Category Archives: Semiconductors

By Lara Chamness, SEMI

This is an exciting year to be in the semiconductor industry as Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI highlighted at SEMICON West; semiconductor-related companies are trading at all-time highs, and record device shipments and revenues as well as equipment revenues are expected (see Figure 1). This growth is primarily fueled by demand drivers such as Automotive Electronics, Medical Electronics, Mobile Phones, and Industrial Electronics. With this recent growth spurt and the proliferation of end-market applications that consume ever increasing numbers of semiconductors, it is tempting to conclude that the industry has seen the end of cycles.

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At the annual SEMI/Gartner, Bulls & Bears Industry Outlook symposium, Stifel’s Patrick Ho, asserted that “Gone are the days of your grandfather’s cycles.” Robert Marie of Semiconductor Advisors, maintained that “Cycle shape has changed due to demand drivers, consolidation, maturation and other factors.”

However, Gartner’s Bob Johnson was quick to assert, “Whenever people say that cycles are over and that the industry is going to grow forever ─ the industry is at a peak.” He noted that Gartner expects semiconductor revenues to surpass $400 billion this year, increase two percent next year, but  decline in 2019. He indicated that Memory is driving this year’s market expansion but will drag down market growth next year as pricing gains achieved will be lost beginning in the fourth quarter of this year. The softness in 2018 is expected to have a detrimental impact on the industry’s spending plans. Gartner predicts that capital spending will shrink to just under one percent next year and contract 7 percent in 2019.

In addition to softer memory pricing in the near term, Gartner does not anticipate that China will invest significant amounts until 2020/2021. SEMI on the other hand is currently modeling an increase of 9 percent in fab equipment expenditures in 2018, which is largely driven by China. China is expected to have an even greater impact on global fab capital expenditures, claiming the top position in 2019, according to SEMI.

Looking at demand drivers, more specifically the “Internet of Things”, it is clear that the explosion of connected “things” is fundamentally reshaping our industry. The fragmented nature of these markets require niche applications and device architectures with the majority of these devices being commoditized MEMS and other solid-state sensors. Growing market revenue does not necessarily translate into industry profitability as the declining average selling price in Figure 2 shows.

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So how can the industry benefit from all of this connectivity? Dr. Sam Wang from Gartner discussed how the Internet of Things has made AI practical, and how artificial intelligence brings out the value of IoT. He noted that AI:

  • Drives the demand for advanced wafer process technologies
  • Encourages the adoption of HMC, HBM, eDRAM, ReRAM, PCM, STT-MRAM, memristors processing in memory
  • Incorporates ADC within sensors and computing in sensors
  • Increases the use of 2.5D, 3D, TSV and SiP technologies
  • Enables chip design flow optimization in EDA
  • Fuels the need of new ATE testers for testing complex AI chips
  • Prompts more start-ups and M&A opportunities

The overwhelming majority of semiconductor devices used in IoT are commodities, creating a renaissance for smaller wafer diameter fabs (200mm and smaller; see related 200mm article). The value of the IoT will come from the ecosystem that supports it, such as data centers and networks that enable connectivity. There are also opportunities for the adoption of new processor technologies, as Gartner’s Werner Goertz pointed out. He stated that the current processors used in IoT processing were designed for very different use cases, and that conditions are now ripe for a disruptive processor supply chain to optimize edge-based AI.

2017 is indeed going to be a great year for the semiconductor industry: device average selling prices have improved dramatically, device manufacturers are investing in new capacity, while stock prices of suppliers throughout the supply chain are trading at elevated levels. 2018 is anticipated by many industry pundits to be another growth year, albeit at more conservative growth levels. Although the Internet of Things literally offers the industry billions of applications, its full impact on the industry remains to be seen. And we’ll definitely keep a close eye on developments in China.

Everspin Technologies, Inc. has begun sampling its new 1-Gigabit Spin Torque Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (ST-MRAM) with lead customers. This product delivers a high-endurance, persistent memory with a DDR4-compatible interface. These features enable storage system vendors to enhance the reliability and performance of storage devices and systems by delivering protection against power loss without the use of supercapacitors or batteries. Enterprise SSD designers can take advantage of fast persistent memory that is inherently power fail-safe while also reducing write amplification and overprovisioning, common limitations for NAND Flash based SSDs.

