TrendForce reports that from 2023 to 2027, the global ratio of mature (>28 nm) to advanced (<16 nm) processes is projected to hover around 7:3. Propelled by policies and incentives promoting local production and domestic IC development, China's mature process capacity is anticipated to grow from 29% this year to 33% by 2027. Leading the charge are giants like SMIC, HuaHong Group, and Nexchip, while Taiwan's share is estimated to consolidate from 49% down to 42%.

Expansion predominantly targets specialty processes such as Driver ICs, CIS/ISPs, and Power Discretes, with second and third-tier Taiwanese manufacturers at the forefront
Within the Driver IC sector, the spotlight is on high voltage (HV) specialty processes. As companies aggressively pursue the 40/28 nm HV process, UMC currently dominates, trailed by GlobalFoundries. Yet, SMIC's 28HV and Nexchip's 40HV are gearing up for mass production in 4Q23 and 1H24, respectively—narrowing their technological gap with other foundries. Notably, competitors with similar process capabilities and capacities, such as PSMC, and those without twelve-inch factories like Vanguard and DBHitek, are poised to face challenges head-on in the short term. This trend may also have long-term implications for UMC and GlobalFoundries.

On June 30th, the Netherlands introduced new export restrictions on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Despite facing export controls from the US, Japan, and the Netherlands, TrendForce anticipates the market share of Chinese foundries in terms of 12-inch wafer production capacity will likely increase from 24% in 2022 to an estimated 26% in 2026. Moreover, if the exports of 40/28 nm equipment eventually receive approval, there's a chance that this market share could expand even further, possibly reaching 28% by 2026. This growth potential should not be dismissed.

Several manufacturing processes including photolithography, deposition, and epitaxy will be subject to these recent export restrictions. Beginning September 1st, the export of all controlled items will require formal authorization. TrendForce reports that Chinese foundries have been primarily developing mature processes like 55 nm, 40 nm, and 28 nm. Furthermore, demand for deposition equipment can be largely met by local Chinese vendors, meaning concerns regarding expansion and development are minimal. The main limiting factor, however, remains the equipment used in photolithography.

TrendForce's recent analysis of the foundry market reveals that demand continues to slide for all types of mature and advanced nodes. The major IC design houses have cut wafer input for 1Q23 and will likely scale back further for 2Q23. Currently, foundries are expected to maintain a lower-than-ideal level of capacity utilization rate in the first two quarters of this year. Some nodes could experience a steeper demand drop in 2Q23 as there are still no signs of a significant rebound in wafer orders. Looking ahead to the second half of this year, orders will likely pick up for some components that underwent an inventory correction at an earlier time. However, the state of the global economy will remain the largest variable that affect demand, and the recovery of individual foundries' capacity utilization rates will not occur as quickly as expected. Taking these factors into account, TrendForce currently forecasts that global foundry revenue will drop by around 4% YoY for 2023. The projected decline for 2023 is more severe when compared with the one that was recorded for 2019.

United Microelectronics Corporation ("UMC" or "The Company"), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced its consolidated operating results for the fourth quarter of 2022. Fourth quarter consolidated revenue was NT$67.84 billion, decreasing 10.0% QoQ from NT$75.39 billion in 3Q22. Compared to a year ago, 4Q22 revenue grew 14.8% YoY from NT$59.10 billion in 4Q21. Consolidated gross margin for 4Q22 was 42.9%. Net income attributable to the shareholders of the parent was NT$19.1 billion, with earnings per ordinary share of NT$1.54.

Jason Wang, co-president of UMC, said, "In the fourth quarter, due to a significant slowdown across most of our end markets and inventory correction in the semiconductor industry, our wafer shipments fell 14.8% QoQ while overall fab utilization rate dropped to 90%. Average selling price increased slightly during the quarter as a result of our ongoing product mix optimization efforts, moderating the decline in revenue."

Xilinx Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), now part of AMD, are always in demand in the semiconductor industry. Today, AMD has shared a letter to Xilinx customers that the selected FPGA device series will receive an 8-25% price increase. Citing AMD's investment into the supply chain, along with increased prices from the suppliers, Xilinx FPGAs will get more expensive. From January 9, 2023, the cost of the Spartan 6 series will increase by 25%, the price of the Versal series will not increase, and all other Xilinx products will increase by 8%. Interestingly, the older series manufactured on 40-28 nm nodes will increase while the latest Versal series doesn't experience any change.

