Intel to Reclaim Number One Semiconductor Supplier Ranking in 2019

According to IC Insights, Intel is to reclaim the number one semiconductor supplier ranking in 2019 from Samsung due to the downturn in Memory (DRAM and NAND). The top 3 memory suppliers (Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron) are according to IC Insights forecast to register ≥29% year-over-year declines in 2018 with SK Hynix expected to decline the most by a 38% down in sales 2019.

The expected top 15 semiconductor (IC and O-S-D—optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales ranking for 2019 is shown above.  It includes six suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Europe, two each in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

Source: IC Insights (LINK)

Micron has started volume production of 10 nm-class DRAM (1z nm)

Micron announced on Thursday that it had started volume production of memory chips using its 3rd Generation 10 nm-class fabrication technology (also known as 1Z nm). The first DRAMs to be made using Micron’s 1Z nm process are 16 Gb monolithic DDR4 and LPDDR4X devices. 

The company claims that its 16 Gb DDR4 device consumes 40% less power than two 8 Gb DDR4 DRAMs (presumably at the same clocks). Meanwhile, Micron’s 16 Gb LPDDR4X ICs will bring an up to 10% power saving. One of the first products to use the company’s 16 Gb DDR4 devices will be high-capacity (e.g., 32 GB and higher) memory modules for desktops, notebooks, and workstations.

Source: Anandtech LINK

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By Abhishekkumar Thakur

Applied Materials to buy Japan's Kokusai to boost memory chip business and ALD

Here are more details and analyst responses on the Applied Materials Kokusai purchase and my own thoughts at the end:

(Reuters, LINK) - U.S. chip gear maker Applied Materials Inc (AMAT.O) on Monday agreed to buy Japanese peer Kokusai Electric for $2.2 billion from KKR & Co Inc (KKR.N), as it bets on rising demand for memory chips used in data centers, 5G phones, and AI-powered devices.  

In summary:

• Kokusai is a small acquisition for Applied materials as compared to the previously failed mega-merger with Tokyo Electron, meaning that the road to approval should be easy. However, China’s willingness from a political standpoint is always a risk, Evercore analysts said. 
• Apart from China, the acquisition will need approvals from Israel, Ireland, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, Applied Materials Chief Financial Officer Dan Durn said on a call with analysts.
• Kokusai, which counts Samsung, SK Hynix, Toshiba and Micron among its top customers, reported revenue of $1.24 billion as of March 2018. 
• Kokusai’s batch wafer processing tools are less technology intensive than Applied Materials’ single wafer tools, the recent focus on ultra-thin films has driven renewed interest in this group, DA Davidson analysts said.

So this whole purchase is really about Applied Materials getting a state of the art ALD technology for the memory business (DRAM and 3DNAND). The last readout is a bit crazy, the analyst refers to ALD as an "Ultra Thin Films". Anybody who has followed the ALD business the previous 15-20 years know that Applied Materials has repeatedly failed to take a big market share in ALD and that a Japanese Large Batch ALD reactor is one of the most advanced and reliable ALD tools out there - simply because nobody would like to trash a full load of +100 product wafers. The top three domination has been by:

• ASM International
• Tokyo Electron
• Kokusai

The top 3 has been followed by Lam Research, Jusung Engineering, Wonik IPS and Applied Materials was always somewhere in this bunch. Even the inrodcution of the new Spatial ALD Olympia platform didn´t change things. It seems that Tokyo Electron took a large part of the spatial ALD market with their NT333 tool and ASM was able to defend their single wafer approach by making the XP platform super productive by adding more chamber slots (up to 16 for the latest ASM XP8 QCM).  

When it comes to IP in Spatial ALD, Tokyo Electron is No.1 followed by Applied Materials (see below).

IP Applications for spatial ALD

Magically, Kokusai settled the IP issues with ASM just before the Applied announcement (LINK). Historically, Kokusai has been masters in avoiding to call ALD ALD because of the IP situation. However, now there is a different situation and Kokusai also have single wafer ALD out there, and Applied is dominating the BEOL films deposition business so we can assume that Applied will enter top three and have a go at No 1. Exciting!

