Semiconductor Weekly | 20230919

1. Sina Finance reported on September 14 that market research organization Counterpoint Research released the ranking of the TOP7 manufacturers in the global semiconductor market in the second quarter of 2023. Nvidia surpassed Samsung and ranked second with a global share of 9%, second only to Intel's 10%. Samsung ranks third with 8% share. The reason is that the storage market was sluggish in the second quarter of this year, which affected the sales of major memory manufacturers such as Samsung and SK Hynix. In addition, Qualcomm ranked fourth with a 6% share due to the weakness of the mobile phone market. SK Hynix and AMD both had 4% share this quarter.


2. Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily reported on September 14 that in order to catch up with TSMC in advanced packaging of AI chips, the advanced packaging (AVP) team of Samsung's DS department has begun to develop FO-PLP advanced packaging technology for 2.5D. On the chip package. With this technology, Samsung expects to integrate SoC and HBM onto the silicon interposer to further build a complete chip. Industry insiders pointed out that once Samsung successfully applies FO-PLP advanced packaging technology, it will create synergy with its foundry and memory chip businesses. Samsung is attracting customers by proposing a one-stop solution (Turn-key), which is to produce semiconductors for AI chip manufacturers and provide HBM and packaging technology.


3. Taiwan Electronic Times reported on September 14 that industry insiders revealed that TSMC has deployed the 3nm process to mass production. Apple is the first customer. TSMC plans to execute 3nm chip orders from other major customers in 2024. According to relevant supply chain estimates, TSMC's N3 monthly production capacity was originally estimated to be about 65,000 pieces. In the fourth quarter, including N3E, it can reach 80,000 to 100,000 pieces. However, it has been reported that Apple has revised its order, and it will only reach about 50,000 pieces in the fourth quarter. With 60,000 pieces, the 3nm family will not be fully launched until 2024. ​


4. NetEase Technology reported on September 14 that the research institution Counterpoint announced the global smartphone AP/SoC chip market share in the second quarter of 2023, which was displayed in terms of shipment quantity and shipment amount. From a quantitative perspective, MediaTek still maintains its market leadership, while Unisoc is the chip company with the fastest quarter-on-quarter growth this year. The global market share reaches 15%.


5. According to reports from the Korea Economic Daily and the Science and Technology Innovation Board on September 13, according to people familiar with the matter, Samsung Electronics has recently signed a memory chip supply agreement with major smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO and Google to supply DRAM and NAND. The price of mobile phone storage chips such as flash memory will be increased by 10%-20% compared with the existing contract price. Samsung Electronics predicts that the memory chip market may be in short supply from the fourth quarter.


6. The Paper reported on September 13 that the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper super chip, which was launched less than two months ago, made its debut in the MLPerf industry benchmark test. In this test, the GH200, with its higher memory bandwidth and larger memory capacity, performed 17% better than the H100 GPU.