And Timetec 256GB SSD 3D NAND QLC SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5 Inch… $15.99
Posted on 02/04/2023 5:35:59 AM PST by FarCenter
The semiconductor gold rush is all but over, and we've had our fill. Or so the past month of dismal earnings might have you believe.
Electronics giant Samsung saw its profits contract 69 percent during the fourth quarter, while revenues slumped 8 percent overall. South Korean memory manufacturer SK Hynix, meanwhile, followed a few days later with an equally bleak report. Both companies told a story of macroeconomic forces that were suppressing consumer spending and driving DRAM and NAND flash inventories to unprecedented levels.
Put simply, where there was once a chip shortage there is now a glut. Well, of memory anyway — more on that later.
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The worst has yet to come Memory fabs' options, given the current predicament, are limited. These companies have fairly long and complex supply chains and largely compete on pricing and process tech, CCS Insights analyst Wayne Lam previously told The Register.
Until things improve, Samsung and SK Hynix are focusing on products like LPDDR5, DDR5, and HBM used in mobile, next-gen server, and high-performance computing products, which it anticipates will drive future demand.
By comparison, conventional fabs, like those operated by TSMC, and those not dedicated to memory at Samsung, have relatively short, straightforward supply chains. This, Lam explained, gives them greater flexibility to reallocate capacity to chips that are in higher demand.
Despite all of this, the next few quarters are looking pretty grim. Over the past few weeks, chipmakers and foundry operators have offered a near universally grisly outlook on the quarters to come.
Intel expects its revenues to fall to $11 billion and potentially lower in the first quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, AMD is predicting flat revenues for Q1 and poor PC and gaming sales throughout the 2023 fiscal year. And, this week, Qualcomm again blamed the fact nobody is buying phones for its shoddy performance. Even TSMC forecast a revenue drop, its first in four years.
The general consensus among these companies seems to be that things should start picking up again in the second half of 2023. But not everyone is so sure. In a recent report, Dylan Patel at SemiAnalysis predicted that inventory levels wouldn't return to normal in Q2, and that the bare market for semiconductor companies would stretch on longer than anyone anticipated.
"We believe there is around a 15 percent downside for semiconductor companies' valuations or significant sideways movement before the real bull run can start," he wrote. "Days of inventory are currently at all-time highs. Even higher than the dot-com bubble and the 2008 financial crisis. This inventory will take a lot longer than two quarters to digest."
Patel isn't the only one. In a recent TrendForce report, analysts predicted foundry revenues would contract 4 percent in 2023, as wafer demand continues to dry up and inventory consumption slows.
When the semiconductor market does recover, the next question will be how quickly. Short of another civilization-altering event, it seems we're unlikely to see the kind of pandemic-level investment in IT that fueled so much of the semiconductor demand over the past three years.
Why all the fabs then?
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Automakers use a lot of separate microcontrollers to do individual functions. These chips already have fairly small die sizes, so producing them on 7 nm versus 28 nm doesn’t increase the number of parts on a wafer by a factor of 16. Much of the wafer is taken up by connection points and allowance for the kerf when sawing the wafer into individual dies.
The glut is in DRAM, NRAM, server processors, high-end PC and tablet processors, smartphone processors, discrete graphics processing units, etc. This is mainly due to the saturation of the PC, gaming, bitcoin mining, and smartphone markets and the ensuing slump in sales.
They’ll be giving F150s away... (LOL).
Once the dealers admit the party is over, the manufacturers will be pushing out 15k-20k off MSRP incentives. A 40k truck at 6% is entirly diffrent to me than a 60k. Profits and losses for the automakers will average out 2018-2024 to a near profitless business like 2012-2018.
If the SUV/Truck companies get their act together, standarize on a common electric core in drive and batery control of near ISO standard parts they can offer a ton of models and make money from value add again. There is no reason for 12 versions of motor controllers. I would love to order a 3d printed 2037chevy on electric frame 23 with the sporty roll hoop option B and spend money on what affects me most, seats, chrome, wheels and tires while on autodrive.
And for sake of the consumers budget, make the infotainment dock a standard connector again. I just want a 14 inch tablet with bluetooth on a standard stalk instead of a 10k must have option. The number of issues with 5 year old google/carplay on factory setups is insane. One could just have physical buttons and the car be car again for 300 bucks.
The cure for high prices are high prices.
You can’t price nav system options for thousands if you make it convenient for people to use Garmin, Magellan, ..., instead.
I have “been in the semiconductor manufacturing business” (working either directly or in a consulting capacity for semi mfg equipment companies) for thirty years.
Boom and bust cycles are a feature of the business, not an anomaly.
If you’re an investor, wait patiently for the bottom and carefully pick up some good companies for cheap. On the way to your 500% capital gain, you’ll enjoy some decent dividend payouts, too.
(Or, the world ends and Jesus returns and that’s cool too.)
Pretty much anything is an upgrade to my GTX 970 with 1GB of video RAM.
The computer is 2015 vintage, but an i5-6500 @3.2 GHz, 32GB RAM, an M.2 boot drive and terabytes of fast SSD is still overkill in the computing department.
And Timetec 256GB SSD 3D NAND QLC SATA III 6Gb/s 2.5 Inch… $15.99
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