ASM talks about supplying lithography machines to mainland China; Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: Speeding up research on smart chips and enhancing algorithmic computing power...
ASM Lithography Machine Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
On November 4, Qualcomm's stock price soared by more than 12%. Compared with its semiconductor peers, Qualcomm was more willing to face the shortage of chips, and was optimistic that its performance would continue to grow next year.
Qualcomm CEO CrisTIano Amon said on the conference call that the supply problem is expected to improve significantly by the end of December, and there will be enough supply to meet demand in the second half of next year. EPS is expected to increase by 20% annually in fiscal 2022.
Lily commented: The shortage of 5G chips has been affecting the shipment of 5G mobile phones. Qualcomm, as the world's major supplier of 5G chips, indicated a shortage of chip supply as early as the beginning of this year. The latest, currently Qualcomm chips are more advanced manufacturing processes, through Samsung, TSMC to obtain 5nm process chips, making it more flexible in the face of supply problems.
Qualcomm CEO CrisTIano Amon believes that despite the short-term pressure on chip supply, chip revenue still grows by 56%. Qualcomm is one of the few companies capable of multi-party procurement in advanced manufacturing processes. Prior to this, Apple processors only chose TSMC as a foundry, and Qualcomm adopted a dual procurement strategy, which was a major factor in the growth of chip sales.
Intel had predicted that the chip shortage would not improve until 2023; however, Qualcomm and AMD are expected to be closer, and AMD estimates that the chip supply bottleneck will continue until the second half of 2022.
ASML: Except for EUV lithography machines, shipments to mainland China are still normal
At the 4th CIIE this year, ASML China stated that the EUV lithography machine is currently not available for normal delivery, and the rest of the products can be shipped normally. Regarding the Chinese market, ASML has the same view as last year's CIIE, and still maintains an open attitude, but still has to abide by relevant laws and regulations. At the same time, ASML also revealed that under the global chip expansion tide, the delivery cycle of some lithography machines has also been affected, so ASML itself is also carrying out expansion plans.
Leland commented: Although it is unable to purchase EUV lithography machines, mainland China itself is still stepping up its chip manufacturing capacity expansion and remains one of ASML's largest customers. ASML claims that the installed capacity in China is close to 1,000, most of which are KrF, i-Line and ArF lithography machines, while the ASML China team is still focused on service support.
However, the domestic chip expansion plan that uses lithography machines seems to have slowed down recently. In the third-quarter financial report released by ASML in October, the proportion of sales from mainland China further decreased to 10% from 17% in the previous quarter. %. In terms of total sales, from the second quarter to the third quarter of this year, ASML’s sales increased by nearly 1 billion euros, while sales from mainland China dropped by nearly 100 million euros to only about 410 million euros. This figure is also Lower than last year's Q3 quarter sales.
In combination with sales growth in other regions, Taiwan and the United States have both started another round of production expansion recently, and there has been a substantial increase in the sales volume of EUV lithography machines. This sales situation is related to TSMC and Intel's factory deployment plan. Due to the inability to purchase EUV lithography machines, SMIC's expansion of higher process production is obviously hindered.
Green's harmonic robot reducer stabilizes its leading position and begins to enter the supply chain of the four major families
As the leading harmonic reducer in the domestic industrial robot field, Green Harmonic has accumulated a large number of high-quality customers in the industry by virtue of its product and technical advantages. According to the third quarter report of Green Harmonic, with the gradual commissioning of its newly-built production capacity, it is expected to benchmark against the leading international precision reducers. At the same time, the performance of its harmonic reducer has been equal to that of Hamonaco, and it has begun to enter the supply chain of the four major families.
Sisyphus comment: The rise of green harmonics in the field of robotics is foreseeable. First of all, the main downstream 3C and automobile manufacturing industries of industrial robots have strong recovery momentum, and the increase in fixed investment has promoted the recovery of robot production and sales. At the same time, rising labor costs and shortening the cost recovery cycle of robots have prompted the replacement of enterprises' machines. The most important thing is the rapid increase in the proportion of domestic self-owned brand robots, and the domestic substitution of high-quality core components can be said to be natural.