The 1 Gb MRAM is produced in 28nm CMOS on 300mm wafers in partnership with GLOBALFOUNDRIES, utilizing Everspin’s patented perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (pMTJ) technology. The rapid development of the 1Gb part is a direct result of the high degree of scalability of the pMTJ, moving from 40nm to 28nm processes in less than one year through our close partnership with Global Foundries.

“We are very excited to begin sampling our 1 Gb product,” said Phill LoPresti, Everspin’s President and CEO. “Getting our latest technology into customers’ hands so they can develop their products to take advantage of the unique capabilities of high-endurance, fast, persistent memory is a significant milestone for Everspin.”

Everspin will be demonstrating the EMD4E001G at the upcoming Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara on August 7-10. This latest ST-MRAM product provides 4 times the capacity of Everspin’s current 256Mb DDR3 ST-MRAM and will be shown running in Everspin’s nvNITRO storage accelerator products.

 

In their recent global memory cards market report, Technavio announced that the market for memory cards will reach $9.025 billion by 2021. That’s up from $8.83 billion in 2016, a CAGR of approximately 0.45%.

Important factors that impede the market growth are enhanced in-built memory capacity in smartphones and proliferation of the cloud. The market deceleration is further enhanced by the decrease in average selling price of memory cards. Technology advances like faster read/write speed, enhanced durability, smaller form factors, and improved cost efficiency, have helped sustain the use of memory cards in smartphones and cameras.

Competitive vendor landscape

The global memory cards market consists of players that are well established in the global memory products and solutions market. Apart from storage capacity, compatibility, and reliability of stored data, vendors in the market are unable to showcase any other major variation in their products.

Top eight memory card market vendors

SanDisk

SanDisk is engaged in the manufacture and distribution of hardware storage products. It offers flash storage card products for a broad range of electronic systems and digital devices. Technologies used for developing flash storage card products include flash memory, controller, and firmware. The company provides its products to the mobile phone, consumer electronics, and computing markets.

Kingston Technology

Kingston Technology is one of the top manufacturers of memory modules, such as printed circuit boards with dynamic RAM, which increases the speed and capacity of computers and printers. The company focuses on capitalizing the potential markets by developing better products following a sustainable growth strategy.

Lexar (Micron Consumer Products Group)

Lexar is a fully owned subsidiary of Micron Consumer Products Group. Micron Consumer Products Group is the largest manufacturer of memory chips in the world. Lexar’s product lineup includes memory cards, USB flash drives, readers, and storage devices for original equipment manufacturers and retailers.

ADATA Technology

ADATA Technology is a Taiwanese storage and memory device manufacturer. Its product portfolio includes USB drives, dynamic RAM modules, and memory cards. It also caters to express cards, solid-state drive (SSD), and digital frame market.

Transcend Information

Transcend Information designs, develops, manufactures, and sells memory modules, flash cards, USB drives, external hard drives, multimedia products, and accessories. The company makes consumer products like memory cards, adapters, portable devices, USB flash drives, external hard drives, SSDs, digital photo frames, memory modules, digital music players, card readers, and wireless and multimedia products.

Samsung Group

Samsung Group is one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers and is the leading electronics company in South Korea. Samsung Electronics, a subsidiary of Samsung Group, is a pioneer in electronic products. It manufactures different consumer devices that include DVD players, digital still cameras, digital TVs, color monitors, computers, printers, and LCD panels. It offers semiconductors like static RAM, dynamic RAM, display drivers, and flash memory.

Sony

Sony is a major vendor in the memory cards market. It focuses on consumer and professional electronics in divisions such as entertainment, gaming, and financial service sectors. It is among the top 20 worldwide semiconductor sales leaders. It has segmented itself into three sectors, namely growth drivers, stable profit generators, and laggards.

Toshiba

Toshiba is involved in the R&D, sales, and manufacture of electronic and electric products. It sells storage devices under the electronic devices business domain. The company’s technology leadership, product diversification, and broad customer portfolio enabled it to become one of the leading players in the global memory cards market. One of the major growth strategies of the company is to expand its product portfolio continuously. The company primarily focuses on its R&D and engineering, and continuously invests to leverage its technology for better sales.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. has announced new V-NAND (Vertical NAND) memory solutions and technology that will address the pressing requirements of next-generation data processing and storage systems. With the rapid increase of data-intensive applications across many industries using artificial intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, the role of flash memory has become extremely critical in accelerating the speed at which information can be extracted for real-time analysis.

