At the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conference in February 2021, Regina Freed of Applied Materials gave a paper: “Module-Level Material Engineering for Continued DRAM Scaling”. Applied Materials provided me with the presentation and was kind enough to set up an interview for me with Regina Freed.
I also spoke to Regina Freed last… Read More
Smartphone shipments have been dropping over the past few years, as shown in Chart 1, as a result of several factors, but primarily the slowdown in smartphone innovation while at the same time prices have kept increasing. Even with the much anticipated 5G in 2020, unimpressive speed gains coupled with a Covid-19 backdrop, smartphones… Read More
2020 has been a NAND growth year-2021 will be the year of DRAM. While foundry logic has gotten all the credit in 2020 the reality is that NAND has been up 2X in 2020 for semiconductor equipment provider Applied Materials (AMAT). It is expected that NAND will be flat in 2021 while DRAM will take over the growth slot with foundry/logic … Read More
KLA reported revenue of $1.54B and Non GAAP EPS of $3.03 versus street expectations of $1.49B and EPS of $2.77. Guidance is for revenues… Read More
At SEMICON West, Applied Materials announced a new selective gap fill tool to address the growing resistance issues in interconnect at small dimensions. I had the opportunity to discuss this new tool and the applications for it with Zhebo Chen global product manager in the Metal Deposition Products group at Applied Materials.… Read More
Higher Foundry/logic exposure helps-
Little or no Covid or China trade impact-
Nice quarter but even better guide-
Applied reported revenues of $4.4B and NonGAAP EPS of $1.06, nicely above street estimates of $4.2B and $0.95 in EPS. Guidance is for revenues $4.6B +-$200M and EPS of $1.17+- $0.06, versus current expectations of… Read More
Two bits of recent news has excited people in the semiconductor manufacturing space. First TSMC (bit.ly/384joVr) announced their intention to invest $12 B dollars in a Fab in Arizona. Then came the Corona-driven bipartisan proposed $23B federal government investment in semiconductor manufacturing (nyti.ms/2YZzFqnl). … Read More
Lam reported strong beat & guide, memory returns-
China trade and Covid impact near zero-
Looking at a strong H2 with WFE in mid $50B+-
Lam reported a great quarter, easily beating expectations coming in at $2.79B and $4.78 in non GAAP EPS-
Guide is for $3.1B +-$200M and EPS of $5.06+-$0.40-
Margins and all… Read More
Moore’s Law has been about device density, specifically transistor density, increasing every certain number of years. Although cost is the most easily grasped advantage, there are two other benefits: higher performance (speed) and reduced power. When these benefits are compromised, they can also pose a scaling limitation.
Blocking chip sales to Huawei back on front burner
Covid19 & China Trade are equally bad
Long lived Uncertainty could “plague” industry sales going forward
Political Predictability worse than Disease Predictability
Reuters broke a story today that the proposed licensing of chip equipment to prevent “bad… Read More