From the perspective of Q3 single quarter alone, Green's harmonic revenue was 135 million yuan, an increase of 124.3% year-on-year. According to the development of the industry, the domestically proposed collaborative robot concept has a favorable capital environment and the technological starting point is similar to overseas. Domestic collaborative robots are expected to achieve corner overtaking. With the green harmonics being the leader of the reducer in the robotics industry, this new concept There will also be a lot of performance to be cashed out.
At present, Green Harmonic’s original P-type gear is comparable to Hamonaco's benchmark product performance, and the accuracy and life of the Y and N series are leading in the industry; through the fund-raising project, the annual production capacity is expected to increase from 90,000 units to 600,000 units, which will increase again Ability to accept orders from major global customers. With excellent performance and outstanding price/performance ratio, Green Harmonic has begun to enter the supply chain of the four major families.
Apple objected! The EU intends to allow the installation of mobile apps through third parties
On November 3, Apple’s head of software Craig Federighi said at the Lisbon Global Network Summit that he opposed the European Union’s "Digital Market Act," which may cause users to install from outside the App Store. Software, thereby undermining iPhone security. The "Digital Market Act" is currently under consideration by European legislators and includes provisions requiring companies such as Apple to allow third-party app stores to run on their devices.
Anson commented: This is already the second bill involving Apple after the EU's unified Type-C interface. In order to ensure the security of the iOS system, which has always been known for its security, it is forbidden to install software through third-party channels other than the App Store. The starting point of this bill is obviously aimed at Apple.
From the point of view of the EU’s proposal of the bill, the EU’s move may be to end Apple’s monopoly. On the one hand, it is to help Apple mobile phone users fight for the right to choose software installation. The "price difference" method uses a 30% fee cut, which not only harms the interests of software vendors, but also harms the interests of consumers. Usually, software manufacturers increase the price of their products on the iOS system to ensure that their own interests are not affected. In fact, Apple’s prohibition of the installation of third-party software violates the relevant regulations of the anti-monopoly law. In recent years, Apple has also been sued by many countries on the grounds of anti-monopoly law, but Apple still maintains its own way.
From the point of view of Apple’s opposition, on the one hand, Apple’s prohibition of the installation of third-party software is indeed for the safety of consumers and the system. On the other hand, the introduction of this bill has indeed moved Apple’s "cake". According to statistics, Apple’s App Store’s revenue in 2020 is 64 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 28%. Software commissions have also become Apple’s main revenue. Important source. Allowing the installation of third-party software will affect the revenue of the App Store. This may be the real reason why Apple opposes the EU bill.
Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: Speeding up research on smart chips and enhancing algorithmic computing power and other capabilities
On November 5th, Wang Zhijun, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that technological innovation is the driving force for development. It is necessary to perseverely strengthen the research on the basic theories, key technologies, and common technologies related to artificial intelligence, and accelerate the research on key links such as smart chips and operating systems. Make breakthroughs, enhance basic support capabilities such as data, algorithms, and computing power, consolidate the industrial foundation and supply capabilities, and contribute Chinese wisdom to the development of the world's smart industry.
Carol comments: In recent years, my country's smart technology and industry have developed vigorously, and the innovative application capabilities of smart technologies such as image recognition and speech recognition have continued to improve. According to calculations by research institutions, the scale of my country’s artificial intelligence core industry has exceeded 300 billion yuan, and the number of enterprises has exceeded 2500. An industrial chain covering the basic, technical, and application layers has been initially formed, which has become an important new driving force for industrial transformation and high-quality economic development. kinetic energy.
With the increase of algorithm models and the gradual improvement of application scenarios and scale, the industry’s demand for AI computing power is increasing, and there are more and more investment and financing in the field of AI chips. Some investors said that they see their investment The company’s calculation of computing power in terms of voice has increased by hundreds of thousands of times from 2012 to 2019, so it has also increased its investment in AI chip companies.
In recent years, there have been more and more AI chip companies. AI computing chips mainly include GPU, DPU, TPU, NPU, IPU, VPU, etc. There will be more than 150 global AI chip manufacturers in 2021, of which there will be about 100 AI chips in China. Global investment in AI chips reached 5.896 billion yuan in 2015. Liu Jun, vice president of Inspur Information and general manager of Inspur AI&HPC product line, said earlier that the computing power of AI chips will continue to increase in the future to meet the growth trend of model scale, focusing on cost, performance and power consumption ratio, and meeting the needs of different scenarios.
