The US is one of the leading countries when it comes to chip design technologies and know-how; however, when it comes to actual manufacturing those designs, it's fallen from grace in recent years. Once the leader in both design and manufacturing, nowadays the US can only claim some 12% of the world's semiconductor production. The rest of it is mainly produced in Asia, where TSMC stands as the industry juggernaut, with other companies stretching across Taiwan, Japan, and most recently (and surging) China - the country has more than doubled its 300 mm manufacturing sites since 2017. This places some strain on the US' dependence from foreign shipments; and the country is looking to bridge that gap in its perceived national interests by investing heavily in silicon manufacturing to be brought back to the country. Recent slippages from Intel when it comes to keeping its manufacturing lead have apparently also instilled preoccupation amongst US policy makers.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, called TSMC shorty, has just become the world's biggest semiconductor company. The news broke after TSMC's stock reached a peak heights of $66.40 price per share, and market capitalization of 313 billion US dollars. That means that the Taiwanese company officially passed Intel, NVIDIA, and Samsung in terms of market capitalization, which is no small feat. And the news isn't that surprising. TSMC has been rather busy with orders from customers, just waiting for new spots so they can grab a piece of its production pipeline.

TrendForce, a market intelligence provider, estimates that TSMC has an amazing 51.9% of global semiconductor foundry share alone. That is no small feat but TSMC worked hard over the years to make it happen. With constant investments into R&D, TSMC has managed to make itself not only competitive with other foundries, but rather an industry leader. With 5 nm already going in high-volume manufacturing (HVM) in Q4 of this year, the company is demonstrating that it is the market leader with the latest node developments. Smaller nodes like 3 nm are already in development and TSMC doesn't plan to stop.

Chinese silicon manufacturer Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) has officially made a debut on the Chinese science and technology innovation board (STAR) as of today. After submitting a proposal 16 days ago, SMIC already managed to start trading its shares on the STAR board of China's Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE). Why this is important you might wonder? Well now SMIC can collect more funds and invest that into node development, so the Chinese semiconductor industry is about to boom. Being the biggest semiconductor manufacturer in China, SMIC takes the lead and every development from the company is big for the Chinese semiconductor industry.

SMIC is currently trading on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEX) where it used to trade exclusively. With SSE now included, it is easier for the company to trade. SMIC also submitted a proposal last year in May to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) so it can get the attention of Western investors. If the company manages to successfully raise all the funds for node development, then the Chinese semiconductor industry is about to flourish.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that it has received UL's Zero Waste to Landfill validation of Gold level and above for all of its global semiconductor operation sites. This signifies that Samsung's semiconductor sites in South Korea, US and China meet the requirement of more than 95-percent waste diversion through methods that do not involve thermal processing. In particular, the Samsung DSR building in Hwaseong, Korea, home to most of its local semiconductor R&D staff, is validated for Zero Waste to Landfill at the Platinum level for reaching 100-percent waste diversion.

"The Zero Waste to Landfill Gold validation is testament to the care and effort by our employees around the world to protect the environment," said Chanhoon Park, executive vice president of global infrastructure technology at Samsung Electronics. "Eco-friendly operations are now a must for any business and we will continue to ensure sustainable growth that is mindful of the environment that we live and operate in."

As the US stranglehold on Huawei keeps on tightening its grip, China's government is keen on both investing more heavily into in-country semiconductor manufacturing that can become a viable alternative to Huawei as a source a silicon, as well as decrease the country's dependence on Western or Western-tied companies. The country has already developed promising alternatives to foreign DRAM solutions via Xi'an UniIC Semiconductors and Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC). Now, following a previously-successful funding round held in Hong Kong (worth some $2.2 billion injected last month), China's largest contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is looking for an additional $2.8 billion funding round via Shanghai.

SMIC is currently years behind TSMC, the current benchmark when it comes to semiconductor manufacturing. For now, SMIC is only able to provide 14 nm product designs - and even in that node, silicon is being quoted as having as much as a 70% defect-rate on any given wafer produced by the company (they've already started 14 nm production of Huawei's low-cost Kirin 710 chipset). At any rate, sources point towards a 6,000 monthly wafer production capacity within SMIC, a very, very low number that fails to meet any current demand (TSMC, for scale, are quoted as producing as many as 110,000 7 nm wafers per month). It's definitely an uphill battle, but SMIC counts with the might of the Chinese government through its sails - so while the waters might not be smooth, investment rounds such as these two (which amount to some $5 billion capital injection in two months) will be sure to help grease the engines for china's semiconductor expansion as much as possible.

