Company co-CEO Mark Liu said that while the fourth quarter could be a bit rough as customers start their inventory adjustments, TSMC’s sales for the quarter will still outperform those for the third quarter.

Talking to Digitimes Lui said that smartphone demand was affected negatively by macroeconomic factors in the first half of 2016. But apparently smartphone chip clients are ordering again in the second half of the year.

TSMC previously estimated its 2016 revenues would grow 5-10 per cent. The foundry expects to meet the high end of the growth guidance, Liu said. In his speech at the CEO Forum of SEMICON Taiwan 2016. Liu claimed that the foundry industry growth is being driven by the markets for smartphones, HPC, automotive and IoT.

Apps like Pokemon G will require more silicon chips used in mobile devices that will be another growth driver in the future, Liu said.

Courtesy-Fud

The new test chip contains ARM’s yet-to-be-announced “Artemis” CPU core which is named after a goddess who will turn you into deer and tear you apart with wild dogs if you ever see her. [The NDA must have been pretty tough on this chip.ed]

In fact things have been ticking along on this project for ages. ARM discloses that tapeout actually took place back in December last year and is expecting silicon to come back from the foundry in the following weeks.

ARM actually implemented a full four-core Artemis cluster on the test chip which should show vendors what is possible for their production designs. The test chip has a current generation Mali GPU implementation with 1 shader core to show vendors what they will get when they use ARM’s POP IP in conjunction with its GPU IP. There is also a range of other IP blocks and I/O interfaces that are used to validation of the new manufacturing process.

TSMC’s 10FF manufacturing process is supposed to increase density with scaling’s of up to 2.1x compared to the previous 16nm manufacturing node. It also brings about 11-12 per cent higher performance at each process’ respective nominal voltage, or a 30 per cent reduction in power.

ARM siad that comparing a current Cortex A72 design on 16FF+ and an Artemis core on 10FF on the new CPU and process can halve the dynamic power consumption. Currently clock frequencies on the new design are still behind the older more mature process and IP, but ARM expects this to improve as it optimizes its POP and the process stabilizes.

Courtesy-Fud

Digitimes’ deep throats claimed TSMC is expected to achieve certification on its 10nm process in the fourth quarter of 2016, and deliver product samples to the customer for validation in the first quarter of 2017.

This means that TSMC could begin small-volume production for Apple’s A11 chips as early as the second quarter of 2017 and building the chips will likely start to generate revenues at TSMC in the third quarter. The A11-series processor will power the iPhone models slated for launch in the second half of 2017.

TSMC is expected to get two-thirds of the overall A11 chip orders from Apple.

The company is officially refusing to comment on Digitimes’ story, but it does fit into what we have already been told about Jobs’ Mob’s plans for next year.

For TSMC, Q1 2016 was marked by a reduction of demand for high-end smartphones, while smartphone demand in China and emerging markets had upward momentum. Beginning Q2 2016 and onward, the company expect to get back onto a growth trajectory and is projected to hit a 5 to 10 percent growth rate in 2016.

“Our 10-nanometer technology development is on track,” said company president and co-CEO Mark Liu during the company’s Q4 2015 earnings call. “We are currently in intensive yield learning mode in our technology development. Our 256-megabit SRAM is yielding well. We expect to complete process and product qualification and begin customer product tape-outs this quarter.”

“Our 7-nanometer technology development progress is on schedule as well. TSMC’s 7 nanometer technology development leverage our 10-nanometer development very effectively. At the same time, TSMC’s 7-nanometer offers a substantial density improvement, performance improvement and power reduction from 10-nanometer.

These two technologies, 10-nanometer and 7-nanometer, will cover a very wide range of applications, including application processors for smartphone, high-end networking, advanced graphics, field-programmable gate arrays, game consoles, wearables and other consumer products.”

In Q1 2016, TSMC reached a gross margin of 44.9 percent, an operating margin of 34.6 percent and a net profit margin of 31.8 percent respectively. Going forward into Q2 2016, the company is expecting revenue between ~$6.65 billion and ~$6.74 billion USD, gross margins between 49 and 51 percent, and operating profit margins between 38.5 and 40.5 percent, respectively.

Chips used for communications and industrial uses represented over 80 percent of TSMC’s revenue in FY 2015. The company was also able to improve its margins by increasing 16-nanometer production, and like many other semiconductor companies, is preparing for an expected upswing sometime in 2017.

In February, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck southern Taiwan where TSMC’s 12-inch Fab 14 is located, a current site of 16-nanometer production. The company expected to have a manufacturing impact above 1 percent in the region with a slight reduction in wafer shipments for the quarter.

“Although the February 6 earthquake caused some delay in wafer shipments in the first quarter, we saw business upside resulting from demand increases in mid- and low-end smartphone segments and customer inventory restocking,” said Lora Ho, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of TSMC.

