Financial
• According to analyst company TrendForce, the prices of hard drives and SSDs are set to increase considerably over the coming months. This is backed up by the fact that both Western Digital and Seagate have sent letters to customers warning them that the companies will be raising prices on storage components, mostly due to rising manufacturing costs.
• SK Hynix recently reported its fastest pace of revenue growth since 2010. This has boosted the company’s shares, which have seen a 20% growth this year based on the forecast that it will continue to drive the market in high bandwidth memory chips. The company also announced plans to build a new $14,6 billion memory facility in South Korea to meet the increased demand for HBM chips, driven by the surge in AI applications.
• Demand for NVIDIA’s Blackwell platform is expected to boost TSMC’s total capacity by over 150% in 2024. The next-gen Blackwell platform, which includes B-series GPUs, and integrates NVIDIA’s own Grace Arm CPU in models such as the GB200, represents a significant development. The supply chain has high expectations for the GB200, with projections suggesting that its shipments could exceed millions of units by 2025, potentially making up nearly 40 to 50% of NVIDIA’s high-end GPU market.
• Although NVIDIA plans to launch products such as the GB200 and B100 in the second half of this year, upstream wafer packaging will need to adopt more complex and high-precision CoWoS-L technology, making the validation and testing process time consuming.
• It was reported that three senior executives of Denel were placed under precautionary suspension over allegations of possible misconduct. Acting CFO Thandeka Sabela, Michael Kgobe, and head of corporate finance and treasury, Gawie van Zyl, were temporarily replaced. The suspension has come at a time when the company was trying to rebuild its financial reputation, after playing a key role in the State Capture corruption scandal.
• It was reported that the combined revenue of the world’s top ten IC design houses reached $167,7 billion, a 12% increase YoY. This growth was primarily driven by NVIDIA’s H100 AI GPU, which pushed the company to a massive 105% increase to reach $55,268 billion. Currently, NVIDIA holds over 80% of the AI chip market and the company’s growth is forecasted to continue through 2024 with the release of the H200 and its next-generation B100/B200.
Companies
• SK Hynix has revealed that its books for the manufacturing of high-bandwidth memory are almost full until the end of 2025. This is largely because of the demand for essential components for AI development. Mass production of its next-generation HBM chip is due to start in the third quarter of this year.
• Mouser has received the 2023 Global Best Distributor of the Year award from Diodes Incorporated, a leading manufacturer and supplier of high-quality application-specific products within the broad discrete, logic, analogue, and mixed-signal semiconductor markets. Mouser received the award for achieving both sales and customer growth for Diodes.
• Mouser Electronics has been named 2023 European eCatalog Distributor of the Year from Molex. Mouser received the recognition for its pivotal role in supporting Molex in its expansion of its market share, and in increasing and enhancing customer acquisition in Europe. With over 160 000 Molex parts available to order, Mouser provides design engineers with a wide selection of Molex’s newest products.
• Silicon Labs has appointed industry veteran Bob Conrad as its senior vice president of worldwide operations. Conrad transitions from his current role, serving on the Silicon Labs’ Board of Directors, and brings 40 years of experience in the semiconductor industry with him.
• Eaton has opened a new campus in Helsinki to strengthen its production and distribution of UPS systems, including its latest 9395X model. This is in response to growing demand for its UPSs installed in datacentres used for AI applications and digital data management.
• Mouser has entered into a distribution agreement with Macronix International, a provider of non-volatile memory solutions. Macronix designs and manufactures an expansive range of NOR Flash and NAND Flash products for diverse applications, from computing, consumer, networking, and industrial to mobile, embedded, automotive, medical devices and IoT.
• Shell Plc has confirmed that it intends to divest from its South African downstream operations. This will see the company selling off these assets, which effectively amount to the over-1000 service stations it operates. This move is forecast to have a negative effect on choosing South Africa as an investment destination.
• A collaboration between Vertiv, a global provider of critical digital infrastructure and continuity solutions, and South Africa-based IT services and solutions company, TechAccess, is growing the presence of both companies in the region, and providing needed support for data centre-colocation, enterprise, financial sector and mining customers across sub-Saharan Africa. Vertiv will work alongside TechAccess, enabling the company to deliver expertise and critical digital infrastructure system support to its customers.
Technologies
• LPCAMM2, a fast and efficient new type of laptop DRAM based on LPDDR2, is shipping in the latest Lenovo ThinkPad P1 computer. Unlike DDR5 RAM which consumes a large amount of power, this new RAM uses even lower voltage, with a resulting drop in power requirement. LPCAMM2 has a transfer rate of 8533 Mbps, a 33% improvement over the previous generation. Micron currently supplies the LPCAMM2 modules used by Lenovo.
• Spectrum Instrumentation has released an open-source Python package that is now available for the current line of all Spectrum Instrumentation test and measurement products. The new package makes the programming of all 200+ instruments, offering sampling rates from 5 MS/s to 10 GS/s, faster and easier. Python, popular for its simplicity, versatility, and flexibility, boasts an extensive collection of libraries and frameworks that significantly accelerates programming development cycles. The package provides a high-level Object-Oriented Programming interface that is specifically designed for the Spectrum Instrumentation digitiser, AWG and digital I/O products, and includes the full source code.
• Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, recently posted to his X platform that any company not spending upwards of $10 billion this financial year on AI-related research will be left behind in the AI revolution. Tesla’s money will be put into AI training and inference to try to position the company at the forefront of AI’s real-world applications outside of generative AI. Spending on AI inferencing will continue the groundwork on the next generation of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) computer code-named HW5.
• Apple has recently announced its new M4 processor, which will first appear in the company’s new iPad lineup. The processor incorporates 28 billion transistors built on 3 nm technology. It features four performance cores and six efficiency cores, together with a 10-core GPU. Of note is the included NPU, which is claimed to offer 38 TOPS for AI processing.
• Mouser has penned a new global partnership with Edge Impulse, a cutting-edge development platform that enables machine learning on edge devices, providing advanced intelligence to a wide range of products and devices, from low-power MCUs to efficient Linux CPU targets and GPUs. This collaboration brings hardware and AI/ML closer together, combining the market-leading platform and tools of Edge Impulse with Mouser’s expansive range of compatible hardware products.
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