New manufacturing processes powered by AI and big data reduce defects that can go unnoticed by human inspection, resulting in improved product quality and efficiency. With the advent of the AIoT era, ASUS has embraced new technologies and methods to develop advanced manufacturing capabilities. At the end of 2019, ASUS expanded the company's AIoT business unit to be able to develop more solutions for industries and, in the process, renamed it the AIoT Business Group (AIoT BG). After consideration and planning around the three major aspects of successful manufacturing - design power, technical ability and continuous profitability - ASUS transformed operations to achieve the flexibility, speed, productivity and quality required for supply-side Industry 4.0 upgrades.

Detecting defects by hand is a major pain point and cause of inefficiencies in manufacturing processes. By investing in smart manufacturing solutions that utilize AI for producing metal peripherals, fans, printed circuit boards and other computer components as well as for system assembly, ASUS was able to remove efficiency bottlenecks and reduce losses resulting from misjudgment of manufacturing defects by factory employees. Moving forward, ASUS will continue to use artificial intelligence and big data to statistically classify different types of quality defects, determine their causes and improve processes at the source of defects to further improve and push the boundaries of manufacturing quality.

TSMC is working hard to bring the best silicon out there, with the company supplying many of the companies like NVIDIA, AMD, Huawei, and Apple - all customers who demand the latest and greatest when it comes to the silicon technology. According to sources close to DigiTimes, TSMC is expected to kick-off volume production of its next-generation 5 nm+ manufacturing node, which is an enhancement of the 5 nm node, as soon as Q4 of this year hits.

Update May 29th: The DigiTimes report indicates that TSMC is preparing the 5 nm+ node for AMD Ryzen 4000 "Vermeer" series of CPUs. Originally planned for using the 7 nm+ node, the CPUs are supposedly ported to a smaller node, providing better transistor performance and lower power consumption. The Ryzen 4000 series of desktop processors were planned for launching later this year, however, being that the new information provided by DigiTimes suggests 5 nm+ node could be used, we can expect to see Zen 3 based processors sometime in early 2021.

A report via DigiTimes, citing "sources familiar with the matter", claims that Micron is ramping up production of its 1z nm nodes for DDR4 manufacturing. As the latest fabrication technology available for the DDR market, 1z nm refers to silicon manufacturing in the 12-14 nm ranges, which is the currently densest available process in the high volume manufacturing space. Micron's other fabrication technology, 1y nm (referring to manufacturing in the 14 - 16 nm range), is also seeing increased manufacturing orders as market requirements for DDR volume are only bound to increase in the foreseeable future.

Micron's ramp-up of 1z nm makes sense, as DDR4 will continue to make-up the overwhelming majority of memory needs for the market until DDR5 fully comes online - and even then, volume requirements will take a while to achieve anything that's compared to today's flow of DDR4. Micron is likely banking on increased experience on the 1z nm nodes to launch its early DDR5 products, which will exclusively use that manufacturing technology. Manufacturing increases are being reported to be mostly related to 16 Gb DRAM modules (for the desktop and laptop spaces).

A report via DigiTimes places TSMC as having announced to its investors that exploratory studies and R&D for the development of the 2 nm process node have commenced. As today's leading semiconductor fabrication company, TSMC doesn't seem to be one resting on its laurels. Their 7 nm process and derivatives have already achieved a 30% weight on the company's semiconductor orders, and their 5 nm node (which will include EUV litography) is set to hit HVM (High Volume Manufacturing) in Q2 of this year. Apart from that, not much more is known on 2 nm.

After 5 nm, which is expected to boats of an 84-87% transistor density gain over the current 7nm node, the plans are to go 3nm, with TSMC expecting that node to hit mass production come 2022. Interestingly, TSMC is planning to still use FinFET technology for its 3 nm manufacturing node, though in a new GAAFET (gate-all-around field-effect transistor) technology. TSMC's plans to deploy FinFET in under 5nm manufacturing is something that many industry analysts and specialist thought extremely difficult to achieve, with expectations for these sub-5nm nodes to require more exotic materials and transistor designs than TSMC's apparent plans

Huawei's subsidiary, HiSilicon, which designs the processors used in Huawei's smartphones and telecommunications equipment, has reportedly moved its silicon orders from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), according to DigiTimes. Why Huawei decided to do is move all of the 14 nm orders from Taiwanese foundry to China's largest silicon manufacturing fab, is to give itself peace of mind if the plan of the US Government goes through to stop TSMC from supplying Huawei. At least for the mid-tier chips built using 14 nm node, Huawei would gain some peace as a Chinese fab is a safer choice given the current political situation.

