UMC has reportedly received a contract to manufacture crucial chips for Apple’s upcoming iPhone antenna modules. According to a report from Economic Daily News, the production volume is said to be in the tens of thousands.

Regarding this, UMC does not respond to specific customer and market rumors. It is reported that the orders from UMC this time come from Qorvo, a supplier for Apple’s power amplifier (PA).

Qorvo designs new iPhone antenna components for Apple, integrating new chips and supplying them with Qorvo power amplifiers. These new chips adopt UMC’s 3DIC technology and are manufactured by UMC.

Per the report citing industry sources, it has revealed that the chips Qorvo outsourced UMC this time are products of Anokiwave, a wireless communication chip factory that Qorvo recently merged with early this year. They will be integrated into the design of new iPhone antenna modules and are currently gradually increasing in volume.

As smartphones gradually integrate AI functionality, the sources cited in the same report also reveal that Apple is enhancing efficiency by adopting a new design for the next generation iPhone antenna module. They are incorporating products from Anokiwave, which was acquired by Qorvo earlier this year, to enhance iPhone reception capabilities.

With Qorvo leveraging Anokiwave’s products and partnering with UMC for manufacturing, UMC secures critical component chip orders for the iPhone once again. Previously, UMC also manufactured driver IC chips for Apple through NovaTek.

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(Photo credit: Apple)

The semiconductor battleground of the Angstrom Era has commenced earlier than expected, with TSMC advancing its plant expansions in Taiwan. As per Commercial Times citing sources, TSMC is poised to increase its 2024 capital expenditure from the initial estimate of USD 28-32 billion to USD 30-34 billion, marking a hike of over 7%.

TSMC’s continuous plant expansion includes the initiation of the first 2-nanometer plant in Hsinchu’s Baoshan facility in April, the addition of another 2-nanometer plant in Kaohsiung, and the commencement of construction for two advanced packaging plants in Chiayi. Furthermore, there are market rumors speculating that TSMC plans to build two more A14 plants in Kaohsiung.

According to industry sources cited by the report, TSMC’s earnings call on April 18th will mark a significant milestone as the company transitions to the next generation of manufacturing processes. Expectations are high for surprises in capital expenditure, second-quarter operating prospects, and the nomination list for new directors.

During TSMC’s January earnings call, they disclosed a capital expenditure estimate of approximately USD 28-32 billion for this year. However, with NVIDIA’s recent unveiling of the Blackwell architecture, advanced packaging has become almost indispensable for next-generation chips. Major customers for advanced packaging, including NVIDIA, Broadcom, Marvell, and AMD, are all closely linked to AI.

Per the same report citing sources, it’s revealed by Commercial Times citing sources near TSMC’s clients that the current waiting time remains as long as six months, as capacity ramp-up continues to chase demand. It is widely expected that TSMC will increase its capital expenditure, with the lower bound potentially surpassing USD 28 billion to over USD 30 billion.

From an operational standpoint, TSMC is expected to benefit this year from the surge in demand for artificial intelligence. Analysts predict that AI clients will support TSMC’s second-quarter revenue momentum, with the potential to deliver low single-digit quarterly growth.

Per the report citing sources, the positive outlook for TSMC’s second quarter can be attributed to several factors. These include stable demand for TSMC’s 4nm and 5nm processes with support from NVIDIA’s GPUs. Additionally, it is speculated that the 3nm process will benefit from cryptocurrency clients and early orders for Apple’s AI chips, boosting capacity utilization. Furthermore, there is an upward trend in the mature 16nm and 28nm processes.

Per the industry sources cited by the report, TSMC’s CoWoS capacity is fully booked until the first half of next year. This will drive up the revenue contribution from TSMC’s 3nm process. Furthermore, the outsourcing orders for Intel CPUs this year will further boost revenue growth.

Additionally, on June 4th, TSMC will hold elections for ten directors, including six independent directors. The list of director candidates is about to be announced, attracting significant attention to the new team lineup. With the current Chairman, Mark Liu, announcing his succession, and independent director K.C. Chen planning to retire, significant changes in the TSMC board of directors’ composition are anticipated.

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(Photo credit: TSMC)

According to wccftech, Intel’s new GPUs will come in two models, namely Battlemage-G10 (abbreviated as BMG-G10) and Battlemage-G21 (abbreviated as BMG-G21).

These two new GPUs from Intel were revealed in an internal document. According to the document, the BMG-G10, targeted at enthusiasts, is a GPU with a TDP of less than 225W, while the BMG-G21 is designed as a mid-range performance product with a maximum TDP not exceeding 150W.

As for specific parameters and performance, the enthusiast-grade BMG-G10 is expected to be equipped with up to 64 Xe2 cores, directly competing with NVIDIA’s RTX 4070. On the other hand, the mid-range BMG-G21 aims at the RTX 4060, both continuing to utilize TSMC’s 4nm manufacturing process.

Therefore, previous rumors suggesting that Intel had canceled the development of BMG-G10 and only retained the BMG-G21 with 40 Xe2 cores appear to be untrue. Moreover, the core count of BMG-G10 is larger than initially reported at 56 Xe2 cores, indicating it is poised to deliver even higher performance.

