Category Archives: Packaging

The semiconductor industry posted record results in 2017, with revenue exceeding US$400 billion. Overall demand for semiconductor devices was robust throughout the year, driven by the growing adoption of electronics components across all applications, with particular strength in the mobile and data center markets. Semiconductor growth in 2017 was led by the memory segment, with impressive revenue reaching US$126 billion. It represents an increase of over 60% year-over-year. Yole Développement (Yole) Memory Team forecasts the memory market to reach US$177 billion in 2018, with 40% growth.

Under this dynamic ecosystem, Yole and its partners System Plus Consulting and Knowmade, all parts of Yole Group of Companies, deeply scan the memory area. They propose today valuable memory services to deliver world class research, data and insight. Their aim is to ensure its clients are well-versed in all aspects of this competitive industry. Yole Group of Companies leverage decades of industry experience and expertise while partnering with its clients to make sure they are consistently well-informed on this pushy market.

Today two memory research services, DRAM Service and NAND Service have been developed by Yole Group of Companies. Full description of both services are available in a new dedicated Memory section on i-micronews.com. In addition, a selection of technology & market news are daily selected by Yole’s memory team and posted in this section.

Make sure to collect deep insights and significant analyses from leading industry experts, combining over 50-year experience in memory and semiconductor-related fields.

Both DRAM and NAND markets were in a state of undersupply throughout the year, leading to rising prices and record revenue and profitability for the memory suppliers. Demand was very strong, led by mobile and data center / SSD and augmented by emerging growth drivers including AI , IoT and automotive. Supply growth across both DRAM and NAND was constrained, due to a combination of limited wafer growth and technological challenges.

The current macro trends of AI and machine learning, mobility, and connectivity, are favorable to both the DRAM and NAND markets, and will likely result in Memory continuing to increase its share of the overall the semiconductor market.

“Understanding memory supply/demand dynamics and its relationship with pricing is vital to understanding the broader semiconductor market and all associated supply chains”, asserts Emilie Jolivet, Division Director, Semiconductor & Software at Yole.

The DRAM market is constantly evolving and changing. Yole Group is announcing a 22% CAGR for bit demand over the next five years.

“New Chinese suppliers threaten the current market balance, and emerging memory technologies are poised to cannibalize huge chunks of DRAM demand while the demand drivers of the past, including PCs and smartphones lose steam and no longer push industry demand,” comments .Mike Howards, VP of DRAM & Memory research within the Semiconductor & Software division at Yole.
In parallel, NAND market is expected to set another revenue record in 2018, before a flattish 2019. Therefore it continues to expand, with several consecutive quarters of record revenue and profitability for suppliers.

NAND’s competitive landscape remains incredibly dynamic. Samsung is prepping its first fab at its massive Pyeongtaek site; Intel is emerging as a stand-alone supplier with capacity in China; and the sale of Toshiba’s memory business to a consortium led by Bain Capital is finally happening. Meanwhile, a new entrant looms on the horizon: China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), which threatens to disrupt the status-quo as well as multiple other Chinese projects.

“NAND demand remains robust, with strong growth for enterprise SSDs in data centers, increasing adoption of SSDs in laptop PCs, and continued content growth in smartphones and other mobile devices,” asserts Walt Coon, VP of NAND and Memory Research at Yole.“These segments will continue driving the bulk of NAND bit consumption, though several emerging trends are poised to augment future growth, including AI and VR adoption, automotive, and IoT,” he adds.

Memory Research Service from Yole, provides all data related to NAND/DRAM revenue per quarter, NAND/DRAM shipments, pricing per NAND/DRAM type, near and long-term revenue, market share per quarter, CAPEX per company, and a market demand/supply forecast. It also includes a complete analysis and details on the demand side, with a deep dive into client and enterprise SSD, data centers, mobile, automotive, graphics, PC, and more. Each Memory Research Service is composed of both products, the Quarterly Market Monitor and the Monthly Pricing Monitor.

During the next few weeks, Yole’s Memory Team will attend a selection of key trade shows and conferences to present the Memory Research Services. Make sure you will be there and ask for a meeting right now. Mike Howard and Walt Coon will for example be at SEMICON West mid-July and the Flash Memory Summit (Santa Clara, CA, North America – From August 6 to 9) in August. More information: Yole’s Agenda

At this week’s 2018 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, imec, the research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technology, will present a process flow for a complementary FET (CFET) device for nodes beyond N3. The proposed CFET can eventually outperform FinFETs and meet the N3 requirements for power and performance. It offers a potential area scaling of both standard cells (SDC) and memory SRAM cells by 50%.