When it comes to the high-end SoCs built on 7 nm, and 5 nm in the future, it is is still uncertain how will Huawei behave in this situation, meaning that if US cuts off TSMC's supply to Huawei, they will be forced to use SMIC's 7 nm-class N+1 node instead of anything from TSMC. Another option would be Samsung, but it is a question will Huawei put itself in risk to be dependant on another foreign company. The lack of 14 nm orders from Huawei will not be reflecting much on TSMC, because whenever someone decides to cut orders, another company takes up the manufacturing capactiy. For example, when Huawei cut its 5 nm orders, Apple absorbed by ordering more capacity. When Huawei also cut 7 nm orders, AMD and other big customers decided to order more, making the situation feel like there is a real fight for TSMC's capacity.

Samsung is determined in its plans to deliver the 3 nm silicon manufacturing process in the year 2022, and with it, there will be some major improvements to the transistor technology. We have already mentioned that Samsung is working on Gate-All-Around FET technology that will bring much better control of the transistor channel, preventing leakage at smaller nodes. However, today Samsung added a few more details about its upcoming Multi Bridge Channel FET technology for a 3 nm manufacturing process, simply called the MBCFET. Thanks to the report from Hardwareluxx, we have more details regarding the MBCFET technology and its characteristics.

Firstly, it is worth noting that MCBFET is a part of GAAFETs, meaning that the GAAFET is not one product, but rather a class of many based on its concepts. As far as the MCBFET performance goes, Samsung says that the technology will use 50% less power while delivering 30% more performance. There is going to be a big density gain as well, where Samsung predicts there will be around 45% less silicon space taken per one transistor. The comparison is made to an unspecified 7 nm process, possibly Samsung's process that uses FinFETs. The technology allows the stacking of transistors on top of each other, which makes it use inherently less space compared to regular FinFET. Being that MCBFET GAA transistors make its transistor width flexible, it means that the overall stacked transistor can be as wide as a designer needs it to be, adjusting for any scenario like low-power or high-performance.

China's state-backed SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) has set an ambitious target of Q4-2020 for its 7 nanometer-class N+1 foundry node to go live, achieving "small scale production," according to a cnTechPost report. The company has a lot of weight on its shoulders as geopolitical hostility between the U.S. and China threatens to derail the country's plans to dominate 5G technology markets around the world. The SMIC N+1 node is designed to improve performance by 20%, reduce chip power consumption by 57%, reduce logic area by 63%, and reduce SoC area by 55%, in comparison to the SMIC's 14 nm FinFET node, Chinese press reports citing a statement from SMIC's co-CEO Dr. Liang Mengsong.

Dr. Liang confirmed that the N+1 7 nm node and its immediate successor will not use EUV lithography. N+1 will receive a refinement in the form of N+2, with modest chip power consumption improvement goals compared to N+1. This is similar to SMIC's 12 nm FinFET node being a refinement of its 14 nm FinFET node. Later down its lifecycle, once the company has got a handle of its EUV lithography equipment, N+2 could receive various photomasks, including a switch to EUV at scale.

Samsung Display, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics that develops and manufactures display panels, is reportedly ending the manufacturing of all its LCD panel products by the end of 2020. These include TN-film, various kinds of VA, and IPS. This would see an end to even LED-backlit LCD panels that make up a bulk of the company's low-cost PC monitors and TVs. The company will focus on more advanced panel technologies, such as AMOLED and QLED. Samsung manufactures LCD panels at plants in South Korea and China. With LCD being phased out, the production lines will be re-tooled to manufacture quantum-dot LED (QLED) panels. The company will spend the rest of 2020 shipping out pending orders of LCD panels.

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that its new cutting-edge semiconductor fabrication line in Hwaseong, Korea, has begun mass production.

The facility, V1, is Samsung's first semiconductor production line dedicated to the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology and produces chips using process node of 7 nanometer (nm) and below. The V1 line broke ground in February 2018, and began test wafer production in the second half of 2019. Its first products will be delivered to customers in the first quarter.

The following analysis shows TrendForce's investigations of key component and other downstream technology industries, under the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, with the latest data as of February 14, 2020.

Semiconductors
Compared to the OSAT industry, the foundry industry has a much higher degree of fab automation and thus is less impacted by the outbreak. But because most workers at semiconductor manufacturing sites in China come from out of town, labor shortages and traffic restrictions will lower work resumption rates at foundries more than expected. In the short term, fab utilization rates may not make a full recovery. As a result, given that the outbreak has not yet been effectively contained, TrendForce is projecting a possible decline in shipment for the Chinese foundry industry in 1Q20, in turn affecting downstream Chinese OSAT companies. The industry's overall performance recovery remains to be seen.

