Samsung Electronics is grappling with significant challenges in its semiconductor division, particularly in its memory and foundry businesses. The company's top management, led by DS Division Vice Chairman Jeon Young-hyun, recently issued a public apology for the division's underwhelming performance. The tech giant's struggles are best seen in its advanced 3 nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) FET node, which reportedly yields only 10-20% of working silicon. This low yield rate has made potential customers hesitant to partner with Samsung, dealing a blow to its foundry business. Samsung Securities projects a 500 billion won (approximately $385 million) loss this year for Samsung Foundry and the LSI division combined. In the global foundry market, Samsung's position has weakened considerably. The company currently holds just 11.5% of the market share in Q2, while industry leader TSMC dominates with a commanding 62.3%. This disparity has led to speculation about the possible spinoff of Samsung Foundry, as the company reevaluates its strategy in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing sector.

Memory unit, one of Samsung's biggest assets, is slowly being one-upped by SK Hynix, which could overtake Samsung as the number one memory maker thanks to strong HBM demand. The management's apology acknowledges the concerns raised about the company's technological competitiveness and future prospects. Vice Chairman Jeon emphasized the need to restore fundamental competitiveness in technology and quality, which he described as the company's "lifeblood." Despite these challenges, Samsung's leadership remains optimistic about turning the crisis into an opportunity. They have pledged to focus on long-term solutions, invest in pioneering technologies, and foster a culture of innovation and open communication within the organization. As one of only three companies left in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing field, alongside TSMC and Intel, Samsung's ability to overcome these hurdles will be crucial not only for the company but for the entire industry.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side, especially as we're running out of sides in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing sector. A recent report by Business Korea highlights Samsung Securities' July publication titled "Geopolitical Paradigm Shift and Industry," which paints a less-than-optimistic picture of Samsung's current state of affairs. The report even evaluates a possible spinoff of Samsung Foundry. The Korean tech giant has faced various business setbacks related to its state-of-the-art 3 nm Gate-All-Around (GAA) FET node. Reports indicate that this node only manages to yield 10-20% of working silicon, making potential customers reluctant to secure partnerships with Samsung. Samsung Securities projects that Samsung Foundry, along with the LSI division, will suffer a 500 billion won (about $385 million) loss this year.

Poor yields and difficulty securing customers have left Samsung facing tough choices, including the possible sale of its massive Foundry unit, which manufactures logic for external customers. It's noteworthy that Samsung is one of only three companies left in the advanced semiconductor manufacturing field, alongside TSMC and Intel. Many companies struggled to deliver results when transitioning to sub-7 nm nodes. Global Foundries dropped out of the race to focus on mature nodes, while Intel faced delays. TSMC has been the only company so far to consistently set and execute its goals, positioning itself as the industry leader. With low yields on the 3 nm GAA FET node, Samsung currently holds 11.5% of the global foundry market share in Q2, while TSMC dominates with 62.3%.

Rapidus Corporation, a company involved in the research, development, design, manufacture, and sales of advanced logic semiconductors, today announced an agreement with Tenstorrent Inc., a next-generation computing company building computers for AI, to jointly develop semiconductor IP (design assets) in the field of AI edge devices based on 2 nm logic semiconductors.

In addition to its AI processors and servers, Tenstorrent built and owns the world's most performant RISC-V CPU IP and licenses that technology to its customers around the world. Through this technological partnership with Rapidus, Tenstorrent will accelerate the development of cutting-edge devices to meet the needs of the ever-evolving digital society.

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2023. The Company posted KRW 60.01 trillion in consolidated revenue, a 6% decline from the previous quarter, mainly due to a decline in smartphone shipments despite a slight recovery in revenue of the DS (Device Solutions) Division. Operating profit rose sequentially to KRW 0.67 trillion as the DS Division posted a narrower loss, while Samsung Display Corporation (SDC) and the Digital Appliances Business saw improved profitability.

The Memory Business saw results improve from the previous quarter as its focus on High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) and DDR5 products in anticipation of robust demand for AI applications led to higher-than-guided DRAM shipments. System semiconductors posted a decline in profit due to lower utilization rates on weak demand from major applications.

