Company Trend(April 15)

Samsung takes the lead to mass-produce 290-layer V-NAND flash memory

In the wave of continuous innovation in the semiconductor industry, Samsung is standing at the forefront of technology again. According to the reports of South Korean media, Samsung planned to start mass production of the ninth-generation industry-leading 290-layer V-NAND(3D NAND) flash memory as early as April. This technological breakthrough marks that Samsung once again set a new industry record in the number of flash memory stacks.

The 290-layer V-NAND flash memory to be mass-produced this time is another major progress after Samsung successfully launched its eighth generation 236-layer V-NAND. This innovation not only improves the storage density of flash memory, but also hopefully meets the growing data storage demand in the field of AI.

According to the analysis of industry experts, with AI transferring from "training" stage to "reasoning" stage, there is rising demand for big data processing ability, especially in terms of image and video processing. Therefore, high-capacity and high-performance flash memory technology has become the key technology urgently needed in the market. Samsungs 290-layer V-NAND flash memory is developed to meet this market demand.

Comments: Samsung is expecting a lot from the mass production of its new generation of NAND flash memory. The industry widely believes that Samsung is optimistic about the profitability of its NAND business in Q1, which further proves Samsungs strong strength and market competitiveness in the field of flash memory technology. In addition, Samsung Electronics’ advanced chip fab built in the United States will also help alleviate the US dependence on imported chips and enhance the security and stability of the local chip supply chain. For the US government, this is also one of the important measures to promote the development of domestic semiconductor industry and enhance its national competitiveness.

With the continuous progress of the semiconductor technology and the continuous expansion of the semiconductor application fields, the competition in the semiconductor market will become more intense in the future. With its investment and production layout in the United States, Samsung Electronics will undoubtedly hold a more favorable position in the global semiconductor market, and will promote the sustainable development and innovation of the whole industry.

Company Trend(April 17)

Hytera restarts global sales after successful appeal to US court to halt sales injunction

Recently, Hytera Communications Co., Ltd. announced that it had successfully appealed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to halt the sanction of product sales. This means that Hytera will be able to immediately resume its commercial activities and restart the sales of related products.

Previously, Hytera and Motorola were involved in a lawsuit over trade secrets and copyright disputes, and Motorola accused Hytera of infringing its rights and interests. After several rounds of games, Motorola successfully obtained an injunction that includes sanctions blocking Hytera’s sales of products worldwide. In response to this situation, Hytera withdrew relevant lawsuit and suspended product sales. At the same time, it actively applied for cancellation of the injunction.

Now, the court of appeal’s halt injunction has brought a turning point for Hytera. The company said that it will immediately restart global sales, which will help reshape its market image and cope with fierce competition. It is widely believed in the industry that Hytera will take this opportunity to strengthen product innovation and promote the sustainable development of the semiconductor communication industry.mments: Hytera is an enterprise holding an important position in the field of semiconductor communication. The resolution of this lawsuit is crucial to its normal operation and global sales. Industry experts widely believe that the decision of the Court of Appeal to suspend injunction provides Hytera with a valuable breathing spell, which will help Hytera reassess its market strategy and strengthen its product innovation to cope with the increasingly fierce international competition. Although there are still uncertainties in the progress of the case, Hytera said that it will continue to take various countermeasures and win over revoking the relevant injunction as soon as possible. At the same time, Hytera will also strengthen close cooperation with its global partners to jointly meet market challenges and promote the sustainable development and innovation of the semiconductor communication industry.

Market Trend(April 18)

NVIDIA targets at the chip market, and Taiwan companies fall in a gloves-off battle

According to the earlier report of Reuters, Nvidia is establishing a new business department, dedicated to designing customized chips including advanced AI processors for cloud computing companies and others. Nvidia executives met with representatives of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI to discuss the production of customized chips for these companies. Broadcom and Marvell are well-known customized chip suppliers. Broadcom has customized TPUs for Google for nearly 10 years, and recently reached a cooperation agreement with Meta to produce customized chips for it. Marvell is an old partner of Amazon and produces Trainium for AWS.

According to the estimates of Alan Weckel from research firm 650 Group, the data center custom chip market will grow to as much as US$10bn this year, and will double that in 2025. According to Needham analyst Charles Shi, the broader custom chip market was worth roughly US$30bn in 2023, which amounts to roughly 5% of annual global chip sales.

The market is worth US$10bn in a narrow sense and US$30bn in a broad sense, which attracts even Nvidia, with a market value of US$1trn. It is not difficult for us to imagine the market will be full of fierce competition in the future market.

Comments: The total sales of the top three companies in Taiwan, China providing semiconductor design support to customers have increased more than twice in four years. They have promoted the rapid development of the US technology industry and created opportunities for local foundries to produce chips, creating a wave of custom-made chips unconsciously on the island. The so-called semiconductor design support is that design service companies provide multi-variety and small-batch chips for specific applications such as household appliances, communications and servers. Engineers work closely with customers in terms of design, development and commercialization to create corresponding customized products.

Although giants such as Broadcom and Marvell can provide diversified design services, local companies of Taiwan have advantages and enterprises of the semiconductor supply chain are concentrated in Taiwan at present. Due to the favored position, both chip manufacturing or chip packaging can be solved within the Island of Taiwan. Local enterprises are also inextricably linked with packaging and testing foundries, and they have unmatched advantages over the Silicon Valley of the USA. Compared with being close to the market, being localized close to the source factories brings them unique advantages in terms of customizing chips.

Company Trend(April 19)

SK hynix collaborates with TSMC to strengthen HBM technological leadership

The two companies are committed to improving the performance of the base die in the HBM package. HBM is formed by stacking several DRAM core dies on a base die and connecting them vertically through TSV technology. The basic die is also connected to GPU and plays a role in controlling HBM.