At the inaugural Samsung Tech Day and this year’s Flash Memory Summit, Samsung is showcasing solutions to address next-generation data processing challenges centered around the company’s latest V-NAND technology and an array of solid state drives (SSDs). These solutions will be at the forefront of enabling today’s most data-intensive tasks such as high-performance computing, machine learning, real-time analytics and parallel computing.

“Our new, highly advanced V-NAND technologies will offer smarter solutions for greater value by providing high data processing speeds, increased system scalability and ultra-low latency for today’s most demanding cloud-based applications,” said Gyoyoung Jin, executive vice president and head of Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to pioneer flash innovation by leveraging our expertise in advanced 3D-NAND memory technology to significantly enhance the way in which information-rich data is processed.”

Samsung heralds era of 1-terabit (Tb) V-NAND chip

Samsung announced a 1Tb V-NAND chip that it expects to be available next year. Initially mentioned in 2013, during unveiling of the industry’s first 3D NAND, Samsung has been working to enable its core memory technologies to realize one terabit of capacity on a single chip using a V-NAND structure.

The arrival of a 1Tb V-NAND chip next year will enable 2TB of memory in a single V-NAND package by stacking 16 1Tb dies and will represent one of the most important memory advances of the past decade.

NGSFF (Next Generation Small Form Factor) SSD to improve server storage capacity and IOPS

Samsung is sampling the industry’s first 16-terabyte (TB) NGSFF SSD, which will dramatically improve the memory storage capacity and IOPS (input/output operations per second) of today’s 1U rack servers. Measuring 30.5mm x 110mm x 4.38mm, the Samsung NGSFF SSD provides hyper-scale data center servers with substantially improved space utilization and scaling options.

Utilizing the new NGSFF drive instead of M.2 drives in a 1U server can increase the storage capacity of the system by four times. To highlight the advantages, Samsung demonstrated a reference server system that delivers 576TB in a 1U rack, using 36 16TB NGSFF SSDs. The 1U reference system can process about 10 million random read IOPS, which triples the IOPS performance of a 1U server equipped with 2.5-inch SSDs. A petabyte capacity can be achieved using only two of the 576TB systems.

Samsung plans to begin mass producing its first NGSFF SSDs in the fourth quarter of this year, while working to standardize the form factor with industry partners.

Z-SSD: optimized for systems requiring fast memory responsiveness

Following last year’s introduction of its Z-SSD technology, Samsung introduced its first Z-SSD product, the SZ985. Featuring ultra-low latency and high performance, the Z-SSD will be used in data centers and enterprise systems dealing with extremely large, data-intensive tasks such as real-time “big data” analytics and high-performance server caching. Samsung is collaborating with several of its customers on integrating the Z-SSD in upcoming applications.

The Samsung SZ985 requires only 15 microseconds of read latency time which is approximately a seventh of the read latency of an NVMe SSD. At the application level, the use of Samsung’s Z-SSDs can reduce system response time by up to 12 times, compared to using NVMe SSDs.

With its fast response time, the new Z-SSD will play a pivotal role in eliminating storage bottlenecks in the enterprise and in improving the total cost of ownership (TCO).

New approach to storage with proprietary Key Value SSD technology

Samsung also introduced a completely new technology called Key Value SSD. The name refers to a highly innovative method of processing complex data sets. With the sharply increasing use of social media services and IoT applications, which contribute to the creation of object data such as text, image, audio and video files, the complexity in processing this data increases substantially.

Today, SSDs convert object data of widely ranging sizes into data fragments of a specific size called “blocks.” The use of these blocks requires implementation processes consisting of LBA (logical block addressing) and PBA (physical block addressing) steps. However, Samsung’s new Key Value SSD technology allows SSDs to process data without converting it into blocks. Samsung’s Key Value instead assigns a “key” or specific location to each “value,” or piece of object data – regardless of its size. The key enables direct addressing of a data location, which in turn enables the storage to be scaled. Samsung’s Key Value technology enables SSDs to scale-up (vertically) and scale-out (horizontally) in performance and capacity. As a result, when data is read or written, a Key Value SSD can reduce redundant steps, which leads to faster data inputs and outputs, as well as increasing TCO and significantly extending the life of an SSD.

 

NanoString Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:NSTG), a provider of life science tools for translational research and molecular diagnostic products, and Lam Research Corporation (Nasdaq:LRCX), a global supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry, today announced a strategic collaboration to develop NanoString’s proprietary Hyb & Seq next-generation sequencing platform.

