Russia reveals plan to deal with counterfeit parts

Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development has revealed it plans to force components makers to microchip their products to help crack down on the counterfeit parts trade in the country.
Speaking at a recent meeting of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, ministry spokesman Pavel Fink said that around half of the $40 billion automotive components and spare parts industry in the country was estimated to be accounted for by counterfeit products, with around 80% of those counterfeit parts being imported.
Labels containing electronic chips already used in the fur industry in Russia cost only 22 roubles (around 40 cents) apiece, he stressed. A similar system could be very useful in the components market, he suggested, not least in terms of encouraging legal parts producers.
The automotive components sector has previously been highlighted by Russia’s Industry and Trade Ministry as one of several sectors in which it, too, would like to see better traceability. The others include wood products and aviation components.
Counterfeit components are also an issue for Russia’s carmakers, of course – OEM Avtovaz recently estimated the counterfeit trade was costing it nearly 8 billion roubles ($120m) a year in the light passenger vehicle segment alone.
The government’s concern centres more around the safety implications: studies suggest one in three car accidents in Russia is attributable to the use of counterfeit components.
Russia’s Association of Automotive Dealers, ROAD, recently sent a letter to the authorities offering to introduce a new licensing regime for workshops as an alternative to a new component labelling system. ROAD executives have suggested carmakers can address the problem of counterfeit parts themselves and that the key issue is to clamp down on unauthorised workshops using parts of unspecified origin.

Russian OEMs have been cutting the price of genuine components since the start of this year, official statistics show. Between March and April this year, Ford, Mazda, Peugeot and Citroën all cut their parts prices by 25-30%, after similar earlier moves by Audi, Volkswagen and Skoda.
Sources at a number of OEMs have confirmed such cuts were targeted mainly at the counterfeit trade.
Aftermarket parts have become more significant in Russia’s depressed automotive market in recent times as car owners have sought to prolong the life of older vehicles, rather than buying new ones. This has made it all the more important to ensure customers use only properly authorised workshops supplying genuine parts, the OEM sources have stressed.
Dmitry Babisnky, a consultant in the analytical centre of SBS Consulting, has suggested the ministry’s plans to chip components will have limited effect, however, unless the scheme goes as far as tier three suppliers, where counterfeiting is also common.
Despite this, labelling tier one products will go some way towards addressing the problem, he admitted – especially if vehicles without the proper labels were subsequently failed during annual vehicle roadworthiness inspections.
The steps needed to support Russia’s automotive logistics sector as the market returns to growth will be at the heart of discussions at this year’s Automotive Logistics Russia summit on July 5th in Moscow.

http://automotivelogistics.media/news/russia-reveals-plan-deal-counterfeit-parts

Samsung Targets 4nm in 2020

SAN FRANCISCO—Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. Wednesday (May 24) updated its foundry technology roadmap, including detailing its second-generation FD-SOI platform, several bulk silicon FinFET processes down to 5nm and a 4nm “post FinFET” structure process set to be in risk production in 2020.

Samsung, which formally broke its foundry operation into a separate business unit called Samsung Foundry last week, also reiterated previously announced plans to put extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography into production in 2018 at the 7nm node.
”We are extremely aggressive with our roadmap, not only in planning, but in announcing what we are going to be doing in the next three to four years,” said Kelvin Low, senior director of foundry marketing at Samsung, in an interview in advance of Wednesday’s announcement.
The most forward-looking of Samsung’s Wednesday announcements, which were unveiled at the company’s annual U.S. foundry technology forum in Santa Clara, Calif., is the company’s proprietary next-generation device architecture, which it calls multi-bridge channel FET (MBCFET). The structure is described as Samsung’s own proprietary flavor of gate-all-around FET (GAAFET) technology that uses a nanosheet device to overcome the physical scaling and performance limitations of the FinFET architecture.
Samsung’s roadmap calls for putting MBCFET technology into risk production in 2020 in its 4nm low-power plus (LPP) process.
Between now and 2020, Samsung plans to put in production an 8nm LPP process this year, a 7nm LPP process featuring EUV next year and 5nm and 6nm LPP processes in 2019.
EUV, a long-promised an often pushed out lithography technology to succeed 193nm immersion lithography, finally appears to be on the verge of being inserted into production. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and Globalfoundries, Samsung’s chief foundry competitors, have both declared their intentions to use EUV in production in 2019.
Samsung has demonstrated the EUV power source production target of 250W in process development. According to Low, the “magic number” for productivity with EUV is 1,500 wafers per day. Samsung has already exceeded 1,000 wafers per day and has a high degree of confidence that 1,500 wafers per day is achievable, Low said.

