There’s “a lot riding” on Intel’s “high-risk, high-payoff struggle” to retake its lead as the world’s top semiconductor manufacturer, blogged American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Claude Barfield Wednesday. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger “forcefully attempted” to close his company’s “technology gap” with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung by entering the foundry business “despite Intel’s earlier manufacturing missteps,” said Barfield. “Intel must overcome internal production issues and resulting customer wariness that it will deliver on time with sustainable quality.” Gelsinger and his team “are acutely aware of these challenges and have moved to have engineers and technical talent carefully shepherd customers through the future manufacturing process,” he said.

About $28 billion of the $50 billion in funding in the Chips and Science Act will go toward incentives “to establish domestic production of leading-edge logic and memory chips that require the most sophisticated manufacturing processes available today,” said the Commerce Department in an “implementation strategy” statement Tuesday. The money “may be available for grants or cooperative agreements, or to subsidize loans or loan guarantees,” it said. The statute’s incentives program will increase domestic production of semiconductors “across a range of nodes,” it said. “This initiative is broad and flexible, encouraging industry participants to craft creative proposals.” Commerce expects to make “dozens” of funding awards, with the total value expected to be near $10 billion, it said. Funding documents, which will provide “specific application guidance” for the program, will be released by early February, said Commerce: “Awards and loans will be made on a rolling basis as soon as applications can be responsibly processed, evaluated and negotiated.” President Joe Biden signed the Chips and Science Act into law Aug. 9 (see 2208090062).

Lattice Semiconductor announced field-programmable gate arrays for automotive applications. The CertusPro-NX FPGAs, with support for LPDDR4 external memory, are applicable for display processing and bridging for infotainment systems, in-vehicle networking, and camera processing/sensor bridging in advanced driver assistance systems, the company said Wednesday. They can also be used in 5G, machine vision and edge processing applications, Lattice said.

Intel signed a definitive agreement with Brookfield Asset Management to jointly invest up to $30 billion to build the two previously announced Intel semiconductor fabs in Chandler, Arizona, with Intel funding 51% and Brookfield the rest of the “total project cost,” Intel said Tuesday. Intel will retain majority ownership and operating control of the two new fabs, which will support long-term demand for Intel’s products and provide capacity for Intel Foundry Services customers, it said. The Brookfield transaction is expected to close by the end of 2022, it said. Intel broke ground on the Chandler fabs in September (see 2109240043), saying then the new fabs will be the largest in the U.S., and will be built for $20 billion in Intel’s money, with no mention of outside investors. The “landmark arrangement” with Brookfield “builds on the momentum" from the recent enactment of the Chips and Science Act (see 2208090062), said Intel Chief Financial Officer David Zinsner. Semiconductor manufacturing “is among the most capital-intensive industries in the world,” and Intel’s strategy “demands a unique funding approach,” he said. “Our agreement with Brookfield is a first for our industry, and we expect it will allow us to increase flexibility while maintaining capacity on our balance sheet to create a more distributed and resilient supply chain.”

Design activity in the semiconductor industry remains robust, notwithstanding the market’s “normal ebb and flow,” said Synopsys CEO Aart de Geus on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q3 ended July 31. The provider of electronic design automation services was one of the few tech companies in recent quarters to upgrade its forecast, saying it now expects revenue of $5.06 billion to $5.09 billion for the fiscal year ending Oct. 31. At the high end of the range, revenue would be $90 billion higher than in the May 18 forecast. The guidance assumes no further changes in the Commerce Department’s entity list of export restrictions, said the company. Semiconductors “have transformed every aspect of our world” over the past five decades, said de Geus. “As a result, not only does the world demand more chips, but more chips are being designed by an expanded group of semiconductor and systems companies,” he said. “Those chips are much more complex. They need to be designed faster due to time-to-market pressure and with increasingly constrained engineering talent resources.” Demand is “particularly high” in markets such as high-performance computing, AI and machine learning, automotive and mobile, “where systems are fueled by smart everything, high-speed and secure connectivity and advanced process geometries,” he said.