This collaboration brings together NanoString’s proprietary sequencing chemistry and Lam’s expertise in advanced systems engineering to enable nanoscale manufacturing, with the goal of building a clinical sequencer with the simplest workflow in the industry. The objectives of the collaboration are to complete the development of the Hyb & Seq single molecule sequencing chemistry, design and engineer a clinical sequencing instrument, develop clinical assay panels, and secure the necessary regulatory approvals.  In addition, the companies intend to explore methods for coupling the sequencing chemistry with advanced semiconductor fabrication processes to optimize the performance of molecular profiling platforms.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Lam will provide up to $50 million of funding intended to cover the costs of development and regulatory approval over a development period expected to last approximately three years, as well as advanced engineering and technical support. Lam will receive a warrant to purchase one million shares of NanoString common stock at $16.75 per share, as well as a royalty on all products developed under the collaboration. NanoString retains all rights to commercialize the resulting Hyb & Seq products, and the parties will share ownership rights in jointly developed intellectual property.

“We are excited to collaborate with Lam Research, in a partnership that brings together leading innovators in our respective fields,” said Brad Gray, NanoString’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “By combining our Hyb & Seq technology with Lam’s advanced engineering expertise, we intend to fully resource the development of the industry’s simplest clinical sequencer, and enable open-ended innovation at the intersection of semiconductors and genomics.”

“Our vision is to create value from natural technology extensions, including nanoscale applications enablement, chemistry, plasma, fluidics, and advanced systems engineering,” stated Martin Anstice, Lam Research’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are excited to collaborate with NanoString to advance the development of their novel Hyb & Seq system and chemistry to meet the challenge of increasing our understanding of human genetics, and we envision a number of strategic benefits by aligning our complementary respective strengths. This is a compelling opportunity for the whole to be significantly greater than the sum of its parts; it is an accelerator of enablement and value for both companies.”

GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced that it has demonstrated silicon functionality of a 2.5D packaging solution for its high-performance 14nm FinFET FX-14 integrated design system for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).

The 2.5D ASIC solution includes a stitched interposer capability to overcome lithography limitations and a two terabits per second (2Tbps) multi-lane HBM2 PHY, developed in partnership with Rambus, Inc. Building on the 14nm FinFET demonstration, the solution will be integrated on the company’s next-generation FX-7 ASIC design system built on GF’s 7nm FinFET process technology.

“With the tremendous advances in interconnect and packaging technology that has occurred in recent years, the line between wafer processing and packaging has blurred,” said Kevin O’Buckley, vice president of ASIC product development at GF. “Incorporating 2.5D packaging into ASIC design boosts performance beyond scaling and is a natural evolution of our capabilities. It enables us to support our customers in a one-stop end-to-end fashion, from product design all the way through manufacturing and testing.”

The Rambus memory PHY is aimed at high-end networking and data center applications performing the most data-intensive tasks in systems requiring low-latency and high-bandwidth. The PHY is compliant with the JEDEC JESD235 HBM2 standard, supporting data rates up to 2Gbps per data pin, enabling a total bandwidth of 2Tbps.

“We strive to deliver comprehensive HBM PHY technologies that will enable data center and networking solution providers to meet today’s most demanding workloads and take advantage of compelling market opportunities,” said Luc Seraphin, senior vice president and general manager, Memory and Interfaces Division at Rambus. “Our collaboration with GF combines our HBM2 PHY with their 2.5D packaging and FX-14 ASIC design system and provides a fully-integrated solution for the industry’s fastest-growing applications.”

FX-14 and FX-7 are complete ASIC design solutions that take advantage of GF’s experience in volume production with FinFET process technology. They comprise functional modules based on the industry’s broadest and deepest intellectual property (IP) portfolio, which makes possible unique solutions for next-generation wired/5G wireless networking, cloud/data center servers, machine learning/deep neural networks, automotive, and aerospace/defense applications. GF is one of only two companies in the world that delivers best-in-class IP plus advanced memory and packaging solutions.

IntelliProp, Inc., a developer of Intellectual Property (IP) Cores and semiconductors for Data Storage and Memory applications, announced today the IPA-PM185-CT, Gen-Z Persistent Memory Controller, code named “Cobra.” This controller combines DRAM and NAND and sits on the Gen-Z fabric, not the memory bus. Cobra has the ability to support byte addressability to DRAM cache and Block addressability to NAND flash supporting up to 32GB of DRAM and 6TB of NAND. IntelliProp is a member of the Gen-Z consortium and is working closely with a number of other companies to support the first multi-company Gen-Z demo, being shown this week at Flash Memory Summit.

