The foundry sector has seen tight supply across all segments, with 6-inch fab capacity almost fully booked for third-quarter 2021 thanks to strong demand for a wide range of applications, such as analog chips and discrete power devices. And short suply in the memory sector is also expected to drive up DRAM and NOR flash prices through second-half 2021. In Poland, startup IS-Wireless is aiming to break the vendor lock-in imposed by big players in the mobile telecom industry. IS-Wireless CEO Slawomir Pietrzyk recently told Digitimes how his company does it.Six-inch fab capacity almost fully booked for 3Q21: Six-inch foundries have seen their fab capacity for the third quarter almost fully booked, driven by a ramp-up in demand for analog chips, such as power management ICs, and discrete power devices including diodes and MOSFETs, according to industry sources in Taiwan.DRAM, NOR flash prices to rise through 2H21: DRAM and NOR flash memory prices are expected to rise through the second half of 2021, as growth on the supply side fails to catch up, according to industry sources.Liberalizing 5G: Q&A with Polish startup IS-Wireless CEO Slawomir Pietrzyk: Window of opportunity has opened up for Polish startup IS-Wireless, which was nominated for DigitalEurope's Future Unicorn Award 2021, having won several other awards in Europe with its innovative 5G mobile communications technologies. They have joined the Garage+ accelerator of the Epoch Foundation in Taiwan, hoping to find hardware partners from Taiwan to deliver their new model of 5G communications at lower cost and better performance.

Window of opportunity has opened up for Polish startup IS-Wireless, which was nominated for DigitalEurope's Future Unicorn Award 2021, having won several other awards in Europe with its innovative 5G mobile communications technologies. They have joined the Garage+ accelerator of the Epoch Foundation in Taiwan, hoping to find hardware partners from Taiwan to deliver their new model of 5G communications at lower cost and better performance.IS-Wireless CEO Slawomir Pietrzyk recently talked to Digitimes about his visions.Q: Could you give a brief introduction to your core team and the company's value proposition?A: I received my PhD in wireless communications at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and two of our colleagues did their PhD studies at National Chiao Tung University in Hsiunchu. The team consists of 50 highly skilled telecom professionals who have experience in building telecommunication networks, starting from 2G and 3G trough 4G and now 5G. We have also a research part of the company which is already focused on 6G. We are a company providing mobile networks of the future. We try to challenge the status quo, which is dominated by the big providers, such as Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei, etc. We are building the gears, including hardware and software for rollouts of the networks. This technology domain is getting to a point of saturation, as the big players each are trying to cover the whole value chain. This situation is called "vendor lock-in," very similar to the computer industry 30 years ago, where single vendors sold software and peripherals products incompatible with other companies. The same thing is happening in the mobile industry and reaching the point of saturation would mean the end of possibilities in this industry.In order to release creativity and move forward, and help lower the prices at the same time, we need to do the same thing which happened 30 years ago in the computer industry, which also involved Taiwanese companies, which is modulization of PCs. Instead of using those incompatible computers, people standardized computer hardware 30 years ago, which allowed consumers to insert cards in computers made by many different suppliers, provided they complied with those standards. The software was totally different. You could install whatever operating system, and on top of that you can build different applications. Each of those elements came from independent suppliers, because the value chain was open. This is happening in the mobile industry. We are one of the few players in the world that is following this trend.We focus on the radio access part, which is the most technologically demanding. Our value is in functionality definition and in implementation of software responsible for those functionality. Taiwanese firms are great in developing hardware, so we look forward to establishing relations with companies which develop computing hardware, such as servers, and the remote radio heads.Q: In the Garage+ brochure, you pointed out that IS-Wireless is participating in the Open-RAN revolution and expects significant changes in how networks are built and deployed in the future. Can you elaborate that vision?A: The things that I have been describing so far was more on the side of the providers, the functionalities and the network gears. They are installed in the mobile networks of telecom service operators, such as Orange, Verizon, etc. Traditionally, mobile service operators tend, so far, to cover all the value chain. From building the networks, running the networks, offering services, etc. But it is a very silo-based thinking, which definitely will have to change.Let me give you an example. Building and running the sites is the least welcoming business of the network operators. Site acquisition, network maintenance, are all costly. Right now companies tend to sell those part of business to external partners. What I believe is that in the near future, especially the locations where the network gear, the base stations, and especially the radio units