Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd

Semiconductor startups are raking in venture capital at super speed. What companies should you know about?

Since 2017 marks the tenth anniversary of the iPhone, analysts and customers are expecting significant technology improvements in the iPhone 8.

NVIDIA’s profit margins  NVIDIA (NVDA) has been increasing its revenue while controlling its expenses, resulting in improved profitability and a high free cash flow of up to 20% of its total revenues. Gross margin NVIDIA’s non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) gross margin fell 90 basis points from 59.7% in fiscal 1Q18 to 58.6% in fiscal 2Q18 […]

China’s Leading Economic Index currently indicates that the country’s economy is facing a downturn. Its LEI remained unchanged at 98.71 points in July 2015.

In September 2014, AMD (AMD) and Synopsys (SNPS) entered into a multi-year agreement. The partnership will give AMD access to a range of Synopsys’ intellectual property.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is working on ray tracing technology and plans to introduce this technology in its future GPUs (graphics processing unit) in order to compete with NVIDIA’s (NVDA) RTX GPUs.

Texas Instruments (TXN) reported strong fiscal Q2 2018 revenue, and forecast slower-than-usual revenue growth for the third quarter as it increases its exposure to the more stable industrial and automotive markets.

TSMC’s technology lead helped it get several orders from Huawei, Advanced Micro Devices, and Qualcomm.

In the first three quarters of 2018, TSMC spent $6.7 billion in capital expenditure and is expected to spend $3.3 billion in the fourth quarter as it ramps up 7-nm production.

TSMC (TSM) is a third-party chip manufacturer and incurs a lot of fixed cost that goes into maintaining its fabrications facilities, or fabs.

The guidance from Apple (AAPL) and its foundry partner TSMC (TSM) show that smartphone demand should pick up in the second half of 2018.

In 2018, AMD decided to divide the production of its 7nm products between TSMC and GlobalFoundries.

A smaller node improves transistor density, thereby improving performance and power efficiency.

According to Jon Peddie Research, NVIDIA’s new RTX 2080 AIB would cost gamers $800 in September, $880 in the fourth quarter, and $1,000 in the first quarter of 2019.

AMAT earns approximately 30% of its revenue from Taiwan, a share that has consistently risen in recent years.

Applied Materials’ (AMAT) performance is an indicator of the overall semiconductor industry’s outlook.

In 1986, Intel (INTC) adopted an integration model in which it invested in x86 chip designs and manufacturing nodes to attain technology leadership in the microprocessor market.

Texas Instruments (TXN) has been reducing its exposure in the declining smartphone market and increasing its exposure in the growing automotive and industrial markets to reduce its seasonality.

Another factor pulling down TSMC’s gross margin is the lower utilization rate of the 28-nm node due to faster-than-expected migration to the 7-nm node.

In full-year 2018, AMD earned operating cash of $34 million, but it was not sufficient to meet its capital requirements.

Being the world’s largest foundry, TSMC is a key customer of foundry equipment suppliers Applied Materials (AMAT) and ASML (ASML).

AMD’s chief technology officer recently discussed the company’s technology strategy to enter the high-performance computing market.

TSMC’s (TSM) revenue hit the bottom in the first quarter of 2019 due to weak economic demand, smartphone seasonality, and high inventory levels in the semiconductor industry.

TSMC started volume production on its new 7-nm (nanometer) node in H2 2018 but it suffered from a computer virus outbreak at the start of August 2018.

TSMC (TSM) is the world’s largest foundry and manufactures chips for all major end markets.

China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, or SAFE, released foreign reserve data for March on April 7, 2016. China’s foreign reserves rose $10.3 billion to $3.2 trillion in March.

For the last few years, Intel (INTC) has been shifting its focus away from PC to data-centric businesses. It’s looking to tap future technologies such as AI.

Intel (INTC) has recently acknowledged that it has fallen short of providing 10-nm (nanometer) PC CPUs (central processing unit) due to a delay in production and rising CPU demand.

AMD is currently working on bringing its second-generation EPYC server CPU, built on TSMC’s 7 nm node, to the market in mid-2019.

Intel (INTC) is spending big on stock buybacks in 2018 driven by large cash flows coming from high PC and data center revenue.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM) is ramping up the production of its 7 nm node ahead of Samsung (SSNLF).

TSMC focuses on manufacturing nodes to attract more chip designers to manufacture their chips at its foundry.

Intel (INTC) is currently working on fixing the security flaws found in its chip designs. However, the nature of these threats is dynamic and evolving.

In calendar 3Q17, Intel (INTC) was the most profitable semiconductor company, with a last-12-month EBITDA of $25.3 billion.

Intel (INTC) has been a dominant name in the technology industry for a long time, holding a strong position in the PC (personal computer) and data center processor markets.

Among the 35 OECD countries, the US has the highest corporate tax rate of 35%. This tax rate puts US companies at a disadvantage compared to their foreign rivals.

The performance of SME suppliers is a bellwether for the overall semiconductor industry’s outlook because these serve foundries and IDMs.

For fiscal 2Q18, analysts expect NVIDIA to report earnings per share of $0.78, which marks a sequential decline of 8.2%.

NVIDIA recently unveiled its unveiled its next-generation Volta GPU (graphics processing unit). In this series, we’ll look at the various growth opportunities NVIDIA is looking at to tap into GPU-accelerated computing.

The early production ramp up for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 8 doesn’t seem to indicate an early launch of the smartphone.

NVIDIA’s non-GAAP gross margin improved from 57.5% in fiscal 1Q17 to 59.6% in fiscal 1Q18.

Applied Materials’ Applied Global Services segment Applied Materials’ (AMAT) Semiconductor Systems segment has seen strong growth as chipmakers transition to new material-intensive 3D NAND technology and 10-nm (nanometer) and 8-nm process nodes. The chipmakers may take some time to ramp up new technology and improve yield rates. Applied Materials’ AGS (Applied Global Services) team works in sync with […]

Things are heating up in the GPU space as AMD looks to enter the high-end market with its Vega GPU. Vega will be priced competitively, likely creating a price war between AMD and NVIDIA.

Intel’s process leadership is seemingly unbeatable. Its upcoming 10nm (nanometer) node will contain double the number of transistors compared to Samsung’s and TSMC’s 10nm nodes.

Intel’s (INTC) gross margin hasn’t improved much over the last two years because it’s been manufacturing chips on the same 14nm (nanometer) node since 2014.

Nvidia (NVDA) has reported strong growth in fiscal 2017, thanks to Pascal GPUs.

Xilinx (XLNX) is moving ahead of Intel (INTC), not only in FPGA (field programmable gate array) adoption but also in technology node.

AMAT is the world’s largest manufacturer of SME (semiconductor manufacturing equipment) and supplies to chipmakers around the world.

Nvidia (NVDA) is rushing to launch Volta in early 2017, which is the timeframe when AMD could release its next-generation GPU Vega.

In fiscal 3Q16, Intel (INTC) partnered with ARM Holdings (ARMH) to provide foundry services for ARM-based chips. Intel announced another foundry partnership with Spreadtrum, but it did not identify the products that would be manufactured.