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Company Trend(September 5)

Intel announced new foundry agreement with Tower Semiconductor

Earlier, Intel announced the acquisition of Israeli chipmaker Tower Semiconductor at the consideration of USD 5.4bn to expand its production capacity and wafer foundry scope in a short time. However, the acquisition was eventually terminated by Intel because it could not obtain the regulatory approvals required under the merger agreement. On September 5, local time, just less than a month after the failure of the acquisition, lntel announced that it had signed a new agreement with Tower Semiconductor. According to this agreement, Tower will utilize Intels advanced manufacturing facility in New Mexico, which will be operated by Intel Foundry Service (IFS), and will invest up to USD 300mn to acquire and own equipment and other fixed assets to be installed in the New Mexico facility. Under the agreement, Tower will have a new capacity corridor of over 600,000 photo layers per month for Towers future growth, enabling capacity to support forecast customer demand for 300mm advanced analog processing. The agreement means that Intel will manufacture Towers 65-nm power management BCD (bipolar-CMOS-DMOS). Tower Semiconductor itself also owns fabricating facilities in Israel (150 mm and 200 mm), the United States (200 mm), Japan (200 mm and 300 mm) and facilities in Italy under its cooperation with STMicroelectronics.

Comments

Intel signed an agreement with Tower Semiconductor to enhance its foundry capacity. The "IDM 2.0"strategy announced by Intel plans to build the world-class Intel Foundry Service (IFS) and challenge competitors such as TSMC, the industry leader. For Tower, this is its first step to cooperate with Intel in terms of various unique collaborative solutions. Towers cooperation with Intel enables it to meet the demand of customers roadmaps, especially paying attention to advanced power management and RF SOI solutions, and it plans to conduct a complete process certification in 2024.

Company Trend(September 5)

Qualcomm to provide auto infotainment system chips for BMW & Benz

According to Casgoo, Reuters reported that Qualcomm, an American semiconductor company, said on September 5th that it would provide auto infotainment system chips for Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Qualcomm said in a statement that it will provide BMW with chips for communication in the car. In addition, the company will also provide chips for next-generation Mercedes-Benz E-Class cars, which will be launched in the United States in 2024. Qualcomm is a major supplier of smart phone chips, and the smart phone market slumped sharply last year. However, it is also cooperating with automakers to provide chips for various automotive functions such as infotainment systems and advanced driving assistance systems. Although the prospect of the smartphone market misses analystsexpectations, Qualcomms auto business revenue increased by 13% in Q3. The CEO of Qualcomm said that the company expects that its auto business revenue will reach USD 4bn by 2026 and USD 9bn by 2030.

Comments

The reason why Qualcomm accelerates developing its auto-related business is that its result has declined due to the downsizing of the mobile phone business market. Qualcomms business has achieved rapid growth. The upgrade of mobile phones from 4G to 5G has driven the growth of Qualcomms mid-to-high-end mobile phone chip business. At the same time, the company has begun to improve its layout in the field of low-end mobile phone SoC chips. Moreover, due to its business diversification growth strategy, the company has achieved significant growth in terms of automobile and Internet of Things, which has driven its result high in the past two years. The joint development of software is an important milestone for BMW s next-generation self-driving platform. In order to realize complex and safe functions in cars, all components in the digital value chain need to be equipped with the most advanced software, which has become a pillar supporting the intelligent driving assistance system.

Company Trend(September5)

Intel vows to surpass TSMC in 2025

According to Bloomberg, a few days ago, the CEO of Intel Corporation delivered a speech at the Deutsche Banks 2023 Technology Conference that Intel would regain leadership" in chip process node technology. He also revealed that Intel has successfully secured a "large customer" for its 18A node technology, which is expected to be available in 2025. To keep its own chips competitive, Intel has actually contracted TSMC as well to fabricate parts of its next generation "Meteor Lake"chips. Since 2021, one of Intels goals is to regain its leadership as an advanced foundry in the market, and it is now 2.5 years into its transformation program. In order to achieve this goal, according to the analysts of Creative Strategies, Intel is on track with its manufacturing roadmap of 5 nodes in four years, regaining process leadership in 2025 with the 18A node. Following on from Meteor Lake (expected to be launched later this month), Intel will be ramping its Intel 3 process (5 nm) "soon". Perhaps more excitingly and attractively, Intel has received pre-payment from a large customer for its 18A node (1.8 nm) that has already been successfully taped out and is to launched to the market in 2025.