will have to be co-located with other type of infrastructure. Lamp posts is one example, but there are much more. We will face a massive distribution of those radio units, tiny base stations, in order to cover small area to densify the network. You need small and low-power units, like WiFi kind of access points. They can even be installed before being used by the same token as the Ethernet cables in the offices. This is the only way to provide significant capacity improvement.The change of gravity is huge. It normally takes 15 months for European telecom operators to build huge sites, which includes acquiring site, and actual build-up of the base station. That is like the stone age for providing the services. Now with our solution, if the operator has already acquired the tiny radio gears, and the owner of kiosks or the city municipality permits the use of lamp posts and bus stops, then those non-telecom infrastructures will serve as access points of the radio gears. The time required for installation can be significantly shorten with this new business model.The single unit of the radio gears is cheap, but you need to produce a huge number of them, in order to get the optimal network performance.Q: It is a brilliant idea for smart city models. Are you already in talks with cities or governments in Europe for this deployment?A: We are at the stage of getting it out of the labs. We have demonstrated the operability of our solution in the labs, and right now we are conducting proof-of-concept trials, including small-site rollouts. This is the step before commercial roll-outs in the cities. Smart city application is only one of the applications. We are also targeting industrial applications and we plan to have rollouts to address the needs for operators providing private networks, which are favored by many companies. This is especially visible in Germany, which auctioned 5G bandwidth for private operators. In addition to auctioning large chunks of bandwidth for the whole country, they allowed localizing licensing of bandwidth per square kilometer, at the price of about single thousand euros, not millions of euros as country-wide auction options. You can imagine how many more business cases can carry such affordable costs. It is seeing explosive demand in Germany and we hope to see similar situation in Poland, which is scheduled to auction frequencies for 5G in 2021. Taiwan also had a private 5G bandwidth auction, a trend we have been very much interested in.Q: Security is a key issue for 5G, not only the geopolitical issues raised by the US in the case of Huawei. In the age of Internet of Things (IoT), networks are vulnerable to hacking. Do you have any solution for protecting security?A: Certainly. Security is at the heart of our solution; we put great emphasis to this. At the geopolitical level, we are building our infrastructure locally. For this part of the world which is in collaboration with NATO and the US, we can be the supplier that is accountable not just for our homeland deployment, but also for the whole European Union, and/or allies of NATO and the US.At the system level, our system is developed with the open model, all the interfaces can be checked by the community. You have much more people to challenge this, compared to the single, silo-based block model of the traditional vendors. Everything is hidden in the traditional model, and the customers over-pay for security which they have no idea what kind of protection they are getting.Our system also has superiority in flexibility. For that open system, which also is equipped up-to-date security counter-measures for threats, you can use the open-system counter-measures tailored for the risks you are facing, because you can take it as a module from an independent security provider. This is very important, you can have the functionality of one vendor, while the security of that vendor can be locally verified in any country.And we also put a lot of emphasis on certification of security. We have just initiated a project with the Polish National Telecommunications Institute, on safeguarding security between the network security functions and aligned computing resources. This is because we allow our software to run on dedicated hardware, such as servers, and shared resources, such as Amazon, Google or Microsoft Azure. That poses different kind of challenges, but we are addressing them as well.Q: Are you seeing competitors which are also startups that are offering similar solutions?A: There are three or four such companies globally. They are already engaged and working for rollouts. They are also providing solutions with the open radio-networking philosophy. They are on wave one, but we are considered as wave two. We believe we have better technology. In most of their cases, the software they offer is decoupled from hardware. Our software is not only decoupled but partitionable from the very beginning. Another difference is they typically start from the upgrade of 4G implementation, while we started from 5G at the very beginning. We are confident to say, after the rollout, we will deliver deployments at a much better level of quality and flexibility.Besides, the competitors are pushing for large-sites with customers who focus on their current needs. I would say that is a technological trap, because the large-site rollout that they focus on will soon get saturated.Q: What is your business model? Do you license IP? How do you generate revenues?A: Very good questions. We want to address two types of customers. One is technologically savvy operators, which understand the technology and can control the whole value chain themselves. Rakuten Mobile