What’s at stake? Lop-sided wins by a few companies have become the norm in certain segments of the semiconductor industry, specifically Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) in the foundry business and Nvidia in the AI chip market. Armed with unfair advantages they have created for themselves, these two giants leave little room for competitors to operate.
What’s at stake? Among all sensors designed into modern vehicles, lidars have seen the most upheaval – to a degree unanticipated even by leading lidar companies.There are no assurances even lidar pioneers like Valeo can keep up with the rapidly changing market landscape.
The causes for this volatility, or attributed to dynamism, include technology advancements, the rise and fall of robotaxis, rapid growth in Chinese EVs, a geographical split among OEMs marketing automated vehicles (L2+, L2++ vs L3), and the death of lidar companies who rode the SPAC boom until their investors bailed.
Powerful governments are pouring vast amounts of money into semiconductors to create or strengthen national or regional manufacturing and innovation hubs, departing from the globalized system that midwifed the industry. The system being built lacks long-term viability, but chipmakers are going along, drawn by government largesse and coercion. Can this new structure survive harsh business realities such as the need for global sales?
As much as $1.6 trillion may be spent on new semiconductor fabs, R&D, and STEM education programs globally by governments and chipmakers between 2020 and 2040 in a defensive, frantic and possibly doomed effort by leading economies to localize IC innovations and manufacturing in their territories, according to figures compiled by the Ojo-Yoshida Report.
Driven by parochial defense, military, supply security and other economic interests China, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and the United States are prodding the semiconductor industry into a new wave of massive, local fab construction projects with promises and plans that appear detached from the market’s fundamentals and historical operational system, according to observers.
Hands-off driving limited to divided highways only is one thing, but hands-off driving on every public paved road in the U.S. and Canada is an entirely different public safety proposition.
What’s at stake: What’s the deal with Intel and Mobileye? After Intel at CES officially unveiled an automotive strategy independent of Mobileye, the relationship between the companies on all things automotive became all the more mysterious.
A few questions have been nagging me since I first learned about Intel’s re-entry into the automotive market.
Is Intel designing its auto strategy narrowly to avoid stepping on Mobileye’s toes?
Given its continued 88 percent stake in Mobileye, what are Intel’s legitimate expectations for fully autonomous vehicles?
If Intel aspires to be the key player in a rapidly changing automotive market, shouldn’t its solutions integrate both Mobileye’s ADAS and Intel’s in-vehicle infotainment platforms?
What’s at stake: After shedding Mobileye, Intel has searched its soul to intuit how it can make a difference in a congested automotive chip market. Rather than shoving more teraflops into a car’s central compute technology, Intel believes its new mission is addressing unanswered questions with which carmakers are grappling — safer, software-defined vehicle architecture, much more energy efficient EVs and the dawn of the chiplet. With no quick fixes possible, is Intel ready to play the long game?
Twenty-five years ago, when Microsoft at CES pitched a plan to wedge its operating system and PC technology into the living room, TV set manufacturers wept crocodile tears for consumers. “The last thing we want,” CE companies said, is “the blue screen of death on their living room TVs.”
Fast forward to 2024. Intel Corp. slouches toward CES, unveiling its all-out plans for the automotive market. Will this moment in history become yet another example of the PC industry horning in on somebody else’s business?
What’s at stake? The headlines of 2023 have heralded the march of generative AI, geopolitical tussles over trade and technology and a bubble of government funding to private companies for local chip production. As a result, the semiconductor industry has more political power, economic force and self-importance than ever before.The question in 2024 is how responsibly and effectively chip suppliers will end up flexing all this muscle.
Unquestionably, the chip industry has become a star on the political and economic stages, as the Wall Street Journal aptly noted. The trend will continue in 2024, potentially altering the whos, hows and whats of the semiconductor landscape.
Jean-Christophe Eloy
While technological progress has created a fiercely competitive market among leading chip suppliers, 2023 also solidified the semiconductor market around single winners – with no comparable rivals – in the critical areas of lithography (ASML) and foundries (TSMC). That gap between champions and also-rans could eventually recoil on the chip sector, with the industry’s strength limited by the weakest link in the supply chain.
The Ojo-Yoshida Report sat down with Jean-Christophe Eloy, president and CEO of Yole Group (Lyon, France), to hear his assessment of 2023. He told us what stood out (events, companies, technology and business/market trends), what concerns him most (boobytraps awaiting the chip industry), and big shifts he sees in China’s semiconductor plans (and their impact on the West).
What’s at stake? Geopolitics has driven China to forgo Arm and opt for RISC-V. Can a Europe-based RISC-V joint venture appeal to China’s EV manufacturers?
A RISC-V joint venture, consisting of Robert Bosch, Infineon, NXP Semiconductors, Nordic and Qualcomm came down the chimney just before Christmas. Named Quintauris, the JV announced Alexander Kocher as CEO.