Samsung has invested heavily in semiconductor manufacturing technology to provide clients with a viable alternative to TSMC and its portfolio of nodes spanning anything from mobile to high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Today, we have information that Samsung will present its SF4X node to the public in this year's VLSI Symposium. Previously known as a 4HPC node, it is designed as a 4 nm-class node with a specialized use case for HPC processors, in contrast to the standard SF4 (4LPP) node that uses 4 nm transistors designed for low-power standards applicable to mobile/laptop space. According to the VLSI Symposium schedule, Samsung is set to present more info about the paper titled "Highly Reliable/Manufacturable 4nm FinFET Platform Technology (SF4X) for HPC Application with Dual-CPP/HP-HD Standard Cells."

As the brief introduction notes, "In this paper, the most upgraded 4nm (SF4X) ensuring HPC application was successfully demonstrated. Key features are (1) Significant performance +10% boosting with Power -23% reduction via advanced SD stress engineering, Transistor level DTCO (T-DTCO) and [middle-of-line] MOL scheme, (2) New HPC options: Ultra-Low-Vt device (ULVT), high speed SRAM and high Vdd operation guarantee with a newly developed MOL scheme. SF4X enhancement has been proved by a product to bring CPU Vmin reduction -60mV / IDDQ -10% variation reduction together with improved SRAM process margin. Moreover, to secure high Vdd operation, Contact-Gate breakdown voltage is improved by >1V without Performance degradation. This SF4X technology provides a tremendous performance benefits for various applications in a wide operation range." While we have no information on the reference for these claims, we suspect it is likely the regular SF4 node. More performance figures and an in-depth look will be available on Thursday, June 15, at Technology Session 16 at the symposium.

At VLSI Symposium 2023, scheduled to take place between June 11-16, Intel is set to demonstrate its PowerVia technology working efficiently on an E-Core chip built using the Intel 4 node. Conventional chips have power and signal interconnects distributed across multiple metal layers. PowerVia, on the other hand, dedicates specific layers for power delivery, effectively separating them from the signal routing layers. This approach allows for vertical power delivery through a set of power-specific Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) or PowerVias, which are essentially vertical connections between the top and bottom surfaces of the chip. By delivering power directly from the backside of the chip, PowerVia reduces power supply noise and resistive losses, optimizing power distribution and improving overall energy efficiency. PowerVia is set to make a debut in 2024 with Intel 20A node.

For VLSI Symposium 2023 talk, the company has prepared a paper that highlights a design made using Intel 4 technology and implements E-Cores only in a test chip. The document states: "PowerVia Technology is a novel innovation to extend Process Scaling by having Power Delivery on the backside. This paper presents the pre and post silicon findings from implementing an Intel E-Core in PowerVia Technology. PowerVia enabled standard cell utilization of greater than 90 percent in large areas of the core while showing greater than 5 percent frequency benefit in silicon due reduced IR drop. Successful Post silicon debug is demonstrated with slightly higher but acceptable throughput times. The thermal characteristics of the PowerVia testchip is inline with higher power densities expected from logic scaling."

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2023. The Company posted KRW 63.75 trillion in consolidated revenue, a 10% decline from the previous quarter, as overall consumer spending slowed amid the uncertain global macroeconomic environment. Operating profit was KRW 0.64 trillion as the DS (Device Solutions) Division faced decreased demand, while profit in the DX (Device eXperience) Division increased.

The DS Division's profit declined from the previous quarter due to weak demand in the Memory Business, a decline in utilization rates in the Foundry Business and continued weak demand and inventory adjustments from customers. Samsung Display Corporation (SDC) saw earnings in the mobile panel business decline quarter-on-quarter amid a market contraction, while the large panel business slightly narrowed its losses. The DX Division's results improved on the back of strong sales of the premium Galaxy S23 series as well as an enhanced sales mix focusing on premium TVs.

SiFive, Inc. the founder and leader of RISC-V computing, today announced two new products that address the need for high performance and efficiency in a small size in high volume applications like wearables, smart home, industrial automation, AR/VR, and other consumer devices. The SiFive Performance P670 and P470 RISC-V processors bring unparalleled compute performance and efficiency that is significantly raising the bar for innovative designs in these high-volume markets. The modern and innovative SiFive design methodologies bring raw compute density that is a substantial advantage for SiFive Performance products and also translates into significant cost savings for customers.

"The P670 and P470 are specifically designed for, and capable of handling the most demanding workloads for wearables and other advanced consumer applications. These new products offer powerful performance and compute density for companies looking to upgrade from legacy ISAs," said Chris Jones, SiFive VP of Product. "We have optimized these new RISC-V Vector enabled products to deliver the performance and efficiency improvements the industry has long been asking for, and we are in evaluations with a number of top-tier customers. Additionally, as the upstream enablement of RISC-V has started within the Android Open Source Project, (AOSP), designers will have unrivaled choice and flexibility as they consider the positive implications with that platform for future designs."