US-China Trade War—DRAM Price to Drop Further 15%

US-China Trade War—DRAM Price to Drop Further 15%: DRAMeXchange, tech market intelligence firm TrendForce's memory and storage branch, announced that it expects Huawei's blacklisting by the U.S. government to contribute to a DRAM price drop of up to 15% in the third quarter. The DRAM market has already struggled amid falling demand, inventory surpluses, and other problems. 

 

Those problems have led to steady price drops throughout 2018 and the first half of 2019. Memory companies have already felt the sting of these price drops--Samsung even ceded the semiconductor throne to Intel in May because its profits had dropped so much in recent quarters. Losing Huawei as a customer is expected to make things worse.

 

 

Source: Tom´s Hardware LINK

 

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By Abhishekkumar Thakur

Samsung Electronics will maintain its DRAM production volume

Samsung Electronics will maintain its production volume without reducing memory semiconductors such as DRAMs. This is a different strategy than the second and third largest memory semiconductor makers SK Hynix and Micron announced their plans to cut production. According to Samsung Electronics, the semiconductor market is expected to improve from the second half of the year as early as 3Q, and it has been said that it does not cut production for preemptive countermeasures.

• SK Hynix, the second-ranked maker, also announced that it will reduce its NAND flash wafer input this year by more than 10 percent from its 1Q earnings release. 
• Micron has announce that it will cut DRAM and NAND flash by 5% each to resolve supply-demand imbalances and inventory problems last month. 

Source: www.asiae.co.kr LINK

 

Samsung Electronics also announced last week that it will invest 133 trillion won in memory and non-memory semiconductors by 2030 (LINK). 

 

 

The investment plan is expected to help the company to reach its goal of becoming the world leader in not only memory semiconductors but also logic chips by 2030. The company also plans to create 15,000 jobs in R&D and production to bolster its technological prowess. (Source: Samsung)

SK Hynix confident of memory chip recovery after quarterly profit drop

SK Hynix Inc said on Thursday it was confident of a recovery in memory chips later this year due to rising demand from data centres, after the South Korean chipmaker posted its smallest quarterly profit in more than two years.

 

Source: Reuters LINK

SK Hynix completes expanded DRAM fab in Wuxi China

CET News reports that SK Hynix has completed an expanded fabrication plant (C2F) in Wuxi, China. C2F is an expansion of the existing DRAM production line, C2, in Wuxi. The Company decided to expand its production line in 2016 to solve the shortage of production space due to technology migration.

Source: CET News LINK

 

SK Hynix plans to spend $107 billion building four memory chip plants

SK Hynix's plans for the factories, producing DRAM and next-generation chips, come as chipmakers prepare for a surge in demand to power new technology such as 5G and artificial intelligence. 

Source: CNBC (LINK)

South Korea continues bold investments in memory sector

South Korea is a global semiconductor powerhouse, with semiconductor output recording an increasing ratio of its total annual exports, surging from 12.6% in 2016 to 17.1% in 2017, and further to 21.2% in the first 11 months of 2018. The significant growth momentum has largely resulted from constant heavy investments by major players Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in memory solutions development, technology upgrades and capacity expansions, as well as in foundry and even packaging process advancement.

In its latest major investment project, Samsung is building its second semiconductor plant in Pyeongtaek at a total cost of US$27.7 billion to make 3D NAND flash and DRAM, with investment and production scales double those of its first plant in the Korean city. After completion by mid-2019 with official run slated for the second half of the year, the new plant will have monthly capacity of 130,000 wafers for DRAM alone.

Continue reading: DIGITIMES LINK

Top-3 memory chipmakers combined DRAM revenues hit record high in 3Q/201818

The world's top-3 memory IC vendors - Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology - saw their combined DRAM and flash memory revenues climb to a record high of US$37.3 billion in the third quarter of 2018.

The combined revenues for third-quarter 2018 represented increases of 8% sequentially and 36% on year, thanks mainly to demand for servers and smartphones that come with higher density memory specs.

