2023 Semiconductors Insights From Feb 26th to Mar 4th

The Commerce Department imposed export restrictions on more than two dozen Chinese entities on Thursday, as part of an effort by the Biden administration to mitigate what it says is a rising national security threat from China.

That is, the Entity List is designed to prevent U.S. goods from being used by entities that Washington deems a potential threat to Western interests. The move comes amid rising diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and China.

The U.S. government has continued to propose further restrictions on shipments to blacklisted companies in recent days. Therefore, U.S. chipmaker Nvidia plans to sell technology to Huawei may be frustrated.

According to Reuters, the Biden administration is assessing the impact of proposed Huawei policy changes on U.S. companies before imposing new rules that could dampen projected revenue streams amid a tech downturn. The documents also offer unusual insight into the politically sensitive issue of which U.S. companies are seeking to do business with Huawei.

On February 28, Rapidus Corporation announced that it had selected Chitose, Hokkaido as the location for the construction of an advanced semiconductor factory. After the approval of the Japanese government's plan and budget, specific preparations will begin. The goal of the new plant is to launch a prototype line in 2025 and a mass production line in the late 2020s.

Infineon announced that it will acquire GaN Systems for US$830 million, and the two parties have signed a final agreement. GaN Systems is a power semiconductor manufacturer with a broad portfolio of transistors that meet the needs of today's most demanding industries, including consumer electronics, data center servers and power supplies, renewable energy systems, industrial motors and automotive electronics.

Infineon noted that the planned all-cash acquisition of GaN Systems will get from current liquidity. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

Broadcom is set to receive an antitrust warning from the European Union in the coming weeks over possible anticompetitive effects of its proposed $61 billion acquisition of cloud computing company VMware, people familiar with the matter said.

Currently, Broadcom's acquisition of VMware has been approved in Brazil, South Africa and Canada, and is under review by regulators in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom.

In 2023 Investment Day, Tesla plans to reduce costs by 50% from the three aspects of vehicle mass production scale, powertrain and manufacturing, another move that has a greater impact on the industry is reducing SiC use in the powertrain part by 75% in the next-generation platform without affecting energy efficiency. As the first car company to use SiC on a large scale in electric vehicles, it is now saying that it wants to reduce the amount of it, which may have a certain impact on the entire SiC industry.

After nearly two years of prosperity, the global semiconductor industry entered a recovery phase in the second half of last year. So what is the next development trend?

1) Enter consumer electronics market downturn.

2) Automotive electronics promote semiconductor expansion.

3) Tensions in the semiconductor supply chain have eased.

4) The semiconductor industry continues to show regionalization and localization trends.

5) New product launch increases demand.

6) Memory oligopoly competition intensifies.

7) More businesses will use RISC-V and Arm architecture.

8) Shortage of semiconductor talents.