According to TrendForce research, although demand for consumer electronics remains weak, structural growth demand in the semiconductor industry including for servers, high-performance computing, automotive, and industrial equipment has not flagged, becoming a key driver for medium and long term foundry growth. At the same time, due to robust wafer production at higher pricing in 1Q22, quarterly output value hit a new high for the 11th consecutive quarter, reaching US$31.96 billion, 8.2% QoQ, marginally less than the previous quarter. In terms of ranking, the biggest change is Nexchip surpassed Tower at the ninth position.

TSMC's across the board wafer hikes in 4Q21 on batches primarily produced in 1Q22 coupled with sustained strong demand for high-performance computing and better foreign currency exchange rates pushed TSMC's 1Q22 revenue to $17.53 billion, up 11.3% QoQ. Quarterly revenue growth by node was generally around 10% and the 7/6 nm and 16/12 nm processes posted the highest growth rate due to small expansions in production. The only instance of revenue decline came at the 5/4 nm process due to Apple's iPhone 13 entering the off season for production stocking.

Intel's semiconductors nodes have been quite controversial with the arrival of the 10 nm design. Years in the making, the node got delayed multiple times, and only recently did the general public get the first 10 nm chips. Today, at IEEE's annual VLSI Symposium, we get more details about Intel's upcoming nodes, called Intel 4. Previously referred to as a 7 nm process, Intel 4 is the company's first node to use EUV lithography accompanied by various technologies. The first thing when a new process node is discussed is density. Compared to Intel 7, Intel 4 will double the transistor count for the same area and enable 20% higher performing transistors.

Looking at individual transistor size, the new Intel 4 node represents a very tiny piece of silicon that is even smaller than its predecessor. With a Fin Pitch of 30 nm, Contact Gate Poly Pitch of 50 nm between gates, and Minimum Metal Pitch (M0) of 50 nm, the Intel 4 transistor is significantly smaller compared to the Intel 7 cell, listed in the table below. For scaling, Intel 4 provides double the number of transistors in the same area compared to Intel 7. However, this reasoning is applied only to logic. For SRAM, the new PDK provides 0.77 area reduction, meaning that the same SoC built on Intel 7 will not be half the size of Intel 4, as SRAM plays a significant role in chip design. The Intel 7 HP library can put 80 million transistors on a square millimeter, while Intel 4 HP is capable of 160 million transistors per square millimeter.

Samsung Electronics today reported financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2021. Total consolidated revenue was KRW 63.67 trillion, a 20% increase from the previous year and a record for the second quarter. Operating profit increased 34% from the previous quarter to KRW 12.57 trillion as market conditions improved in the memory market, operations normalized at the Austin foundry fab, and as effective global supply chain management (SCM) helped maintain solid profitability for the finished product businesses.

The Semiconductor business saw a significant improvement in earnings as memory shipments exceeded previous guidance and price increases were higher than expected, while the Company strengthened its cost competitiveness. For the Display Panel Business, a one-off gain and an increase in overall prices boosted profits.

Today, Toshiba has announced that it will officially be leaving the systems LSI (large scale integration) business. With this business unit, Toshiba used to provide design proposals and specifications for systems used for things like image processing, sensors, etc. However, it turns out that the unit is not profitable and Toshiba will be dissolving it. With this move, about 770 employees of the unit will be moved to another work place or be provided with an early retirement plan. Despite ending the business in making SoCs, Toshiba is still going to support existing customers. What is going to be next for Toshiba is the area of analog ICs and microcontrollers for motors, which is supposedly more profitable than the past business unit. All of the resources used in the LSI group will be redirected to the new plan.

Samsung Electronics reported today KRW 52.97 trillion in consolidated revenue and KRW 8.15 trillion in operating profit for the second quarter ended June 30, 2020. Even as the spread of COVID-19 caused closures and slowdowns at stores and production sites around the world, the Company responded to challenges through its extensive global supply chain, while minimizing the impact of the pandemic by strengthening online sales channels and optimizing costs.

Quarterly operating profit rose 26 percent from the previous quarter and 23 percent from a year earlier, thanks to firm demand for memory chips and appliances, as well as a one-off gain at its Display Panel Business. A partial recovery in global demand since May also helped offset some COVID-19 effects, resulting in higher earnings than initially expected. Revenue in the quarter fell 4 percent from the previous quarter and 6 percent from a year earlier due to reduced sales of smartphones and other devices.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced the industry's first all-in-one power management integrated circuits (PMIC), MUA01 and MUB01, optimized for today's True Wireless Stereo (TWS) devices.

