The global semiconductor sector will post modest growth this year although expectations are high that the global economy will gradually improve, Digitimes Research said yesterday.
Digitimes forecast the global semiconductor sector would rise by 5 percent this year from the previous year, thanks to falling inventory levels over the past three quarters and rising demand beginning in the second half of the second quarter.
Since 2010, the dramatic growth of portable electronics devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, has driven industry growth, Digitimes analyst Nobunaga Chai (柴煥欣) said.
The total output of the global semiconductor assembly and testing industries reached US$47.07 billion in 2010, up 23.8 percent from the previous year, he said.
Although the European debt crisis and natural disasters in Japan and Thailand caused annual growth to slow to 2.8 percent last year, with total output reaching US$48.38 billion, Chai expressed optimism.
Shipments of portable electronics devices are still very likely to grow, while PC shipments are expected to rise 20 percent sequentially in the second half of the year, he said.
According to Gartner Inc, worldwide semiconductor revenue is projected to increase 4 percent to US$316 billion this year from last year. Gartner predicted in mid-March that semiconductor revenue from tablets would reach US$9.5 billion this year.
Semiconductor revenue from PCs is forecast to reach US$57.8 billion this year, with that for mobile phones totaling US$57.2 billion, Gartner said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to