IntelliProp is exhibiting at Flash Memory Summit, being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, August 8-10, 2017. IntelliProp is in booth #821. The Gen-Z “Cobra” Controller along with other IP & ASSP demos will be shown at IntelliProp’s booth. The Gen-Z Cobra controller will also be showcased in the Gen-Z Consortium demo in booth #739.

IntelliProp is also showing the NVMe Host Accelerator IP Core, the IPC-NV164-HI. This Core will find primary application with companies doing FPGA and ASIC designs who need high performance connectivity with PCIe based NVMe storage devices. Compliant with the NVMe 1.3 specification, the NVMe Host Accelerator IP Core provides a simple firmware or RTL driven interface for data movement to and from an NVMe endpoint attached to a PCIe link. “We manage the command and completion queues in hardware to accelerate performance by off-loading the processor from needing to handle numerous interrupts,” said Hiren Patel, VP of Business Development at IntelliProp. “The NVMe Host Accelerator IP Core is shipping today for all Xilinx and Altera FPGAs including the latest Ultrascale Plus and Arria 10 FPGAs.  And for those customers that want acceleration with Linux, IntelliProp has also written a Linux driver to work with the NVMe Host Accelerator IP Core,” continued Mr. Patel.

IntelliProp is excited to also announce the availability of additional NVMe products for the storage market.   IntelliProp has released the IPC-NV171A-BR, NVMe-to-NVMe Bridge and the IPP-NV186A-BR, NVMe-to-SATA Bridge. “The NVMe-to-NVMe bridge allows customers to manipulate data or commands from a PCIe root-complex such as a PC to an NVMe drive. The NVMe-to-SATA bridge allows customers to use SATA drives which will enumerate as NVMe drives in the host system,” said Hiren Patel.

Microsemi Corporation, a  provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, today announced its collaboration with Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (Nasdaq: MLNX), a supplier of high-performance end-to-end smart interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, and Celestica, a provider of the delivery of end-to-end product lifecycle solutions, to develop a unique reference architecture for NVM express over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) applications as part of Microsemi’s Accelerate Ecosystem Program.

Microsemi’s Accelerate Ecosystem speeds development efforts for customers and collaborators through technology alignment, joint marketing and sales acceleration. Collaborating with Microsemi allows companies like Mellanox and Celestica to leverage Microsemi’s peer-to-peer (P2P) memory architecture, which is supported by its Switchtec PCIe switches in combination with its Flashtec NVRAM cards and NVMe controllers to enable large data streams to transfer between NVMe-oF applications without the central processing unit (CPU) in the data plane. This leads to the development of highly optimized NVMe-oF storage subsystems with better throughput, latency and quality of service (QoS). It also enables customers’ data center storage applications such as rack scale architecture, which disaggregates flash and shareable pools of NVMe memory to operate at faster rates.

“With customers designing their next-generation applications around NVMe-oF today, Microsemi has created a strong ecosystem of industry leaders to put together tested and validated solutions for their specific needs,” said Amr Elashmawi, Microsemi’s vice president of corporate and vertical marketing. “The growth potential in this market makes this the perfect time to pair Celestica’s and Mellanox’s expertise with Microsemi’s unique value-add to showcase the NVMe-oF P2P reference architecture accelerating data center and cloud applications.”

The data center market continues to see NVMe storage devices increasingly being moved outside the server to centralized locations in order to share NVMe-based storage across multiple servers and CPUs. This enables better utilization in terms of capacity, rack space and power. According to industry research and marketing firm G2M, Inc., the NVMe market will be more than $57 billion by 2020 and nearly 40 percent of all-flash arrays will be NVMe-based by 2020. The firm also expects NVMe-oF adapter shipments will climb to 740,000 units by 2020.

“Working together with Microsemi through its Accelerate Ecosystem Program allows our team to leverage its performance storage tier, including Switchtec PSX switches, to develop innovative hardware platforms that can be customized for our customers,” said Jason Phillips, senior vice president, Enterprise Solutions at Celestica. “As a result of this important relationship, Celestica successfully launched the first commercially available NVMe dual-port All Flash Array platform, and is preparing to launch our first NVMe-oF solution, powered by Microsemi technology.”