“We are confident that we are ready to bring [EUV] into production in 2018,” Low said. “This is no longer a concept roadmap item.”
Low said that Samsung, unlike some competitors, sees the 10nm node as a “long-lead node” that will provide customers with the performance and desired power consumption on leading edge designs for a considerable period of time.
“As long as we are able to deliver power, performance and scaling in production, we think it will be a very productive node,” Low said.
Samsung also detailed an 18nm FD-SOI process technology targeted for risk production in 2019. The company plans to gradually expand its current 28nm FD-SOI process into a broader platform by incorporating RF and embedded MRAM options before offering its second-generation FD-SOI platform, which it says will offer a 40 percent power savings, a 20 percent performance improvement and area advantages over its predecessor.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331785

Advanced SR controller for LLC power supply designs

An advanced synchronous rectifier (SR) controller from ON Semiconductor has been optimised for LLC resonant converter topologies.

The FAN6248 can be used for modern, high performance, power supply units where high levels of reliability and efficiency are required in a small space. Typical applications include server and desktop computing, gaming, large screen LCD TV and OLED TV, networking, telecom and LED lighting applications.
The device incorporates an advanced, mixed, SR control methodology combining instantaneous drain voltage detection with previous switching cycle information. The separate 100V rated sense inputs sense the drain and source voltages across the two SR MOSFETs, allowing for any asymmetries or poor coupling in the secondary winding.
With a 10.5V high gate drive output, the FAN6248 prevents current inversion and avoids SR mis-triggering due to capacitive current spikes. The anti-shoot-through control within the controller is said to enhance the reliability of the PSU and prevents the simultaneous turn on of the two SR MOSFETs.
Above resonance operation is achieved without the introduction of voltage spikes. At no load, the FAN6248 enters green mode and disables itself. During light load conditions, the controller pulses within green mode giving power delivery as required by efficiency standards such as 80 PLUS, DoE VI, and CoC Tier 2.
Inbuilt adaptive parasitic inductance compensation also minimises body diode conduction in the SR MOSFETs due to its package’s stray inductance.
There are four devices within the series; the range is suitable for use with MOSFETs in TO-220, D2PAK, DPAK or PQFN package styles.
Design support is available from ON Semiconductor, including a 240W evaluation board incorporating a complete LLC design.

http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/electronics/advanced-sr-controller-for-llc-power-supply-designs/155453/

China Set to Rewrite FD-SOI History

This public/private partnership Tuesday (May 23) unveiled a plan to pump $100 million into a project to “spur innovation in China’s semiconductor industry” around FD-SOI.
The move is a significant step in efforts to ignite broader acceptance of the non-bulk CMOS technology in China. The plan rests on the fact that China today consumes more than 58 percent of semiconductors produced worldwide and a nationwide drive to substantially expand indigenous semiconductor production capacities.

While China held only a 16.2 percent share of worldwide semiconductor production in 2015, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report released this year, the nation is currently going through an unprecedented fab boom, backed by 120 billion yuan National IC fund (more than $17 billion) and supported by 600 billion yuan ($85 billion) from local government and private equity companies.
Riding the fab wave, China is making a concerted effort to join the memory industry. On the logic front, it appears that Globalfoundries, collaborating with Chengdu, hopes to advance the FD-SOI agenda. It’s planning a fab in Chengdu equipped to produce chips using Globalfoundries’ 22FDX FD-SOI technology.
The newly unveiled $100 million budget allocated for building the FD-SOI ecosystem in Chengdu is a part of $10 billion Globalfoundries and Chengdu’s leaders announced in spending on fab construction.