of Japan is a good example of such kind of customer. For this kind of customer, we are willing to simply license our software and make sure it matches the hardware it controls. The second group of customers are more likely to get the low-hanging fruits faster. They are not that technologically savvy because they are from different industries. Let's imagine we are working with a railway company or with an airport. They are not telecom companies, but they have the potential of either running their private networks or deploy networks that they would rent or license to someone else. With that, we will provide total solution, including both software and hardware. We will not be producing hardware but would like to work as a partner with hardware manufacturers to offer total solution. We also provide installation and integration service to whatever is needed.Very often we can think of running system integration with non-telecom companies such as Amazon who have access to customers. We can also work as a supplier of the network gears to provide network functionality and able to install the elements needed for localization.Q: IS-Wireless is also preparing for the emergence of 6G technology? Will your 5G technology be obsolete when 6G takes over?A: No, it won't happen that way. I am old enough to observe 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G, with 3G and 4G the center of my professional career. We expect that 6G will be a continuation of 5G concepts. The 5G services currently provided by large operators is not too different from 4G, regarding the technical concept. The novelty of 5G is the possibility of opening up the value chains. You can have the elements of the wireless gears, decoupled from the software. In the past, they are inseparable. 5G brings slicing of services. What will 6G be? It will be an evolution. The leapfrogging technology we are working on right now is exactly a 6G strategy. We are very confident that the future lies with the trend of software decoupling from hardware, and a bottom-up approach of building massive numbers of low-power sites versus the top-down approach of traditional 3G/4G rollouts. That is because you would not have the luxury of building a totally new network, and the limit of the wave length requires density of the network. In the future, 6G gears will have to be co-located with other infrastructures, and you need to share those bandwidths with multiple users.Q: Is the purpose of IS-Wireless to join the community of Garage+ accelerator to get access to potential manufacturing partners in Taiwan?A: That is one of the reasons, but there are more. The first thing is to find partners with hardware manufacturing capabilities. We already have some relationships that we would like to deepen, in the direction of computing and radio units. During my visit in 2019, I learned that there are interests from Taiwanese companies to invest in technological startups. If we can establish a collaboration with Taiwanese companies which are strong in hardware manufacturing, it would be complementary and would benefit both sides, because our strength is in software. And Taiwan is also the perfect place to propagate to the entire region of Asia. We also share similar values. Poles and Taiwanese are both good at abstract thinking and creative way of solving problems. I believe we are better than our western European colleagues as a partner for Taiwanese companies.Q: Do you have any expansion plan or fund-raising plan this year or next?A: We are now a company of around 50 people, which is like a teenager in the life of a human being. We are growing rapidly and learning rapidly. To build a team to support the early rollouts and trials that I mentioned earlier, maintaining customer relationships, and finishing technical work for optimizing, adding or improving our product, we are looking for investments of around US$10 million this year as a bridge-financing to get us to the point of implementing larger rollouts.Right now we are looking for early adopters who are customers that are willing to work with us, a very agile and fast-responding company. In their domain, we can be a very strong differentiator.IS-Wireless CEO Slawomir PietrzykPhoto: Company

DRAM supply has already fallen short of demand with the chip shortages worsening. DRAM contract prices are expected to continue rising in second-quarter 2021. The coronavirus pandemic has decimated many industries, but the semiconductor sector has thrived against all odds, HPC, 5G, AI, and automotive applications will be driving the global semiconductor market growth in 2021 and beyond, according to SEMI. But components shortage remains a headache in the meantime. Acer expects global demand for notebooks and other PCs to remain strong due to the pandemic-induced stay-home needs, but supply will be constrained by component shortages until thid-quaerter 2021.DRAM contract prices set to continue growing in 2Q21: DRAM contract prices are set to continue rising in the second quarter of 2021, according to Nanya Technology, which has reported sequential and on-year increases in February revenue.SEMI upbeat about semiconductor market outlook: The emerging 5G, HPC, AI and automotive applications will be driving the global semiconductor market growth in 2021 and over the next several years, according to Clark Tseng, director of Industry Research and Statistics at SEMI.PC supply to remain constrained until 3Q21, says Acer chairman: The global supply of notebooks and other PCs will remain constrained all the way to the third quarter of this year as components continue to be in tight supply, according to Acer chairman and CEO Jason Chen.