Recently, per a report from Reuters, Intel, Qualcomm, Google, and other major tech companies are teaming up to challenge NVIDIA’s market dominance and make inroads into the AI software sector. They are expected to look to steer developers away from NVIDIA’s CUDA software platform, a parallel computing platform tailored for GPU acceleration.

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(Photo credit: Intel)

On March 27, Wolfspeed announced the topping out of construction at the its largest and most advanced John Palmour Manufacturing Center for Silicon Carbide.

According to its introduction, the “John Palmour Silicon Carbide Manufacturing Center” has a total investment of USD 5 billion, covering 445 acres. The first phase of construction is expected to be completed by the end of 2024. Wolfspeed CEO Gregg Lowe stated that the factory has begun installing ingot equipment, and it is estimated that production will start in December 2024 or January 2025.

The factory will mainly produce 200mm (8-inch) silicon carbide wafers, which are 1.7 times the size of 150mm (6-inch) wafers. This will meet the demand for the next generation of semiconductors critical for energy transformation and AI artificial intelligence.

It is reported that the ramp-up of the “John Palmour Silicon Carbide Manufacturing Center” will provide support for customers like Renesas and Infineon. Currently, Wolfspeed manufactures over 60% of the world’s silicon carbide wafer at its headquarters in Durham, North Carolina. It is worth mentioning that, Wolfspeed is carrying out a capacity expansion plan with a total investment of USD 6.5 billion.

In recent years, driven by the burgeoning development in applications such as new energy vehicles, 5G, solar energy, and photovoltaics, the demand for silicon carbide has shown explosive growth. According to previous data statistics from TrendForce, the overall market size of silicon carbide power device reached USD 2.28 billion in 2023 with 41.4% YoY, which is expected to stand at USD 5.33 billion by 2026.

Given the promising market prospects, major silicon carbide-related companies worldwide are accelerating their strategic deployments. Recently, reports of investments and progress in various silicon carbide industry projects.

Globally, Mitsubishi Electric is scheduled to open a new 8-inch SiC plant in Japan in April this year, and plans to put it into operation in 2026. European graphite materials and silicon carbide substrate supplier Mersen is expanding its silicon carbide substrate production capacity by obtaining investment from the French government.

In China, SICC announced to spend CNY 500 million to invest in “Silicon Carbide Semiconductor Materials Project”. TANKEBLUE’s silicon carbide project completed the second phase of the main body; Ascen Power steps up the production of its silicon carbide wafer manufacturing project phase I.

On the other hand, the joint venture of San’an and Li Auto has started pilot production of its  automotive-grade silicon carbide wafer and module project with a total investment of 1 billion; a large-size silicon carbide single crystal substrate industrialization project signed in Lishui, Zhejiang, China. Nantong Semiconductor Equipment SiC components project started the second phase. TonyTech intend to expand the 6-inch silicon carbide substrate materials project with a capacity of 200,000 pieces annually.

Cases of collaboration between enterprises frequently came up since 2024. For instance, Infineon has signed a long-term contract with SK Siltron for silicon carbide wafer, Innosilicon and STMicroelectronics have signed a silicon carbide strategic cooperation agreement in Shenzhen of China, the same as United Nova Technology and Li Auto.

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(Photo credit: Mitsubishi Electric)

On March 28th, Xiaomi officially launched the electric vehicle Xiaomi SU7, featuring three configurations: the standard version priced at CNY 215,900, the Pro version at CNY 245,900, and the Max version at CNY 299,900.

According to Xiaomi Automotive’s Weibo account, within less than 30 minutes of the launch, the SU7 secured 50,000 orders.

In March 2021, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun officially announced Xiaomi’s venture into the automotive industry. Nearly three years later, with the release of the Xiaomi SU7, its associated suppliers have emerged. These include global giants like Qualcomm, NVIDIA, and Bosch, alongside Chinese suppliers such as BYD, CATL, Yangjie Electronic Technology, TCL, and BOE.

Regarding chip supply, NVIDIA provides autonomous driving chips for Xiaomi cars. The Xiaomi SU7 is equipped with two NVIDIA DRIVE Orin chips, delivering a combined computing power of 508 TOPS.

In the smart cockpit, the SU7 utilizes Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8295 chip, built on 5nm technology. Compared to the Snapdragon 8155, the Snapdragon 8295 offers double the GPU performance and triple the 3D rendering capability. It supports integrated features like electronic side mirrors, surround-view cameras, and passenger monitoring.

Additionally, powered by the Pangolin OS smart car system, SU7 features a central control eco-screen, a flip-up instrument screen, HUD, and two rear-seat expansion screens.

The Xiaomi SU7 features a front central eco-screen measuring 16.1 inches, reportedly a Mini LED display supplied solely by TCL CSOT, as per Cailianpress. In the driver’s position, the SU7 is equipped with a 7.1-inch flip-up LCD instrument panel supplied by BOE, showcasing essential driving information. The 56-inch HUD head-up display is provided by New Vision Automotive Electronics.

Moreover, the SU7 features Xiaomi’s self-developed Super 800V Silicon Carbide high-voltage platform, with a peak voltage of up to 871V. Notably, besides the SU7, several models like the Zeekr 007, AITO M9, NIO, and Xiaopeng X9 also incorporate 800V Silicon Carbide.

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(Photo credit: Xiaomi)