Alain Mutricy, senior vice president of product management at Globalfoundries, told EE Times, “The investment in the Chengdu fab was the first chapter. This is the second chapter” for Globalfoundries to nurture and assist China’s still fledgling fabless chip companies and design service businesses. Mutricy expects a number of EDA companies (i.e. Synopsys, Cadence and others) and IP vendors (i.e. ARM) to open offices in Chengdu to support the FD-SOI ecosystem with their tools and IPs.
Those who already raised their hands to become a part of the FD-SOI ecosystem in Chengdu at the time of the announcement include: Cadence, Synopsys, MediaTek, RockChip, VeriSilicon, Invecas, Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics Group Company and others.
Joe Chen, executive vice president and co-COO of MediaTek, for example, said in a statement: “MediaTek established our site in Chengdu back to 2010. Chengdu is quickly becoming an international destination for cutting-edge technology companies, and we are thrilled to see continued investment to establish the region as a center of excellence for both manufacturing and design of Globalfoundries' FDX technology.”
Stressing FD-SOI is "an ideal technology for new embedded systems that need connectivity," Globalfoundries' Mutricy listed IoT, 5G and ADAS (vision processing) as market segments where FD-SOI will be a good fit.

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331773

Bain, KKR, Broadcom among suitors lining up for Toshiba's chips business

Suitors including private equity firms KKR & Co LP, Bain Capital and U.S. chip maker Broadcom Ltd are lining up for Toshiba Corp's semiconductor business, sources familiar with matter said ahead of a deadline for second-round offers on Friday.
Broadcom, which has teamed up with private equity firm Silver Lake, and Bain which has partnered with South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix will participate in the second-round, the people said. It was not clear if KKR and its partners would submit their offer by the end of the day.
Toshiba, which values its chip unit at at least 2 trillion yen ($18 billion), was forced to put its prized asset on the block this year, after dramatic cost overruns at its now-bankrupt U.S. nuclear unit left it scrambling for cash. Selling the unit is critical for the company's recovery.
However much of the sale and its outcome are still uncertain, as Toshiba's business partner, Western Digital Corp, which jointly runs Toshiba's main semiconductor plant and is one of the suitors for the unit, is seeking to block any sale that does not have its consent.
KKR is expected one of the most favored bidders. It is set to join hands with a state-backed fund, the Innovation Network Corp of Japan (INCJ), in an offer of at least 1.8 trillion yen, one person said, adding that the bid could be raised to make it more competitive.


The government has made clear that it is prepared to block any sale that could see highly valued chip technology leave the country and the participation of government-backed investors is seen as a key stamp of approval.
Sources familiar with the matter said that INCJ and the Development Bank of Japan had separately told Toshiba of their intention to take part in the bidding process although there were no details on what form that participation may take.
KKR and INCJ declined to comment. Toshiba also declined to comment.
Bain plans to bid around 1.5 trillion yen for a majority stake, two of the sources said, declining to be identified as talks were confidential.
Bain's offer will allow Toshiba and the management of the memory chip business to own a sizeable holding in the chips unit, the people said, adding that keeping management in place will help the business grow faster. SK Hynix is not expected to take a leading role in the offer due to anti-trust concerns.

A Hong Kong-based representative for Bain declined to comment. SK Hynix says it has decided to bid for Toshiba's memory chip business as part of a consortium, though it did not name the partner or disclose further details.
U.S. chipmaker Broadcom and Silver Lake did not immediately rely to requests for comment outside of regular U.S. business hours. Their consortium was the highest bidder in the first round of the auction with an offer of 2.5 trillion yen, a person briefed on the matter said at the time.
Taiwan's Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, has also formed a consortium with Japanese partner Sharp Corp to bid in the second round, other people with knowledge of the matter said.
Foxconn and Sharp declined to comment.
Toshiba is also open to entertaining new bids after the second round closes, a person with knowledge of the matter has said.
(Reporting by Junko Fujita, Taro Fuse, Makiko Yamazaki and Kentaro Hamada in Tokyo, Se Young Lee in Seoul, Elzio Barreto in Hong Kong and JR Wu in Taipei; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-idUSKCN18F08F