With its own silicon fabrication facilities pushed to their capacity limits, Intel is looking for third-party semiconductor foundries to share some of its supply load, and according to a WCCFTech report, its latest partner could be GlobalFoundries, which has a 14 nm-class fab in Upstate New York. If it goes through, the possible Intel-GloFo deal could see contract manufacturing commence within 2020.

GloFo's fab offers 14 nm FinFET and 12LPP, a refinement that's marketed as 12 nm. According to the report, Intel could use GloFo for manufacturing CPU dies, specifically its entry-level chips such as Core i3, Pentium, and Celeron. Intel is also known to shed its own manufacturing workload by contracting foundries for 14 nm core-logic (chipsets). In a bid to maximize 14 nm fab allocation for its CPUs, Intel also started making some of its 300-series chipsets on the older 22 nm process, which goes to show the company's appetite for 14 nm.

TSMC is delivering record results day after day, with a 5 nm manufacturing process starting High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) in Q2 next year, 7 nm process getting plenty of orders and the fact that TSMC just became the biggest company publicly trading in Asia. Continuing with the goal to match or even beat the famous Moore's Law, TSMC is already planning for future 3 nm node manufacturing, promised to start HVM as soon as 2022 arrives, according to JK Wang, TSMC's senior vice president of fab operations. Delivering 3 nm a whole year before originally planned in 2023, TSMC is working hard, with fab construction work doing quite well, judging by all the news that the company is releasing recently.

We can hope to see the first wave of products built using 3 nm manufacturing process sometime around end of year 2022, when the holiday season arrives. Usual customers like Apple and HiSilicon will surely utilize the new node and deliver their smartphones with 3 nm processors inside as soon as the process is ready for HVM.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited, also known as TSMC shortly became Asia's biggest and the most valuable company with a market cap of over 8.02 trillion New Taiwan Dollars, which roughly translates to 262.75 billion US Dollars. Becoming the biggest Asian company, TSMC's market capitalization has now surpassed Samsung for the first time in the history of company existence.

The underlying reasons for becoming a company that TSMC is today, are plenty. Firstly, they are providing customers with the flexibility of choosing any manufacturing node, whatever it is the latest 7 nm or the older ones like 180 nm. They have a choice whatever they want to use something older and less expensive or something newer for high-performance and lower power. Additionally, TSMC is re-investing a big part of its profits into research and development efforts to stay competitive and deliver only the best technology to its customers, on time.

Samsung has reportedly secured a "PC CPU" manufacturing order from Intel. This would entail Intel using Samsung's fabs to manufacture its processors. "PC CPU" is a broad term, interchangeable with "client CPU," and could include both notebook and desktop processors, spanning the "S," "H," "U," and "Y" silicon variants (mainstream desktop, mainstream notebook, ultrabook, and ultra low-power, respectively). Samsung's bouquet of contract-manufacturing covers not just silicon fabrication across 14 nm, but also sub 10 nm nodes, but also provides other key stages of processor manufacturing, including bumping and packaging. Intel would want minimal expenditure in adapting its chip designs to Samsung's nodes

In her November 20 letter addressed to Intel's customers, executive V-P and GM for sales, marketing, and communications, Michelle Johnston Holthaus, mentioned that in addition to Intel's own manufacturing facilities, the company is roping in "foundries" (third-party silicon fabrication companies) to meet demand. Samsung and TSMC lead the foundry business, followed by the likes of GlobalFoundries, UMC, etc.Many Thanks to biffzinker for the tip.

Panasonic, an electronics manufacturing giant, has today sold its silicon manufacturing business, marking the end of an era of Japanese semiconductor manufacturing. Once a big player in silicon manufacturing scene, particularly in the '80s and '90s era when Japan's silicon output was huge, Panasonic was considered one of the main players in the silicon manufacturing business. However, due to some difficulties like operating a business with a loss of over $215 million yearly, and having to compete with Chinese and Taiwanese silicon manufacturing firms, Panasonic is selling its silicon production lines.

The subsidiary of Panasonic called "Semiconductors Solutions" is being sold to Nuvoton Technology Corporation, a semiconductor company that spun-off from Winbond Electronics Corporation in 2008, where Winbond still owns 61% stake in Nuvoton despite the spinoff. Additionally, Panasonic forecasts a 27% drop in operating profit for this physical year, with the declining semiconductor manufacturing business counted. The reasoning behind this sale is that the company plans to exit all declining businesses that also include LCD manufacturing, as Chinese alternative manufacturers are stiff competition for Panasonic when it comes to pricing and panel output.

