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Glazed with AI, Arm Market Value, Soar and Soar

Glazed with AI, Arm Market Value Soars

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:

Few companies have had as tangled a history as Nvidia Corp. and Arm Holdings, both of which have seen their valuations skyrocket on surging demand for artificial intelligence hardware, software and intellectual property. The only challenge for Arm lies in whether its growing list of AI customers would be similarly able to turn the company’s IP into huge windfalls. If not, a retreat in valuation could occur as suddenly as rapidly as the ascent of its shares.

It turns out Softbank Group has reasons worth billions of dollars to appreciate M&A regulators.

Arm Holdings, the once wholly-owned subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate, has turned into one of the most valuable properties in Softbank’s portfolio, courtesy of the buzz around artificial intelligence.

Read More »Glazed with AI, Arm Market Value Soars
As AI Challenges Chipmakers, EDA Must Up the Ante

As AI Challenges Chipmakers, EDA Must Up the Ante

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Whether foundry, processor IP company, or EDA vendor, practically every major player in the electronics industry is scrambling to adapt its business strategies, product lines and roadmaps to exploit the explosive growth of AI. What does the AI community want from EDA and who among EDA tool suppliers can rise to the occasion?

Everyone in the electronics industry wants to surf the AI wave. Just discussing AI is good business. Wall Street is listening.

More significantly, AI has begun breaking traditional business models and tech development practices. To process AI, hardware must be able to handle massive software workloads. AI chips/accelerators also typically require huge designs.

Read More »As AI Challenges Chipmakers, EDA Must Up the Ante
Chiplets: If It Happens in China, Will It Stay in China?

Chiplets: If It Happens in China, Will It Stay in China? 

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
China’s chiplet aspirations are well known. But will China use its domestic chiplet activities as an opportunity to decouple from the rest of the world? We think the reality is contrary.

Chiplets represent a once-in-a-lifetime revolution that will allow the semiconductor world to disaggregate the processes of designing, manufacturing, testing and packaging silicon – the fundamental matter who does what. China wants to seize this moment to play a big role in this new world order.

Read More »Chiplets: If It Happens in China, Will It Stay in China? 
Memo to Auto Chipmakers: AVs' Failure is Your Failure, Too

Memo to Auto Chipmakers: AVs’ Failure is Your Failure, Too

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?

When autonomous vehicles do not perform as expected, the entire industry, including the semiconductor companies supplying the subsystems and other components, will be negatively impacted. End-users will ask: Why are you teaming up with auto OEMs to put on the roads vehicles that clearly need further technology development and design work?

Cruise and Waymo have one thing in common. Their autonomous vehicles have earned the humiliating disdain of some intended customers.  

If you are a semiconductor supplier whose products have been designed into Cruise’s autonomous vehicle or Waymo’s robotaxi, you’ve got the beginning of a public relations nightmare.

Read More »Memo to Auto Chipmakers: AVs’ Failure is Your Failure, Too
Chiplet Mission: Navigate Interconnect Complexity

Chiplet Mission: Navigate Interconnect Complexity

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake
Chiplets present a set of multi-layered, multi-faceted, multi-dimensional technology and business problems with no one-size-fits-all answer. Numerous startups are proposing various solutions to tackle the complexity of die-to-die interconnects.

For every player in the semiconductor supply chain – from chip designers and EDA tool vendors to semiconductor foundries, OSAT companies and the Babel of technology startups – the toughest challenge, arguably, boils down to how to connect chiplets.

Fortunately, startups such as Eliyan, Blue Cheetah and YorChip are poised to tackle the issues, each in its own way.

Read More »Chiplet Mission: Navigate Interconnect Complexity
Intel Tackles an Old Nemesis with Little Room for Errors

Intel Tackles an Old Nemesis with Little Room for Errors

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?

Intel has a comprehensive restructuring and recovery plan, but it is also being dogged by a self-created problem: low capacity utilization. It’s a hydra-headed challenge with conflicting solutions. By constructing new fabs, Intel adds to its fab-loading headache but not doing this will hobble the company’s competitiveness in the foundry business upon which its foundry future is now hinged. Will becoming a foundry for other foundries solve this problem?

Intel Corp.’s ongoing fab addition and expansion plan could potentially become a hugely profitable and restorative move or a major financial disaster.

And it all boils down to a simple but dreaded phrase: capacity utilization rate.

Whether Intel succeeds with its IDM 2.0 plan comes down to a single question: Will the chipmaker find enough customers for its foundry business and boost sales in its traditional business to push capacity utilization rate over currently low levels and above the strongly margin-boosting 80 percent rate?

Read More »Intel Tackles an Old Nemesis with Little Room for Errors