“We expect our business in the second quarter will benefit from continued inventory restocking and recovery of the delayed shipments from the earthquake.”

In fiscal year 2016, the company will spend between $9 and $10 billion on ramping up the 16-nanometer process node, constructing Fab 15 for 12-inch wafers in Nanjing, China, and beginning commercial production of the 10-nanometer FinFET process at this new facility. Samsung and Intel are also expected to start mass production of 10-nanometer products by the end of 2016.

During its Q4 2015 earnings call, company president and co-CEO Mark Liu stated the company is currently preparing and working on a 7-nanometer process node and plans to begin volume production sometime in 2018. Meanwhile, since January 2015, a separate research and development team at TSMC has been laying the groundwork for a 5-nanometer process which the company expects to bring into commercial production sometime in 1H 2020.

So far in Q1 2016, shipments of 16 and 20-nanometer wafers have accounted for around 23 percent of the company’s total wafer revenues.

Courtesy-Fud

It is starting to look sales teams for the pair are each trying to show that they can use the technology to reduce the most electricity consumption and production costs.

In its yearly result for 2015, TSMC made an announcement that it is planning to enter mass-production system of chips produced by 16-nano FinFET Compact (FFC) process sometime during 1st quarter of this year. TSMC had finished developing 16-nano FFC process at the end of last year. During the announcement TSMC talked up the fact that its 16-nano FFC process focuses on reducing production cost more than before and implementing low electricity.

TSMC is apparently ready for mass-production of 16-nano FFC process sometime during 1st half of this year and secured Huawei’s affiliate called HiSilicon as its first customer.

HiSilicon’s Kirin 950 that is used for Huawei’s premium Smartphone called Mate 8 is produced by TSMC’s 16-nano FF process. Its A9 Chip, which is used for Apple’s iPhone 6S series, is mass-produced using the 16-nano FinFET Plus (FF+) process that was announced in early 2015. By adding FFC process, TSMC now has three 16-nano processors in action.

Samsung is not far behind it has mass-produced Gen.2 14-nano FinFET using a process called LPP (Low Power Plus). This has 15 per cent lower electricity consumption compared to Gen.1 14-nano process called LPE (Low Power Early).

Samsung Electronics’ 14-nano LPP process was seen in the Exynos 8 OCTA series that is used for Galaxy S7 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820. But Samsung Electronics is also preparing for Gen.3 14-nano FinFET process.

Vice-President Bae Young-chang of Samsung’s LSI Business Department’s Strategy Marketing Team said it will use a process similar to the Gen.2 14-nano process.

Both Samsung and TSMC might have a few problems. It is not clear what the yields of these processes are and this might increase the production costs.

Even if Samsung Electronics and TSMC finish developing 10-nano process at the end of this year and enter mass-production system next year, but they will also have to upgrade their current 14 and 16-nano processes to make them more economic.

Even if 10-nano process is commercialized, there still will be many fabless businesses that will use 14 and 16-nano processes because they are cheaper. While we might see a few flagship phones using the higher priced chips, it might be that we will not see 10nm in the majority of phones for years.

Courtesy-Fud

Apparently the fruity cargo cult Apple has already signed up to adopt the technology, which means that the rest of the world’s press will probably notice.

According to the Commercial Times TSMC will have 85,000-100,000 wafers fabricated with the foundry’s in-house developed InFo packaging technology in the second quarter of 2016.

TSMC has disclosed its InFO packaging technology will be ready for mass production in 2016. Company president and co-CEO CC Wei remarked at an October 15 investors meeting that TSMC has completed construction of a new facility in Longtan, northern Taiwan.

TSMC’s InFo technology will be ready for volume production in the second quarter of 2016, according to Wei.

TSMC president and co-CEO Mark Liu disclosed the company is working on the second generation of its InFO technology for several projects on 10nm and 7nm process nodes.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/tsmc-goes-fan-out-wafers.html

According to EETimes Paul Boudre, who claimed that SOI is already being used by Apple and Intel even though neither company is broadcasting it. SOI appears to be on track to major market penetration even while the rest of the industry is talking FinFETs.

GlobalFoundries general manager Rutger Wijburg told the SEMICON Europa 2015 that his outfit’s 22-nanometer “22FDX” SOI platform delivers FinFET-like performance but at a much lower power point and at a cost comparable to 28-nanometer planar technologies.

The 300-millimeter $250 million FD-SOI foundry here in the “Silicon Saxony” area of Germany, builds on 20 years of GlobalFoundries’ investments in Europe’s largest semiconductor fabs.

GlobalFoundries said it will extend Moore’s Law by using fully-deleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) transistors on wafers bought from Soitec.

Many had thought that if GloFlo’s FD-SOI gamble paid off then it would be a while before FinFET would have a serious rival. But Boudre’s claims suggests that SOI is already being used.

Customers like Intel and OEMs supplying fully-deleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) RF transistors to Apple proves that SOI and Soitec are past the cusp of the growth curve, destined to ramp up exponentially.