Major American PC and consumer-electronics OEMs, namely Dell, HP, Microsoft, and Amazon, are reportedly moving some of their manufacturing out of China, in the wake of the ongoing US-China trade-war, an offshoot of which inflicts import-tariffs on a spectrum of products imported from China. This impacts China as a destination for manufacturing. According to Japanese business publication Nikkei, HP and Dell are each moving 30 percent of their laptop manufacturing volume out of China. This roughly aligns with their volumes bound for the US market. They could continue manufacturing in China for volumes headed to other markets.

Currently, the U.S. Government imposes import tariffs on $200 billion worth goods imported from China, and fully built PCs were immune to these tariffs. This has had an adverse and unfair impact on U.S.-based system integrators such as OriginPC, Falcon Northwest, etc., who import components and assemble gaming PCs and notebooks on U.S. soil, on a build-to-order basis. A new round of import tariffs proposed by Washington changes this, and brings even fully-built laptops, smartphones, and gaming consoles under the ambit of import tariffs. This explains why Microsoft and Amazon are eager to change their manufacturing landscapes. Microsoft makes its Surface line of premium portable computers, and Xbox game consoles in China, while Amazon makes a vast array of IoT products under its main brand, and various knick-knacks under its Amazon Basics brand.

Toshiba Memory Corporation and Western Digital Corp. have finalized a formal agreement to jointly invest in the "K1" manufacturing facility that Toshiba Memory is currently constructing in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture, Japan. The K1 facility will produce 3D flash memory to support growing demand for storage in applications such as data centers, smartphones and autonomous cars. Construction of the K1 facility is expected to be completed in the fall of calendar 2019. The companies' joint capital investments in equipment for the K1 facility will enable initial production output of 96-layer 3D flash memory beginning in calendar 2020, with meaningful output expected to begin later in the year.

Toshiba Memory and Western Digital will continue to cultivate and extend their leadership in their respective memory businesses by actively developing initiatives aimed at strengthening technology competitiveness, advancing joint development of 3D flash memory, and making capital investments according to market trends.

Motherboard manufacturer Super Micro is moving manufacturing completely outside China to allay fears from customers on spyware implanted by China. Bloomberg in October 2018 put out a sensational article alleging that Super Micro, which specializes in server motherboards bought in bulk by data-centers and cloud companies, contain spyware by the Chinese government designed to spy on US enterprises. Super Micro was quick to refute the article as baseless, but by then the damage to its reputation was done. Faced with declining sales by as much as 10 percent despite rapid industrial CAGR growth, the company is now forced to relocate manufacturing outside China not just to allay these fears, but perhaps also to reduce its import tariff burden imposed by the US government on a spectrum of electronics goods manufactured in China.

China had a manufacturing strangehold on server motherboard manufacturing, amounting to 90 percent of server motherboards shipped in 2017. In 2018, however, with the the US-China trade-war underway, that figure dropped like a rock to just 50 percent, a dramatic fall for just one year. Server component manufacturers are relocating to other countries, such as Taiwan, Vietnam, and Malaysia. Super Micro is relocating to Taiwan, with a new factory set up in Taoyuan at a cost of $65 million.

The world's largest contract semiconductor manufacturing company, TSMC, has been cleared to commence construction of a new 3 nm chip factory at the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The new factory is expected to use 20 percent renewable energy and 50 percent recycled water.

The factory's environmental impact assessment was accepted by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) on Dec. 19, after concerns were raised about use of water and power sources. TSMC is expected to invest NT$600 million (US$19.45 million) in the project, with construction to begin in 2022. Production is planned to start in late 2022 or early 2023. At the same site, TSMC is also building a 5 nm chip factory, which is expected to be up and running in late 2019 or early 2020.

IBM today announced an agreement with Samsung to manufacture 7-nanometer (nm) microprocessors for IBM Power Systems , IBM Z and LinuxONE , high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and cloud offerings. The agreement combines Samsung's industry-leading semiconductor manufacturing with IBM's high-performance CPU designs. This combination is being designed to drive unmatched systems performance, including acceleration, memory and I/O bandwidth, encryption and compression speed, as well as system scaling. It positions IBM and Samsung as strategic partners leading the new era of high-performance computing specifically designed for AI.

"At IBM, our first priority is our clients," said John Acocella, Vice President of Enterprise Systems and Technology Development for IBM Systems. "IBM selected Samsung to build our next generation of microprocessors because they share our level of commitment to the performance, reliability, security, and innovation that will position our clients for continued success on the next generation of IBM hardware."