DIGITIMES Research believes that the neural processing unit (NPU) will bring new choices for AI accelerator chips in edge devices. Compared to general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPU), NPU has power consumption and price/performance ratio advantage, making it suitable to handle AI computing tasks in edge computing, according to DIGITIMES Research's findings in the new AIoT report.
Nvidia announced at GPU Technology Conference (GTC) that it will launch the Blackwell architecture B100 and B200 GPUs in the second half of 2024, and will be manufactured by TSMC's 4nm process node.
Alibaba's Damo Academy recently held the Xuantie RISC-V Ecological Conference 2024, announcing that the next-generation processor, C930, will be launched within the year.
After reaching a record total of US$574.1 billion in chip sales in 2022, the industry experienced an 8.2% decline in global revenue to US$526.9 billion in 2023 due to normal market cyclicality. However, the industry experienced consistent month-to-month and year-to-year increases in sales during the second half of last year, signaling the start of the current cycle, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI).
Samsung Electronics significantly expanded its DRAM market share in the fourth quarter of 2023, extending its lead over SK Hynix to 14 percentage points from a quarter earlier. While SK Hynix currently takes the lead in High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM), analysts emphasized that traditional DRAM products still dominate the market with a larger share and more significant role than the recently popular HBM.
Arm has unveiled a significant expansion of its presence in automotive electronics, introducing server-grade automotive enhanced processor IP alongside software development platforms and computing subsystem roadmaps. This move has attracted nearly all traditional IDMs and IC design giants in the automotive field, to join Arm's automotive system IP ecosystem.
HiSilicon (Shanghai) Technologies showcased new chip and terminal device solutions for smart homes, displays, and the Internet of Things (IoT) at the recent Appliance & Electronics World Expo (AWE) in Shanghai.
Qualcomm has revealed the Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 mobile SoC for AI smartphones, which will be used by key OEMs such as Honor, iQOO, Realme, Redmi, and Xiaomi. The first handset is likely to be announced in March.
Just as Qualcomm is poised to unveil an updated Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, leaked benchmark scores for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4, a 3nm flagship SoC slated for the second half of 2024, have emerged, surpassing even Apple's forthcoming SoC. This signals a rare instance of Android's mobile SoC outperforming Apple's.
Intel CFO David Zinsner recently told investment bank analysts that Intel is still one of the big customers of TSMC and will continue to outsource chip production to TSMC in a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley.
Foxconn (Hon Hai) will see its revenue growth momentum for 2024 come from five main development axes – namely AI servers, three major smart platforms, Electrical Vehicles (EVs), IC design, and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites – as unveiled by chairman Young Liu at the company's recent investors conference.
US chip design startup Cerebras Systems has announced its Wafer Scale Engine 3 (WSE-3) processor, which uses TSMC's 5nm process. Compared to its predecessor, the WSE-2, the WSE-3 boasts a 54% increase in transistor count, reaching 4 trillion transistors. The CS-3 system equipped with the WSE-3 doubles the performance of the CS-2 while having the same power consumption. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman believes this is a true step toward realizing Moore's Law that the industry hasn't seen for a long time.
Electronic devices account for over 40% of Taiwan's exports, but semiconductor products are shipped through air freight. Meanwhile, notebook PC and smartphone production lines have migrated to other regions, but are still highly dependent on chips produced in Taiwan. Thus the destinations of semiconductor exports may gradually shift to different locations.
IC design house ALi Tech entered a trading halt on March 14, pending the release of material information, according to a company filing with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE).
Qualcomm inaugurated a new design center in India specializing in wireless connectivity solutions. The fabless semiconductor firm will help with 6G research in India.
DIGITIMES Research discovered Nvidia's sales in fiscal year 2025 (February 2024 to January 2025) will exceed US$100 billion from the data center market alone.