as a flexible material. Battery Base. Current research has been published in the Wiley Online Library. TechNews