Smart TVs incorporating MediaTek’s Pentonic 700 SoC are expected to be released in Q4, said the chipmaker Thursday. The Pentonic 700 supports resolution up to 4K at 120Hz and is capable of variable refresh rates up to 4K at 144Hz for gaming applications, it said. HDR support in the Pentonic 700 includes Dolby Vision IQ with precision detail and HDR10+ Adaptive technology for optimal viewing experiences based on a room's lighting conditions, said MediaTek. Its built-in hardware video decoding engine supports the H.265, H.266, AV1 and AVS3 codecs, it said.

Indie Semiconductor’s 181% revenue growth in the second quarter outperformed the automotive industry through its “design win momentum” in advanced driver-assistance systems and vehicle electrification, said CEO Don McClymont on a Q2 earnings call Thursday. “The shift to electrification is accelerating amid the higher oil price environment and long-term transition to greener technologies,” he said. Citing Cox Automotive data, McClymont said electric vehicle sales grew more than 75% in 2022's first half, but overall U.S. auto sales were down more than 17% over the same period. A recent AAA survey found 25% of Americans plan to buy an EV as their next car purchase, he said. “The electrification megatrend benefits Indie in a few ways.” The chipmaker has “strong relationships with an increasing number of strategic EV OEMs,” and it’s gaining “design win traction there,” he said. Its portfolio also “tends to gain a substantially higher attach rate to newly designed electric vehicles,” he said. Consumer interest in buying an EV “has soared 70% since January, particularly for younger generations,” he said. With only 5% EV penetration of new vehicle sales in the U.S., “the shift has only just begun,” he said.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. had Q2 revenue of $1.9 billion, up 41.6% year over year and 3.3% more than Q1, reported China’s top chipmaker Thursday. It forecast flat revenue growth sequentially for Q3. Capacity utilization in Q2 was 97.1%, said SMIC, the target of past U.S. export restrictions from the Bureau of Industry and Security (see 2111160033). Due to the limitations on people's movement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, “some of the fabs did not conduct annual maintenance in the second quarter, causing the overall impact of the epidemic on output to be lower than expected, thus revenue and gross margin in the quarter slightly exceeded guidance.”

Alpha and Omega Semiconductor’s (AOS) consumer segment revenue in fiscal Q4 ended June 30 declined 1.7% year over year and 15.9% from Q3, said Chief Financial Officer Stephen Chang on an earnings call Wednesday. “Nearly all of the revenue decline was attributable to the Shanghai lockdown, as the largest end market applications in this segment, such as home appliances and gaming are sourced fully from our Shanghai factory,” he said. AOS expects its consumer segment to recover by double digits sequentially in fiscal Q1 ending Sept. 30 on strong demand in gaming and “catch-up” demand from the shipments interrupted by the Shanghai lockdown, he said. “We are expecting record gaming volumes, particularly from the number one gaming console manufacturer, where we have leading share,” he said, referencing Sony and the PlayStation 5. Though the Shanghai COVID-19 lockdown eased in late April and the company was able to restart operations, “it took time for our assembly lines to return to full utilization,” and for the logistics support and supply chain “to ramp up to full functional capacity,” said CEO Mike Chang. “Our Shanghai facilities are mostly back to normal and are currently operating at a full capacity.”

GlobalFoundries, similar to others in the chip industry, is seeing “some areas of the market beginning to rebalance supply and demand, including end markets such as low-end handsets, PCs and in general, the lower end of consumer electronics market,” said CEO Thomas Caulfield on a Q2 earnings call Tuesday. “Although we've experienced some decrease in some pockets of our unconstrained demand, the total demand for GF solutions remains robust and capacity continues to be oversubscribed.” In GF’s “fast-growing” end markets of home and industrial IoT, automotive, communications infrastructure and data center, “demand continues to outpace our ability to supply by about 10%,” he said. GF’s Q2 revenue of $1.99 billion was up 23% year over year, driven by increases in wafer shipments and average selling prices, he said. Caulfield bypassed Q&A so he could be at the White House for the signing of the chips bill (see 2208090062), he said: “This landmark legislation will have a profound positive impact on our nation, our industry and GF for years to come.”