The CFET is a further evolution of the vertically stacked gate all around nanowire transistor. Instead of stacking either n-type or p-type devices, it stacks both on top of each other. Imec’s proposed flow consists of stacking an n-type vertical sheet on a p-type fin. This choice exploits the FinFET process flow and benefits from the potential for strain engineering in the bottom pFET. Based on TCAD analysis, the proposed CFET can meet the N3 targets for power and performance, where it will outperform FinFETs. However, the dominant parasitic resistance of the deep vias needs to be reduced. This can be achieved by introducing advanced Middle of Line (MOL) contacts using e.g. ruthenium.

A design-technology co-optimization (DTCO) analysis reveals that the CFET device used in either an SDC or SRAM cell has the potential of 50% area reduction. The SDC area is mostly driven by accessing the transistor terminals. Consequently, the area gain using CFETs will not lie in the reduction of the active footprint, but rather in the considerable simplification of the transistor terminal access. By fully benefiting from the CFET architecture, it is possible to reduce the SDC to three routing tracks whereas the most advanced FinFET libraries today need six. For SRAM cells, the same area reduction is possible thanks to a new cross-coupling scheme that allows us to scale the cell height from T6 to T4.

“Given its excellent characteristics and scaling potential, the CFET device is an excellent contender for the new device architecture we need for nodes beyond N3, pushing the horizon for Moore’s Law farther out,” stated Julien Ryckaert, distinguished member of the technical staff at imec.”

These results will be presented on June 21 at the VLSI Technology Symposium, in session T13: FET performance and scaling. This research is performed in cooperation with equipment companies TEL Coventor and Lam Research and with imec’s key program partners including GlobalFoundries, Huawei, Intel, Micron, Qualcomm, Samsung, SK Hynix, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, TOSHIBA Memory, TSMC and Western Digital.

At this week’s 2018 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, imec, the research and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technology presented considerable progress in enabling germanium nanowire pFET devices as a practical solution to extend scaling beyond the 5nm node. In a first paper, the research center unveiled an in-depth study of the electrical properties of strained germanium nanowire pFETs. A second paper presents the first demonstration of vertically-stacked gate-all-around highly-strained germanium nanowire pFETs.

“With a number of scaling boosters, the industry will be able to extend FinFET technology to the 7- or even 5nm node,” says An Steegen, EVP at imec’s Semiconductor Technology and Systems division. “Beyond, the gate-all-around (GAA) architecture appears as a practical solution since it reuses most of the FinFET process steps. But one important challenge of using lateral nanowires is the significant decrease of the channel cross-section compared to conventional FinFETs. To improve the drive per footprint, several nanowires have to be stacked, but this comes with a serious penalty of increased parasitic capacitance and resistance. A solution is to replace the silicon nanowires by a high-mobility channel material such as germanium (Ge), providing the necessary current boost per footprint”, adds Steegen, “These new studies show that solution is indeed feasible, reaching the cost, area and performance requirements for nodes beyond 5nm.”

The first study of high-performing strained Ge nanowire pFETs gives insight in the device performance these new devices may offer for high-end analog and high-performance digital solutions. One conclusion is that dedicated optimizations of key process steps make these devices a serious contender for the GAA technology. The second paper reports on Ge GAA FETs with single nanowires, achieving a performance that matches state-of-the-art SiGe and Ge FinFETs. Moreover, for the first time, strained p-type Ge GAA FETs with stacked nanowires were demonstrated on a 14/16nm platform. The GAA nanowire technology appears as a promising high-performance solution for future nodes, provided that the junctions are further optimized.

“These complimentary studies establish germanium GAA nanowire technology as a valid contender for the sustained scaling that will be required to fulfill the requirements for the data-driven IoT-era requiring huge computational power,” concludes Steegen.

These results will be presented on June 20 at the VLSI Technology Symposium, in session T8: Advanced FinFET and GAA. This research is performed in cooperation with imec’s key program partners including GlobalFoundries, Huawei, Intel, Micron, Qualcomm, Samsung, SK Hynix, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, TOSHIBA Memory, TSMC and Western Digital.

Micross, headquartered in Orlando, FL announced a new appointment within the company’s senior management team. Marshall (Mac) Blythe has joined Micross in the role of General Manager of Component Modification Services (CMS) located in Hatfield, PA.