Taiwan's New Media Entertainment Association (NMEA) has launched a project to unite small content creators vertically and horizontally, calling for the establishment of a holding company to help domestic media companies support and cooperate with each other.Under its Project X, NMEA suggests the government inject an initial fund of NT$1 billion (US$35.71 million) for the holding company that will create 10 new pieces of Taiwanese IP per year, so as to achieve four major development goals of capitalization, digitalization, globalization and localization for Taiwan's contents creation industry, according to NMEA chairman Homme Tsai.Tsai said in a statement that the arrival of "the age of streaming" threatens to wipe out Taiwanese content creators who compete individually against international giants such as Netflix.NMEA now has more than 200 individual and corporate members, engaged in the fields of gaming, music, digital advertising, publishing, anime and manga, fashion, new media and filmmaking, the statement said.

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the global economy. However, thanks to their unique market position and manufacturing capabilities, the Taiwan and China-based cross-strait PCB makers achieved good results in 2020. Increasing demands for 5G infrastructure, cloud data centers and high-performance computing led to stronger growth momentum. These market forces are creating an increase in demand and interest in printed circuit boards (PCB), in particular high-end multi-layer boards (MLB), high density interconnect (HDI) PCBs and flexible PCBs (FPCB).We met up with Pierce Weng, General Manager of Orbotech PCB Taiwan, to talk about the company's new process-enabling solutions for FPCB manufacturing. For 40 years, Orbotech, a KLA company, has been developing advanced yield enhancement solutions for the manufacturing of electronics. Through its long-time partnership with Taiwanese and Chinese PCB makers, Orbotech has enabled the electronics manufacturing service industry to maintain its leading global position.Orbotech Infinitum and Orbotech Apeiron series provide a big boost for FPCB manufacturingFlex circuits are widely used in almost all popular electronic products, especially smartphones, tablets and notebooks. 2020 was a bumper year for flex manufacturing and FPCB makers had to respond quickly in order to meet the strong demand. To help its customers achieve their business objectives, Orbotech has announced two new roll-to-roll (R2R) products for FPCB manufacturing. The solutions are for roll-to-roll direct imaging (DI) and UV laser drilling. Both overcome many of the yield, throughput and quality challenges inherent in flex material manufacturing. Leveraging newly developed and field-proven technologies, the solutions facilitate high quality, cost-effective mass production of the ultra-thin FPCB boards that are critical in new generations of advanced electronics.The first solution is the Orbotech Infinitum series - a roll-to-roll direct imaging solution for mass production of FPCBs. Leveraging Orbotech's new DDI Technology (Drum Direct Imaging ) for optimal material handling and high-speed imaging, the systems deliver high yield and production throughput. The Orbotech Infinitum delivers fine line structure and uniformity enabled by continuous exposure and high depth-of-focus (DoF) with Orbotech's LSO Technology (Large Scan Optics Technology). The systems are compatible with a wide range of resists and processes enabled by simultaneous multi-wave exposure thanks to Orbotech's MultiWave Technology. The two models named Orbotech Infinitum 10 and Orbotech Infinitum 10XT both offer maximum efficiency and cleanliness with options for roll widths of 260mm and up to 520mm.The next solution is the Orbotech Apeiron series. A powerful UV laser drilling system for flex roll-to-roll and sheet-by-sheet drilling, it delivers high drilling throughput, quality and accuracy. Using Multi-Path Technology, its precise laser beam and four large scan area drilling heads can drill in four locations simultaneously, optimizing laser power usage. Its small footprint design leverages its internal roll-to-roll mechanism, enabled by the new Roll-Inside Technology. The third technology driving this innovative solution is Orbotech's CBU Technology (Continuous Beam Uniformity) that provides built-in beam validation tools to ensure beam accuracy and quality for size, roundness and energy distribution. Orbotech Apeiron offers both roll-to-roll and sheet-by-sheet handling of thin flex cores with the ability to simultaneously drill two panel sheets, side by side for maximum drilling capacity.Based on its experience and expertise as well as its close partnerships with PCB makers, Orbotech has developed a wide range of solutions designed specifically to meet the demanding requirements of FPCB and advanced HDI PCBs. Orbotech offers an entire suite of solutions for mass production including DI (Direct Imaging), AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) and AOS (Automated Optical Shaping) - the 3D shaping of opens, shorts and nicks. Orbotech's product offering is in great demand from PCB makers. With its announcement of the Orbotech Infinitum and Orbotech Apeiron series, Orbotech continues to maintain its market leadership as it optimizes the handling of the most delicate flex materials during direct imaging and UV laser drilling processes.Taiwan PCB makers see optimistic outlook in 2021With the year finally coming to an end, Mr. Weng reviewed the business development of 2020 in PCB sectors. 