Samsung Electronics to Make 10 Trillion Won More Investment in 2017

Samsung Electronics Co., which aims to become the world’s largest semiconductor producer, will make the biggest ever investment in facilities this year. The company is expected to invest 24.5 trillion won (US$21.95 billion), up more than 10 trillion won (US$8.96 billion) from the previous year.
Shinhan Investment Corp. announced on May 16 that Samsung Electronics’ investments in semiconductor facilities (CAPEX) will reach 24.5 trillion won (US$21.95 billion) this year, showing an 85.6 percent increase compared to last year. The figure is 980 million won (US$878,136) bigger than 14.7 trillion won (US$13.17 billion) in 2015, the biggest of all time.
Choi Do-yeon, a researcher at Shinhan Investment, predicted that Samsung would invest 12.05 trillion won (US$10.8 billion) in NAND flash memory chips whose prices are recently increasing due to a short supply and 8 trillion won (US$7.17 billion) in the non-memory chip sector, including foundry. He said, “It is an opportunity for Samsung, which has outplayed late starters with its 3D NAND mass production technology, to expand its market share in the medium and long term with new investment. The investment will go on for its Fab 18 two layers line in Pyeongtaek and new second Fab facility in Xian, China. It means that Samsung Electronics is making a successive investment in 3D NAND after the current investment in the first floor of the Fab 18 line in Pyeongtaek.
In this regard, an official from Samsung Electronics said, “We haven’t confirmed our investment plans this year since there are a lot of variables in terms of business. But, we expect that the investment will increase compared to last year.” Samsung Electronics made a total of 9.82 trillion won (US$8.8 billion) of investment in facilities in the first quarter alone, including 5.02 trillion won (US$4.5 billion) in semiconductors and 4.17 trillion won (US$3.73 billion) in displays.
Industry sources expect that Samsung Electronics will become the number one semiconductor business in the world this year by strengthening the investment in memory chips which are going up in price. According to market research firm IC Insights, Samsung Electronics recorded US$13.6 billion (15.18 trillion won) in sales in the semiconductor sector in the first quarter of this year, narrowing the gap with Intel to as low as US$600 million (669.6 billion won). In addition, the company is expected to beat out Intel in the second quarter.

http://www.businesskorea.co.kr/english/news/ict/18102-keep-top-position-samsung-electronics-make-10-trillion-won-more-investment-2017

Intel Bets Its Chips On B2B Marketing

For years, Intel’s five-note jingle was one of the most recognizable sounds on TV and helped build solid brand awareness for its consumer-facing PC business.
But a jingle isn’t going to encourage network administrators at a telco to embrace Intel’s open architecture or get senior decision-makers to consider Intel’s hybrid cloud platform.
“In the past, most of Intel’s outbound marketing was around big media buys and creating a big presence from a mass perspective,” said Alyson Griffin, VP of global marketing at Intel. “Now we’re building the infrastructure and pipes to do automated lead nurturing.”
Griffin is hiring a team of content writers and strategy folks to support Intel’s nascent B2B marketing efforts with a focus on content.
And it takes a lot of content to nurture and nudge committees of C-suite decision-makers down the funnel. The B2B sales cycle can often take the better part of a year or more and involves a committee of decision-makers tasked with vetting the options.
“We’re defining priorities for the business and growth opportunities across the board so that each initiative – data centers, network transformation, hybrid cloud – has a narrative assigned to it based on what the end customer needs,” Griffin said.
AdExchanger caught up with Griffin, who joined Intel in July after 17 years at HP, most recently as VP of marketing, to talk content creation, programmatic and why B2B decision-makers are just people at the end of the day.
AdExchanger: Intel recently brought its programmatic media buying in-house. How does that impact the work you do?
ALYSON GRIFFIN: Programmatic is in the mix. We partner very closely with [Intel global media director] Julie Keshmiry’s team on our strategy. We need to establish and create a brand for Intel around business transformation and then we need to show what that means.
Working together with the media side, we can say, “Here’s the story we’re telling this quarter or this half and these are the KPIs.” And then they can help us find the right media. We’re also working with our media partner, OMD, to do that, and with Resolution Media on the digital marketing side.
What is Intel’s B2B marketing strategy?
The goal is to build a brand for Intel within the business realm beyond PCs and consumers. We’ve done a lot of research on senior business decision-makers and found that they don’t know Intel outside of being a PC chip maker and they’re not aware we have a role to play in business transformation.
How are you putting that into practice?
We’re asking questions like: Where do network administrators or other personas live on the web? What do they like? And then we’re creating tailored assets like videos, white papers, ROI calculators – things that are beneficial to the business, not just spec sheets – so that we can target them rather than doing a generic media buy aimed at generic IT that drives people to our website from a banner ad.
We’re also thinking about content for different geos. For example, it doesn’t make sense to talk about health care in China the same way we talk about health care in the US. A lot of work is being done to make assets usable and informative to the culture where they’re going to land.
Intel launched a global B2B marketing campaign in April with your spokesman Jim Parsons and a new character called “The Future,” an anthropomorphic representation meant to demonstrate that cutting-edge technology like autonomous driving and AI is empowering rather than scary. How does that campaign fit into the overall B2B marketing strategy?
The campaign has three layers. The first layer is about reaching business leaders with TV spots, which is where Jim Parsons and The Future come in. We’re talking about business solutions for real pain points and business problems, but we’re doing it in a humorous way, which is different from most other B2B marketing assets.
Senior business decision-makers are people, too. They like to laugh, and when they come home at night, they’re just a consumer. The purpose of the spots is to get Intel’s name out there in a non-PC context.
The second layer is a vertical approach that goes into the Intel solution in a little more depth, like with health care, for example. We have a video that looks to the future when we’ll be able to map the human genome while someone waits in the doctor’s office. From there, decision-makers can access more content, case studies and the tools we’ve created for them.
In the third layer, having nurtured our prospects, we can talk about Intel’s product leadership and how to actually deploy the technology, which is more in Intel’s historical comfort zone.
Considering the length of the B2B customer journey, what are your KPIs here?
The main KPI is benchmarking whether we’re known for something more than being a PC chip maker, to see if we become known for business transformation. Initially we’re focused more on awareness and consideration than preference and purchase because we’re newer to this game.