Comments

In the past few years, Intel has tried to upgrade its process node technology from 14 nm to 10 nm, and when seeing TMSC takes a leading position in Chip process node technology, it encountered a series of setbacks. One can only speculate as to which company this "large customer" is. TSMC also claims it will release its own 2 nm process node in 2025 and already receives support of major customers including Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD, MediaTek, and Apple. Undoubtedly, Intel will be keen to secure at least one of these companies as it helps with its own economies of scale as investing in each of these new process nodes is a multi-billion-dollar endeavor. In the end, the competition in the foundry sector benefits customers as it is driving the delivery of faster, but also more efficient chips.

Market Trend(September 7)

Global semiconductor sales totaled USD 43.2bn, keeping its increase momentum

On September 6th, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced global semiconductor industry sales totaled USD 43.2bn over July 2023, up 2.3% from USD 42.2bn of June 2023, but down 11.8% from USD 49bn of July 2022. Regionally, the monthly sales increased in the Americas (6.3%), China (2.6%), Europe (0.5%), and Asia Pacific/All others (0.3%), but decreased slightly in Japan (-1.0%). The YoY sales were up in Europe (5.9%), but down in Japan (-4.3%), and the Americas (-7.1%). SIA President and CEO said that the global semiconductor market experienced modest but steady month-to-month growth this year, with sales increasing for the fourth consecutive month in July. However, global sales remain down compared to last year, but the YoY decrease in July was the smallest gap of the year to date. According to SIAs earlier report, the global semiconductor sales in Q2 2023 totaled USD 124.5bn, up 4.7% compared to Q1 2023, but down 17.3% compared to Q2 2022. As can be seen from the recent data of SIA, the global semiconductor market is on track of recovery.

Comments

After the global sales growth reached its peak in December 2021, the global semiconductor market fell into a downward cycle. This round of prosperity of the semiconductor industry has remained down for a long time, with its fundamentals "being bottomed" basically. The continuous MoM growth may bring a glimmer of light for the industry to bottom out. Although the slight growth disclosed by SIA has released a good signal, the YoY global semiconductor sales still lagged behind that of 2022. Therefore, with the release of the signal of slow recovery, the market is more concerned about when a comprehensive recovery will come. In this regard, the upstream and downstream of the industry and analysts have anchored the time node in 2024. In the insiders view, the main driving force of this round of recovery comes from the slow recovery of the consumer electronics industry and the sharp increase in the demand for AI chips.

Trends of some domestic industries

1.GTA Semiconductor completed financing of RMB 13.5bn(September 4)

According to the report of the Wechat account of Mingsheng Capital, recently, Shanghai GTA Semiconductor Co., Ltd. ("GTA Semiconductor") completed a new round of financing of RMB 13.5bn. It is reported that GTA Semiconductor has been rated to ISO9001, VDA 6.3 (Grade A), IATF 16949, ISO 14001, ISO/IEC 27001 and other management system certifications for quality, environment and information security. It is one of the leading manufacturing foundries specializing in automotive IC and IGBT chips and holds a leading position in the foundry of analog circuits and power devices. GTA Semiconductor has two manufacturing facilities in Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone Lin-Gang Special Area and Xuhui District of Shanghai, with a total capacity of 280,000 units of 8"wafers per month, including 70,000  units of 6" wafers per month, 110,000 units of 8 "wafers per month, 50,000 units of 12" wafers per month and 30,000 SiC wafers per month, and provides characteristic manufacturing platforms and technical services for core chips such as microcontrollers, analog circuits, power devices and sensors in the fields of automobile electronics, industrial control and high-end consumer electronics.

2.YOFC Advanced Semiconductors Wuhan base officially started with investment of RMB 20bn+(September 4)

According to the report of the Wechat account of Anhui YOFC Advanced Semiconductor Company (YASC), the commencement ceremony of YASC Wuhan Base was smoothly held at the Science Island of Optics Valley in Wuhan, Hubei province. It is reported that YASC Wuhan Base is located at the Science Island of Optics Valley, and its total investment is expected to exceed RMB 20bn. Among them, the total investment of the first phase of the project is RMB 10bn, with an annual output of 360,000 units of SiC MOSFET wafers, including epitaxy, device design, wafer manufacturing and packaging. It is expected that the first phase of the project will be completed in 2025, when it will become the largest SiC power semiconductor manufacturing base in China. The president of YASC said that the smooth start of the Wuhan Base indicates that YASC has started an important step in the third generation semiconductor field, which will inject strong impetus into its rapid development in the silicon carbide industry. Apart from reducing costs, it also provides sufficient capacity guarantee for YASCs further business expansion and customer service.