Regarding lead times, the 16 nm UltraScale+ series, 20 nm UltraScale series, and 28 nm 7 series all take 20 weeks from order to delivery, which will remain until the third quarter of 2023. You can read the entire document below.

According to TrendForce investigations, foundries have seen a wave of order cancellations with the first of these revisions originating from large-size Driver IC and TDDI, which rely on mainstream 0.1X μm and 55 nm processes, respectively. Although products such as MCU and PMIC were previously in short supply, foundries' capacity utilization rate remained roughly at full capacity through their adjustment of product mix. However, a recent wave cancellations have emerged for PMIC, CIS, and certain MCU and SoC orders. Although still dominated by consumer applications, foundries are beginning to feel the strain of the copious order cancellations from customers and capacity utilization rate has officially declined.

Looking at trends in 2H22, TrendForce indicates, in addition to no relief from the sustained downgrade of driver IC demand, inventory adjustment has begun for smartphones, PCs, and TV-related peripheral components such as SoCs, CIS, and PMICs, and companies are beginning to curtail their wafer input plans with foundries. This phenomenon of order cancellations is occurring simultaneously in 8-inch and 12-inch fabs at nodes including 0.1X μm, 90/55 nm, and 40/28 nm. Not even the advanced 7/6 nm processes are immune.

While the global electronics supply chain experienced a chip shortage, the corresponding shortage of foundry capacities also led various foundries to raise their quotes, resulting in an over 20% YoY increase in the total annual revenues of the top 10 foundries for both 2020 and 2021, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. The top 10 foundries' annual revenue for 2021 is now expected to surpass US$100 billion. As TSMC leads yet another round of price hikes across the industry, annual foundry revenue for 2022 will likely reach US$117.69 billion, a 13.3% YoY increase.

TrendForce indicates that the combined CAPEX of the top 10 foundries surpassed US$50 billion in 2021, a 43% YoY increase. As new fab constructions and equipment move-ins gradually conclude next year, their combined CAPEX for 2022 is expected to undergo a 15% YoY increase and fall within the US$50-60 billion range. In addition, now that TSMC has officially announced the establishment of a new fab in Japan, total foundry CAPEX will likely increase further next year. TrendForce expects the foundry industry's total 8-inch and 12-inch wafer capacities to increase by 6% YoY and 14% YoY next year, respectively.

No-one seems to be immune to the current spat of component shortages and Even Upton from the Raspberry Pi foundation has announced that the 2 GB SKU of Raspberry Pi 4 will be going up in price, to its previous US$45 price point, from its current US$35. They will also bring back the 1 GB SKU of the Raspberry Pi until things settle down and it'll retail for $35.

They're also shifting their production priorities to be able to meet the demand of some products, as they're experiencing a fab allocation shortage on the 40 nm node on which the Raspberry Pi 3 SoCs are being made. As such, the Raspberry Pi 3B+ might end up in short supply, as the Raspberry Pi foundation will focus on its Raspberry Pi 3 and 3+ compute modules, as well as the Raspberry Pi 3B.

Finally some good news from the semiconductor industry, Infineon has announced the opening of its new €1.6 billion, 300 mm, or 12-inch wafer semiconductor factory. That said, we're somewhat confused with the press release, as it states that "the chips are manufactured on 300-millimeter thin wafers, which at 40 micrometers are thinner than a human hair" and that Infineon is a "global pioneer in 300-millimeter thin-wafer technology". This is why you need someone to proofread press releases before distributing them.

Anyhow, back on topic. The fab has nearly 60,000 square meters of gross floor space and production will be ramped up over the next four to five years, so it's not going to alleviate the current chip shortage any time soon. The fab is located in Villach, Austria and has taken three years to build. The first wafers produced in the fab are said to be leaving it this week and although Infineon didn't specify what chips they'll end up as, the fab is set up to initially cater for the automotive industry, data centers and the renewable energy industry.

