Electronics News Byte: EU Semiconductor Revenues Drop, TSMC Looks West, and More
Semiconductor manufacturers and IP vendors continue to drive electronics news during these turbulent times. Revenues are down and uncertainties abound as high-tech businesses and governments alike struggle to navigate the coronavirus pandemic.
Semiconductor manufacturers and IP vendors continue to drive electronics news during these turbulent times. Semiconductor revenues are down. Uncertainties abound as high-tech businesses and governments alike struggle to navigate the coronavirus pandemic. Let’s take a look at the most important news items from the past several days.
Electronics News Update
- European Semiconductor Revenues Drop in Q1: DMASS Ltd. is reporting that a variety of global issues, particularly the COVID-19 crisis, led to a 11.7% drop in European semiconductor revenues in Q1 2020. The organization reported the following interesting sales results for the period: UK (-19.4%), Germany (-11.8%), France (-17.7%), and Italy (-6.5%). According to DMASS chairman Georg Steinberger, “At the beginning of the crisis, it was the disruption of production in Asia that was a concern, now it is the other end of the supply chain – the customers and their uncertainties in their end markets.” As for global semiconductor demand, we recently reported that McKinsey is predicting a 5%-15% drop across the board.
- TSMC Plans US-Based Semiconductor Plant: Last week, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) announced a plan to open a $12 billion 5-nm fab in Arizona, USA. The facility will “utilize TSMC’s 5-nanometer technology for semiconductor wafer fabrication, have a 20,000 semiconductor wafer per month capacity, create over 1,600 high-tech professional jobs directly, and thousands of indirect jobs in the semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC stated. The company expects to start building in 2021.
- New US Rules Target Huawei: The United States Commerce Department announced on Friday new rules to restrict “Huawei’s ability to use U.S. technology and software to design and manufacture its semiconductors abroad.” This week, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the US's aim is "to cut Huawei off from non-U.S. companies that manufacture chips used in Huawei’s cellular base stations and servers as well as its own smartphones." The news comes on the heels of a report that Q1 global smartphone shipments dropped 17%. The US-China trade war and the coronavirus crisis were cited as contributing factors.
- Intel Delivers Fastest Gaming Processor: In late April, Intel announced the "world's fastest gaming processor." According to Intel, the Intel Core i9-10900K processor boasts 10 cores, 20 threads, and DDR4-2933 memory speeds. The processor has gamers excited because it can deliver up to 187 frames per second in gameplay. “The i9-10900K processor powers the ultimate gaming experience, allowing more tuning control, faster multitasking and smoother gameplay,” the company announced.
- Arm Announces Virtual DevSummit: Arm announced last week that it is replacing its annual Arm TechCon event with a virtual event this fall — Arm DevSummit. The online event will take place October 5-9, 2020, and it will focus on “a diversity of applications including AR/VR, embedded and IoT, autonomous machines, and infrastructure edge computing,” the company reported. Arm stated that it is running a virtual event in 2020 due to the current global pandemic. The events’ technical focuses will be: AI in the Real World; Cloud Native Developer Experience; Creating the Next Generation of Interactive Experiences; Building the IoT; Chip Design Methodology; and Infrastructure of Modern Computing. Registration begins in July 2020.