DRAM chip sales accounted for as high as 71% of the combined memory chip revenues generated by the top-3 vendors in the third quarter of 2018, Digitimes Research indicated. The top-3 memory chip vendors saw their combined DRAM memory sales reach US$26.4 billion in the third quarter, up 10% sequentially.

Source: DIGITIMES LINK

SK Hynix : Announces 1Ynm 16Gb DDR5 DRAM

(marketscreener.com) SK Hynix Inc. Announces 1Ynm 16Gb DDR5 DRAM2018.11.15 Seoul, November 15, 2018 - SK Hynix Inc. (or 'the Company', www.skhynix.com) announced that it has developed 16Gb (Gigabits) DDR5 (Double Data Rate 5) DRAM, the industry's first DDR5 to meet the JEDEC standards. 

 

The same 1Ynm process technology used for the recently-developed 1Ynm 8Gb DDR4 DRAM was applied to the new DRAM, giving an industry-leading competitive edge for the Company. DDR5 is a next-generation DRAM standard that offers ultra-high speed and high density with reduced power consumption as compared to DDR4, for use in data-intensive applications such as big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. SK Hynix successfully lowered the operating voltage from 1.2V to 1.1V, achieving 30% lower power consumption compared to the previous generation, DDR4 DRAM. The new 16Gb DDR5 DRAM supports a data transfer rate of 5200Mbps, about 60% faster compared to 3200Mbps of the previous generation, with which it can process 41.6GB (Gigabytes) of data-11 full-HD video files (3.7GB each)-per second. The Company provided a major chipset maker with RDIMM (Registered Dual In-line Memory Module) and UDIMM (Unbuffered DIMM) for server and PC platforms, with more memory banks-doubled from 16 to 32 banks-in accordance with the JEDEC DDR5 standards. 'Based on technological advancements that allowed the industry's first DDR5 DRAM to meet the JEDEC standards, SK Hynix plans to begin mass producing the product from 2020, when the DDR5 market is expected to open, to actively respond to the demands of clients,' said vice president Joohwan Cho, the Head of Volume Product Design Group. According to IDC, a market research institute, demand for DDR5 is expected to rise from 2020, accounting for 25% of the total DRAM market in 2021 and 44% in 2022.

Source: 4-traders LINK

SK Hynix posts record third-quarter profit as chip outlook dims

South Korea's SK Hynix Inc posted record third-quarter operating profit on Thursday despite softer chip prices, beating expectations thanks to a seasonal sales boost for mobile devices and strong server demand.

Source: Reuters LINK

Micron to invest $3 billion in memory chip factory in Manassas, Virginia

[Venture Beat] Manassas, Virginia is best known as the site of the Battle of Bull Run in the American Civil War. And now it's home to an expanding chip factory, as Micron Technology announced today it is investing $3 billion by 2030 to make memory chips. 

 

Picture credit Micron.com

 

Boise, Idaho-based Micron makes dynamic random access memory (DRAM), the chips that provide the memory for applications in personal computers and many other devices. It will also make NAND flash memory chips for long-term storage in a wide variety of devices.

The investment breaks down to about $250 million per year over 12 years, and it will create about 1,100 new jobs. That’s not a huge amount, but it does represent a commitment to keeping manufacturing and high-wage jobs in the U.S. at a time when the rest of the world is increasingly competitive at making chips, or the basic building blocks of electronic devices. 

 

Source: Venture Beat [LINK]

China DRAM startup to enter 19nm chip production in February 2018

DIGITIMES reports that China DRAM startup to enter 19nm chip production in February 2018.

Hefei Rui-Li (transliterated from Chinese) Integrated Circuit will start making DRAM chips using 19nm process technology around the end of February 2018, according to industry sources.

Formerly named Hefei Chang Xin, Rui-Li IC will start installing equipment at its new 12-inch fab at the end of 2017 which is ahead of schedule, said the sources. Rui-Li has started negotiating with silicon wafer providers to ensure a sufficient supply.