https://adexchanger.com/advertiser/intel-bets-chips-b2b-marketing/

Toshiba Auction of Chip Unit Is Slowed by Dispute With U.S. Partner

TOKYO — When Toshiba, the struggling Japanese conglomerate, decided to sell off part of its coveted microchip business this year, the American digital storage company Western Digital Corporation looked to be in an ideal position to scoop it up.

Western Digital, a part-owner of a Toshiba semiconductor factory in Japan, is as close to Toshiba’s chip operations as an outsider can be. It is said to have made an offer for the microchip business — whose total value has been estimated at close to $20 billion — although it declined to comment on whether it had done so.

But now the companies’ partnership has become a source of contention, leading to legal threats and complicating the sale of the chip unit.

The dispute centers on whether Toshiba can sell the semiconductor business without Western Digital’s consent, and it is compounding a run of problems for Toshiba, which is grappling with huge losses in its nuclear power division and badly needs the sale to succeed.

On Sunday, Western Digital said it had decided to take its conflict with Toshiba to the International Court of Arbitration, a tribunal operated by the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce that adjudicates corporate disputes. The court has the power to adjudicate disagreements under the terms of the companies’ partnership, a common practice in international business tie-ups.

“All of our other efforts to achieve a resolution to date have been unsuccessful, and so we believe legal action is now a necessary next step,” Stephen D. Milligan, Western Digital’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Toshiba has already soliticted other bids for the microchip unit, whose products are central to modern digital gadgets like smartphones. Western Digital says Toshiba would be breaching legal contracts if it brought in a new owner without Western Digital’s consent.

In a statement, Toshiba said the sale was being “conducted properly” and that it had not breached any of its agreements with Western Digital. Western Digital, it said, “has no ground to interfere with the process.”

Acrimony between the two companies has been escalating. In a letter to Western Digital this month, Toshiba accused it of waging a “campaign” of “intentional interference” with the sale and threatened to shut Western Digital employees out of the shared Japanese factory.

Although Toshiba has not said exactly how much of the business it plans to sell, even a minority stake is expected to be worth billions of dollars.

The type of semiconductors Toshiba makes, so-called NAND flash memory chips, has become one of the crucial building blocks of modern electronics, essential to storing data in smartphones and other gadgets. Toshiba pioneered the technology 40 years ago and has kept it profitable, although competitors outside Japan have been elbowing into the market and competing for its customers.

Toshiba is already moving forward with an open auction, setting aside objections from Western Digital. It has solicited offers from about a dozen technology and financial companies, including Western Digital.

If the arbitration tribunal rules in Western Digital’s favor, Western Digital will, in effect, win exclusive negotiating rights.

That could significantly affect how much money Toshiba is able to raise with the sale. Some of the other bidders have offered more than Western Digital has, according to people briefed on the process.

