Latest Semiconductor News Update on Dec 31, 2023 to Jan 6, 2024

MIPS picks up former SiFive execs in RISC-V drive

Chip design company MIPS has hired two former SiFive executives to advance its RISC-V drive. Now, the company has appointed Drew Barbier as VP of Product and Brad Burgess as Chief Architect to help drive further development and market share of its products. Both executives worked at SiFive, one of the better-known companies in the RISC-V space, which last year underwent a major restructuring of its operations, cutting 20% of its staff. It is understood that this includes some management teams and engineers.

Burgess is SiFive's chief CPU architect and has more than three decades of experience on various processor architectures, including ARM, 68000, PowerPC, x86 and RISC-V. MIPS tells us he will be responsible for the development of all new critical product designs.

U.S. awards $162 million to Microchip Technology to bolster domestic semiconductor production

The Biden administration on Thursday announced it is providing $162 million to Microchip Technology, an Arizona-based semiconductor company that supplies the automotive, defense and other industries, to bolster domestic production of computer chips and create jobs. The agreement is the second award announced under a new program to help ensure U.S. companies that have a stable supply. The investment will allow Microchip to increase production of semiconductors used in automobiles, aircraft, appliances, medical devices and military products. The U.S government said it expects the award to create more than 700 jobs in the construction and manufacturing industries.

Samsung and Micron plan to increase DRAM prices by 15%-20%

Samsung Electronics and Micron plan to increase DRAM prices by 15% to 20% in Q1 2024. NAND Flash prices took the lead in rebounding in Q3 2023. Although DRAM chips had not yet seen a significant increase at that time, industry insiders have begun to expect that overall memory chip prices will begin to rise. In particular, DDR4 and DDR5 DRAM chips are expected to be the first to rise in price earlier this year.

3D TLC NAND chip prices increased by 10% in December 2023, while DRAM prices only increased by 2% to 3% during the same period. However, as the demand for smartphones and servers has heated up recently, and the capacity utilization rate of major DRAM chip manufacturers is still low, the industry expects that the supply of DRAM will be relatively tight, which will drive up the prices of DDR4 and DDR5 chips in Q1 2024.

42 new wafer fabs are added globally and put into operation

SEMI's latest quarterly report shows that semiconductor wafer production capacity has reached a record high, including the opening of 42 new wafer fabs this year, nearly half of which are located in China.

Growth in 2024 will be driven by increases in cutting-edge logic and foundry capacity, applications such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC), and a resurgence in end-use demand for chips. Capacity expansion slowed down in 2023 due to weak demand in the semiconductor market and the resulting inventory adjustments.

SEMI said that the recovery of global market demand and the strengthening of government incentives are driving a surge in fab investment in major chip manufacturing regions, and global production capacity is expected to grow by 6.4% in 2024.

BYD Electronic has acquired Jabil Circuit (Singapore)

BYD Co., Ltd. announced that its controlling subsidiary BYD Electronics (International) Co., Ltd. has completed the acquisition of Jabil Circuit (Singapore) Pte. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jabil Singapore"), a subsidiary of Jabil Inc.

On August 28, 2023, BYD and its controlling subsidiary BYD Electronics simultaneously announced in A-shares and Hong Kong stocks that BYD Electronics and Jabil Singapore signed a framework agreement to acquire the seller's product manufacturing in Chengdu and Wuxi for approximately US$2.2 billion, including parts manufacturing business for existing customers.

Nokia and Honor sign 5G patent licence agreement

Nokia and Chinese smartphone vendor Honor have signed a licensing agreement, which covers both parties' fundamental inventions in 5G and other technologies. The license covers both parties’ basic inventions in 5G and other network technologies, and is Nokia’s fourth smartphone agreement in the past 12 months. And full terms of the pair’s deal were not disclosed.

Nokia chief licensing officer for mobile devices Susanna Martikainen said its pact with “one of the leading players in the Chinese smartphone market” highlights its “decades-long contributions to cellular standards and other technologies.”

Honor head of global IP Wenyu Zhou added: “As both 5G SEP [standard essential patent] holder and implementor, Honor highly respects IP rights and strongly believes that reasonable value of IP is important to the development of the mobile industry.”