The panic buying of chips persisted in 2Q21 owing to factors such as post-pandemic demand, industry-wide shift to 5G telecom technology, geopolitical tensions, and chronic chip shortages, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. Chip demand from ODMs/OEMs remained high, as they were unable to meet shipment targets for various end-products due to the shortage of foundry capacities. In addition, wafers inputted in 1Q21 underwent a price hike and were subsequently outputted in 2Q21. Foundry revenue for the quarter reached US$24.407 billion, representing a 6.2% QoQ increase and yet another record high for the eighth consecutive quarter since 3Q19.

As the global economy enters the post-pandemic era, technologies including 5G, WiFi6/6E, and HPC (high-performance computing) have been advancing rapidly, in turn bringing about a fundamental, structural change in the semiconductor industry as well, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. While the demand for certain devices such as notebook computers and TVs underwent a sharp uptick due to the onset of the stay-at-home economy, this demand will return to pre-pandemic levels once the pandemic has been brought under control as a result of the global vaccination drive. Nevertheless, the worldwide shift to next-gen telecommunication standards has brought about a replacement demand for telecom and networking devices, and this demand will continue to propel the semiconductor industry, resulting in high capacity utilization rates across the major foundries. As certain foundries continue to expand their production capacities this year, TrendForce expects total foundry revenue to reach a historical high of US$94.6 billion this year, an 11% growth YoY.

Demand in the global foundry market remains strong in 1Q21, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. As various end-products continue to generate high demand for chips, clients of foundries in turn stepped up their procurement activities, which subsequently led to a persistent shortage of production capacities across the foundry industry. TrendForce therefore expects foundries to continue posting strong financial performances in 1Q21, with a 20% YoY growth in the combined revenues of the top 10 foundries, while TSMC, Samsung, and UMC rank as the top three in terms of market share. However, the future reallocation of foundry capacities still remains to be seen, since the industry-wide effort to accelerate the production of automotive chips may indirectly impair the production and lead times of chips for consumer electronics and industrial applications.

TSMC has been maintaining a steady volume of wafer inputs at its 5 nm node, and these wafer inputs are projected to account for 20% of the company's revenue. On the other hand, owing to chip orders from AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and MediaTek, demand for TSMC's 7 nm node is likewise strong and likely to account for 30% of TSMC's revenue, a slight increase from the previous quarter. On the whole, TSMC's revenue is expected to undergo a 25% increase YoY in 1Q21 and set a new high on the back of surging demand for 5G, HPC, and automotive applications.

AMD is eyeing a slice of the Windows 8 tablet pie with its Z-Series "Hondo" dual-core x86-64 APU, which was launched earlier this week. According to sources among Taiwan-based notebook makers, the first devices based on the chips will arrive as early as this November. The company, however, did not disclose design wins or the companies working on products around its chip. AMD Z-60 will face off with Intel's recently-launched Atom Z2760 dual-core chip, designed for the same class of devices. Built on the 40 nm "Brazos 2.0" silicon, the Z-60 packs two x86-64 cores, and Radeon HD 6250 DirectX 11 graphics. Its TDP is just 4.5W.

NVIDIA's flagship single-GPU graphics card, the GeForce GTX 680, achieved performance leadership over AMD's Radeon HD 7970, and forced a price-cut, however, a section of the community feels that availability is an issue with it. According to NVIDIA, availability is attributed to sales, and not lack of volumes. At an annual investors' meeting with the company's top-brass, NVIDIA released a slide which depicts GeForce GTX 680 as having 60% higher sales than GeForce GTX 580, six weeks following their respective launches.

There is one cosmetic inaccuracy in the graph, though. GeForce GTX 680 and GTX 580 are labeled "GT". One inference that can be drawn out of the graph is that NVIDIA is seeing some success in putting the 28 nm silicon fabrication process to use, despite the GTX 680 being one of the first chips built on it. In comparison, the GTX 580 arrived when the 40 nm process achieved a higher level of maturity. There seems to be a genuinely high demand for the GTX 680.

Sofics bvba of Gistel, a leading provider of ESD solutions for ICs, and ICsense of Leuven, a prominent designer of analog, mixed-signal, and high-voltage ICs and turnkey ASICs, today announced that NVIDIA has licensed their integrated ESD and I/O technology to provide a stable 3.3V I/O with robust ESD protection on its Icera modem processors that use 1.8V transistors.

The license includes customized ESD solutions from Sofics and ICsense's overvoltage-tolerant I/Os. These solutions are based on a novel circuit technique proven in TSMC 0.18 um, 40 nm, and 28 nm processes that allows I/Os to handle more than 2X the voltage of the transistors on the chip.