Unlike wireless headphones, TWS earbuds have no wire that connects the two earpieces. Without the connecting wires, TWS devices present users with more freedom in movement and range on their day-to-day activities. However, like other mobile devices, long battery life and small form factors are key requirements for these wireless earbuds.

TSMC today announced it has collaborated with Broadcom on enhancing the Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS ) platform to support the industry's first and largest 2X reticle size interposer. With an area of approximately 1,700mm2, this next generation CoWoS interposer technology significantly boosts computing power for advanced HPC systems by supporting more SoCs as well as being ready to support TSMC's next-generation five-nanometer (N5) process technology.

This new generation CoWoS technology can accommodate multiple logic system-on-chip (SoC) dies, and up to 6 cubes of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), offering as much as 96 GB of memory. It also provides bandwidth of up to 2.7 terabytes per second, 2.7 times faster than TSMC's previously offered CoWoS solution in 2016. With higher memory capacity and bandwidth, this CoWoS solution is well-suited for memory-intensive workloads such as deep learning, as well as workloads for 5G networking, power-efficient datacenters, and more. In addition to offering additional area to increase compute, I/O, and HBM integration, this enhanced CoWoS technology provides greater design flexibility and yield for complex ASIC designs in advanced process nodes.

AMD today announced that Jim Anderson (43) has joined the company as senior vice president and general manager of AMD's Computing and Graphics (CG) business group, reporting to President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su. Anderson will be responsible for managing all aspects of strategy, business management, engineering, and sales for AMD's computing and graphics products and solutions.

"Jim's business and technical expertise make him another strong addition to AMD's leadership team," said Dr. Su. "His deep industry knowledge and proven ability to transform businesses to drive profitable growth make him the ideal candidate to lead the Computing and Graphics business."

G.SKILL International Co., Ltd., the leading high performance memory and SSD designer and manufacturer, is excited to announce the Phoenix Blade Series PCIe SSD, the next generation of high-speed, high-capacity storage device. The Phoenix Blade PCIe SSD is the perfect storage solution for extreme gaming, professional graphic design, industrial design, and HD video & audio content creation.

By introducing extreme read and write performance, the potential of today's multi-core processors can be unleashed, resulting in higher productivity and performance, whether you are in extreme gaming or professional design.

GIGABYTE Technology, a leading creator of high performance server hardware, is happy to introduce today its new lineup of motherboards based on the new Intel C612 chipset. Supporting the brand new Intel Xeon processor E5-2600/1600 V3 product families (former codename Haswell-EP) and the also brand new DDR4 server memory, this new lineup initially consists of one workstation motherboard and six server motherboards.

On Intel's previous server platforms, by design the maximum supported memory frequency has always been automatically downgraded the more DIMMs were being added on a server motherboard. As this trade-off between performance and capacity represents a dilemma to many memory-hungry server applications, GIGABYTE offers a unique solution. All our motherboards based on the LGA 2011-3 socket support by default a maximum frequency of 2133 MHz in any memory configuration.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, today announced it has completed its previously announced acquisition of the assets of LSI's Accelerated Solutions Division ("ASD") and Flash Components Division ("FCD") from Avago Technologies Limited.

"There is a growing opportunity for mobile and enterprise flash-based storage solutions, which is why we're excited about this strategic technology acquisition," said Steve Luczo, Seagate Chairman and CEO. "Integrating LSI's Enterprise PCIe flash and SSD controller products, and its engineering capabilities into Seagate's leading storage technology portfolio and product development will expand our ability to meet a broader base of customers' needs and drive new revenue opportunities."

LSI, an Avago Technologies Company, today announced breakthrough performance and endurance demonstrations of its third-generation SandForce SF3700 flash controller. After successfully introducing industry-leading sequential performance of 1800 MB/s, the SF3700 is now demonstrating mixed 80/20 (read/write) workload performance of up to 1300 MB/s with a native PCIe interface. This incredible real-world performance is supported by the integrated SHIELD error correction with hard and soft LDPC and DSP technology, engineered to meet the associated endurance requirements.

The SF3700 performance and endurance represents a substantial improvement over competitive flash controller designs. Unlike current solutions, the SF3700 controller is optimized and architected for bi-directional PCIe traffic, unlocking the maximum performance capability to meet requirements for client and enterprise applications.