While other companies have seen the benefits of Microsemi’s reference architecture, Microsemi also benefits from these cooperative efforts. With remote direct memory access (RDMA) a key technology in the NVMe-oF ecosystem, working closely with RDMA network interface card (NIC) providers like Mellanox enhances Microsemi’s ability to further serve the needs of its data center, cloud, hyperscale and enterprise original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers. Such collaborations will enable Microsemi to gain market share for NVMe-oF applications, positioning Microsemi as a key player in the storage revolution.

“Mellanox is excited to collaborate with Microsemi as part of the Accelerate Ecosystem Program, which is delivering solutions with Microsemi’s Switchtec and Flashtec products for NVMe-oF applications,” said Rob Davis, vice president of storage technology at Mellanox Technologies. “Mellanox’s market leading ConnectX Network Adapters, including ConnectX-5 and our new BlueField SOC, combined with Microsemi’s P2P CPU memory offload capabilities, offer a comprehensive reference platform for high performance data plane applications and JBOF implementations.”

Rinchem recently announced the expansion of its chemical distribution center in Pyeongtaek, South Korea.

The new site provides four additional warehouses capable of storing a wide variety of materials including: general commodities (non-DG), flammable, toxic, corrosive, oxidizer and miscellaneous dangerous goods with strict temperature requirements ranging from -30 to 30 C. The new additions add 12,350 pallet positions to the Korea campus.

“This recent investment in South Korea marks Rinchem’s largest investment in the Asian Pacific market to date,” said Chris Wright, Rinchem’s Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “The Pyeongtaek distribution center is state-of-the-art in every way and is positioned as the largest semiconductor grade chemical storage facility in Korea.”

Each new warehouse will be optimized for efficiency and safety consistent with Rinchem’s global standards. The new warehouses will boast a very narrow aisle (VNA) racking system with wire-guided forklift steering controls. Additionally, the Korea campus now operates the newest version of Rinchem’s proprietary Chem-Star® customer interface. The system update showcases a streamlined and easy-to-navigate customer interface granting access to inventory data in real-time.

Rinchem will host a grand opening event to celebrate the recent completion of this expansion project on the new Korea campus on 9 August 2017 at 10:00 AM. Rinchem executives and staff will be on site to participate in a ribbon cutting ceremony, remarks on the new expansion and site tours.

Rinchem provides a wide range of logistics services to support the semiconductor, chemical, gas, life sciences and paint and coatings industries, including dedicated and multi-client warehousing, on-site services, over-the-road and local transportation, freight forwarding, empty container return management and supply chain consulting.

Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to increase 10.2 percent in 2017, to $77.7 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. This growth rate is up from the previous quarter’s forecast of 1.4 percent, due to continued aggressive investment in memory and leading-edge logic which is driving spending in wafer-level equipment (see Table 1).

“Spending momentum is more concentrated in 2017 mainly due to strong manufacturing demand in memory and leading-edge logic. The NAND flash shortage was more pronounced in the first quarter of 2017 than the previous forecast, leading to over 20 percent growth of etch and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) segments in 2017 with a strong capacity ramp-up for 3D NAND,” said Takashi Ogawa, research vice president at Gartner.

According to Gartner’s latest view, the next cyclical down cycle will emerge in 2018 to 2019 in capital spending, compared with 2019 to 2020 in the previous quarter’s forecast. “Spending on wafer fab equipment will follow a similar cycle with a peak in 2018. While the most likely scenario will still keep positive growth in 2018, there is a concern that the growth will turn negative if the end-user demand in key electronics applications is weaker than expected,” said Mr. Ogawa.

Table 1: Worldwide Semiconductor Capital Spending and Equipment Spending Forecast, 2016-2020
(Millions of Dollars)

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Semiconductor Capital Spending

70,568.9

77,794.5

77,443.5

71,814.8

73,239.5

Growth (%)

9.1

10.2

-0.5

-7.3

2.0

Wafer Fab Equipment, Including Wafer-Level Packaging

37,033.1

43,661.0

43,690.4

40,515.8

41,342.7

Growth (%)

11.4

17.9

0.1

-7.3

2.0

Other Semiconductor Capital Spending

33,535.8

34,133.5

33,753.2

31,299.0

31,896.8

Growth (%)

6.8

1.8

-1.1

-7.2

1.9

Source: Gartner (July 2017)

This research is produced by Gartner’s Semiconductor Manufacturing program. This research program, which is part of the overall semiconductor research group, provides a comprehensive view of the entire semiconductor industry, from manufacturing to device and application market trends.