ARM today announced the availability of a significantly expanded lineup of ARM Processor Optimization Pack (POP) solutions for TSMC 40 nm and 28 nm process technologies targeting a range of ARM Cortex processors. At least nine new POP configurations targeting Cortex-A5, Cortex-A7, Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15 processor cores will be released. An essential element of ARM's comprehensive implementation strategy, POPs enable ARM partners to quickly close timing of single-, dual- and quad-core implementations across a broad envelope of power, performance and area optimization points. This solution reduces risk and improves time-to-market in the development of Cortex processor-based Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) with partners achieving competitive results in as little as six weeks.

At the leading-edge 28 nm HPM (high performance for mobile) and 28 nm HP (high performance) process variants, ARM is launching new POPs for the Cortex-A9 core as well as the first POPs for ARM's newest Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15 processors. Since the Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A15 cores are used in tandem as ARM's big.LITTLE energy-efficient processing solution, the addition of POPs for both cores assures a complete solution for big.LITTLE implementations. ARM's lead licensee for the Cortex-A15 POP for TSMC 28 nm HPM is progressing toward the tape out of its first chip in the coming months.

The GeForce 600 series grew by two members today (albeit, OEM-only), NVIDIA re-branded the GeForce GT 520 to a new model name, "GeForce GT 620". This "new" part is otherwise identical to its predecessor, except that its standard memory amount has been halved from 1 or 2 GB to 512 MB or 1 GB. A feature addition here, is that the GT 620 supports the OpenGL 4.2 API, something the GT 520 doesn't. The GT 620 continues to be based on the 40 nm GF119 silicon, with 48 CUDA cores, 8 TMUs, and 4 ROPs.

NVIDIA also unveiled to OEMs the "new" GeForce 605, which is a re-branded GeForce 510. Based on the same GF119 silicon as the GT 620, the GeForce 605 core runs at 523 MHz, with 1046 MHz CUDA cores. This model comes with memory size options of 512 MB and 1 GB. It also inherits the core configuration of the GeForce 510, with 48 CUDA cores, 8 TMUs, and 4 ROPs.

Sony's next-generation PlayStation, reportedly codenamed "Orbis", is known to be powered by an AMD x86-64 CPU with graphics based on its Southern Islands architecture, from the older report. We're now hearing that Sony may implement a multi-GPU solution of its own. According to an IGN.com report, the CPU in question will be a custom-version of AMD's A8-3850 quad-core APU. This should serve as indication that the processor cores will be based on AMD's K10 Stars architecture, rather than K15 Bulldozer/Piledriver.

The GPU, on the other hand, will be based on the "Southern Islands" architecture, and the IGN.com report pin points it to resemble Radeon HD 7670. The HD 7670 is a re-branded HD 6670, which is based on the 40 nm "Turks" GPU. Turks uses neither Graphics CoreNext nor VLIW4, but the older VLIW5 number-crunching machinery. The most interesting piece of information here is talk of a multi-GPU configuration between this Turks-based GPU, and the GPU that's embedded into the "Llano" APU. We know that the graphics core embedded into AMD A8-3850, the Radeon HD 6550D, can work in tandem with Radeon HD 6670 to yield an AMD Hybrid CrossFireX configuration called "Radeon HD 6690D2". This could be end up being Sony's graphics weapon of choice.

Today, Sparkle announced the launch of GeForce GTX 560 SE graphics card aiming at midrange market. As the most expected superstar product for mainstream market in the first half of this year, this card features a mature 40 nm GF114 GPU, delivering the ultimate next generation gaming experience. The excellent performance not only leads over similar competing products, but also shows no way inferior to GeForce 5 series. Now is the perfect time to upgrade your graphics card at a surprisingly affordable price!

When we learned early details about the Qosmio X870 from Toshiba, we took it as a sufficiently impressive combination of "Ivy Bridge" and "GeForce Kepler", without a clue about which exact models they were. DonanimHaber went hands on with one of these beasts and discovered it instead packs top-rate versions of Ivy Bridge and GeForce Fermi...err, right.