The problem for Soitec is no one is really talking about it. Chipzilla is committed to the FinFET, because it is higher performance than FD-SOI, even though it is higher power too.
Boudre said that it was supplying SOI wafers to Intel for other applications that don’t require high-performance. For instance, our wafers are very good for their silicon photonics projects.

Apple is already using SOI for several radio frequency (RF) chips in their front-ends, because they use 20-times less power. The iPhone is still using gallium arsenide (GaAs) for its power amplifier (PA) because it needs the high-power device for good connections, but for other RF front-end chips, and in fact for all the chips that they want to keep “always on,” the lower power consumption of FD-SOI is pushing the smartphone makers to Soitec, Boudre said.

SOI wafers cost three-times as much as bulk silicon but the cost per die is less because of the simplified processing steps including fewer masks.

Normally GPS chips run on 0.8 volts and consume over 20 milliamps, so they must be turned off most of the time. But when they are made with SOI wafers, they can run on 0.4 volts and consume only 1 milliamp. The mobile device to leave them on all the time and new and more accurate location sensing and new kinds of location-based applications can be developed.

What is amusing then is that Intel’s reason for going with FinFETs was that SOI wafers were too expensive but it did find a use for it.

GlobalFoundries’ Saxony fab will offer four varieties of its 22FDX process.

FDX-ulp for the mainstream and low-cost smartphone market. This will use body-biasing to beat FinFETs on power, but equal them in performance.

FDX-uhp for networking applications using analogue integration to match FinFETs while minimizing energy consumption

FDX-ull for ultra-low power required by wearables and Internet of Things applications. This will have a 1 picoamp per micron leakage

DDX-rfa for radio frequency (RF) analogue applications delivering 50 percent lower power and reduced system costs for LTE-A cellular transceivers, high-order multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) WiFi combo chips and millimeter wave radar.

Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/ibm-and-intel-going-goflo-soi.html

Actually AMD is pretty cheap right now and if it was not for the pesky arrangement that prevents AMD’s buyer getting its x86 technology then it would have been snapped up a while ago. But with, or without AMD, Samsung could still make a good fist of chipmaking if it put its mind to it. At the moment its chipmaking efforts are one of the better things on its balance sheet.

Its high-margin semiconductor business is more than making up for the shortfall in smartphones. Selling chips to rivals would be more lucrative if they were not spinning their own mobile business. The products it have are worth $11.7 billion this year, more than half the company’s total.

Growing demand for chips and thin-film displays is probably the main reason that Samsung now expects operating profit to have reached $6.3 billion. After applying Samsung’s 16 percent corporate tax rate, its chip division is likely to bring in net income of slightly less than $10 billion.

To put this figure into perspective Intel expects to earn $10.5 billion in this year. Samsung is also sitting on a $48 billion net cash pile. Samsung could see its handset and consumer electronics business as a sideline and just focus on bumping off Intel.

The two sides of such a war would be fascinating. Intel has its roots in the PC chip market which is still suffering while Samsung is based in the mobile chip market which is growing. Intel has had no luck crossing into the mobile market, but Samsung could start looking at server and PC chips.

AMD is still dying and unable to offer Intel any challenge but there is a large market for those PC users who do not want to buy Intel. What Samsung should have done is use its huge cash pile to buy its way into the PC market. It might have done so with the IBM tech which went to Lenovo. It is still not out of the running on that front. Lenovo might be happy to sell IBM tech to Samsung.

Another scenario is that it might try to buy an x86 licence from Intel. With AMD dying, Intel is sitting on a huge monopoly for PC technology. It is only a matter of time before an anti-trust suit appears. Intel might think it is worthwhile to get a reliable rival to stop those allegations taking place. Samsung would be a dangerous rival, but it would take a while before it got itself established. Intel might do well to consider it. Of course Samsung might buy AMD which could sweeten that deal for Intel.

Samsung could try adapting its mobile chip technology for the PC/server market – it has the money to do it. Then it has a huge job marketing itself as the new Intel.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/can-samsung-compete-with-intel-in-the-x86-chip-space.html

The cunning plan is to install electric generating equipment at its factories or even building its own power plant.

Apparently, the company’s electricity bill will go up by 50 per cent over the next ten years as it moves to more-advanced technologies.

Taiwan is already facing power shortage problems and TSMC is worried that its plans could be stuffed up.

TSMC has asked Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and government-owned Taiwan Power Company (Taipower) about the feasibility of building its own power generators and related regulatory matters.

According to Digitimes companies can set up power generating equipment for use at their own factory sites, but the law has to be revised to allow TSMC to build its own power plant.

TSMC previously pointed out that it does not necessarily need nuclear power unless there is an alternative. We really hope that quote does not mean that TSMC is considering going nuclear.

Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/is-electricity-in-tsmcs-future.html