Corporate – SemiAnalysis

Amazon Graviton 3 Uses Chiplets & Advanced Packaging To Commoditize High Performance CPUs | The First PCIe 5.0 And DDR5 Server CPU

December 2, 2021December 2, 2021 Dylan Patel 0 Comments Amazon, AMD, AWS, AWS EBS, AWS Elastic Block Storage., AWS Nitro, DDR5, Graviton 2, Graviton 3, Graviton2, Graviton3, Intel, Neoverse N1, Neoverse N2, Neoverse V1, Nitro, PCIe 5.0

Shots are being fired at merchant silicon.
Amazon’s Graviton3 completely commoditizes generalized CPU compute while also bringing advanced packaging, PCIe 5.0, and DDR5 to the server market ~6 months before Intel and AMD.
Server and rack level system architecture choices propel Graviton 3 to new heights in cost per unit of compute.
There’s something special about the packaging behind the paywall.

DRAM JSR Lam Logic Tokyo Electron

Lam Research, Tokyo Electron, JSR Battle It Out In The $5B+ EUV Photoresist, Coater, and Developer Market – CAR vs MOR vs Dry Resist

November 18, 2021November 18, 2021 Dylan Patel 0 Comments CaR, chemically amplified resist, dry deposit, dry develop, dry photo resist, Dry photoresist, dry resist, Lithius Pro Z, Metal oxide resist, MOR, photo resist, photoresist, spin coater, wet deposit, wet develop, wet photoresist

There is a battle brewing in the photoresist, coater, and developer market due to EUV advancement. This battle could cost Tokyo Electron their dominance over a $5B+ annual revenue market and lead to some photoresist companies such as TOK to lose a major market. JSR and Tokyo are bringing Metal Oxide Resist (MOR) to the market to fight off Lam Research’s encroachment with their dry resist technology.

Intel Logic

Intel Betting The Farm – Shrinking Business, Margins Down For Few Years, But Aggressively Investing $40B-$43B A Year And More With Subsidies

October 22, 2021October 22, 2021 Dylan Patel 29 Comments

Intel could follow the path of many other American goliaths such as IBM and General Electric. A slow slide to irrelevancy, spinning off business, and bringing shame to what was once pride for American ingenuity. Instead of that conservative route, they are going to put the metal to the floor, spend every dime Intel makes on investing in more manufacturing, design, and in general catching up in technology.

Mobile Qualcomm

Qualcomm RFFE Business Continues Relentless Pace With ultraBAW Filters | >$8B Segment By 2025

October 20, 2021November 3, 2021 Dylan Patel 0 Comments Qualcomm, RFFE, ultraBAW, ultraSAW

Qualcomm continues to accelerate their RFFE business by filling more gaps in their product line and building out more capabilities for 5G. With ultraSAW, ultraBAW, and other innovations in filters, modules, envelope trackers, and switches, Qualcomm will likely grow RFFE to $8B in 2025.

Apple Intel Logic Samsung TSMC

TSMC 3nm Wafer Shipments Pushed Into Q1 2023, 2.5 Years After N5 | TSMC 2nm, Samsung 2nm, And Intel 20A Battle It Out In 2025

October 14, 2021October 14, 2021 Dylan Patel 2 Comments

SemiAnalysis has been hearing murmurings about TSMC’s N3 having poor yields, poor metal stack performance, being very expensive, and being too late for Apple’s 2022 iPhone. These can’t be confirmed, but we can confirm that TSMC N3 is now shipping in Q1 2023.
The hiccup on N3 brings many questions about TSMC’s competitive positioning versus Intel 20A and Samsung 2nm. Both these nodes are very aggressive and aimed at getting back into a competitive position against TSMC. Intel and Samsung even claim the nodes will bring leadership.

ASML Lyncean

ASML’s EUV Tools Have A Throughput Problem, But Lyncean Has The Answer By Scaling EUV Light Source Power An Order Of Magnitude

October 13, 2021October 13, 2021 Dylan Patel 1 Comment

A TSMC fab with 10 EUV machines running N3 wafers would only be capable of ~15,000 wafers per month at current power output and uptime rates. There is a major issue with EUV throughput, and Lyncean Technologies may have the solution.

GlobalFoundries Logic

GlobalFoundries $GFS IPO – Mubadala Lost Over $22.4B, Now They Are Hoping Public Markets Bail Them Out

October 6, 2021October 31, 2021 Dylan Patel 2 Comments GlobalFoundries, Mubadala

Low utilization rates, countless divested assets, cut R&D and capex, and still doesn’t make money in the greatest semiconductor boom of all time.
Playing up on nationalism while having their largest fab and ongoing investment in Singapore.

Apple Logic

Apple A15 Die Shot and Annotation – IP Block Area Analysis

October 5, 2021October 5, 2021 Dylan Patel 1 Comment

TechInsights released a die shot of the A15 and with the help of SkyJuice’s, we are analyzing it today. The

Aehr Intel Packaging Silicon Photonics

Aehr Multi-Wafer Level Burn-in Test for Silicon Carbide and Silicon Photonics Applications

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 Dylan Patel 1 Comment Aehr, laser burn-in, photonics burn-in, Silicon Carbide, Wafer level burn-in

Test intensity for silicon carbide and photonics is very high due to extreme operating ranges. Wafer level burn in could transform the test life cycle for semiconductors. Major wins such as On Semiconductor and Intel validate this.

DRAM Micron NAND

Memory Oligopoly Woes – Micron Says They Will Not Increase Wafer Output In DRAM Or NAND For The Foreseeable Future

September 29, 2021September 29, 2021 Dylan Patel 0 Comments

Short term risks related PC inventory/sales and weak China mobile sales weigh on the short term, but Micron is flexing the oligopoly muscle long term!

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