Semiconductor Weekly | 20230822

1. International Electronic Business News Recently, the topic of the German government's "default" subsidy for semiconductor companies investing in local factories has attracted much attention. In particular, the German government’s statement that it will provide TSMC and Intel with huge factory construction subsidies has aroused doubts from some people in the economic circles and media circles


2. Although the global smartphone market has experienced a relatively large decline, the three emerging markets in India and Southeast Asia have not experienced a large decline, and they show different characteristics, especially the high-end market. The demand in the second half of 2023 is likely to Increase, to boost confidence in the market.


3. Recently, it has been reported in the IC industry that TSMC and the world advanced companies it invests in have successively lowered the price of 8-inch wafer foundry, with a maximum drop of up to 30%. Later, it was reported that Korean wafer foundries (including Dongfang Hi-Tech, Key Foundry, etc.) also began to generally lower the price of 8-inch foundries, with the highest being as high as 20%.


4. SK Hynix announced on the 21st that it has successfully developed a new AI-oriented ultra-high-performance DRAM product HBM3E1, and began to provide samples to customers for verification. The new product will be put into mass production from the first half of next year to consolidate SK hynix's unique position in the AI-oriented memory market


5. According to Kuai Technology citing Korean media reports, Samsung will launch more than 300 layers of flash memory in 2024, ahead of SK Hynix. A few days ago, SK Hynix announced the world's first flash memory with more than 300 layers, reaching 321 layers, the type is TLC, and the single Die capacity is 1Tb, but it will not be mass-produced until 2025.


6. According to China Taiwan Business Times, the latest quarterly wafer industry analysis report of the International Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI)’s silicon product manufacturers organization shows that global silicon wafer shipments in the second quarter of 2023 will reach 3.331 billion square inches, a year-on-year Decreased by 10.1%, up 2% month-on-month, halting the previous two consecutive quarters of recession


7. According to foreign media sources quoted by TechWeb, in order to catch up in the global computing power competition, British Prime Minister Sunak plans to spend 130 million US dollars to purchase thousands of high-performance AI chips from Nvidia, AMD and Intel. It is reported that UK research and innovation, the UK science funding agency, has entered the advanced stage of ordering 5000 Nvidia GPUs.