According to Justin Kim, President and the Head of AI Infra, at SK hynix, with the cooperation with TSMC, SK hynix will accelerate its efforts for open collaboration with its customers and develop the industry’s best-performing HBM4. In the future, Sk hynix will strengthen its market leadership as the total AI memory provider further by beefing up competitiveness in the space of the custom memory platform.

Senior Vice President of TSMC’s Business Development and Overseas Operations Office, and Deputy Co-Chief Operating Officer said that both sides worked together in integrating the most advanced logic and state-of-the art HBM in providing the world’s leading AI solutions. It is believed that SK hynix will continue to work closely in delivering the best-integrated solutions to unlock new AI innovations for customers.

Comments: SK hynix and TSMC signed an MOU on the cooperation of R&D of HBM4 and the next generation packaging technology. By adopting TSMCs advanced process technology, SK hynix will improve the performance of HBM4, and make breakthrough the performance limit of memory for AI applications by building a tripartite cooperation between IC design factory, wafer foundry and memory factory. It is estimated that HBM4 to be put into production in 2026 is the sixth generation HBM.

SK hynixs previous HBM products, including HBM3E (the fifth generation HBM), were manufactured with base dies made by its own process, but it plans to adopt TSMC’s Logic process from HBM4. Through the joint efforts of both parties to optimize SK hynixs HBM products and integrate TSMCs CoWoS technology, SK hynix and TSMC can jointly meet the requirements of HBM-related customers.

Domestic Trend

Xiner held handover ceremony of packaging workshop, engaged in high-power module packaging and testing(April 15)

According to the news of the official Wechat account of Xiner (Shenzhen Invsemi Technology Co., Ltd.), Xiner held the handover ceremony of the workshop for its high-end power module packaging & manufacturing base at Anchao Economic Development Zone, Hefei on April 11th. The handover project was a three-and-a-half-story building, covering an area of about 13,000 square meters.

It is reported that the high-end power module packaging & manufacturing base built in Chaohu, Hefei is specialized in the packaging and testing of high-power modules. The base will be mainly provided with ten IGBT production lines and five SiC MOS automatic production lines, and the products will be applied to industries such as new energy vehicles, solar energy and household appliances. After the overall completion of the project, it is estimated that the base will achieve an annual output of 4.8 million IGBT modules and 600,000 SiC MOS modules, with annual revenue of about RMB1.5bn.

This project is an important part of the strategic layout of Xiner and also a key measure to enhance its core competitiveness, providing strong guarantee of manufacturing, delivery and quality for its high-end power modules. Shenzhen Invsemi Technology Co., Ltd., headquartered at Shenzhen, is a national high-tech enterprise committed to the R&D, production, and sales of power semiconductor products. The products are mainly used in drives of industrial servo motors, variable frequency household appliances, inverters, power systems, new energy vehicles and so forth.

Domestic first mask aligner dedicated to advanced packaging of large chips delivered to the factory(April 16)

According to the news of the official Wechat accounts of Guangzhou Industrial Investment and Capital Operation Holding Co., Ltd. and Guangdong 3D-Semi Co., Ltd., the "Exposure Time - 3D Heterogeneous Chip Packaging Technology Seminar" organized by Guangdong Industrial Technology Research Institute on April 16th and the delivery ceremony of domestic first mask aligner dedicated to advanced packaging of large chips was held by Guangdong 3D-Semi Co., Ltd. In the Zengcheng District, Guangzhou.

It is reported that the domestic first mask aligner used for advanced packaging of large chips delivered to the factory was independently developed by iSTAR, and it can provide lithography process for the integrated manufacturing of Chiplet and 2.5D/3D large chips, laying strong technical support to help domestic AI large chips to integrate various functional chips.

The receiver of this mask aligner is Guangdong 3D-Semi Co., Ltd. It is an advanced packaging enterprise mainly initiated by controlling shareholders XingCheng Capital, Bay Area Sensor Industry Group and Chinas most experienced TSV wafer-level advanced packaging team as well as participating shareholders state-owned capital companies of three levels, namely Zengcheng, Guangzhou and Guangdong. It is headquartered in the core area of Zengcheng Economic and Technological Development Zone in Guangzhou, and the total planned investment of the project is about RMB6.6bn.

Chongqing Sanan Optoelectronics and STMicroelectronics, with total investment of about RMB30bn, to be put into production in August(April 16)

According to the news of the official Wechat account of Xiyong Micro-electronics Industrial Park, the relevant person in charge disclosed that the main structure of the Sanan Optoelectronics and STMicroelectronics Project has been capped, and the interior decoration and equipment procurement for the project are under way. It is estimated that it will be put into operation in August this year, two months ahead of schedule.

It is reported that the Sanan Optoelectronics and STMicroelectronics Project, with total investment of about RMB30bn, fully integrates the R&D and manufacturing of substrates, epitaxy and chips of automotive 8-inch SiC, and is committed to building an advanced 8-inch SiC substrate and wafer factory.

According to previous reports, the project includes an automotive-grade power chip manufacturing company and a material supplier to provide it with SiC substrate materials. Among them, the automotive-grade power chip manufacturing company was jointly established by Sanan Optoelectronics, a leading China compound semiconductor company, and STMicroelectronics, the worlds leading semiconductor company. The project, with total investment of US$3.2bn, can produce 480,000 units of 8-inch automotive-grade SiC MOSFET power chips per year after reaching its production capacity. The products are mainly used for main drive inverter, charging piles and vehicle charger of new energy vehicles.