The X870 is driven by Core i7-3610QM. This chip is perhaps the most popular Core i7 mobile chip notebook designers will have access to, from the 3rd generation Core processor family. Armed with 4 cores, 8 threads (enabled with HTT), the i7-3610QM has a nominal clock speed of 2.30 GHz, with a Turbo Boost frequency as high as 3.30 GHz. Unlike higher Core i7 Extreme mobile models, its L3 cache is limited to 6 MB. Handling graphics, on the other hand, is the NVIDIA GeForce GT 670M. The GT 670 is based on 40 nm GF114 GPU, and packs 336 CUDA cores, and 2 GB of GDDR5 memory over a 256-bit wide memory interface. Other notable features of the Qosmio X870 include 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory, a 17.3-inch display with 1920x1080 pixels resolution, an SSD holding the OS and programs, and a 2 TB HDD holding data.

Taiwan's premier chip foundry, TSMC, is reportedly seeing strong demand for sub-40 nm chip manufacturing. It's easy to manufacture smaller, simpler chips on new foundry nodes than complex devices such as GPUs. Hence, the source notes that it's wireless communication device chip manufactures that have sub-40 nm nodes at TSMC fully booked up. The foundly also scored orders from local and foreign fabless audio IC firms. "In fact, TSMC's 6-inch fab dedicated to process analog and LCD driver ICs has been running at full capacity since late February, with shipment delivery times to customers being extended to more than 12 weeks, the sources pointed out," notes DigiTimes.

Even as NVIDIA is inching towards the launch of its next-generation GeForce GTX 670 Ti, it is rushing out the GeForce GTX 560 SE to stem loss in competitiveness to the Radeon HD 7770. Galaxy is readying a compact, cost-effective graphics card based on the new GPU, which is pictured below. Based on the 40 nm GF114 GPU (variant: GF114-200-KB-A1), the GTX 560 SE features 288 CUDA cores, 48 TMUs, 24 ROPs, and a 192-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 1 GB [(4x 1 Gbit)+(2x 2 Gbit)] of GDDR5 memory.

Galaxy's card uses a short PCB, its VRM area has been pushed to the front of the card, consisting of a 4+1 phase design. It draws power from two 6-pin power connectors. The card is cooled by a compact aluminum-fin heatsink to which heat is conveyed by copper heat pipes, and ventilated by a big (80 mm) fan. Chinese site QK123 put the card through a few synthetic benchmarks, measured power-draw, and OC performance. The GPU-Z screenshot reveals its reference speed.Benchmarks follow.

Today at its annual Financial Analyst Day, AMD has presented an updated roadmap detailing the hardware it plans to bring to the table during 2012 and 2013. For this year, the Sunnyvale-based company is preparing a processor quarter which includes the Trinity, Brazos 2.0 and Hondo APUs (accelerated processing units) and the Vishera CPU.

Set to be the main weapon in AMD's x86 arsenal, the Trinity APU (aka the 2nd gen A Series) is made on 32 nm process technology, and features DirectX 11 graphics, two/four Piledriver cores (Piledrive is said to deliver 25% better performance than the Stars cores found in Llano APUs), and a TDP that can go as low as 17 W on mobile parts. Trinity is expected to debut in Q2 and already has close to 100 design wins (more than Llano had before its release).

Tilera Corporation, the leader in manycore microprocessors, today announced several significant steps for the company including the immediate general availability of two of its highly anticipated, low-power, high-performance 64-bit processors - TILE-Gx36 and TILE-Gx16 - as well as companion evaluation systems. These processors are setting new records for performance and performance per watt, running multiple applications including networking, cloud computing and multimedia. Tilera is engaged with more than 80 customers for its TILE-Gx processors, including Harmonic and Mercury Computer Systems.

Moreover, Tilera's former CEO and Tilera co-founder Devesh Garg returns as CEO to scale the company into a leading processor provider in the market.

Without making any noise, AMD rolled out an OEM-exclusive graphics card model, the Radeon HD 7670. This GPU is completely identical to the previous-generation Radeon HD 6670, making it a rebrand. It has identical specifications to the 40 nm Turks GPU, which drives the retail HD 6670, with 480 VLIW5 stream processors, a 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 512 MB or 1 GB of memory, 24 TMUs, 8 ROPs, and clock speeds of 800 MHz core, and 4.00 GHz memory. This GPU was featured on some of HP's desktop PC products. The product page of this OEM-only GPU can be found here.