The Japanese semiconductor factory is owned by Toshiba and SanDisk, a company that Western Digital acquired last year for $19 billion.

After Western Digital accused Toshiba of breaching their joint venture contract by laying groundwork for the semiconductor business sale, Toshiba sent a letter warning it would “protect its intellectual property rights by suspending Western Digital employees’ access” to the shared factory and its computer databases.

The identities of the bidders for shares of the chip business have not been made public. But people briefed on the matter said as many as a dozen companies from the United States, South Korea and Taiwan had approached Toshiba with proposals.

Foxconn, the giant Taiwanese assembler of Apple iPhones and other electronics, is one of them. Others include the American microchip maker Broadcom and SK Hynix of South Korea, according to the people briefed on the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss the private bids.

The closest thing to a homegrown bid has come from an alliance between a Japanese government-controlled investment fund, the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, and KKR & Company, the American private equity firm. Some Japanese business leaders have expressed hope that the semiconductor business will remain in domestic hands.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/14/technology/western-digital-toshiba-semiconductor-nand-flash.html?_r=1&WT.mc_id=SmartBriefs-Newsletter&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=smartbriefsnl

Samsung Electronics creates new contract chip manufacturing division

Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Friday it has formed a new division within its semiconductor business for contract chip manufacturing as the firm seeks to attract more customers.
The new division will be responsible for making mobile processors and other non-memory chips for clients such as Qualcomm Inc and Nvidia Corp, competing with firms such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
It will continue to be overseen by Kim Ki-nam, Samsung's president overseeing all chip businesses.
The move is unlikely to surprise. Analysts had speculated that the firm would eventually split apart its foundry and system chip operations to make them more efficient and ease concerns from customers about potential leaks to parts of Samsung that compete with them.
Although revenue from the foundry business remains a small portion of Samsung's overall sales, it has seen sharp growth. Research firm IHS estimates Samsung's foundry revenue rose 86 percent to $4.7 billion in 2016.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-chips-idUSKBN1880PR

Marvell's New CTO Wants 'Culture of Innovation'

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Neil Kim is just what the doctor ordered for Marvell — a booster shot of positive, practical engineering energy for a company about halfway through a major surgical makeover. The former head of Broadcom’s central engineering group spent an hour with EE Times sharing his views at the end of his first week on the job as Marvell’s new chief technologist.

It’s been a wild ride at Marvell, and it’s not over yet. A year ago, Marvell founders — chief executive Sehat Sutardja and president Weili Dai, his wife — resigned as the company’s finances tumbled amid investigations of accounting practices. Revenues and profits had fallen from $3.6 billion and $435 million in 2015, respectively, to $2.6 billion with an $811 million loss a year later.
Since then, the company has essentially replaced its entire board and top tier of management. Last May, Rick Hill, former chief executive of Novellus Systems, became Marvell’s chairman. In June, Matthew Murphy, a senior executive from Maxim Integrated, was named chief executive. In less than a year, Murphy has hired a half-dozen execs under him, with Kim being the most recent, and the third to come from rival Broadcom.

The financial freefall stabilized in Marvell’s last fiscal year to revenues of $2.3 billion and a $21 million profit. The company has 4,600 employees, down nearly 40% from its peak of 7,300 in 2014. Current management estimated by October 2017 900 will have left, and it has earmarked an undisclosed number of products it aims to cancel or sell off.
Murphy has indicated that he aims to complete the restructuring by October. Even when he is done, Marvell still faces a number of strategic challenges.
While it has been focused on rebuilding itself, the semiconductor industry around it has gone through a historic consolidation. Marvell’s top competitors in embedded processors, Ethernet, and Wi-Fi have beefed up for the next rounds of battle amid slowing market growth. Broadcom merged with Avago, and Qualcomm is set to gobble up NXP, enabling new levels of chip integration, savings, and economies of scale.
About half of Marvell’s current business is in a sunset sector — controllers for hard disk drives. It’s a business that depends on a few big customers.
Marvell’s second largest customer after Western Digital — Toshiba’s electronics group — is now up for sale. Its third biggest customer, WinTech, is a relatively small memory module maker.
Former CEO Sutardja was himself an engineer at heart. He was known for getting deeply involved in projects such as MoChi, a silicon interconnect that he described in a 2015 ISSCC keynote, one of his last major public talks.
Neil Kim spent the last 15 years of his career building and overseeing Broadcom’s central engineering group. It was known for being a disciplined practitioner of silicon design and reuse, a skill that the company relied on repeatedly as it grew by acquisition.
Kim retired from Broadcom last year just before Avago closed the deal to buy the company in one of the largest of many recent large mergers. We spoke to Kim after his first week at Marvell’s Silicon Valley headquarters.