Mac brings more than twenty-five years leadership experience in a variety of business development, operations & executive management roles to Micross. His career has been primarily focused in the Electronic Manufacturing Services industry, supporting customers across the Aerospace & Defense, Industrial, Healthcare and Communication sectors.

Mac comes to Micross from Creation Technologies where he served as Vice President, Business Development for Eastern North America. Previously, Mac was President of Accuspec Electronics (now 4Front Solutions) where he successfully led the team to accelerate revenue growth through improving the company’s operational effectiveness, manufacturing productivity and quality. Mac also spent over 12 years at Celestica, where he held key general management and senior sales leadership roles.

Mac earned his M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and holds a BA from UNC, Chapel Hill, NC.

“We are delighted to welcome Mac to the Micross team,” stated Richard Kingdon, CEO of Micross. “We are confident that Mac’s combination of leadership skills and industry experience will both drive Micross’ Component Modification business forward and enhance the effectiveness of our broader organization.”

Micross is the one-source, one-solution provider of Bare Die & Wafers, Advanced Interconnect Technology, Custom Packaging & Assembly, Component Modification Services, Electrical & Environmental Testing and Hi-Rel Products to manufacturers and users of semiconductor devices.

FormFactor, Inc. (NASDAQ:FORM), a electrical test and measurement supplier to the semiconductor industry, has extended its Contact Intelligence technology. With Contact Intelligence, FormFactor’s advanced probe systems automatically and autonomously adapt in real time to changes in the testing environment, enabling customers to collect large amounts of RF data faster. As the race to bring 5G devices to market heats up, this addresses the need for higher productivity, to reduce time to market.

FormFactor’s Contact Intelligence technology combines smart hardware design and innovative software algorithms to provide accurate probe-to-pad alignment and electronic recalibrations in engineering labs and many production applications. With the introduction of its new RF solution, FormFactor now has specialized Contact Intelligence applications for RF, DC and Silicon Photonics (SiPh) testing.

FormFactor is best known for it’s probe card business, but with its acquisition of Cascade Microtech in 2016, it became more involved in the design and characterization side of chip-making, including RF and silicon photonic devices (probe cards are primarily used at the end of wafer manufacturing, testing the devices before they are packaged).

Mike Slessor, CEO of FormFactor, said with upcoming infrastructure changes — such as 5G, more mobile communications and IoT — RF is an important place to be. “The Cascade Microtech acquisition gave us an engineering systems business. These are pieces of customized capital equipment that help people very early on in their development and R&D — even early pathfinding — to figure out how their next device is going to perform, to characterize it and to improve its yield,” he said. That systems business grew saw a double digit growth rate last year.

Slessor said the new Contact Intelligence technology is designed to help customers in the systems business get a lot of data faster. He said the push to improve yield, along with new materials and new devices, is driving a tremendous amount of data collection. “What Contact Intelligence really is positioned to do is to help people easily and efficiently collect that data. You can think of it as bringing almost production automation to the engineering lab. We’re helping people do it autonomously over wide ranges of temperatures,” he said. He said it enables engineering tools to be upgraded. Customers can “set it up, push a button and walk away for 48 hours, 96 hours even more and come back and have a hundreds of thousands of individual characterization data points.”

New high frequency ICs, such as 5G (with multiple high frequency bands from sub-6 to more than 70 GHz) and automotive communication devices, need the highest quality process design kits (PDK’s) to ensure working devices at first iteration.

Traditional systems and methods require engineers to invest significant time for recalibration when the system invariably drifts, or to reposition probes with intentional changes in test temperatures. At higher frequencies, calibrations and measurements are more sensitive to probe placement errors and there is more calibration drift, so recalibration is required more often.Over time and temperature, Contact Intelligence automatically makes these adjustments with no operator intervention, resulting in more devices tested in less time, for more accurate PDK’s and faster time to market.

Slessor says the push to 5G brings many design and test challenges due to the significant increase in carrier frequencies – 10 times higher than 4G. “Although there are different bands and the carriers and the countries are still ironing out where they’re going to operate, there are bands as high as 72 gigahertz,” Slessor said. “Electrical signal propagation gets much, much more challenging as you go up in frequency. All kinds of new engineering and physics challenges emerge because you’ve got things that are radiating a good deal of power and there’s a whole bunch of cross talk on the chip. There are all kinds of interesting phenomena that appear that make the designers and the test engineer’s job much more difficult just because of these higher frequencies.”

In an RF front end, instead of modems or radios communicating, a wide variety of a BAW and SAW  filters are used to do the frequency band management and make sure that only the individual bands that are supposed to be used or being effectively used.