5G smartphones did not meet their forecasts during the early months of 2020, mainly because the global brands' flagship models were postponed. But mid-end and entry level lower price phones took a major step up in volumes and maintained an overall upward trend for the mobile phone market. Meanwhile, some leading investments for 6G technology have been initiated. This will contribute to higher-end process equipment and manufacturing solutions and increase demand for Orbotech's wide range of innovative solutions and product offerings.In addition to mobile phone PCB sectors, HDI boards were one of the fastest growing technologies during 2020. With the widespread adoption of 5G base stations worldwide and major Taiwan PCB makers enjoying robust orders for notebooks, tablets and PC servers, HDI PCB makers are showing strong growth. Successful manufacturing of HDI and multi-layer PCBs have thinner lines, tighter spacing, tighter annular rings and use thinner specialty materials. First tier PCB makers are working in close collaboration with Orbotech's engineering teams developing special equipment including laser drills, laser direct imaging and sequential lamination process solutions. In order to successfully produce this type of board, it requires additional time and a significant CAPEX investment in manufacturing processes and equipment.Pierce Weng, GM of Orbotech PCB Taiwan, gives upbeat sales forecast on high-end PCB process enabling solutions

Some public cloud platform operators have recently launched QaaS (Quantum as a Service) business, seeking synergies between software and hardware suppliers and enterprise users - a move which will help explore potential applications and accelerate the integration of new and old computing technologies, according to Digitimes Research.Major public cloud service providers, including IBM, Microsoft and AWS (Amazon Web Services), have successfully launched QaaS, allowing enterprise users to access quantum computing resources on public cloud platforms.This business model allows quantum computing technology providers to solicit more customers and meets the needs of enterprise users for high-speeding computing services, which is favorable to the quantum computing industry's development.The growing deployments of QaaS services and related ecosystems by these public cloud service providers also mean that commercialization of quantum computing has arrived, according to Digitimes Research.As a feasible solution for accelerated data computing in the post-Moore's Law era, quantum computing is not replacing traditional computing processes but is optimizing the high-speed computing performance of the old and new computing technologies, Digitimes Research notes.While most quantum computers are still being operated in highly constrained environments, the availability of QaaS in the form of remote access has helped alleviate the scarcity of quantum computing resources.

The US trade ban may be blocking SMIC from advancing its semiconductor manufacturing processes, but the China foundry is looking to expand its presence in the mature node segments amid industry-wide tight capacity. Qualcomm reporedly has had to extend lead times for its mobile chips. Also in short supply have been Nvidia's RTX 30 series discrete graphics cards, which have been keenly sought after by cryptocurrency miners. Now cryptominers are turning to RTX 30-equiped gaming notebooks to serve their mining purposes.SMIC to enhance presence in mature process segment: Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC) is looking to further grow its mature process business segment, after receiving US licenses to import equipment and materials for use in mature-node processes, according to industry sources.Qualcomm chip supply reportedly tight: Qualcomm reportedly has extended the delivery lead times for its mobile chips as the global semiconductor supply chain remains under pressure amid tight capacity, according to industry sources.Gaming notebook suppliers see surge in demand from cryptominers: Gaming notebook specialists have seen demand surge for cryptocurrency mining applications, according to industry sources.

