Speakers questioned whether the U.S. can completely separate itself from Chinese suppliers, during a webinar sponsored by Huawei Monday. Experts warned about the semiconductor shortage, a new FCC focus (see 2105190001).
Chip export news
The $100 billion in capital expenditures that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. plans to make in the next three years to expand capacity and help relieve the global chips shortage (see 2104150034) will include $30 billion in spending for 2021 -- 74% more than in 2018, 2019 and 2020 capex spending combined, said a Form 20-F annual report for 2020 filed Friday with the SEC. TSMC CEO C.C. Wei, after announcing the $100 billion investment on Thursday's Q1 earnings call, also said he isn't worried about TSMC customer Intel’s recently announced plans to jump into the competitive foundry business in a big way.
Intel “generally” opposes the U.S. putting “unilateral export controls” on foreign tech companies suspected of threatening U.S. national security, Tom Quillin, senior director-security and trust policy, told a virtual forum convened Thursday by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security to identify risks in the semiconductor supply chain. BIS said it will use feedback from the forum, plus comments received in its notice of inquiry, to help shape recommendations to the White House on President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order to relieve supply chain bottlenecks (see 2103110054).
The U.S. should adopt “smart policies” to eliminate or reduce “vulnerabilities” in the global semiconductor supply chain “and enhance the U.S. economy, national security, and supply chain resilience,” the Semiconductor Industry Association told the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security. Comments due Monday in docket BIS-2021-0011 will help shape recommendations to the White House on President Joe Biden’s Feb. 24 executive order to relieve supply chain bottlenecks (see 2103110054).
The Commerce Department should expand export restrictions on China’s top chipmaker to prevent it from accessing more manufacturing equipment, wrote Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas. Their letter last week to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo asked the agency to apply the foreign direct product rule to Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., which would restrict the company’s ability to import certain foreign-made semiconductor equipment with U.S. technology. SMIC would face similar restrictions imposed by the Bureau of Industry and Security on others on the entity list, including Huawei. The department and SMIC didn't comment Monday.
The Bureau of Industry and Security is buried within an organization “hostile to the aggressive use of export controls,” and should be moved from the Commerce Department to the State Department, which puts national security first, said Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., Thursday during a Reagan Presidential Foundation program. Cotton wants the Office of Foreign Assets Control (see 2102190012) expanded and sanctions applied to those who steal intellectual property from U.S. firms and to those companies that profit from that theft. “Huawei has been effectively cut off from most high-end U.S. chips; the United States should ensure ZTE is cut off, as well. When the next Huawei or ZTE arises, the government should deal with it in the same manner,” he wrote. He said the U.S. should aim to bankrupt Huawei and ZTE through further sanctions and cut them off from the U.S. financial system. Cotton, who co-sponsored the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act (see 2102180023), said work is underway to fund the act. Commerce, Huawei, ZTE and the Chinese Embassy didn't comment Friday.
Global semiconductor shortages remained the talk of major chipmakers that reported quarterly results Tuesday and Wednesday. Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) said it’s expanding production capacity to record levels, but doubts it will keep up with demand. Lattice Semiconductor credited proactive inventory-build decisions it made several quarters back for its good supply position relative to the industry. Both companies warned investors not to expect relief from the supply constraints soon.
Apple remained the world’s top semiconductor customer in 2020, comprising 11.9% of global chip spending, reported Gartner Tuesday. Samsung was second with 8.1% share, and Huawei barely inched out Lenovo for third with 4.2% share, it said. Huawei significantly decreased its semiconductor spending in 2020 to $19.09 billion, down 23.5% from 2019, said Gartner. Trump administration export restrictions on Huawei limited its ability to buy semiconductors, but the Chinese market “remains important for semiconductor vendors, as other Chinese smartphone OEMs stepped in to fill the vacuum created by Huawei in the second half,” said analyst Masatsune Yamaji.
Silicon Labs and Edge Impulse are collaborating to develop and deploy machine learning (ML) on the chipmaker’s EFR32 wireless SoCs and EFM32 microcontrollers, they said Wednesday. Edge’s tool enables complex motion detection, sound recognition and image classification on low-power, memory-constrained and remote edge devices, they said. Device developers will be able to generate and export the ML models directly to the device or via Silicon Labs’ Simplicity Studio to implement machine learning “in minutes.” Adding ML into edge devices will enable new user experiences in commercial applications including predictive maintenance, asset tracking, monitoring and human detection, said Matt Saunders, vice president-IoT, Silicon Labs.
Micron Technology expects to benefit this year from a double-digit increase in the per-unit content of the DRAM and NAND chips it supplies for 5G smartphones, said CEO Sanjay Mehrotra on a fiscal Q1 investor call Thursday. Micron forecasts a doubling in 5G smartphone unit sales in 2021 to around 500 million handsets globally, he said.