In addition to RF, Contact Intelligence is also designed for use in autonomous DC testing and for silicon phototonics.

In DC applications, Contact Intelligence automatically senses preset temperatures, and responds by waiting the correct amount of time until the system is stabilized. This allows lengthy test routines to be conducted over multiple temperatures without an operator present. Contact Intelligence also provides dynamic probe-to-pad alignment, even on pads as small as 25 µm, employing a combination of smart software, probe tip recognition algorithms and advanced programmable positioners.

FormFactor’s integrated SiPh solution allows sub-micron manipulation of optical fibers positioned above the wafer, automatically optimizing fiber coupling position.  Contact Intelligence uses machine vision technology to automate Theta X, Y and Z axis calibrations and alignments enabling measurements out of the box, reducing what used to take days or weeks to a matter of minutes.When combined with autonomous DC and RF, measurement options expand from Optical-Optical to include Photo-Diodes, Optical Modulators and more.

For more information, visit http://www.formfactor.com/contactintelligence.

pSemi™ Corporation (formerly known as Peregrine Semiconductor), a Murata company focused on semiconductor integration, announces the availability of the PE29101 gallium nitride (GaN) field-effect transistor (FET) driver for solid-state light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems. The PE29101 boasts the industry’s fastest rise times and a low minimum pulse width. This high-speed driver enables design engineers to extract the full performance and switching speed advantages from GaN transistors. In solid-state LiDAR systems, faster switching translates into improved resolution and accuracy in the LiDAR image.

“As GaN is proving its relevance in applications like solid-state LiDAR, design engineers are using pSemi high-speed drivers to maximize the fast switching benefits of GaN,” says Jim Cable, chief technology officer of pSemi. “Because of its rise and fall speed, the PE29101 enables the highest possible resolution imagery—something the industry needs for LiDAR to reach its fullest potential.”

LiDAR operates on the same principles as radar but instead uses pulsed lasers to precisely map surrounding areas. Traditionally used in high-resolution mapping, LiDAR is now used in advanced-driver assistance programs (ADAS) and is widely seen as an enabling technology to fully autonomous vehicles. Furthermore, solid-state LiDAR has emerged as the future leader in the commercialization of LiDAR systems, largely due to its affordability, reliability and compact size compared to mechanical sensors.

In LiDAR systems, the pulse laser’s switching speed and rise time directly impacts the measurement’s accuracy. To improve resolution, the current must switch as quickly as possible through the laser diode. GaN technology offers LiDAR systems superior resolution and a faster response time because of its very low input capacitance and its ability to switch significantly faster than metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs).

GaN FETs must be controlled by a very fast driver to maximize their fast-switching potential. Increasing the switching speed requires a driver with fast rise times and a low minimum output pulse width. The PE29101 offers these key performance specifications, enabling GaN technology to improve LiDAR resolution.

Driven by the colossal Internet of Things (IoT) opportunity, wireless technologies—including wireless local area network (WLAN), Bluetooth, cellular and low-power wireless—will account for 55 percent of connectivity integrated circuit (IC) shipments in 2018, according to a new report from business information provider IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO). Over the next five years, wireless connectivity will play an increasingly crucial role in market segments including automotive and transportation, commercial and industrial electronics, communications, computers, consumer and medical.

“Massive IoT use cases requiring long battery life, deep coverage and mobility are fueling demand for cellular and low-power wireless,” said Julian Watson, senior principal analyst for IoT at IHS Markit. “WLAN, Bluetooth and Zigbee are already entrenched in the home automation and consumer electronics segments. And in the coming years, wireless is going to have a huge impact on industries such as healthcare, where providers will lean heavily on wireless connectivity to track and trace costly equipment across large sites and to monitor the condition of patients within domestic settings.”

The IoT opportunity is also spurring competition among wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Long Term Evolution (LTE) and challengers like long-range wide area network (LoRaWAN), Sigfox and Thread. “The diversity of IoT use cases requires multiple technologies, and because of this we’ll see competition between technologies intensify,” Watson said. “The end result is that connectivity technologies will either compete, complement or combine—and whatever is most cost-effective will win out.”

Five connectivity technologies to watch

In its new Connectivity Technologies report, IHS Markit identifies five connectivity technologies to watch:

5G

The move to 5G will trigger significant investment across the value chain from 2020 to 2030, with $2.4 trillion in capital expenditures during this time frame. 5G will start by addressing enhanced broadband uses cases, but industry, not humans, will be the chief 5G driver. Most growth in new subscriber connections will come from industrial use cases rather than consumer markets.

Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT)

NB-IoT enables connectivity in devices used in a wide array of applications such as utilities, digital sensor monitoring, agriculture, location-based services and smart cities. Strong NB-IoT deployment in China and Europe will continue, while LTE Cat-M1 will remain dominant in the US. Asia is projected to account for 88 percent of global NB-IoT connections in 2020.

LoRa

Despite intense competition from NB-IoT, LoRa is the low-power WAN (LPWAN) technology of choice for private networks and non-traditional service providers such as cable operators due to its accessibility and differentiation. LoRa has earned a leading role in the LPWAN market, with more than 32 million nodes shipped in 2017, growing to over 57 million nodes in 2018.

Bluetooth mesh

Bluetooth’s momentum and massive installed base gives it an advantage that will be hard for incumbent technologies like Zigbee to challenge. Although it is still perceived as a consumer technology, mesh technology will allow Bluetooth to cross over into commercial and industrial applications such as lighting and building automation, with an anticipated 392 million lighting and building automation device shipments in 2022.

802.11ax

As greater numbers of Wi-Fi–enabled devices are added into homes and enterprises, the 802.11ax standard will gain more prominence in the marketplace and is expected to become the de facto Wi-Fi standard in the next decade. The 802.11ax market will grow rapidly beginning in 2020, after the Wi-Fi alliance launches a certification program. 802.11ax chipset revenue is expected to reach $855 million in 2022.

Plasma-Therm, the manufacturer of plasma etch, deposition, and advanced packaging equipment for the production of specialty semiconductor devices, announced today the successful acquisition of CORIAL, a France-based plasma processing equipment supplier.

“This transaction is expected to produce significant cost savings from operational synergies while increasing the group’s top line revenue by leveraging the combined sales and service network. This acquisition enforces Plasma- Therm’s commitment to the European market by further enhancing our support infrastructure for the European customer base” stated Abdul Lateef, Plasma-Therm CEO. “With this acquisition we take one more step in the execution of our vision of a Technology Center of Excellence and Research in the Grenoble ecosystem” further emphasized Abdul Lateef.

Thierry Lazerand, Plasma-Therm Director of Marketing said, “CORIAL is a strategic acquisition that strengthens our presence in the R&D market space and for all other markets requiring small footprint and technology-rich equipment. We are also excited about the addition of the experienced team of Engineers with differentiated know-how for product development. The combination will leverage Plasma-Therm’s award-winning service, as recognized by the VLSIresearch Customer Satisfaction Survey”.

“We are excited to become a subsidiary of Plasma-Therm”, comments Andrei Uvarov, CORIAL’s Chief Research Officer. “It is a great opportunity for CORIAL to consolidate its future and accelerate the development of innovative stand-alone equipment based on joined CORIAL and Plasma-Therm expertise and advance our commercialization initiatives globally”.

Winbond Electronics Corporation, a global supplier of semiconductor memory solutions, today announced the introduction of the W25N01JW, a high-performance, 1.8V Serial NAND Flash memory IC delivering a new high in data-transfer rates: 83MB/s via a Quad Serial Peripheral Interface (QSPI).

Winbond’s new high-performance Serial NAND technology also supports a two-chip dual quad interface which gives a maximum data transfer rate of 166MB/s.

This high-speed Read operation, some four times faster than existing serial NAND memory devices offer, means that the 1.8V W25N01JW chip can replace SPI NOR Flash memory in automotive applications such as data storage for instrument clusters or the center information displays (CIDs).

This is important for automotive OEMs because the adoption of more sophisticated graphics displays in the instrument cluster, and larger display sizes of 7 inches and above in the CID, is increasing system memory requirements to capacities of 1Gbit and higher. At these capacities, serial NAND Flash has a markedly lower unit cost than that of SPI NOR Flash, and occupies a smaller board area per megabit of storage capacity.

SPI NOR Flash has been the preferred memory technology in automotive displays for many years because of its high read speed, which supports the fast boot requirements of automotive user interfaces, and because of its high reliability and long data retention. By raising the data transfer rate of its serial NAND technology to 83MB/s – matching the read speed of automotive SPI NOR Flash – Winbond has ensured that the W25N01JW can support fast boot operation and the demanding requirements of sophisticated graphics applications.

The W25N01JW also meets strict automotive requirements for quality and reliability. Built with high-reliability single-level sell (SLC) memory technology, and implementing 1-bit error correction code (ECC) on all Read and Write operations, it complies with the endurance, retention and quality requirements of the AEC-Q100 standard and relevant JEDEC specifications.