About 795.7 million smartphone application processors will be shipped to China-based handset vendors in 2021, up 12.2% on year, forecasts Digitimes Research.Demand for smartphone-use APs in China is increasing as vendors including Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are building up inventories aiming to ramp up their market share at the expense of Huawei, whose spun-off sub-brand Honor is also stepping up its AP purchases due to its low inventory level.The supply of smartphone APs and other chips such as power management (PWM) ICs will remain tight in the first half of 2021 due to tight capacity at 8- and 12-inch fabs.However, the tight supply may ease in the second half thanks to capacity expansion and improving yield rates at foundry houses. And some handset vendors are likely to adjust their AP inventories in the latter half of the year.Digitimes Research estimates that APs for 4G smartphones will remain the mainstream of shipments to China in 2021, accounting for over 50% of total shipments.In the second half of 2021, the ratio of APs built using 4/5nm nodes will reach 7% of all AP shipments, and 5nm products will be the majority in the 4/5nm segment.China will continue to be the largest outlet for 5G APs in 2021, taking up 56% of the global total, with Qualcomm, MediaTek and Samsung Electronics being the top-3 vendors.Both Qualcomm and MediaTek will see their market share increase significantly in the year, with the former enjoying a higher growth rate.

TSMC is giving priority to expanding its 12-inch fab capacity to ease supply. Now clients stand a better chance of having their orders squeezed into TSMC's production schedule in the second quarter of 2021. Taiwan's inductor makers are also keen on expanding production capacity to meet robust demand from the autmotive and handset sectors. Global smartphone shipments are expected to grow almost 50% in first-quarter 2021, according to Digitimes Research.TSMC prioritizes 12-inch fab expansion: TSMC has prioritized expanding 12-inch fabs over 8-inch ones, and it may be easier for the foundry house to squeeze in extra orders from some clients its 12-inch fabs in the second quarter, according to industry sources.Taiwan inductor makers keen on capacity expansions: Taiwan makers of inductors are keenly enforcing capacity expansions to meet increasingly strong demand for automotive, handset and other consumer electronics applications, according to industry sources.Global smartphone shipments to grow 50% in 1Q21: Global smartphone shipments are likely to grow nearly 50% on year to 340 million units in the first quarter of 2021, driven by robust sales of Apple's iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone Pro Max as well as a ramp-up in shipments by Chinese brands to grab the market share relinquished by Huawei, according to Digitimes Research.

With its advantages in edge computing and mobile device applications, Arm has been expanding its server solution offerings, heading towards high performance computing instead of staying on the traditional route of further lowering power consumption, according to Digitimes Research's observation.Adoption by cloud computing datacenter operators such as Amazon and Microsoft as well as chip designers including Marvell and Ampere is expected to help Arm expand its presence in the large-size cloud datacenter and HPC markets, enabling it to obtain a 10% market share in the server CPU market.Arm-based servers are attractive particularly to large-size cloud computing datacenter operators with Amazon being the keenest in procuring the products, since Arm-based architecture, comparing to x86 one, feature lower cost and lower power consumption.Large-size cloud computing operators have been expanding their datacenter infrastructure in a bid to satisfy increasing demand for cloud computing services, AI and HPC applications and therefore have rigid demand for lowering hardware expenses and power consumption. Arm-based CPUs will allow the operators to provide services with high price/performance ratios and more flexible combinations.However, to survive in the server market, Arm still faces many difficulties: it lacks support from the software ecosystem; related server motherboard and rack system design are not yet mature; and there is fierce competition from other open-source camps such as RSIC-V.Digitimes Research expects Arm to focus on expanding in the cloud computing datacenter and HPC server markets. If Nvidia is able to complete the acquisition of Arm, the GPU giant will then be able to offer server solutions that combine Arm CPU and Nvidia GPU that will expand Arm's reach in the AI cloud computing market.