Source : DIGITIMES LINK

Nanya sells partial stake in Micron

Taiwan-based DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology has announced the sale of part of its stake in US-based Micron Technology, with an aim to increase the company's working capital and repay loans.

Source: DIGITIMES LINK

 

 

SEMI reports record Q1/2017 spending for Semiconductor Equipment in Korea, Japan and China

Today SEMI reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$13.1 billion for the first quarter of 2017. That is a very strong quarter with the month of March reaching an all time monthly record at $5.6 billion. Not since 2000 the quarterly billing has been this high. Most interestingly, South Korea has replaced Taiwan as the largest semiconductor equipment market.

 

Three markets are showing exceptional growth and that is South Korea (Samsung & SK Hynix), China and Japan (Toshiba & Micron), which must be related to investments in 3D-NAND and DRAM Fab equipment. This is in line with the statement made by VLSI Research at the recent CMC2017 conference in Dallas, saying that they are updating their equipment forecast for 2017 based on increased spending in Memory and especially DRAM this year.

For memory ALD process has been a crucial tool in HVM since 2004 when Samsung started production of 90 nm DRAM with an ALD HfO2/Al2O3 dual stack and since then many, many more ALD process passes has been added to both DRAM and 3D-NAND, for instance in multiple patterning and Tungsten ALD for 3D-NAND gates and Al2O3 blocking oxide in those deep trenches. That is why we can assume that the ALD OEMs should all show record revenue for their ALD business units in 2017. Obviously also PECVD and Etch will benefit from this spending.

Please find the SEMI press release here : LINK

First Quarter 2017 WW #Semiconductor Equipment Figures; Record Quarterly Billings of $13.1 Billion https://t.co/h1zYQw62pB #marketdata pic.twitter.com/WtcVV9mfqt

— Ed Hall (SEMI) (@SEMI_mktstats) June 6, 2017

Nanya to invest NT$50 billion over next 2 years including ReRAM and 3D Xpoint

According to Digitimes, Nanya is to invest NT$50 billion over next 2 years.

Taiwan-based DRAM maker Nanya Technology is looking to invest a total of NT$50 billion (US$1.6 billion) over the next two years to "enhance its product value rather than market share," according to company president Pei-Ing Lee.

Nanya will put its focus on new memory technologies including ReRAM and 3D XPoint, said Lee.Nanya recently issued a filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) disclosing a total of NT$343 million spent on facilities and machinery equipment. Nanya has budgeted a capex of NT$25 billion for 2016. Spending for the year will focus on the company's transition to 20nm process technology.

 

Continue reading : http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20160930PD200.html

Major memory manufacturer qualifies AIXTRON’s QXP-8300 mini-batch ALD system

AIXTRON reaches important milestone for its silicon semiconductor manufacturing technology

AIXTRON SE (FSE: AIXA; NASDAQ: AIXG), a worldwide leading provider of advanced deposition equipment to the semiconductor industry, announced today that a major memory manufacturer has qualified its

 QXP-8300 Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) mini-batch system (www.aixtron.com)

QXP-8300 Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) mini-batch system suitable for high-k oxide films in various advanced memory applications including 3D structure devices. 

“We are delighted that our customer has completed the evaluation of our QXP-8300 ALD system for the manufacturing of the most advanced high performance memory devices. The QXP-8300 ALD system enables the manufacturing of advanced films with excellent electrical and device properties. AIXTRON is looking forward to further support its customer’s memory development plans by providing the production equipment to address the challenges of a rapidly evolving industry,” says Bill Bentinck, Vice President and General Manager of AIXTRON Inc., USA. 

As the semiconductor memory cell size continues to be scaled down, manufacturers need advanced technologies for the deposition of precise layers of dielectric, metal and non-volatile memory materials. AIXTRON’s QXP-8300 ALD system includes the patented TriJet vaporizer technology integrated with the unique close coupled showerhead design that enables the use of low vapor pressure precursors as needed in making higher-k dielectrics and metal nitrides for the performance improvement.