 http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331703

Rising mobile DRAM prices to constrain growth of memory content in smartphones, says TrendForce

A rally in mobile DRAM prices will hold back the growth of average per device memory content for smartphones in 2017, according to TrendForce. Average DRAM content in smartphones is forecast to reach 3.2GB per device in 2017, said TrendForce, which previously estimated 3.7GB.

TrendForce's revised outlook for 2017 average DRAM content in smartphones represents an increase of 33.4% compared to 2016.

"Smartphones’ average memory content was around 2.4GB in 2016, and its growth for this year was initially expected to be significantly larger due to LPDDR4 becoming the market mainstream," said TrendForce analyst Avril Wu. "However, the continuing rise in prices of mobile DRAM products is increasing the cost pressure on smartphone makers and constraining their efforts to raise memory specifications for their products."

Wu continued that smartphone vendors especially Android phone makers intend to increase the memory content of their new products because of performance and consumer preference.

Several high-end smartphones feature 4GB or even 6GB of mobile DRAM, which are already comparable to the specs of some mainstream notebooks, Wu identified.

Nevertheless, intensifying competition and spiking prices of mobile DRAM products will decelerate the growth of average per device memory content for smartphones in 2017, Wu said. Very few among the world's smartphone companies, such as Samsung and Apple, have the economies of scale to earn impressive profits. "The recent price increases in the mobile DRAM market have further added to the cost burdens of smartphone makers, thereby slowing the growth of the average memory content per device," Wu indicated.

In addition, TrendForce predicted that of the three new iPhone devices that will be released in 2017, the model with a 5.8-inch AMOLED display and the model with a 5.5-inch LCD display will both have 3GB of memory, while the 4.7-inch LCD model will carry 2GB. An iPhone that comes with 4GB of RAM is unlikely to arrive until 2018, according to TrendForce.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20170505VL200.html

Samsung Could Pass Intel in Chip Sales

http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1331676

SAN FRANCISCO—Thanks to surging memory chip prices, South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. could knock Intel Corp. from its familiar perch atop the chip vendor sales leaders as soon as this quarter, according to market research firm IC Insights Inc.

Samsung, the industry leader in memory chip sales, is benefiting from a precipitous rise in average selling prices (ASPs) for DRAM and NAND flash. According to IC Insights, DRAM ASPs in the first quarter of this year were 45 percent greater than in the first quarter of 2016, while NAND ASPs increased 40 percent over the same period.
If Intel's second quarter sales come in around the midpoint of the company's guidance, about $14.4 billion, Samsung could unseat Intel in the second quarter with a modest yet typical increase of 7.5 percent in chip sales from $13.9 billion in the first quarter, IC Insights noted.

Intel has been No. 1 in semiconductor sales since 1993. If memory prices hold firm through 2017, Samsung could also displace Intel as the chip sales leader for the full year, IC Insights said. Both companies are currently on pace to sell about $60 billion in semiconductors this year, the firm said.
"With the memory market still cyclical, this could indeed be a one year event," said Bill McClean, IC Insights president, in an email exchange with EE Times.
IC Insights (Scottsdale, Ariz.) predicts that memory chip prices will begin to cool in the second half of 2017. However, the firm is still projecting that the DRAM market will grow 39 percent this year and the NAND market will grow 25 percent. IC Insights also believes that the memory chip market may grow even faster than the firm has projected.

But McClean noted that memory chip vendors are dramatically increasing their capital expenditures this year to add capacity in light of the memory boom, a situation that can quickly lead to overcapacity and a rapid deflation of ASPs. Samsung spent $4.3 billion on semiconductor capex in the first quarter alone and is likely to spend more than $15 billion for the full year, a 30 percent increase over 2016. Meanwhile, rival SK Hynix plans to increase its capex by 16 percent this year, McClean said.
"When they catch up in capacity, memory prices could retreat quite quickly," McClean said.