Financial
• The prices of NEV (new energy vehicle) power batteries fell by 3 to 4% MoM. The Li-ion battery industry was still in the process of consuming existing inventory, and prices of materials in the upstream sections of the industry chain continued to fall. The average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate and lithium hydroxide registered MoM drops of 9% and 8% respectively. The prices of other cathode-related upstream materials such as cobalt (II, III) oxide and cobalt (II) sulphate also reached a trough.
• The average selling price of NAND Flash products will continue to fall 5 to 10% in Q2 2023. Despite the fact that NAND manufacturers have continued to roll back production, there is still an oversupply of NAND Flash, as demand for products such as servers, smartphones, and notebooks is still weak. Two major players, Kioxia and Micron, both reported a reduction in production with Kioxia’s revenue plunging 30,5% due to the weak demand.
• Trendforce has reported that several manufacturers, including Micron and SK Hynix, have started scaling back DRAM production. The ASP of DRAM dropped 20% in Q1 2023, and this price decline is expected to slow down to 10% in the next quarter. It is still uncertain whether the demand will recover in the second half of 2023, and therefore, production is being scaled back to force a rebound in the average selling price.
• On a more upbeat note, smartphone camera module output is predicted to grow by 3,6% to 4,62 billion units in 2023 as smartphone demand picks up. Consumers are now, more than ever, prioritising camera performance when it comes to choosing a new smartphone.
Companies
• Intel has barely retained its title as the world’s most valuable semiconductor brand, marginally ahead of TSMC. Intel, whose brand value dropped 10% to $22,9 billion, edged TSMC by only $1,2 billion after its brand value increased by 5% to $21,6 billion. This is largely due to the fact that Intel has built a mainly consumer-facing brand, producing products for laptop and desktop computers, while TSMC is a business-to-business brand manufacturing semiconductors for the likes of Apple, AMD, and Nvidia.
• Eskom has been issued with a R950 million fine in favour of Framatome, the company contracted to manufacture and replace the six steam generators at Koeberg nuclear power station. The fine was a penalty for delaying the project to replace unit 1 steam generator. The delay was in order to reduce load shedding in June 2022, but stage 4 power cuts were still implemented despite the delay. The project requires each Koeberg generation unit to be shut down for a projected five months.
• Riding the worldwide hype surrounding ChatGPT, and now, other AI and ML products, Nvidia has introduced new intelligence chips and supercomputing services. This is intended to showcase how the company’s technology will drive the next round of AI breakthroughs. Nvidia has said that AWS is set to use 20 000 interconnected H100 GPUs (successor to the A100 used by OpenAI). Oracle announced that its platform will be using 16 000 of the new Nvidia H100 GPUs for high-performance computing applications, and Microsoft has started adding H100 GPUs to its existing compute infrastructure.
• Nvidia is also positioning itself as a key player in quantum computing with the launch of new hardware and software. This month the company unveiled Cuda Quantum, a platform for building quantum algorithms using the popular classical coding languages C++ and python. Their program will help run the algorithm across both quantum and classical computers depending on which system is most efficient for that particular problem. The platform is named after Cuda, the Nvidia software most AI developers use to access the company’s GPU, and which has set Nvidia apart from other manufacturers in the AI space.
• MTN South Africa will spend at least R1,5 billion in 2023 to secure its network against vandalism and load shedding. MTN’s CTO, Michele Gamberini, stated that there have been more than 400 attacks on its tower infrastructure in the Eastern Cape alone, with thieves making off with batteries, copper cable, and generators.
• The South African Cabinet has approved a bill on electricity regulation which will pave the way for private generation projects. Despite its monopoly, Eskom is unprofitable and is moving ahead with its plan to separate into individual business entities: generation, transmission, and distribution. The bill will strengthen the role that energy regulator Nersa plays, and allow measures to create a transmission system operator that includes the provision of an electricity trading platform on a multi-market basis.
• China Energy Engineering Group has proposed building a 1 GW floating solar farm on Lake Kariba in Zimbabwe. The R18,3 billion project will use more than 1,8 million PV panels installed over 146 modular floating units on the world’s largest lake. Civil engineering works would make up around 20% of the cost, with the balance used for the electrical equipment and installation. Zimbabwe currently has up to 12 hours of power blackouts per day due to electricity generating problems. China Energy has previously completed similar projects in China and Thailand. Benefits are threefold as the projects, besides generating power, avoid competition for land and have the potential to reduce evaporation from lakes.
• Starlink rival OneWeb is set to launch global internet coverage this year. The company has launched the final 36 satellites of its initial 616-satellite constellation. OneWeb now has enough satellites in orbit to offer broadband to businesses and customers in the US by May, with global coverage set to be offered by the end of 2023.
• Not to be outdone, SpaceX launched 495 additional Starlink satellites this year, the latest being 56 satellites on 24 March. This brings the total to over 3580 of these small LEO satellites with global coverage. Nearly 12 000 satellites in the Starlink network are planned to be deployed.
• The Swedish mining group Boliden is becoming one of the first in the world to start using battery-electric trucks for heavy underground transport, starting in 2023. In mining environments, the electric trucks can deliver several big advantages, including no exhaust emissions, a safer workplace, and quieter working conditions.
Technologies
• NAPAfrica, the African continent’s largest Internet exchange point (IXP), reached a 3 Tbps peak traffic milestone. This peak in Internet traffic was reached on the back of some significant gaming releases and software updates. Since then, the increase in NAPAfrica’s average throughput has continued, and recently peaked at 3,44 Tbps, with the increase attributed to enterprises moving into the cloud and the ever-increasing demand for video and gaming services.
• Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corporation and a pioneer in the semiconductor industry, has died at the age of 94. He is most well-known for ‘Moore’s Law’ where he originally observed, in an article, that the number of transistors on microchips had roughly doubled every year since integrated circuits were invented. His prediction was later amended to every two years and helped both Intel and rival chipmakers target research and development resources aggressively to make sure that his prediction held true. In an interview in 2005 Moore said, “I was very fortunate to get into the semiconductor industry in its infancy. And I had an opportunity to grow from the time where we couldn’t make a single silicon transistor to the time where we put 1.7 billion of them on one chip. It’s been a phenomenal ride.” His legacy will certainly be remembered.
• Researchers at the University of Rochester have announced a breakthrough in superconductor technology. A new material that is a superconductor at room temperature, albeit at high pressure, promises to revolutionise the electronics industry, leading to many new practical applications including ultra-efficient electricity grids, ultra-fast and energy-efficient computer chips, and incredibly powerful magnets for various control applications. Superconducting circuits are also used as qubits, the basic units of quantum computing.
• Computing pioneer Bob Metcalfe has been awarded the industry’s most prestigious prize for the invention of Ethernet, a technology that remains the cornerstone of the internet. The Association for Computing Machinery conferred its 2022 Turing Award on Metcalfe and credited him with Ethernet’s ‘invention, standardisation, and commercialisation.’ The award, known as the Nobel prize of computing, comes with a $1 million prize purse, thanks to backing from Google.
© Technews Publishing (Pty) Ltd | All Rights Reserved
printer friendly version