The W25N01JW device operates from -40°C to 105°C and retains data for 10 years at 85°C after 1,000 program/erase cycles, whereas eMMC can only retain data for a fraction of that time under these conditions even when used in SLC mode, which are today widely used for data storage in the CIDs of high-end vehicles.

“Cars’ large and attractive displays need higher memory capacity, beyond the ‘sweet spot’ of SPI NOR Flash, which is good for up to 512Mbits,” said William Chen, deputy director of the Flash Product Marketing Division at Winbond. “For systems that require high-speed memory in capacities of 1Gbit or higher, Winbond’s high-performance Serial NAND Flash is the new best choice for automotive OEMs, offering a combination of lower unit cost, smaller size and excellent reliability and data retention.”

The W25N01JW is available for sampling today in a capacity of 1Gbit. A two-chip implementation in dual-quad I/O mode provides 2Gbits of memory capacity and a maximum data transfer rate of 166MB/s.

The chip is available in industrial grade and in an extended-temperature automotive grade version operating at up to 105°C. It is compatible with standard SPI NAND Flash protocols. It is housed in standard 8mm x 6mm WSON and TFBGA packages that are footprint-compatible with standard SPI NOR Flash products.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $37.6 billion for the month of April 2018, an increase of 20.2 percent from the April 2017 total of $31.3 billion and 1.4 percent more than last month’s total of $37.1 billion. Monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average. Additionally, a newly released WSTS industry forecast projects annual global market growth of 12.4 percent in 2018 and 4.4 percent in 2019.

“The global semiconductor industry has posted consistently strong sales so far in 2018, and the global market has now experienced year-to-year growth of greater than 20 percent for 13 consecutive months,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Although boosted in part by impressive growth in the memory market, sales of non-memory products also grew by double digits in April on a year-to-year basis, and all major regional markets posted double-digit year-to-year gains. The global market is projected to experience significant annual growth this year, with more modest growth expected next year.”

Regionally, year-to-year sales increased in the Americas (34.1 percent), China (22.1 percent), Europe(21.4 percent), Japan (14.6 percent), and Asia Pacific/All Other (10.2 percent). Compared with last month, sales were up in China (3.2 percent), Japan (2.7 percent), Europe (1.4 percent), and the Americas (0.8 percent), but down slightly in Asia Pacific/All Other (-0.8 percent).

Additionally, SIA today endorsed the WSTS Spring 2018 global semiconductor sales forecast, which projects the industry’s worldwide sales will be $463.4 billion in 2018. This would mark the industry’s highest-ever annual sales, a 12.4 percent increase from the 2017 sales total. WSTS projects year-to-year increases across all regional markets for 2018: the Americas (14.0 percent), Europe (13.4 percent), Asia Pacific (including China) (12.3 percent), and Japan (8.6 percent). In 2019, growth in the semiconductor market is expected to moderate, with sales increases of between 4-5 percent expected across each of the regions. WSTS tabulates its semi-annual industry forecast by convening an extensive group of global semiconductor companies that provide accurate and timely indicators of semiconductor trends.

For comprehensive monthly semiconductor sales data and detailed WSTS Forecasts, consider purchasing the WSTS Subscription Package. For information about the global semiconductor industry and market, check out SIA’s free 2018 Factbook.

Apr 2018

Billions

Month-to-Month Sales                              

Market

Last Month

Current Month

% Change

Americas

8.10

8.16

0.8%

Europe

3.58

3.63

1.4%

Japan

3.21

3.30

2.7%

China

11.98

12.36

3.2%

Asia Pacific/All Other

10.23

10.15

-0.8%

Total

37.09

37.59

1.4%

Year-to-Year Sales

Market

Last Year

Current Month

% Change

Americas

6.08

8.16

34.1%

Europe

2.99

3.63

21.4%

Japan

2.88

3.30

14.6%

China

10.12

12.36

22.1%

Asia Pacific/All Other

9.21

10.15

10.2%

Total

31.28

37.59

20.2%

Three-Month-Moving Average Sales

Market

Nov/Dec/Jan

Feb/Mar/Apr

% Change

Americas

8.63

8.16

-5.5%

Europe

3.40

3.63

6.6%

Japan

3.21

3.30

2.8%

China

12.01

12.36

2.9%

Asia Pacific/All Other

10.35

10.15

-1.9%

Total

37.60

37.59

0.0%