Seagate Technology plc, a world leader in storage solutions, and Avago Technologies Limited, a leading semiconductor device supplier to the enterprise storage, wired, wireless and industrial end markets, today announced that they have entered into a definitive asset purchase agreement under which Seagate will acquire the assets of LSI's Accelerated Solutions Division ("ASD") and Flash Components Division ("FCD") from Avago for $450 million in cash.

The acquisition strengthens Seagate's strategy to deliver a full suite of storage solutions, providing Seagate with established Enterprise PCIe flash and SSD controller capabilities to deliver solutions for the growing flash storage market. LSI's ASD business, which is the second largest player in the PCIe flash space, offers a highly differentiated enterprise-grade PCIe flash solution focused on the high-growth cloud and hyperscale markets. LSI's FCD business, led by its SandForce SF2000 and SF3700 controller products, is driving a multi-product roadmap to address volume markets.

ADATA revealed its flagship consumer SSD in the M.2 form-factor, the SR1020NP series, which is an evolution of the AXNP280e it unveiled at this year's International CES. The drive comes in capacities of up to 1 TB, is based on LSI-SandForce 3700 series processor wired to MLC NAND flash, and a host interface with wiring for PCI-Express 2.0 x4 physical layer. Most M.2 SSDs, in contrast, are being designed for PCI-Express 2.0 x2.

That's not all, most motherboards launched on Intel's 9-series chipset feature M.2 slots with just PCI-Express 2.0 x2 wiring, with the exception of ASRock's top-end Z97-Extreme6, which features a special M.2 slot with PCI-Express 2.0 x4 wiring. Using that slot, however, will eat into the bandwidth meant for graphics cards, and the primary PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot will run at 3.0 x8, because ASRock wired the slot to the CPU's root complex. Under ideal conditions, SandForce 3700 series processors are advertised to offer sequential transfer rates as high as 1.8 GB/s. Given that, this drive should be bottlenecked on most motherboards with PCI-Express 2.0 x2 based M.2 slots. ADATA will display the drive at the 2014 Computex, early next month, alongside gaming-grade and overclocker-grade DDR4 modules.

OCZ Storage Solutions - a Toshiba Group Company and leading provider of high-performance solid state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced the RevoDrive 350 Series with workstation-grade design capabilities and maximum performance for professional content creation, multimedia, and extreme gaming applications. Achieving three times the performance of SATA-based SSD solutions, RevoDrive 350 is based on proven performance architecture and features 19 nm Toshiba NAND to complete OCZ's portfolio transition to in-house flash, offering a high-performance yet cost-efficient SSD solution for bandwidth-intensive client applications.

Using the PCI Express Gen. 2 x8 interface and up to four LSI SF-2282 processors to offer more available bandwidth than the previous generation, RevoDrive 350 features up to 1.8GB/s sequential speeds and up to 140,000 4K random write IOPS, delivering SSD RAID performance without the hassle in an easy-to-deploy, single card solution.

OCZ Storage Solutions - a Toshiba Group Company and leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today announced the introduction of the enterprise-class Z-Drive 4500 PCI Express (PCIe) SSD Series. The new Z-Drive 4500 Series delivers even higher performance in comparison to OCZ's Z-Drive R4 Series, leverages 19 nanometer (nm) MLC NAND flash, and features a more robust architectural design covering 800GB, 1.6TB and 3.2TB usable capacities.

Each model within the Z-Drive 4500 Series is integrated with OCZ's new Windows Accelerator (WXL) Software -- a flash management and caching solution for Microsoft Windows Server applications also announced by the Company today. WXL Software enables IT managers to deliver low-latency flash deployable as a local flash volume, a flash cache for HDD volumes or as a combination of both.

LSI Corporation (NASDAQ: LSI) today reported results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2013. On December 15, 2013, LSI entered into a definitive agreement with Avago Technologies Limited (NASDAQ: AVGO) under which Avago has agreed to acquire LSI for $11.15 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $6.6 billion. In anticipation of this transaction, which is expected to close in the first half of 2014, LSI will not issue financial guidance for the upcoming quarter or conduct a fourth quarter results conference call. LSI has also discontinued its quarterly dividend and stock repurchases.

"We ended the year on a strong note, with solid quarterly results and the announcement of Avago's proposed acquisition of LSI," said Abhi Talwalkar, LSI's president and CEO. "Our employees did a great job in the quarter and in the year, bringing several exciting new products to market and expanding our capabilities to better serve our growing customer base in flash storage, datacenters and mobile networks."